Distant Voices, Desperate Lives in Sri Lanka
by John Pilger, May 14, 2009
antiwar.com
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the catastrophe facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, whose distant voices have appealed to the world for almost as long as the Palestinians. Read the rest of this entry »
Distant Voices, Desperate Lives in Sri Lanka
Posted by smeddum on May 15, 2009
Posted in Drive to Global War, Rights of indigenous peoples | Tagged: Rights of indigenous peoples, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »
NATO – Fun And Games in Georgia
Posted by seumasach on May 14, 2009
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Posted in New Cold War | Tagged: Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), New Cold War, Obama agenda, SCO | Leave a Comment »
Banks ‘may need more state aid’, Bank of England warns
Posted by seumasach on May 14, 2009
“There is a big difference in practice between the levels of capital banks need to be stabilised… and those required to persuade banks to exhibit normal levels of risk-aversion. How big that gap is is impossible to say… but it looks as if it will be quite big.”
We have lost everything, unless we’re a bank, except that peculiarly Brit gift for understatement. Roughly speaking the above translates as: how much do we have to give banks in order that they lend something back to us? Quite a lot I’d say, old chap.
Mervyn King said although banks’ survival had been assured by recent bail-outs, they would not start lending freely unless more capital was pumped into their balance sheets.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: Financial crisis, stop the bailout | Leave a Comment »
Radio: Jim Willie on the rising of the yuan
Posted by smeddum on May 14, 2009
Posted in Financial crisis, Multipolar world | 1 Comment »
U.S. Soldier in Iraq Kills 5 Comrades at Stress Clinic
Posted by smeddum on May 14, 2009
U.S. Soldier in Iraq Kills 5 Comrades at Stress Clinic
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
BAGHDAD, May 11 — An American soldier opened fire on comrades Monday afternoon inside a combat stress clinic at a large U.S. military base in Baghdad, killing five and wounding three in an attack that prompted officials to promise to try to ease the strain on troops deployed to war zones. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Afghanistan, Drive to Global War, Iraq | 2 Comments »
‘BRIC countries’ role in global economy can only increase’
Posted by smeddum on May 13, 2009
‘BRIC countries’ role in global economy can only increase’
14 May 2009, Timesofindia
NEW DELHI: As India prepares for the BRIC summit in Russia next month, foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon said on Wednesday that the four countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — together are a factor of stability and growth as the global economy discerns its way through the complexities of the international financial crisis and as the world moves towards flatter distribution of power. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Brazil, BRIC, China, India, russia | Leave a Comment »
UK stakes claim to huge area of South Atlantic seabed
Posted by seumasach on May 12, 2009
That the Brit’s defence of the “sovereignty”of the Falklands Islands was more than just symbolic is now patently clear. Our response must be equally forthright:
Las Malvinas son de Argentina!
11th May, 2009
A vast tract of the South Atlantic seabed – rich in oil and minerals – was formally claimed by the United Kingdom today in defiance of Argentinian opposition.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Las Malvinas son de Argentina | Leave a Comment »
Icelanders need to be told the magnitude of their economic problem
Posted by smeddum on May 12, 2009
Make Iceland Pay for Incompetent British Bank Deregulation!
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF Counterpunch
>By MICHAEL HUDSON May 11, 2009
Last month the G-20 authorized the International Monetary Fund to increase its loan resources to $1 trillion. It’s not hard to see why. Weakening currencies in the post-Soviet states threaten to raise default rates on foreign-currency mortgages as collapse of the Baltic real estate bubble drags down Swedish banks, while the Hungarian property plunge threatens Austrian banks. It seems reasonable to infer that creditor-nation banks hope to be bailed out. The IMF is expected to lend the Baltic, central European and other debtor-country governments money to pay them. These hapless debtor economies are then to follow IMF “conditionalities” to squeeze enough money out of their populations to pay foreign creditors – and repay the Fund by imposing yet more onerous taxes on their labor and industry, making them even more high-cost and therefore pushing them even further into trade and credit dependency. This is why there have been so many riots recently in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, as was the case for so many decades throughout the Latin American countries that introduced the term “IMF riot” to the global vocabulary. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Battle for Europe, Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Defend Iceland!, iceland and IMF, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Federal Inspector without a clue
Posted by smeddum on May 12, 2009
Posted in Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Our Kleptocracy: Saving the American economy by looting it
Posted by smeddum on May 10, 2009
Bit of News
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 Written by Garrett Johnson
Paul Krugman recently pointed out that wages are falling across America. A week earlier the Treasury Department reported that tax revenue was collapsing at a 14% rate.
It’s easy to see the correlation between these two trends. But what do they have to do with this statement? Everything.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He’s losing.
“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,”
The first thing to understand is that the banking industry adds nothing to the economy. It doesn’t sow crops, make widgets, build homes, or fix your computer. The financial industry sits on top of the real economy in the same way a fungus grows on a tree. In fact, as famous investor John Bogle said a few years before the massive bailouts, the financial sector actually subtracts from the economy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: the new slavery | Leave a Comment »
The Nature of the Current Financial Crisis: The System is designed to exert Total Control over the Lives of Individuals
Posted by smeddum on May 10, 2009
Richard C. Cook
Global Research,
Sunday, May 10, 2009 Prison planet
What impresses me in the current financial crisis is the near-total failure of so-called progressives to appreciate the magnitude of what is going on or the level of intelligence behind it. How many will say, for instance, that the crash was deliberately engineered by the creation, then destruction, of the investment bubbles of the last decade? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: the new slavery | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 