Debt Jubilee for the Bankers – Austerity for Us

Source

Rory Hall

How do you know when you are about to be run down by a train? Well, typically you see it coming. What about when Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are about to blow up and you see the financial world flying off a cliff; how does one see that coming? Well, you can only see that after you have fallen and are tumbling toward planet earth, picking up speed as you fall!!

This is exactly the point that our financial system has reached. The Hypo bank in Austria was recently declared to be a zombie bank. The government of Austria had previously bailed out (read: taxpayers' money), Hypo bank, but the bank management thought they could beat the bookie and then pay off their debt if they could get one roll of the dice to fall in their favor. The dice had other plans and the gamble has not worked in Hypo’s favor. The problem with Hypo is they have all these government bonds on their books. The bonds are tied to the CDS and now we - the world, that is - are waiting to see if we are heading over the cliff or if the bankster mafia members are going to be able to work their magic and make the CDS go away. The only way the banksters were able to make the previous CDS crisis go away was to sacrifice Lehman Brothers and steal trillions of dollars from the American taxpayer. We will never be able to pay this debt. Ever. Debt jubilee, anyone?

Is Soros Preparing A Color Revolution For Greece?

Brandon Turbeville

With the recent victory of Syriza in Greece, opponents of austerity the world over have been rejoicing. The news from a country crushed by austerity policies, the European Central Bank, the IMF, and corrupt oligarchs is now heralding a shift in direction toward a “third way” that does not simply involve trading one austerity oligarch and his party for another. 

For many in Greece, the signal is clear – help seems to be on the way. 

For those watching the developments from afar, the hope is that the spark in Greece will light the brushfire across Europe and the rest of the world that says “No!” to austerity and banker domination of national economies. 

Yet, while the signs coming out of Greece may seem positive at first, there is an ominous cloud approaching – the cloud of George Soros and his color revolution apparatus.

11 Signs That Italy Is Descending Into A Full-Blown Economic Depression

Michael Snyder

When you get into too much debt, really bad things start to happen.  Sadly, that is exactly what is happening to Italy right now.  Harsh austerity measures are causing the Italian economy to slow down even more than it was previously.  And yet even with all of the austerity measures, the Italian government just continues to rack up even more debt.  This is the exact same path that we watched Greece go down.  Austerity causes government revenues to drop which causes deficit reduction targets to be missed which causes even more austerity measures to become necessary.

But if Italy collapses economically, it is going to be a far bigger deal than what happened in Greece.  Italy is the ninth largest economy on the entire planet.  Actually, Italy used to be number eight, but now Russia has passed it.  If Italy continues to stumble, India and Canada will soon pass it as well.

It is a tragedy to watch what is happening in Italy, because it really is a wonderful place.  When I was a child, my father was in the navy, and I got the opportunity to live there for a while.  It is a land of great weather, great food and great soccer.  The people are friendly and the culture is absolutely fascinating.  But now the nation is falling apart.  The following are 11 signs that Italy is descending into a full-blown economic depression...

Markets Fall As Another Crisis Engulfs Portugal

Chris Carrington

Borrowing costs in Portugal have risen more than 2% and the market has fallen by more than 6% during early trading. Jose Mario Barroso is said to be following the situation very closely.

Earlier this week two leading ministers resigned as large protests against the austerity imposed on the country took hold.

The sharp rise in bond yields suggests investors are less confident that Portugal will be able to repay its international debts.

Jose Mario Barroso The European Commission President said:

The initial reaction of the markets shows the obvious risk that the financial credibility recently built up by Portugal could be jeopardised by the current political instability. If this happens it would be especially damaging for the Portuguese people, particularly as there were already preliminary signs of economic recovery.

In May 2011 Portugal received a $102bn bailout on the condition that it implemented long-standing austerity measures. A little over two years later the Portuguese people are becoming more angry with the measures and more disillusioned with their government.

Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple, where this article first appeared. Wake the flock up!

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Stand Strong and Do Not Despair: Some Thoughts on the Fading Student Movement in Quebec

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

As eight of the fourteen CEGEP preparatory schools have voted to return to class, and thereby end the strike which began in February, Quebec is beginning to witness the fading away of the first phase of the student movement, mobilized by the planned tuition increases, and which expanded into a broader social movement known as the ‘Maple Spring.’ As some students have returned to class, they were met with a heavy police presence, no doubt to ensure ‘order’ during such a “dangerous” situation in which students enter school property. After all, Bill 78, which was passed by Jean Charest’s government back in May (now known as Law 12), made student protests on (or within 50 metres of school property) an illegal act.

Bill 78 was, quite accurately, described as “a declaration of war on the student movement,” and included an excessive amount of violations of basic rights and freedoms. Regardless of the specific details of the illegalities of the Law, we – the people – do not need even our Charter of Rights and Freedoms to tell us what is right and wrong, just or unjust. The legal system itself, after all, has very little to do with ‘justice’, and far more to do with legalizing injustice. Not only was the Law a violation of legally guaranteed rights and freedoms, such as freedoms of assembly and expression, but it was an affront to a very basic sense of decency, an insult to a very common sense of democracy, and an attack on a very basic conception of freedom.

This Law remains in effect. The tuition is set to increase. And as students vote to end the strike, some are mourning the seemingly vanishing potential of the student movement to effect a real, true, and lasting change. But all was not for nothing, all is not lost, and resistance is not futile. We have witnessed but the starting actions, initiative, determination, and voice of a generation which, around the world, from Egypt, to Greece, Spain, Chile and Mexico, are standing up, taking to the streets, innovating new actions and forms of collective resistance and even revolution. Our generation is beginning – and only just beginning – to awaken our wider societies to resist and challenge a system which, in the wake of this new great global depression, which in the wake of new wars of aggression, has revealed its true nature: all for the powerful, and nothing for the people. It is a system which benefits the few at the expense of the many.

11 Things That Can Happen When You Allow Your Country To Become Enslaved By Bankers

Dees Illustration

Michael Snyder, Contributor
Activist Post

Why are Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and so many other countries experiencing depression-like conditions right now? It is because they have too much debt. Why do they have too much debt? It is because they allowed themselves to become enslaved to the bankers. Borrowing money from the bankers can allow a nation to have a higher standard of living in the short-term, but it always results in a lower standard of living in the long term. Why is that?

It is because you always have to pay back more money than you borrowed. And when you get to the point of having a debt to GDP ratio in excess of 100%, you are basically drowning in debt. Huge amounts of money that could be going to providing essential services and stimulating your economy are now going to service your horrific debt. 

Today, citizens in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are experiencing a standard of living far below what they should be because the bankers have trapped them in endless debt spirals. Sadly, the vast majority of the people living in those countries have absolutely no idea what is at the root cause of their problems.

The truth is that no sovereign nation on earth ever has to borrow a single penny from anyone.

Welcome to the World Revolution in the Global Age of Rage

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Mass protest in Spain

I am currently writing a book on the global economic crisis and the global resistance, rebellious and revolutionary movements that have emerged in reaction to this crisis. Our world is in the midst of the greatest economic, social, and political crisis that humanity has ever collectively entered into. The scope is truly global in its context, and the effects are felt in every locality. The course of the global economic crisis is the direct and deliberate result of class warfare, waged by the political and economic elites against the people of the world. The objective is simple: all for them and none for you. At the moment, the crisis is particularly acute in Europe, as the European elites impose a coordinated strategy of class warfare against the people through “austerity” and “structural adjustment,” political euphemisms used to hide their true intention: poverty and exploitation.

The people of the world, however, are beginning to rise up, riot, resist, rebel and revolt. This brief article is an introduction to the protest movements and rebellions which have taken place around the world in the past few years against the entrenched systems and structures of power. This is but a small preview of the story that will be examined in my upcoming book. Please consider donating to The People’s Book Project in order to finance the completion of this volume.

Those who govern and rule over our world and its people have been aware of the structural and social changes which would result in bringing about social unrest and rebellion. In fact, they have been warning about the potential for such a circumstance of global revolutionary movements for a number of years. The elite are very worried, most especially at the prospect of revolutionary movements spreading beyond borders and the traditional confines of state structures. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser, co-founder with banker David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, and an arch-elitist strategic thinker for the American empire, has been warning of what he terms the ‘Global Political Awakening’ as the central challenge for elites in a changing world.

In June of 2010, I published an article entitled, “The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order,” in which I examined this changing reality and in particular, the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski in identifying it. In December of 2008, Brzezinski published an article for the New York Times in which he wrote: “For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.” This situation is made more precarious for elites as it takes place in a global transition in which the Atlantic powers – Western Europe and the United States – are experiencing a decline in their 500-year domination of the world. Brzezinski wrote that what is necessary to maintain control in this changing world is for the United States to spearhead “a collective effort for a more inclusive system of global management,” or in other words, more power for them. Brzezinski has suggested that, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening.” In 2005, Brzezinski wrote:

The Austerity Hoax

image source

Stephen Lendman, Contributor
Activist Post

Since 2008, Western nations have force-fed their people austerity poison. Decline replaces prosperity. Millions suffer. Living standards deteriorate. Societies become no longer fit to live in.

Neoliberal and imperial priorities let essential public needs go begging. How much more people will take before erupting remains to be seen.

The longer fiscal pain continues, the closer an ultimate day of reckoning approaches. It'll arrive disruptively. Perhaps people will recognize that throwing out bums for new ones accomplishes nothing. 

America is Exhibit A. Political Washington is corrupt, immoral, degenerate, and unprincipled. Instead of helping people, they destroy them. They benefit from imposing misery. 

Allied with criminal bankers an other corporate predators, their policies made conditions for growing millions intolerable.

Super Mario Monti and the Dictatorship of Austerity in Italy

Andrew Gavin Marshall

The following is Part 2 of a two-part excerpt on ‘Italy in Crisis.’ These excerpts are rough-draft, unedited samples of a chapter on the European debt crisis to be featured in my upcoming book (as yet ‘Untitled’), to be done by the end of the summer. The book covers the following: the origins, evolution, and effects of the global economic crisis; the acceleration of international imperialism; the elite global social engineering project of constructing a system of ‘global governance’; emerging resistance and revolutionary movements (and elite attempts to co-opt, control, or crush them), including the Arab Spring, European anti-austerity protests, the Spanish Indignados, the Chilean student movement, the Occupy movement, the Quebec ‘Maple Spring’, and the Mexican student movement, among others. This sample allows you to see the research that is going into this book, and if you would like to see the book come to completion, please consider making a generous donation to The People’s Book Project. With a fundraising goal of $2,500 the Project has raised $810, and just $1,690 to go!

Greece grinds to a halt as general strike gets underway

Workers across Greece walked off the job on Tuesday, kicking off a crippling 48-hour strike with a mass protest in the capital, Athens, as parliament debated a new austerity plan. Police fired tear gas in clashes with protesters. 

AFP -- France 24

Greece ground to a halt Tuesday as angry workers launched a 48-hour general strike against an austerity drive ordered by its bankruptcy-threatened government in exchange for a European bailout.

Crowds converged early on Syntagma Square, where parliament will vote on sweeping spending cuts as planes, ships and most public transport came to a halt.

Europe's economic tsar Olli Rehn in Brussels warned that Greece faced "a critical juncture" and the austerity programme was the "only way to avoid immediate default."

But that view was not shared by protestors, determined to block passage of the package.

"We don't want your money Europe," Iamando, 36, told AFP on the square where police were already out in force at 11:00 am (0800 GMT). "Leave us alone -- please, please, please."

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Congressman Ryan: Let’s make a deal!

image source: PPJ Gazette

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Dear Congressman Ryan:

I have seen you many times on Lame Street Media promoting your grandiose plan to kill Medicare. I realize targeting those least able to defend themselves from yet another round of the neo-con movement to redistribute the wealth to the upper 3% while leaving the country in ruins as jobs are shipped out and as corporations plunder the country, is underway.

While helping to spend the country into untenable debt and rolling out the red carpet to foreign investors and corporations who are steadily consuming everything in sight, I realize that you have to dispense with any program or initiative which would lend support to the elderly, that class of useless eaters so despised by so many of you.

While railing against Medicare and what it costs the country, you never made mention of what it costs the country to support you while you are in office and even when you leave.  For someone whose existence is now predicated upon the parasitic relationship of elected officials dependent on taxpayers, I am surprised that you did not readily identify yourself and the rest of congress as an unsustainable drain on the economy.  We can no longer afford to support you people, especially when you contribute virtually nothing to the economy or GDP while availing yourselves of special privileges, perks and financial enrichments.

Greek government survives vote

George Osbourne Image

Harry Papachristou and Barry Moody
Reuters

Greece's embattled government on Wednesday survived a confidence vote crucial to avoiding a sovereign default, as thousands of protesters chanted insults outside parliament.

The assembly voted confidence in the government, reshuffled by Prime Minister George Papandreou to stiffen resolve behind a painful new austerity program, by 155 votes to 143 with two abstentions. All Papandreou's Socialist Party deputies voted solidly with the government.

"If we are afraid, if we throw away this opportunity, then history will judge us very harshly," Papandreou said in a final appeal for support before the vote.

The closely watched vote had an immediate impact with the euro making gains, although traders said continuing concerns about implementation of the measures contained the currency's advance.

Protesters besieged parliament in Syntagma square, chanting slogans against the politicians, shining hundreds of green laser lights at the building and into the eyes of riot police outside and pushing their hands forward in a traditional insult. 

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Mayors of America Unite to tell Obama and Congress: End the Wars and Keep The Money at Home

“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Martin Luther King Jr. - Wiki Image

Eileen Fleming
Salem-News

(BALTIMORE) - The United States Conference of Mayors, representing 1,200 cities with populations over 30,000, voted in their June 20 plenary session to call on the federal government to end America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and redirect that military spending to home land priorities.

The Conference of Mayors first convened during the depths of the Depression and mayors have met annually ever since; but the last time they addressed American military policy was when they called for an end to America’s war in Vietnam.

Mayor Kitty Piercy, of Eugene, Oregon, introduced Resolution 59 stating, “Mayors call on our country to begin the journey of turning war dollars back into peace dollars, of bringing our loved ones home and of focusing our national resources on building security and prosperity here at home. Our children and families long for and call for a real investment in the future of America. It is past due.”

Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square

Photo Credit - SturdyBlog

SturdyBlog

I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.

What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.

The powers that be have suggested that there is plenty to sell. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s party, recently made the helpful suggestion that we should sell some of our islands to private buyers in order to pay the interest on these loans, which have been forced on us to stabilise financial institutions and a failed currency experiment. (Of course, it is not a coincidence that recent studies have shown immense reserves of natural gas under the Aegean sea).

Keiser Report: Banks Blame the Peasants (Video)

Max Keiser

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Slashing Local Food, Rural Development, Child Nutrition, and Conservation

WIki Image

Taylor Reid
BeginningFarmers

House Republicans Propose Slashing Local Food, Rural Development, Child Nutrition, and Conservation Programs

On May 31st 2011 the House Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal year 2012 Agricultural Appropriations bill (to read the full text of the bill CLICK HERE) with major cuts in agricultural program spending – a 13.4% reduction in from fiscal year 2011. What is most worrisome is where the cuts have come. While the proposed bill actually increases Commodity Crop Payments by $150 million, it seems to take specific aim at much smaller programs funding local food, rural development, child nutrution, conservation, sustainable agriculture (SARE) and fair competition rules for meat producers.

An Attack on Local Food Systems

The House Appropriations Committee Report suggests that efforts to promote local and regional food systems are unnecessary and wasteful in a number of ways. In reality, local food systems have the potential to dramatically increase farmers share of the food dollar, and stimulate economic development and job creation by encouraging local reinvestment rather than corporate profit. The House Committee’s explicit attack on local and regional food systems is one of the most striking elements of the bill’s text, and that of the Committee Report.

Greece Austerity Protests Grow

George Georgiopolous 
Reuters/Huffington Post

ATHENS, June 5 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands Greeks rallied in central Athens on Sunday to denounce politicians, bankers and tax dodgers, as the government prepared to inflict another bout of austerity demanded by its international lenders.

"Thieves - hustlers - bankers," read one banner as more than 50,000 people packed the main Syntagma square outside parliament to vent their frustration over rising joblessness as austerity bites, blaming the crisis on political corruption.

Turnout was the biggest so far in a series of 12 nightly rallies on the square inspired by Spain's protest movement.

Amidst a sea of splayed hands waved at the parliament building -- an offensive gesture for Greeks -- one demonstrator raised a placard reading "Bravo Yemen", whose president underwent surgery in Saudi Arabia for injuries suffered in a rocket attack on his palace.

Police put the crowd at 50,000 by mid-evening, but numbers continued to grow as dusk fell over the Greek capital. Another banner drew comparisons with rallies early this year in central Cairo which ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "From Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square, we support you!" it said.

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People power: Thousands defy Spanish protest ban as demonstrations go on into the night

Banner in Puerta del Sol, Madrid / Wiki Commons

The Daily Mail

An order by the Spanish government banning protests after midnight last night was held up to ridicule when tens of thousands of demonstrators continued protesting after the curfew supposedly kicked in.

   

Yesterday was the last day for candidates to campaign for the election for municipal and regional government positions in much of the country. Citing the mandatory end of campaigning, the national election commission banned protests today and tomorrow - voting day.

But as city clocks chimed the beginning of a new day, thousands of demonstrators condemning government spending cuts - stood their ground. Some kept quiet, many with sticky tape over their mouths in a gesture to illustrate they were being gagged by the ban.

The government avoided saying if it would order police to break up the crowds in the early hours of this morning, but at the stroke of midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of the demonstrations.

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Who Pays For The Freight Train To Economic Collapse? (Charlie McGrath Video)

YouTube--crabbydogtrix

http://pumabydesign001.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/hoyer-breaks-with-obama-over-...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110516/pl_nm/us_usa_debt_congress

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