Democracy under attack around the world - "These are very dangerous times"

yes, these are very dangerous times... i can't shake the feeling that we are on the cusp of something very, very big, something that could go either way - continuing down the dark path we're currently on or perhaps something wonderful that will surprise us all... it's a tipping point, for sure...

thom hartmann...

A year ago - if you would have asked the proud people in Italy - if their elected Prime Minister could be replaced by an unelected bankster to impose harsh austerity measures on them without a single vote - they would have called you crazy. Similarly - if you would have asked the Greeks - the cradle of democracy - if their elected Prime Minister could be run out of office for just asking for a national referendum on a bailout - and replaced by a bankster - they too would have called you crazy. Yet - that's exactly what's happened - and is continuing to happen in Europe.

Democracy is under attack around the world - including the United States - where Republican Governor Rick Snyder in Michigan has given himself the power to appoint unelected "financial managers" to take over cities struggling with budget deficits - fire elected city council officials - void union contracts - and sell off large chunks of cities to private corporations. Other Republican governors are thinking this is a good idea.

These are very dangerous times.

there's a lot of stuff piling up against the dam right toward the end of the year... if you're quiet, you can hear the cracks spreading...

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An elevated risk of the collapse of the Euro

a viewpoint you definitely won't see on u.s. news media...

from ireland's tv 3...

Ireland's Financial Expert Eddie Hobbs advising people to get out of the Euro as it is going to collapse.

it's time to stock up on popcorn...

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Italy is TBTF Too Big to Fail but it is also TBTS Too Big To Save [UPDATE] [UPDATE II]

nouriel roubini...

The worst case scenario for Italy is inevitable

Clearly unsustainable.

and thus spake dr.doom...

[UPDATE and BUMPED]

from the financial times...

Nouriel Roubini: Why Italy’s days in the eurozone may be numbered

With interest rates on its sovereign debt surging well above seven per cent, there is a rising risk that Italy may soon lose market access. Given that it is too-big-to-fail but also too-big-to-save, this could lead to a forced restructuring of its public debt of €1,900bn.

That would partially address its “stock” problem of large and unsustainable debt but it would not resolve its “flow” problem, a large current account deficit, lack of external competitiveness and a worsening plunge in gross domestic product and economic activity.

i don't know about you, but i'm getting the distinct feeling that something really, really big is about to happen...

[UPDATE II and BUMPED]

the collapse of the euro zone appears to be getting closer and closer... accordingly, i've added two more popcorn-eating icons to graphically demo just how interesting this whole thing is getting...



from the ft...

Market spikes eurozone’s guns

This week’s market upheaval in Europe has made it difficult to increase the firepower of the eurozone’s €440bn rescue fund to the €1,000bn that the bloc’s leaders had hoped for, the fund’s chief executive said on Thursday.

Investors have fled from bonds issued by highly indebted countries. Luring them back by offering insurance on losses – the centrepiece of a plan agreed in Brussels on October 26 – would now probably use up more of the fund’s resources, Klaus Regling, head of the European financial stability facility, said.

His concerns underline Europe’s difficulties in putting in place mechanisms to contain the sovereign debt crisis and, if necessary, help Italy cope with soaring refinancing costs.

pull up a chair... get comfy... we just might be about to witness an historic economic collapse which, if it does happen, is going to have a domino effect that we can't even imagine...

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Greece should "tell the IMF and EU to go to hell"

our super-rich, elites, their banksters and governmental puppets are bound and determined to continue stomping out any semblance of a middle class and any trace of a social contract anywhere they might still exist... since there are still a few governments that take the responsibility to foster the common good seriously, they must be set up and dispatched expeditiously... knocking over greece, a country at the forefront of populism and democracy for well over 2000 years, is the first european domino to seriously totter and it looks like it's going to fall... yes, and then there's italy, spain, ireland and portugal...

Plan to Spoon-Feed Greece to Death

The original bailout was 110 billion Euros, now it takes another $85 billion (and counting). When the fire sale of Greek assets does not bring in enough money, the banks and IMF will place even harsher terms on Greece.

Notice the plan to spoon-feed payments to Greece in 12 billion-euro bites while demanding "progress". This will ensure Greece is sucked dry (at fire sale prices) of any government assets worth owning by the time the "bailout" is over.

Portugal, and Ireland should make note of the process. The same "bailout" plan will be used on them unless they tell the IMF and EU to go to hell.

note to those of you in germany who might be looking on smugly and thinking about how well your economy is doing relative to the rest of the eu and the world... don't think for a minute that you're immune... your plan simply hasn't yet been put in motion...

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Sunday photoblogging - springtime in Buenos Aires

i say goodbye to this wonderful city on wednesday after 6 1/2 years... i just took a long walk through parque saavedra, soaking up the ambience and watching all the people enjoying themselves as porteños seem to know how to do so well... of all the places i have been to over the past years, argentinos and porteños have the knack of just "being" better than any other people i have ever spent time with, except, perhaps, for greeks and italians... i'm gonna miss it here - a LOT...!

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Headin' back on the road

tomorrow i head out once again... i'll be spending time with a friend in macedonia for a couple of days before heading off for greece and the beaches of the halkidiki peninsula with her and her family... i'm curious to see what's happening on the ground in greece, one of the most distressed of the euro zone p.i.i.g.s. (portugal, ireland, italy, greece and spain) countries...

Greek Recession Deepens

The Greek economy contracted sharply in the second quarter ... The national statics service Ellsta said Thursday that second-quarter gross domestic product fell 1.5% on a quarterly basis, weaker than forecasts of a 1% drop and the 0.8% fall in the first quarter.

Jobs data for May, meanwhile, revealed persistently high unemployment, which ticked higher to 12% from 11.9% in April.

hopefully, the greeks will hold off on any full-blown street riots until i depart on the 27th... 'course, i'll be heading to kosovo from there, not exactly a hotbed of prosperity...

p.s. note that greece is struggling with a 12% unemployment while we here in the u.s. are hovering between 9 and 10 (at least according to OFFICIAL stats)... not that far off, eh...?

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U.S. extraordinary rendition takes a hit in Italian courts

why should the italians have a stronger sense of justice than u.s. courts...?

An Italian court sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison yesterday for their role in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect in the first trial relating to “extraordinary renditions”.

The Americans were all tried in absentia, but the verdicts were hailed by human rights campaigners as a victory that could open the way to further prosecutions. Two agents of the Italian military intelligence agency Sismi were sentenced to three years each.

None of the convicted CIA agents is in Italy, and successive Italian governments have refused to ask for their extradition. Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, was given an eight-year sentence while 22 other agents received five years each. Classed under Italian law as “fugitives”, all were represented by Italian lawyers who had little or no contact with their clients.

at least SOMEONE thinks there should be accountability for extraordinary rendition... too bad it's italy and not our own courts...

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Delta/Northwest, Berlusconi, Zimbabwe, and food riots: waking to a string of unpleasant news

where to start...

Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp., squeezed by record high fuel prices and a slowing economy, are combining in a stock-swap deal that would create the world's biggest carrier.

my experience with one of the previous holders of the "world's biggest airline" title, united, tells me that no good will come of this...

and that's the least of the gloomy news...

the europeans couldn't believe we re-elected bush, and i can't believe the italians were stupid enough to re-elect this annoying, corrupt piece of offal...

Media billionaire Silvio Berlusconi won a decisive victory Monday in Italy's parliamentary election, setting the colorful conservative and staunch U.S. ally on course to his third stint as premier.

meanwhile, another totally corrupt, to-hell-with-the-people dictator desperately hangs on to power while the leaders of neighboring countries do nothing...

President Robert Mugabe's security forces fanned out across Zimbabwe Monday on the eve of a general strike called by the opposition after a judge threw out its bid to force the election results.

[...]

At Saturday's emergency summit in Lusaka, regional leaders discussed the post-election impasse long into the night, but they stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean government or Mugabe.

Regional leaders have been chided for their traditional reluctance to speak out against 84-year-old Mugabe, seen by many as an elder statesman who still deserves respect for his role in winning Zimbabwe's independence.

Some three million Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries in the wake of the country's economic collapse under Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980.

A one-time regional model, Zimbabwe is now groaning under the impact of the world's highest rate of inflation while even basic food products such as bread and cooking oil are scarce.

and soaring food prices are having the predicted result across the globe, most notably, in a country that hasn't had any genuine good news in seemingly forever...

The good news is that there hasn't been a coup d'etat in Haiti in the wake of violent protests over increased food prices. However Saturday's vote by 16 of the country's 27 lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis means that the country is in the middle of a severe leadership crisis - and that Haiti's Head of State, President Rene Preval, is now politically impotent, bereft of his chief executive.

and here's what really, really hungry people look like, courtesy of spiegel...


Haiti


Pakistan


Philippines

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The Temples of Darmanhur

seriously, one of the most amazing things i've ever run across...

Nestling in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, 30 miles from the ancient city of Turin, lies the valley of Valchiusella. Peppered with medieval villages, the hillside scenery is certainly picturesque.

[...]

100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government.

For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.

Constructed like a three-dimensional book, narrating the history of humanity, they are linked by hundreds of metres of richly decorated tunnels and occupy almost 300,000 cubic feet - Big Ben is 15,000 cubic feet.

Hall of the Earth


The giant glass dome of The Hall of Mirrors

[T]he 'Temples of Damanhur' are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.

It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples.

Around these he dreamed there lived a highly evolved community who enjoyed an idyllic existence in which all the people worked for the common good.

More bizarrely still, Oberto appeared to have had a supernatural ability: the gift of "remote viewing" - the ability to travel in his mind's eye to describe in detail the contents of any building.

"My goal was to recreate the temples from my visions," he says.

astounding...

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Evo Morales: from $300M to $2B a year revenue increase

Evo Morales

fantastic...! i've been rooting for evo from the start... may he continue to move in the light...

We Need Partners, Not Masters

Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Italy this week to receive a special award for his government's commitment to social and health issues. He has made these issues a "political priority."

The award was presented by the Pio Manzù Centre, a research organisation based in Rimini in northeast Italy that studies economic, scientific and social policies.

Besides meetings with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and foreign affairs minister Massimo D'Alema, Morales met members of the 30,000 Bolivian community in Rome, and members of Italian social movements.

Morales told Rome's Bolivians that before he was elected President in December 2005, Bolivia received 300 million dollars a year in tax revenues from the oil industry. Following nationalisation of energy reserves, Bolivia now receives 2 billion dollars annually.

The increased revenues are being used for education and healthcare, and for creation of a microcredit programme, Morales says.

"To increase revenues there is no need to create additional taxes," he told Claudia Diez de Medina from IPS, "but simply to make better use of our natural resources." For this, he said, "we need partners, not masters."

damn right...! now, if he can lead the country away from a dependence on carbon-based energy and toward cheap, sustainable energy resources, he will have pulled off a true miracle...



President Evo Morales dancing the cueca "Viva mi patria, Bolivia"
with a Cochabambinean "cholita" during his meeting with the Bolivian
community in Rome at the Protomoteca room in Campidoglio,
on 28 October 2007.
Credit: Claudia Diez de Medina, IPS.

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Comunidades y Viviendas: "Slow Cities"

this fits in nicely with the community concept i've been discussing off and on (here, here and here, among others) for the past couple of months...


A banner for a festival in Bevagna:
The celebration is conducted at a snail's pace.

"Slow City" advocates argue that small cities should preserve their traditional structures by observing strict rules: cars should be banned from city centers; people should eat only local products and use sustainable energy. In these cities, there's not much point in looking for a supermarket chain or McDonald's.

[...]

"Our goal is to create liveable cities," says [Stefano Cimicchi, mayor of Orvieto, Italy, from 1991 to 2004], a cheerful 51-year-old with a white moustache and laugh lines around his eyes. "We are working, if you will, on the concept of the utopian city, in the same way as the writer Italo Calvino and the architect Renzo Piano have done."

The miniscule Tuscan Chianti town of Greve became the first "cittáslow" in 1999, followed by Bra, Positano and Orvieto. Over time, the slowness wave has spread. There are now 42 slow cities in Italy, and more and more cities -- in Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Poland and Norway -- conform to the movement's list of strict requirements. In Germany, a number of cities -- including Hersbruck, Lüdinghausen, Schwarzenbruck, Waldkirch and Überlingen -- have joined the select circle, which only admits cities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.

i've visited the cinque terre region in italy, five unesco world heritage sites villages along the ligurian coast... they function much the same way as "slow cities", and i was vastly impressed... the sense i got was one of towns existing for the people who live there, as opposed to places that have been overtaken and virtually destroyed by the automobile and the relentless push for business expansion and profit...


Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre,
Ligurian coast, Italy

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Arrest warrants issued for CIA agents in Germany - another government responsive to its citizens

.


A CIA jet takes off at Palma de Mallorca

i've posted twice since february (here and here) on the trial that began on june 8 in italy for the 26 cia agents accused in the extraordinary rendition of abu omar...

[A] Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

you might remember that the opening of the trial in milan coincided with bush's recent visit to that country...

In an uncomfortable coincidence for American officials that highlighted the ongoing strain in U.S.-Italian relations, the trial started just hours before Bush arrived in Italy for a day-and-a-half visit following the Group of 8 summit in Germany.

now, germany's gotten in the act, issuing arrest warrants for the cia agents suspected of kidnapping Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004, which i posted about this past march...

from der spiegel online...

The district attorney's office in Munich has filed international warrants with Interpol for the arrest of Lyle L., 51, and nine other CIA employees. Lyle L., also known as "Uncle Bud," a former member of the elite Green Berets combat unit, is alleged to have been part of a group of agents who kidnapped Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004 and flew him to Afghanistan via the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. A trained medic, Lyle L. was probably the one who administered sedatives to Masri on board the Boeing 737.

and, as you would expect from the germans, they're dead serious...

Officials in Washington have since realized that the German investigation is more than just a symbolic act. This week in Berlin, a group of senior officials from the interior, foreign and justice ministries will meet to discuss the sensitive issue of how the German government should handle the Munich petition for "arrest for the purposes of extradition." There is general agreement within the government in Berlin that the request should be promptly delivered to the Bush administration, which would be tantamount to an official request for the arrest of the men being sought.

meanwhile, official washington is whining...

At a recent lunch in the German Embassy in Washington, Michael Hayden, the new CIA director, complained about the "bottomless criticism" from Europe that the US government faces for abducting suspicious Islamists. One US diplomat calls Germany's approach the "German double standard."

as spiegel notes, germany could have stopped the issuance of the warrants, but they didn't because, unlike our government here in the u.s., they were concerned about the resulting public outcry...

The German government could have put a stop to the arrest warrants in the first stage. It would simply have had to refer to Paragraph 153c of the German Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that a legal proceeding can be terminated by official decree if this is in the "prevailing public interest." But a group of senior officials meeting at the Justice Ministry rejected a government veto, arguing that any government efforts to apply the brakes on the investigation would be too difficult for the public to swallow.

imagine that...! a government responsive to its citizens...! that makes two countries in one week... (see story about mexico's supreme court defending that country's constitution here...) what's the world coming to...?

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A tough day's work for George but, tomorrow, ALBANIA!

the day didn't start off too well and it just got worse...

first, bush was apparently distracted when he was briefed on the protocol for meeting the pope, and that he had forgotten what he had been told before previous meetings didn't help...

Meeting the pope, Bush said: "Good to be with you, sir." Italian journalists noted the breach in protocol: the pope is formally addressed as "Your Holiness."

then there was a car problem...

The president's stretch - armour-plated - limo stalled while he returned from the Vatican to the US embassy. A statement on American engineering?

and, after all that, there were those annoying demonstrators...

After the talks [with the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi], riot police used tear gas against anti-Bush demonstrators.

ah, but everything will be SO much better when he gets to albania tomorrow...

The city [Tirana] and the country have been in a state of almost permanent excitement for weeks for the first-ever visit by a US president to this small, Western Balkan country.

Travelling in from the airport on the newly constructed road you are immediately confronted with billboard after billboard proclaiming the visit.

"Albania welcomes President Bush" and "President Bush in Albania, making history" the signs read.

A picture of Mr Bush beams down from giant posters.

i'm sure he'll forget all about italy in no time at all...

"Albania is for sure the most pro-American country in Europe, maybe even in the world," [Tirana] Mayor Edi Rama told the newspaper. "Nowhere else can you find such respect and hospitality for the president of the United States. Even in Michigan, he wouldn't be as welcome."

nope, for sure, i don't think he'd be as welcome in michigan...

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While Bush talks with the Pope and Prodi, Italy tries CIA "fugitives" for extraordinary rendition

..

President Bush, deeply unpopular here and met by boisterous protests, sought to impress Pope Benedict XVI and the Italian public on Saturday with his humanitarian record and downplayed differences with the Vatican over Iraq.

his HUMANITARIAN record...? george's hypocrisy knows no bounds... i also doubt very much if RAT-zinger brought up the subject...

As President Bush headed for Italy on Friday, a Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

[...]

Judge Oscar Magi opened the trial, reading the indictment and ticking off the Americans' names, repeating 26 times: "Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

[...]

Only in Italy, however, has [an extraordinary rendition] case gone to trial, a public forum that threatens to further illuminate the actions of CIA operatives and the long-denied complicity of their European counterparts.

"We want to punish terrorists — but in the courtroom," Milan's lead prosecutor, Armando Spataro, said in commenting on the significance of the landmark trial. The war on terrorism, he said, should be waged "within the full respect of the laws of our Western democracies."

In an uncomfortable coincidence for American officials that highlighted the ongoing strain in U.S.-Italian relations, the trial started just hours before Bush arrived in Italy for a day-and-a-half visit following the Group of 8 summit in Germany.

in the ap story quoted at the top of this post, it was not until the last two paragraphs, paragraphs 36 and 37 that this was mentioned...

Along with the 26 Americans on trial for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric, a U.S. soldier is on trial in Rome for the March 2005 slaying of an Italian spy in Baghdad. In both cases, the U.S. citizens are being tried in absentia.

[Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi] said he and Bush did not discuss the trials.

heaven forbid anyone would try to burst george's bubble...

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Bellinger continues to cover Condi's ass

after huffing and puffing yesterday about the eu report on secret cia flights and threatening the eu with the loss of u.s. cooperation on intelligence efforts, bellinger tipped the rest of his hand...

The State Department's top lawyer said Wednesday that the United States would refuse to extradite CIA officers who face kidnapping charges in Italy, warning that European criminal prosecutions of U.S. agents were harming transatlantic counterterrorism efforts.

[...]

"If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy," Bellinger told reporters in Brussels, where he was meeting with European Union officials.

Bellinger's statement was the first time that a U.S. government official has directly addressed the Italian criminal investigation, which is expected to produce the first overseas trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation.

but, once again, let's not forget just whose ass he's covering... yep... his boss, who claims that extraordinary rendition kidnapping is perfectly legal...

Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. [...] Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives. In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture.

despite the insistence of others that it's certainly anything but...

"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York.

eventually, hopefully within my lifetime and preferably much sooner, condi, her boss, and the rest of the criminal gang will be brought to account...

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US to EU: how DARE you question our illegal activities!

shooting the messenger... tried and true... if somebody catches you with the goods, impugn their credibility and threaten them with consequences... it works on the dems, why not the eu...?

A senior U.S. administration official on Wednesday warned that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA activities in the European Union may undermine intelligence cooperation between the United States and European nations.

[...]

John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the European Parliament report "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair" and called on the EU governments to challenge the suggestion that Europeans need to be concerned about secret CIA flights.

"I can understand concerns about specific incidents but we should not somehow suggest that all intelligence activity is something illegal or suspicious," he said.

Germany, Italy and several other EU countries have been carrying out their own inquiries into secret CIA activities in Europe, probes Bellinger said "have not been helpful with respect to necessary cooperation between the United States and Europe."

"I do think these continuing investigations can harm intelligence cooperation, that's simply a fact of life," Bellinger told reporters after meeting legal advisers to EU governments in Brussels.

even though it was only a few posts ago that i dredged this up, let's revisit condi for just a moment, shall we...?

Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. [...] Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives. In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture.

pay particular attention to the part where she says, "i presume of any other democracies who use this procedure," implying, of course, eu cooperation in this illegal activity... oh, and, btw, it IS illegal...

"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York.

hmmmm... well, then...

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CIA agents go to trial in Italy on June 8

this ought to be interesting...

An Italian judge ordered 26 suspected CIA agents and 5 Italians to stand trial for kidnapping. The case is based on the alleged abduction of an Egyptian Muslim preacher in 2003, which may have been part of the US extraordinary rendition program.

BBC correspondent, Christian Fraser, reports that there is no expectation the CIA agents would return to Italy but, he says, "They are not needed. The prosecution doesn't need to have them on the stand according to Italian laws so the trial will go forward on June the 8th, regardless."

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1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace or stopped over at airports in Europe after 9/11

i posted the other day on marie brenner's vanity fair article about charles swift in which he said that the purpose of guantánamo is torture... i think it's abundantly clear that is also the purpose of extraordinary rendition...

European Union lawmakers on Wednesday approved a final report which slams EU governments for tolerating or assisting the United States' practice of secret detentions of terrorist suspects.

More than 10 European states, including Britain, Poland, Italy and Germany aided or knew about the US secret service CIA's clandestine programme of taking terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation, Euro MPs said in their report.

At least 1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace or stopped over at airports in Europe after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, Euro MPs concluded.

i'm not surprised about the uk or poland... and, even tho' we've know about it for a while, i'm still surprised about germany and italy...

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