[WTF] Guess who advised the Irish government to screw several generations of its citizens

(I wonder how much they got paid for their wise advice):


Just in from Sovereign Independent :

By Christian Massey

What if I said it was the Rothschild’s who came up with the hair brained invention of N.A.M.A

A plan to transfer 77 billion of bad loans from Irish banks to the Irish tax payer who will probably never see a cent of it again. Well according to them it was infact their idea all along.

See here (4 clicks to the right arrow)

For those of you who are new to all this and judging from our site visits there are many of you

See here

But this is all one big conspiracy theory right?

Thanks to Ian Crilly for this info

Related:

IMF and EU Hammer Ireland !

Financial oligarchy dictates terms of Irish bailout

As The Euro Goes The Way Of The Dodo, Where Does That Leave The Dollar?

From/by Gonzalo Lira, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010


The Eurozone is heading for a crash—anyone saying otherwise is either stoned, works in Brussels, or hasn’t checked the European bond market action lately: All hell is breaking loose there.

The Euro:
A famed, flightless bird, now extinct.

And if, as I have argued here, the Irish Parliament decides not to pass the austerity budget next December 7—that is, decides not to take the European Central Bank bailout—then hell is going to break out in Europe just in time for Christmas: Satan and Santa Claus just might be squaring off on the Rue Belliard before year’s end.

Therefore, the smart money starts thinking about what’s going to happenafter the euro-crisis-climax happens.

In other words, what’s going to happen to the dollar, once the euro goes the way of the dodo.

First, we have to understand how we got here, in order to figure out what’s going to happen next.

The Banana Republics of Europe

In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, various Latin American republics foolishly pegged their currency to the U.S. dollar.

It worked like a charm—at first. At first, all these small-fry countries took advantage of the fixed currency exchange rate to get indebted in dollars, and go off on a big-time shopping spree.

It all ended in tears, of course, when the bill came due. Chile, Argentina, Perú, Uruguay, at various times they all had their currency pegged to the dollar. And in each of those situations, once the currency peg became unsustainable, their economies crashed. 

This is exactly what the smaller economies of Europe did. As I argued back in April, if you look at the euro as simply a very complex currency peg, then the solvency crisis we are witnessing in Europe was inevitable.

Just like the banana republics in Latin America, the PIIGS of Europe got over-indebted to the point of insolvency. 

What Are The Europeans Doing? Trying To Save The Gangrenous Limbs, Instead Of The Patient

When the Latin American economies and their bondholders realized—the hard way—that their dollar-peg was unsustainable, the countries devalued their local currency, and started rebuilding their economies.

The bondholders? That is, the people fool enough to lend to these countries which had pegged their currency to the dollar? If they were lucky, they took a haircut. If they weren’t so lucky, they went home with a big fat bagel—a big fat zero.

What has the ECB been doing, with regards to the failing eurozone economies of Greece and Ireland? They’ve been trying to prop them up with bailouts—but keeping those economies pegged to the Euro.

What are the bailouts? Why, they’re loans. In other words, the Euro-morons are lending money to these shaky economies so that they can pay off their other loans. The Euro-drones in Brussels are not allowing Greece and Ireland to default and restructure: They are instead insisting in bailing them out and imposing austerity measures, without forcing haircuts on the bondholders.

So as the Greek and Irish economies continue to deteriorate, they have an overly strong currency for the weakness of their economy, and they are being forced to pay 100c on the euro, on loans they cannot possibly repay.

The effects are obvious:

Already, the Greek bailout of this past spring—which was supposed to be repaid in 2014 and 2015—is being extended to 2017. And casual observers of the Irish situation realize that, with the bailout costing €85 billion at 5.8% interest, there is no way that Ireland will ever be able to grow its way out of this debt. Greece and Ireland will be debt slaves forever, even as the crushing weight of the euro grinds their economies down.

Meanwhile, the bond markets realize that the bailouts of Greece and Ireland are only kicking the can down the road—the bureaucrats in Brussels are simply giving Greece and Ireland more loans to pay off older loans. So the bond markets are simply leapfrogging ahead to the next crisis-point:

Spain.

As I have argued here, Spain is the battleground where the Eurozone will either survive as a much smaller partnership of core member, or where the Euro will be utterly wrecked—and possibly the European Union along with it. 

So What Would Happen To The Euro?

There are two possibilities:

One, the Euro-shitheads of Brussels try to do in Spain what they’ve done with such remarkable incompetence in Greece and Ireland—prop up the sovereign debt with more loans. The bond markets—just like in the Greek and Irish cases—realize this is futile, or at best palliative, and therefore go to the next weak economy on the list: Italy.

Just as Greece and Ireland went down the tubes, Spain goes down, Italy goes down, until the bond markets settle on France—the ultime eurozone member. French sovereign bonds are attacked, Germany pulls out altogether—

—in short, a big old mess, with the euro left for dead on the side of the road, and all the countries going back to their original currencies, but with interest rates in the double digits, as the European bond market is wiped out.

That’s the worst case scenario.

The second possibility—the possibility that should have been implemented with Greece, and which I think the Euro-crats will implement come the Spain-Italy debacle—is to kick countries out of the eurozone.

This is the sensible thing. I also think that it is the likely thing: The weak and insolvent economies—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium—get tossed out of the euro, and go back to their local currencies, with their debts restructured.

As I see it, kicking out the weaker economies is the only way to cure this currency gangrene that is killing the entire eurozone. To stop gangrene, you gotta suck it up and cut off the limb. To stop what’s happening in the eurozone? Same thing.

If this currency gangrene is allowed to spread—if the EU and the ECB insist on bailouts for all the eurozone economies, while insisting they all stay in the euro and pay off 100c on the euro—then the European monetary union is doomed, as is the European Union itself.

Therefore, the weak and insolvent nations will have to be expelled from the eurozone, in order to save the stronger, healthier economies.

There are several countries in the European Union that have their own, non-euro currency—cutting loose economies that obviously are hurt by the euro is the rational thing to do.

Then again, with the Euro-twerps of Brussels, you never know. 

So Where Does That Leave The Dollar?

You have to understand one thing about the eurozone, if you are to understandanything about the eurozone: It is big.

Sure, the eurozone is smaller than the dollarzone—but not by much: Its GDP in 2009 was €8.5 trillion ($11 trillion), roughly 78% of the U.S.’s GDP.

The combined GDP of the PIIGS+Belgium in 2009 was about €2.5 trillion—therefore, if they are shown the door, the reduced eurozone would remain a very respectable €6 trillion.

Any big move on the euro would have a massive impact on the rest of the world’s economy, including the U.S., including the dollar—and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Therefore—regardless if it’s a (worst case) full-on euro-collapse, or a (best case) orderly expulsion of the weak and insolvent economies from the eurozone—the big winners will be precious metals, commodities (industrial, agro and oil), the Swiss franc, the pound sterling, British gilts, the dollar, and U.S. Treasury bonds. In that order.

Europeans have history to guide them: They know that in times of trouble, precious metals are the safest haven. Furthermore, a lot of them—rightfully—don’t trust the crazies running the Federal Reserve: They think that QE and it various iterations are insane.

So they’ll flee from the euro to precious metals. Commodities, too, would rise as well, for roughly the same reasons.

The Swiss franc and especially the British pound will rise—hard—with a euro-quake. The Swiss are a traditional safe haven—but the British under Cameron are winning kudos for their austerity measures. Regardless of whether one thinks they are half-measures or not, there is the perception in Europe that the UK is firmly on the H.M.S. Austerity: This makes the pound very attractive, to Europeans.

Much more so than the U.S. dollar: The dollar will also rise in a euro-crash, but not because it’s so attractive—it’s not. Like I said, the Europeans do not trust the crazies at the Eccles Building. But with everyone exiting the euro, inevitably a portion of them will go to the dollar, if only as a hedge against sudden moves in the franc and the pound. Same with U.S. Treasury bonds. Their absurd yields will go even more absurd—but Treasuries will be an asset class of last resort, for European capital fleeing the euro.

So regardless of how the euro ends—either by a total currency collapse, or an exodus of weaker and insolvent member states—the dollar will strengthen somewhat, but that will be as nothing compared to the British pound and the Swiss franc.

And the dollar will weaken—substantially—against precious metals or commodities of all classes, when the euro crashes.

As many of you know, I’m Hyperinflation Boy. So as regards that subject, a collapse in the euro—total or partial—will in fact hasten the arrival of dollar hyperinflation.

The reason I think so is because, even as the dollar strengthens against other major currencies, it will fall against precious metals and commodities, both industrial and agro, including oil. As commodities are all bid up by Europeans exiting their ruined currency, it will put price pressures on the dollar, which will skew the American economy even further in the direction it is already tipping towards.

So a collapse in the euro is not good news for the dollar—on the contrary: It’ll hasten the dollar’s fall.

_______

Related: 

Nigel Farage: The money struggle is the struggle against totalitarianism

Please Europe, "Do Something"! - 1^st December 2010

The Real Collapse You Should Be Watching Is The Euro Against Gold (GLD)

Europe Falls Toward Enlightenment?

Caution: Neo-cons at work. (Revisiting the Wikileaks data-dump.)

From CANNONFIRE :

Anglachel seems to be backing away from earlier comparisons between the Big WikiLeak Data-Dump and the Valerie Plame case. Nevertheless, a growing number of savvy commentators are coming around to the view that young Bradley Manning has been assigned the fall guy role. The big questions: Who is really running the show, and what's the motive for this operation?

Earlier, I suggested that the purpose might be to screw over Hillary Clinton, an idea borne out by Jack Shafer's new piece, which argues that she can no longer perform as Secretary of State. Hillary does seem to be at least a collateral target. But after looking at some of the actual cables (as opposed to reading the summaries offered by journalists), I think that an even larger goal motivated this leak.

This is about Iran. Someone out there wants war -- or at least an airstrike.

In other words: Welcome to neo-con country! Remember yellowcake? Remember the "laptop" documents? The war-lovers are at it again.

While we can't allege that Michael Ledeen had anything to do with the document dump, he surely welcomes the release of cables revealing that Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states want America to take military action in Iran. If Mikey had personally cherry-picked a selection of diplomatic cables, would the results be terribly different?

Although the vast majority of the documents are of recent vintage, a few go way back -- 1966, 1972, 1979, 1986. In this post, let's pay special attention to the earliest examples. They too have a message.

As we ponder that message, let's ask ourselves a couple of questions. First: Why would these cables come within the purview of Bradley Manning, Private First Class? Second question: Why would he consider the release of this information so damned important as to justify the risk of a long imprisonment?

It's not as though you'll find the name of the grassy knoll shooter in these pages. In fact, these early cables do not directly address any issues that might embarrass this country's conservative elites.

None of the documents talk about war in Nicaragua or El Salvador. They don't mention Paraguay or Chile or Argentina or any other nation run by American-backed dictators. We get no behind-the-scenes assessments of Klaus Barbie's involvement with the "cocaine coup" in Bolivia. We learn nothing about the assault on the Liberty. Nothing about the sexual compromising of Saudi leaders. Nothing about Terpil or Wilson. Nothing about Jonestown or Guyana. Nothing about the downfall of Harold Wilson. Nothing about the mysterious funding of Solidarity. Nothing about the arming of Saddam Hussein.

In short: These historical records offer nary a word about any matter of interest to students of parapolitics in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Nothing in these cables will inconvenience anyone who thinks the way Ann Coulter thinks.

So what do we get?

1966: The earliest document concerns the extension of Argentina's claimed territorial sea. Uninteresting.

1972: A cable about the Shah of Iran's request for F-4E fighter jets. Conceivably, the release of this document serves a right-wing purpose: The Shah is pictured as America's staunch ally, while there is much talk about Russia's expansionist threat.

In 1972, the United States began to arm the Shah of Iran in a major way for the first time. After the Iranian revolution, the regime could no longer maintain its American weaponry, such as those F-4Es. Hence, Iran-gate.

1979: This cable is an interesting read. Once again, the subject is Iran -- after the revolution and before the hostage crisis. The author is Bruce Laingen, the most important American official taken captive during the hostage crisis.

The cable offers what some regard as a racist assessment of the Persian character and mind-set. "Racism" may not be the proper term, although Laingen does indulge in a fair amount of ethnic stereotyping of the "All Jews are avaricious, all blacks are lazy and all Italians are hotheads" sort:

In some instances the difficulties we have encountered are a partial reflection on the effects of the Iranian revolution, but we believe the underlying cultural and psychological qualities that account for the nature of these difficulties are and will remain relatively constant.

Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism. Its antecedents lie in the long Iranian history of instability and insecurity which put a premium on self-preservation. The practical effect of it is an almost total Persian preoccupation with self and leaves little room for understanding points of view other than one's own. Thus, for example, it is incomprehensible to an Iranian that U.S. immigration law may prohibit issuing him a tourist visa when he has determined that he wants to live in California.

The reverse of this particular psychological coin, and having the same historical roots as Persian egoism, is a pervasive unease about the nature of the world in which one lives. The Persian experience has been that nothing is permanent and it is commonly perceived that hostile forces abound. In such an environment each individual must be constantly alert for opportunities to protect himself against the malevolent forces that would otherwise be his undoing.

Coupled with these psychological limitations is a general incomprehension of causality. Islam, with its emphasis on the omnipotence of God, appears to account at least in major part for this phenomenon.

And so on. Obviously, no diplomat would resort to such language these days. At least I hope not.

The important point is this: Laingen's cable is useful to hawks who want to bomb Iran. This ethnocentric diatribe conveys the impression that Iranians can never be trusted, because every inhabitant of that country is an unstable egomaniac incapable of understanding the linkage between actions and consequences.

Later in 1979, Bruce Laingen famously warned President Carter about the dire consequences that might ensue if the Shah of Iran were admitted to the United States for medical treatment -- a prediction which came horribly true. Alas, other voices overruled Laingen's sound judgment on this issue. Those voices included Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, John McCloy and (I've been told) George H.W. Bush.

Odd, isn't it, that the data-dump has nothing to say about that sequence of events?

1986: The sole cable from this year speaks of strained relationships between Spain and Qaddafi's Libya after the latter was found to be illegally funding a far-right group in Spain. Older readers will recall that, in the American media, Qaddafi was one of the most popular bad guys of the Reagan era. Thus, nothing in this cable inconveniences the neo-con world-view.

The only bit here that might surprise Americans is the revelation of Qaddafi's ties to the Spanish far right. Throughout the 1980s, American propagandists tried to paint him as a Moscow stooge.

If you're hoping for any mention of the Wilson/Terpil links to Libya, you hope in vain. Neither do we learn anything about the still-mysterious 1986 bombing of the La Belle disco in Germany, which led to the retaliatory bombing of Libya. Some have argued that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing.

(Incidentally, Spain did not allow American jets to fly through its airspace en route to Libya.)

1989: The sole cable from this year bears the heading "Panamanians hope for a successful coup." The title says it all. Nothing here will challenge any pro-Bush historians of the era.

And there you have it: The earliest entries in the great Wikileaks data dump. How did this material find its way onto a data disk owned by PFC Bradley Manning? Why would Manning consider this stuff to be of vital importance to the outside world? Why did he (allegedly) risk his freedom to make this unchallenging right-wing boilerplate known to the public?

Something here reeks of fish.

Wikileaks and Imperial Mobilization

What is Wikileaks all about:


By Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org 

In order to comprehend the ostensibly bizarre Wikileaks phenomena that is continually in the news these days, it is essential to first comprehend the concept of the 'Mighty Wurlitzer'.

It used to be the honorific of Frank Wisner, the first chief of political warfare for the Central Intelligence Agency, used to describe the C.I.A.’s plethora of front organizations and newsmedia stooges that he was capable of playing (like a great organ with many keyboards) for synthesizing any propaganda tune that was needed for the day. More details may be gleaned in the disclosures of Operation Mockingbird.

The fact that such an omnipresent Message-Machine is not ancient history but very much current affairs, is underscored by this NYT headline “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”, Sunday, April 20, 2008.

Therefore, today, I use the term 'Mighty Wurlitzer' as a metaphor to pluralistically refer to the same message-machine, i.e., the intelligence apparatus for manufacturing consent and controlling dissent, and its concomitant conscious manipulation of peoples' thoughts, feelings, actions and in-actions, in order to serve the primacy interests of the ruling-elite. The latter are, invariably, also the de facto owners of the complete messaging-system now even more globally ubiquitous than when Frank Wisner played the world for a fool.

This 'grand organ' is now able to even more effectively synthesize, implant, and reinforce, all the right set of beliefs (myths) among the entire world's public – by suitably combining 'events' with imaginative 'expos' writing – which appropriately primes the world populations to acquiesce to the oligarchic agendas. While playing this orchestra is now an integral part of all state-craft, its major musical themes are entirely determined by the behind the scenes owners of the system. While some might refer to the underlying techniques as propaganda and psy-ops, 'Mighty Wurlitzer' singularly captures the messaging-system controlled under a unified purpose of command which is both highly compartmentalized and cellularized. Only the Mighty Wurlitzer knows the entire tune.

What this means is that not all who willingly cooperate with the Mighty Wurlitzer in synchronistically humming its themes are knowingly being purveyors of its myths and deception. Many of its most shrill echoers are often well intentioned functionaries who are fed different motivating myths at different levels in the hierarchy – sometimes the lie is different at every level – such that it suitably motivates each according to their own predilection, professional station, and mission statement.

The Mighty Wurlitzer operates on the core premise which has been empirically shown to psychologically motivate most human action. That premise was elegantly captured in the following insightful observation made at the so called “Terrorism Study Group”, that “'Public Assumptions' Shape Views of History: Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community. The sources for such presumptions are both personal (from direct experience) and vicarious (from books, movies, and myths).” Successfully implanting such presumptions and pre-suppositions among any group is to motivate its overall actions in accordance with those implanted beliefs. Thus, many intelligent peoples for whom it is otherwise inexplicable to understand why they persist in 'United We Stand' with absurdities, are motivated to react sympathetically to those absurdities.

To barely catch a glimpse of how it's partially done, the following description by Col. Fletcher Prouty from the Preface to the first edition of his 1973 book “The Secret Team” is instructive:

'There is another category of writer and self-proclaimed authority on the subjects of secrecy, intelligence, and containment. This man is the suave, professional parasite who gains a reputation as a real reporter by disseminating the scraps and "Golden Apples" thrown to him by the great men who use him. This writer seldom knows and rarely cares that many of the scraps from which he draws his material have been planted, that they are controlled leaks, and that he is being used, and glorified as he is being used, by the inside secret intelligence community.

Allen Dulles had a penchant for cultivating a number of such writers with big names and inviting them to his table for a medieval style luncheon in that great room across the hall from his own offices in the old CIA headquarters on the hill overlooking Foggy Bottom. Here, he would discuss openly and all too freely the same subjects that only hours before had been carefully discussed in the secret inner chambers of the operational side of that quiet Agency. In the hands of Allen Dulles, "secrecy" was simply a chameleon device to be used as he saw fit and to be applied to lesser men according to his schemes. It is quite fantastic to find people like Daniel Ellsberg being charged with leaking official secrets simply because the label on the piece of paper said "top secret," when the substance of many of the words written on those same papers was patently untrue and no more than a cover story. Except for the fact that they were official lies, these papers had no basis in fact, and therefore no basis to be graded top secret or any other degree of classification. Allen Dulles would tell similar cover stories to his coterie of writers, and not long thereafter they would appear in print in some of the most prestigious papers and magazines in the country, totally unclassified, and of course, cleverly untrue.

In every case, the chance for complete information is very small, and the hope that in time researchers, students, and historians will be able to ferret out truth from untruth, real from unreal, and story from cover story is at best a very slim one. Certainly, history teaches us that one truth will add to and enhance another; but let us not forget that one lie added to another lie will demolish everything. This is the important point. Consider the past half century. How many major events — really major events — have there been that simply do not ring true? How many times has the entire world been shaken by alarms of major significance, only to find that the events either did not happen at all, or if they did, that they had happened in a manner quite unlike the original story?'

Coldly implicit in Col. Prouty's afore-quoted empirical statement: “and the hope that in time researchers, students, and historians will be able to ferret out truth from untruth, real from unreal, and story from cover story is at best a very slim one”, is the Machiavellian notion of sewing faits accomplis in current affairs by straight-jacketing all public discourse in deception, and leaving the ferreting out of 'truth' to future generation of scholars and historians when separating myths from the calculus of hegemony can at best only be a bogus academic exercise entirely irrelevant to reversing the faits accomplis already sewn. See Convince People of Absurdities and get them Acquiescing to Atrocities: The Enduring Power of Machiavellian Political Science.

Wikileaks and Imperial Mobilization

A pertinent example of Col. Fletcher Prouty's fabricated leaks noted above, is the Wikileaks' July 2010 disclosures of 'The Afghanistan Papers' which revealed nothing new.

Wikileaks has always been a rather transparent Mighty Wurlitzer ops. It is trivial to see through the absurdity of its existence despite it promoting itself as being a sort of watchdog upon the empire, and therefore, ostensibly, being inimical to its unbridled quest for “full spectrum dominance” – just like Al Jazeera television based in Qatar, which too, absurdly enough, is permitted to function unhindered in the same nation as America's CENTCOM headquarters. Would it not be trivial for an armed to the teeth National Security State to take-out either apparatus rather trivially?

The reason each is allowed to function is of course social engineering, the sine qua non for waging modern warfare upon civilian populations by way of deception. It spans the entire gamut of engineering consent, from mantra creation in the mainstream and diabolically controlling dissent in order to control all opposition, to actually fabricating the visible pretexts which can naturally ripen the conditions for the mantra of “clash of civilizations” to be called real before the Western public in order to sustain the otherwise untenable “imperial mobilization”. Zbigniew Brzezinski had most succinctly summed this motivation in his book The Grand Chessboard – American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives: “Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization”.

How can one tell manufactured reportage and fabricated leaks from the real stuff? How can one see through the Mighty Wurlitzer?

As daunting as it might appear to the mainstream television watcher, it is in fact rather straightforward for those unencumbered by blind faith in governments and its statecraft. Just look for the core-lies and unquestioned axioms of empire that are typically retained in the “leaks” and reportage which, in order to sound credible, often openly expose what is mostly already known anyway or judiciously employ some variation of “Limited Hangout” wrapped in a veneer of dissent or 'freedom of the press'.

It’s the exact same recipe as is used by all the other fabricated and controlled dissent assets of empire when they are not outright spinning patent lies, for spinning half-truths requires far more brilliance. It is not for nothing that James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974, is quoted in the 1992 BBC-2 Documentary on Operation Gladio: “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State”.

Osama bin Laden is alive and playing a key role in directing the war in Afghanistan, leaked US military files suggest.


Multiple intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader are contained among the documents. They disclose publicly for the first time that bin Laden is thought to be personally overseeing the work of suicide bombers and the makers of Taliban roadside bombs which have had a devastating effect on British and US troops. A secret “threat report” drafted by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in 2006 locates bin Laden as well as the Taliban leader Mullah Omar to the Pakistani city of Quetta as well as several villages on the Afghan border. --- UK Telegraph 27 July 2010.
The core-lies retained in the Wikileaks' disclosure – which I call 'the Afghanistan Papers' – is to once again reaffirm that there is a real nemesis called “Osama Bin Laden”, that the “war on terror” is real, that it is being inflicted upon the West from Pakistan-Iran nexus, and to re-substantiate the handoff of former President George W. Bush's clairvoyance to the Obama Administration that “If another September 11 style attack is being planned, it probably is being plotted in Pakistan, and not Afghanistan”! That, when such a “planned” attack transpires, it “will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison”. See: ‘Bin Laden’: Key enabler of “imperial mobilization” and nuclear attack on Iran-Pakistan.

The successful handoff of “imperial mobilization” to Pakistan and Iran, now further sprightly underscored by Wikileaks' documents, is once again demonstrated by President Obama's Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's July 2010 remark to the BBC as quoted by Reuters: “There are still additional steps that we are asking and expecting the Pakistanis to take. But there is no doubt in anyone's mind that should an attack against the United States be traced to be Pakistani, it would (have) a very devastating impact on our relationship”. And that is merely just another echo from the Obama Administration of what the Pakistanis themselves have been made to parrot the past 9 years, as demonstrated by its own Ambassador's remark in 2008:

'On Wednesday, a media report quoted Pakistan’s envoy to Washington as saying that US leaders had warned Islamabad that if the United States suffered an attack that was traced back to Pakistan Washington would retaliate. “Those (statements) have been made,” Ambassador Hussain Haqqani told editors and reporters at The Washington Post. “We want to make sure that it doesn’t come to that.”'

To show Pakistan's unflinching willingness to do as much more as was asked, the Ambassador of Pakistan had further stated in an interview to Reuters in 2008:

'I am aware that there is still some who would question, or even justify the offense of 911.

But let us be clear. Al Qaeeda killed nearly 3000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women, and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody.

And yet Al Qaeeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale.

They have affiliates in many countries, to try to expand their reach.

These are not opinions to be debated. These are facts to be dealt with.' --- President Obama, Cairo Egypt, June 4th 2009, 911 and Imperial Mobilization Redux By Zahir Ebrahim
'Pakistan would attack Osama bin Laden the moment it had reliable intelligence on the Al Qaeda leader's whereabouts, Ambassador Husain Haqqani said on Wednesday. Haqqani also said he was confident Pakistan could help foil any Al Qaeda plans to attack the United States, although he did not know of any right now. “A cooperative effort between all the allies, and that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States and NATO – I think we can thwart any potential plans for an attack,” Haqqani said in an interview with Reuters. He said Pakistani intelligence had helped defeat many of the “several dozen” Al Qaeda plots detected worldwide since the September 11, 2001, attacks, but government officials knew of no immediate threats to the United States. Haqqani said Pakistan would act on its own against Al Qaeda if necessary. “If Pakistan, Afghanistan or the United States had specific intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden, they would have acted on it. No reservations would have come in the way of action on that, and none will even in the future,” he said. “If any of us had that actionable intelligence we would all act. We would act separately, we would act in tandem, we would act cooperatively – we would act.”'

So, could these self-serving 'Afghanistan Papers' have been any more convenient as a casus belli, carrying forth the same core-lies now entering its tenth year? If Wikileaks' dramatization grabbing all the world's headlines isn't an officially sponsored “modified limited hangout” for exactly that purpose of reinforcing the core-lies, then the White House not even bothering to stop the New York Times – whose own motto is 'All the news that's fit to print' – from publishing it, even giving it “all got gold stars” as the Salon put it, is downright inexplicable:

“So, uh ... why was all of this information classified and top secret? If it's old news, and it just confirms what "everyone" already knows, what was the rationale for keeping it classified and calling WikiLeaks all sorts of mean names for publishing it?”

What would it matter afterwards, after Iran and Pakistan have been bombed, what were lies and what was truth? Did the bogus mea culpa by the 2005 Presidential Commission on intelligence failure, the Iraq Study Group's disingenuous conclusion: “We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure,” reverse the decimation of Iraq? Did the New York Times 2008 revelation of Pentagon's Message Machine after 'all the barbers in town already knew it', return back to its silos each and every cruise missile that was dropped upon the innocent civilians of Iraq?

'In the summer of 2005, the commission of the European parliament for security and defense, of which I am a member, was invited to a special screening created by the Washington Center for Strategic Studies

We were asked to watch a film which depicted what would happen in Europe, if Brussels was hit by a nuclear bomb. Fifty thousand deaths, hundred thousand injured. The reactions of various European governments. Suddenly, footage of Osama Bin Laden claiming responsibility for a nuclear attack on NATO headquarters comes on screen. All members of the parliament, myself included, were rendered speechless. Then a parliamentarian finally said:

“Today we were shown a convincing demonstration of how Osama Bin Laden's image can be completely manipulated. All the Osama's we have seen over the years, may never have existed. Just as a nuclear attack on NATO Headquarters in Brussels has never taken place.”' --- ZERO
That is the real import of the craftsmanship of the Mighty Wurlitzer! To engineer a fait accompli by manufacturing consent among the gullible masses and dissent among the rabble rousers, leaving future scholars, historians, and the odd malcontent to laudingly study the ashes left behind by “history's actors”. A diabolical modus operandi of democratic statecraft which the Mighty Wurlitzer's operators even brazenly brag about: '“We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”' (Ron Suskind, New York Times, Oct. 17, 2004)

Those attempting to see through its fog of deception when a fait accompli can still be averted – before missiles have left their silos, before pen has been put to legalisms – are variously labeled as 'kooks', 'conspiracy theorists', 'delusional', 'denier', etc., their efforts infiltrated (as in cointelpro) and energies defocussed by introducing what's cynically called “beneficial cognitive diversity”. See Anatomy of Conspiracy Theory.

There is an undeniable categorical imperative before the Western peoples today. With the escalating belligerence towards Iran and the strategic dismantling of Pakistan palpably on the visible horizon, will the profoundly innocent of knowledge in the West allow themselves to be fooled once again into more criminal aggression upon civilian populations in the name of 'War on Terror'? This perpetual 'War on Terror' is not about 'Islamofascism' – Please get with the real agenda you people!

Or, will the people choose to not be (willingly) deceived by the Mighty Wurlitzer's many ruses at every level which continually justify the core axioms of “imperial mobilization” by way of deception?

  _______--


Related:

Is Wikileaks being manipulated by an intelligence service?

WikiStink

Wikileaks – Is It a Spy Agency Front?

Wikileaks Leaks Toxic Acid in Every Direction, Except to Israel

WIKILEAKS – MORE ISRAELI GAME THEORY WARFARE?

GENERAL SAYS WIKILEAKS IS CIA AND MOSSAD

EMERGENCY UPDATE: WIKILEAKS BANK DATA WILL BRING GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN AND COULD LEAD TO EMERGENCY LAWS

Brutal imperialism continues with fake "elections" under UN flag in Haiti

From SteveLendmanBlog:

The New York Times Endorses Haiti's Coup d' Etat "Elections" - by Stephen Lendman

Two previous articles explained the sham, outrageous enough to make a despot blush, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/11/haitis-sham-elections-solidifying.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/11/massive-fraud-in-haitis-sham-elections_30.html

No matter for The New York Times, a notorious voice for wealth and power. On November 30, its editorial titled "Haiti After the Vote" endorsed the sham, saying:

Despite elections "sullied by low turnout, polling-place confusion and accusations of voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and other fraud....international observers from the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community agree with Haiti's national election council (the Provisional Electoral Council - CEP), which has declared that the election was fundamentally sound."

So did MINUSTAH's head of mission (UN Blue Helmets), Edmond Mulet, calling the election "fairly good....in many ways," his way of endorsing brazen coup d'etat rule.

Preval's hand-picked CEP, in fact, rigged the election by banning 15 parties, including by far the most popular, Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas. Doing so violated Haiti's 1987 Constitution.

Besides the above abuses, voter names were left off rolls. Those of dead ones were included. Required ID cards weren't issued to most Haitians losing them in January's earthquake. Voting stations opened late, closed early, and in some cases had faulty or no ballots. Premarked INITE party ballot stuffing was widespread. Individuals using several ID cards voted multiple times for INITE candidates, hand-picked Preval ones.

Largely financed and orchestrated by Washington, the entire process was farcical and outrageous, evident to those on the ground observing it, and, of course, for Haitians - again denied democracy to institutionalize coup d'etat rule, serving local elites, Washington, and America's corporate exploitation of Haiti's resources and workers.

They're paid a below subsistence 25 cents an hour (about $2 a day, 70 gourdes), ensuring extreme poverty and for many too little to survive. It's less than one-fifth the 1980 minimum wage under dictator Baby Doc Duvalier in violation of Haiti's Labor Code, Article 137, requiring annual inflation adjustments. However, corporate interests blocked changes to assure the Hemisphere's lowest wage, (virtual slave labor), a benchmark to keep other regional ones from rising.

The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) called yesterday's elections "no surprise." They were "consistent with the (CEP's) history throughout the electoral process. Haiti has been on the course of undemocratic elections since the CEP was handpicked by President Preval in October 2009, in violation of Constitutional requirements for an independent Council."

IJDH's conclusion: "New, credible elections should be organized immediately, by a new, credible CEP."

No, for The New York Times, saying:

"Re-running elections this large - not just for president, but for 11 members of the 30-member Senate and the entire 99-member lower house of Parliament - would lead to months more of confusion and government inaction. Unless compelling evidence of fraud is found, it is not necessary and clearly not in Haiti's interests."

No time ever did The Times express more arrogance, more contempt for democracy, more disdain for a people denied any measure of equity and justice for over 500 years, except for two brief interregnums:

-- after its successful 1791 - 1803 revolution, turning slaves into citizens by establishing the world's first Black republic, and

-- during Aristide's tenure as president, abruptly ended on February 29, 2004 when US marines forcibly deposed him at gunpoint.

At issue only for Times management is "press(ing) ahead with an open and honest vote count" - what's impossible after a sham process. Yet its editorial concluded, saying:

"Haitians, whose patience has already been grievously tested, need to believe that their next leaders were legitimately elected. That appears to be the case. Haitians also need for those leaders to get on with the business of governing and rebuilding."

Ignored is brazen injustice, institutionalized illegitimacy, coup d'etat rule, and Haitians again denied what people everywhere deserve - officials serving everyone equitably and fairly. Instead they got government of, by and for wealth and power alone, what no one should ever tolerate, especially in countries like Haiti - impoverished, ravaged, and exploited as ruthlessly as any people anywhere. It's long overdue time that changed.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Background:

Haitian History Lessons (Part 1) – Our Debt to Haiti


Related:
Haiti solutions

European financial SHTF imminent

A must read from FinanceAndEconomics.Org, 28 November 2010

They must be keeping their fingers firmly crossed in Brussels, even praying that the Irish rescue package will do more, much more than buy a little breathing space. Relying on divine intervention will not be good enough, because there are three separate problems that will now make the financial collapse of the euro area a racing certainty. These problems are the large amounts of cross-border lending, misguided economic responses, and creditor-debtor politics.

The scale of the Irish financial threat is considerably greater than commonly realised and presented, because the relative size of the Irish economy is being confused with the size of its external banking obligations which are significantly larger than those of Spain or Italy.  Cross-border loans to Ireland by BIS-reporting banks amount to the equivalent of $715bn, and the comparable figures for Spain are $534bn and for Italy $467bn.[i] Of course these are not the only cross-border financial flows, because they do not include outward banking deposits and securitised debt issued by the Irish government and large companies. But they are the figures that matter.

So we must focus on the banks, because they are at the heart of the real crisis.  The cross-border loans by BIS-reporting banks for all the PIIGS amounts to $1,982bn at mid-year, which is 32% of the euro area total and disproportionate relative to the size of the economies involved.  So if the largest of these debtors, which is Ireland, is allowed to fail there would probably be a full-blown banking crisis even before markets turn their attention to either Spain or Italy.

These same statistics show that between September 2008 and June this year the PIIGS between them have also suffered loan withdrawals of $611bn, which indicates how hard their economies are being squeezed by the withdrawal of credit. For Ireland alone the figure is $165bn, about the same as one year’s GDP, and more withdrawals will have taken place since June, putting the proposed rescue package of only $113bn into context. This acute deflation is being conducted at the same time as taxes are being increased, which brings us to the serious mistakes being made in the management of the economy.

The Irish government has got one thing right: the importance of keeping corporation tax low. Brussels views things differently, partly because Germany and France see Ireland as unfair competition with respect to corporate location. So between Brussels and Dublin an ugly camel is born, and their attempts to close the budget deficit by a mixture of tax rises and public sector wage cuts while robbing state pension funds betrays a lack of resolve to tackle banking solvency properly. It is madness to punish the Irish people for the current banking crisis, because Brussels is shooting at the wrong target: rescuing the European banking system does not require the Irish economy to be driven into the ground, it requires Brussels to recognise it has a full-scale banking problem on its hands.

Both lender and borrower must bear responsibility for such wrong-headedness.  It amounts to a protection of jobs in the public sector, while taxes are raised from the private sector and pensions are robbed.  Taxing individuals and the private sector to reduce budget deficits prevents vital capital formation and so condemns Ireland’s economy to a prolonged period without recovery. This socially-driven approach is counterproductive, a point which will not be lost on the markets, when they work out that Ireland will be less able to repay its creditors because economic recovery, upon which government finances rely, is effectively cancelled.

So markets are now faced with a bail-out too small to reverse the run on the Irish banks, and by an Irish economy that has no chance of economic recovery in the foreseeable future.  A bail-out of $113bn amounts to an injection of only half of the money withdrawn from Ireland by the banks in the last two years. It is simply not enough.

The crisis is not helped by the understandable reluctance of the German people to commit more good money after bad.  It was difficult enough for Angela Merkel to come up with the funding for Greece, which was sold to the German electorate as a one-off.  Six months later it’s Ireland, presumably then Portugal, then Spain. It is no surprise that she wanted someone else, like senior bondholders to share the pain. But talk of bondholder haircuts merely creates a new bond market crisis to add to the banking crisis and will drive up Irish bond yields even further; and back-peddling on this issue is unlikely to undo the damage.

The importance of Ireland is that is the biggest cross-border banking debtor of all the PIIGS.  If the Irish banks are not saved, the European banking system will probably go under, and soon, without waiting for the pressure to mount on Portugal Spain and Italy. The politicians and bureaucrats of Euroland have not demonstrated a sufficient sense of urgency and understanding of the true crisis to resolve it: rather they have made it worse.  It is now becoming impossible to see a way out of the euro-banking problem without the ECB giving in on its anti-inflation stance and implementing aggressive quantitative easing. However, the ECB was set up to survive attempts to get it to inflate, so if it backs down from its sound-money stance in the middle of this crisis, the euro itself will suffer a loss of confidence.

It looks like divine intervention is the best hope after all.

28 November 2010

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[i] These figures are as at the end of June 2010 and are from the Quarterly External Debt Database portal of the World Bank.

_________

Related:

Financal Times admits Europe is facing fiscal union or break up

The Euro: Après moi le déluge

ECB pledge to buy bonds seals euro’s doom

The meltdown of the eurozone has slowed this morning following the announcement by the European Central Bank that it will buy bonds from governments in what is also seen as an indirect admission that the market does not want to buy bonds. Because the ECB’s bond buying programme will stoke inflation,  a gigantic flight from the euro in the longer term is now all but guaranteed.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has also said the introduction of eurobonds can’t be ruled out. But if Germany’s bunds are replaced with eurobonds,  the cost of servicing Germany’s national debt will soar.  The flight from the euro currency has caused it to drop 8 cents against the dollar in a wee; investors are fleeing European stock markets, including Italy and Belgium and Germany’s bund is also starting to be shunned by investors.

Read more in The Telegraph:

European Central Bank readying to buy more European government debt

up 58.8 to 5587  +1.06%

by Deborah Hyde on Dec 01, 2010 at 08:22

The European Central Bank’s governing council will consider whether to buy more bonds from beleaguered peripheral European nations Portugal, Spain and Italy on Thursday as investors are increasingly nervous about lending cash to these debt-laden countries.

The ECB has purchased nearly €70 billion of government bonds since the beginning of the financial crisis and already holds around one sixth of all Greek, Irish and Portuguese bonds.

It had hoped to be able to announce the withdrawal of support at this month’s meeting but yesterday the president of the bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, hinted that more buying may now be on the cards saying the programme is ‘ongoing’.

Here It Comes: US Gives Green Light On IMF-Mediated Rescue Of Europe, EURUSD Goes Parabolic

From Reuters: "US official says US would be ready to back larger European financial stability fund via increased IMF commitments." In other words, America, and its oh so rich middle class, is about to bail out Europe again. EURUSD surges on the news, as does ES. Elsewhere, Ireland's new dictator, Olli Rehn, adds that he is "attracted' by Eurobond ideas; sees no initiative soon. Which means about a week.

The EURUSD just went parabolic.