26 June 2020

Prediction #2 by Nouriel Roubini - June 2020 *


Interview with Economist Nouriel Roubini
"The Stock Market Is Deluding Itself"

Prominent American economist Nouriel Roubini does not believe the global economy will recover quickly. He believes that the dire situation will produce a summer of protest in the U.S. and years of difficulties in Europe as well.

Prediction #1 by Nouriel Roubini - February 2020 *


Star Economist Roubini on the Economic Effects of Coronavirus:
"This Crisis Will Spill Over and Result in a Disaster"

Economist Nouriel Roubini correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Now, he believes that stock markets will plunge by 30 to 40 percent because of the coronavirus. And that Trump will lose his re-election bid.


25 June 2020

Another display of "serious" journalism... *


Has Hajj been CANCELED over Covid-19 for the FIRST TIME in history? Not if you choose facts over clickbait headlines

"...Reality is a messy business, and assumptions touted as gospel by the media don’t often ring true. Perhaps that’s why the Times went with a headline that seems to back up its months of coronavirus fear-mongering, rather than the less interesting but more truthful alternative. Either that or the nation’s paper of record just needed a few extra clicks."

23 June 2020

Down with BigBrotherbook !!!


This was my last post in Facebook, posted yesterday, 22.6.2020. Apparently, someone from Facetapo censors army or AI weaponry didn't like my brief response to a friend's post. I guess mentioning 'Taliban' smashing artworks alongside 'Black Lives Matter' (who happen to be doing the same nowadays), does not follow some obscure and vague "Community Standards"; so, he/she/it decided to 'punish' me.

This utterly stupid censorship was the straw that broke the camel’s back, following a series of similar incidents among other people that I know of, which had made me raise my eyebrows several times. In protest, as much as in disgust from this growing trend of mind-control exercised by totalitarian monopolies, I decided to abandon that huge mind-grinding mechanism after more than a decade as Tatat N Sosos, feeling unable to be an obedient member of the herd. So, I also added this comment to the above post:


To be able to express my thoughts without obnoxious totalitarian chains blocking my freedom of speech, I decided to re-activate this old podium of mine, delaxo.blogspot.com, where hopefully my words will not be scrutinized and my views will not be blocked as 'unfit' to the standards of any "community" -like BigBrotherbook herd. For Greek speakers and topics, I re-activated my antilogies.blogspot.com too.

If you like to keep in touch with this nonconformist corner, to be informed about new posts and exchange opinions, then please click the 'Follow' button on the top left.
 
Intellectual heretics unite!

12 November 2016

Hush-hush, "Jews DO cover the media"

I bumped onto an impressive article titled Six Jewish Companies Control 96% of the World’s Media! with this screenshot:


When I clicked on the link to go to the original article, I found that screen:



I did a little web search and I found the text of the article elsewhere. I searched also the web site of The Times of Israel and I located a page where the missing article was proudly announced as number one in the top Times of Israel posts of 2012.


I clicked to read the original but again the same "This is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?" message appeared.
However, other popular posts from their list -like the The rabbi and the vibrator- were easily available.
I guess the editors of The Times of Israel decided to remove the revealing article, in spite of its popularity.
No need to expose reality to the public...






30 April 2016

Hypocricy and lies as standard 'Western' values - Example #2376

John Pilger writes about the massive disinformation campaign against Russia in "The return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth"

"...In February, the US mounted one of its "colour" coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama's assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, personally selected the leader of an "interim government". She nicknamed him "Yats". Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.

For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler's invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called "vermin". The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.

A Nato Membership Action Plan is Washington's gift to the coup-regime in Kiev. In August, "Operation Rapid Trident" will put American and British troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "Sea Breeze" will send US warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America's borders.

In reclaiming Crimea - which Nikita Kruschev illegally detached from Russia in 1954 - the Russians defended themselves as they have done for almost a century. More than 90 per cent of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia. Crimea is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and its loss would mean life or death for the Russian Navy and a prize for Nato. Confounding the war parties in Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin withdrew troops from the Ukrainian border and urged ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon separatism.

In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the "Russian threat". Hillary Clinton likened Putin to Hitler. Without irony, right-wing German commentators said as much. In the media, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are sanitised as "nationalists" or "ultra nationalists". What they fear is that Putin is skilfully seeking a diplomatic solution, and may succeed. On 27 June, responding to Putin's latest accommodation - his request to the Russian Parliament to rescind legislation that gave him the power to intervene on behalf of Ukraine's ethnic Russians - Secretary of State John Kerry issued another of his ultimatums. Russia must "act within the next few hours, literally" to end the revolt in eastern Ukraine. Notwithstanding that Kerry is widely recognised as a buffoon, the serious purpose of these "warnings" is to confer pariah status on Russia and suppress news of the Kiev regime's war on its own people.

A third of the population of Ukraine are Russian-speaking and bilingual. They have long sought a democratic federation that reflects Ukraine's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither "separatists" nor "rebels" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland. Separatism is a reaction to the Kiev junta's attacks on them, causing as many as 110,000 (UN estimate) to flee across the border into Russia. Typically, they are traumatised women and children.

Like Iraq's embargoed infants, and Afghanistan's "liberated" women and girls, terrorised by the CIA's warlords, these ethnic people of Ukraine are media unpeople in the west, their suffering and the atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. No sense of the scale of the regime's assault is reported in the mainstream western media. This is not unprecedented. Reading again Phillip Knightley's masterly 'The First Casualty: the war correspondent as hero, propagandist and mythmaker', I renewed my admiration for the Manchester Guardian's Morgan Philips Price, the only western reporter to remain in Russia during the 1917 revolution and report the truth of a disastrous invasion by the western allies. Fair-minded and courageous, Philips Price alone disturbed what Knightley calls an anti-Russian "dark silence" in the west.

On 2 May, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. There is horrifying video evidence. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). The New York Times buried it, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

On 28 June, the Guardian devoted most of a page to declarations by the Kiev regime's "president", the oligarch Petro Poroshenko.  Again, Orwell's rule of inversion applied. There was no putsch; no war against Ukraine's minority; the Russians were to blame for everything. "We want to modernise my country," said Poroshenko. "We want to introduce freedom, democracy and European values. Somebody doesn't like that. Somebody doesn't like us for that." 

According to his report, the Guardian's reporter, Luke Harding, did not challenge these assertions, or mention the Odessa atrocity, the regime's air and artillery attacks on residential areas, the killing and kidnapping of journalists, the firebombing of an opposition newspaper and his threat to "free Ukraine from dirt and parasites". The enemy are "rebels", "militants", "insurgents", "terrorists" and stooges of the Kremlin. The current campaign to blame the Russian government for the downing of the Malaysian airliner is part of this propaganda. In truth, the crime of the airliner's shooting down is a direct result of Obama's putsch in Ukraine. Summon from history the ghosts of Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, southern Africa, Iraq; note the same propagated tags, the same false flags. Palestine is the lodestone of this unchanging deceit. Following the latest Israeli, American equipped slaughter in Gaza of more than 800 Palestinians - including 120 children - an Israeli general writes in the Guardian under the headline, "A necessary show of force"..."

15 June 2012

Which "obligations"?


During last weeks, we often hear from various official mouths the cliché "Greece must fulfill her obligations". That is to implement the agreements signed between Troika and Greek government, and ratified by the Greek parliament.

Such 'savoir-vivre' advice sounds reasonable to the ears of many. But how exactly those "obligations" were created? Who exactly undertook them on behalf of the country, and with what sort of procedures?

Here is an illustrated chronicle that we should bring to mind each time a Mr. Scheuble or a Mrs. Lagarde teach Greeks 'how they should behave'.

13.2.2012:
Greek MPs (who were elected under Papandreou's false slogan "There is plenty of money" in 2009)
vote on the second austerity Memorandum. 




Mr. Chrysochoidis (minister for Citizen Protection) said that he voted 'Yes'
without having read the treaty "because he had other things to attend to"

There were more like him who later admitted that
they had voted without reading what they were voting for.
On the same day the Greek people had their own voting
in front of the Parliament.

But the vote of the huge crowds was 'slightly' different than of their representatives.
  
There had been many more protests against Parliament decisions during the previous months.

Some dared shouting 'No' to the decision of the Parliament.
[the man with white hair is 90-year old Manolis Glezos,
who became famous when he tore down the German flag on Acropolis in 1941]
 


The objections were finally muffled and so Greece's "obligations" were born.
Who cares about the opinion of 'hoi polloi'?
Our distinguished friends celebrated with relief the decision of the Greek Parliament,
probably taking the tear-gas effects as tears of joy for the triumph of democracy.

[the story continues -please come again]

10 January 2012

No conspiracy theory: An elite controls the world!

[Google translation of German article]

Bankers apparently actually dominate the world. What we suspected for a long time, researchers in Switzerland have finally confirmed: In a scientific study showed that a small elite controls the entire world economy. Well something like that!

Of the Freemasons of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), to the Bilderbergers: What are many bloggers, independent journalists, filmmakers and authors writing for several years, desperate fingers bled, was now by a recent study by the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich confirms. The fact that the demonstrators "Occupy" movement is described as 99% while not as obviously wrong: From a database containing the 2007, the data on 37 million companies and investors around the globe have, researchers at 43 000 transnational corporations and their share ownership focused. The analysis showed clearly that within this group of 1,318 companies linked so closely together that they make up about 60 percent of global sales.

Within this very elite group of companies, there is still an elite, a so-called "super-unit" of 147 companies, which controls around 40% of the entire network. "In fact, less than one percent of the company is able to control 40 percent of the entire network," said James Glattfelder, one of the researchers of the study, on which the New Scientist reported. Included are, of course, again the usual suspects. And & the Bank of America Corporation, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co Inc and JP Morgan Chase Co are even in the top 25 within the "super unit".

The reality is so complex that one must get away from the call to such circumstances as a "conspiracy theory" as Glattfelder added. "Our analysis is the reality."

The study builds on earlier economic theories, which also was detected in that wealth is concentrated systematically on individual parts of the population. Thus, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 had found that in Italy some 20 percent of the population controlled 80 percent of the country. This study became known as the Pareto principle. Pareto also found out that in spite of different conditions in the country, the distribution of wealth remains always the same. Conclusion: Natural resources, independent of human performance, tends to accumulate to put on some, rather than being evenly distributed. Politicians and parties have therefore only the function, you sell it to the stupid foot soldiers humanely.

The top 50 "Super Unit", disclosed in Alles Schall und Rauch blog:
  1. Barclays plc
  2. Capital Group Companies Inc
  3. FMR Corporation
  4. AXA
  5. State Street Corporation
  6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
  7. Legal & General Group plc
  8. Vanguard Group Inc
  9. UBS AG
  10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
  11. Wellington Management Co LLP
  12. Deutsche Bank AG
  13. Franklin Resources Inc
  14. Credit Suisse Group
  15. Walton Enterprises LLC
  16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
  17. Natixis
  18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
  19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
  20. Legg Mason Inc
  21. Morgan Stanley
  22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
  23. Northern Trust Corporation
  24. Société Générale
  25. Bank of America Corporation
  26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
  27. Invesco plc
  28. Allianz SE 
  29. TIAA
  30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company,
  31. Aviva plc
  32. Schroders plc
  33. Dodge & Cox
  34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc
  35. Sun Life Financial Inc
  36. Standard Life plc
  37. CNCE
  38. Nomura Holdings Inc
  39. The Depository Trust Company
  40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
  41. ING Groep NV
  42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
  43. UniCredito Italiano SpA
  44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
  45. Vereniging Aegon
  46. BNP Paribas
  47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
  48. Resona Holdings Inc
  49. Capital Group International Inc
  50. China Petrochemical Group Company


[see the original ETH paper in English]

02 July 2011

Bangs for banks



High resolution photos from Athens protests, 28-29.6.2011:

15 September 2010

A photo for all seasons



This is a shocking photo, illustrating poverty and hunger beyond anything words can describe.

If you wonder where the photo was taken, there are three (3) alternative options:
1 - According to this site, it is "a starving boy in North Korea" (cruel commies).
2 - According to this site, the photo refers to "a hungry American child" (cruel rich).
3 - Finally, this site [scroll down past the middle] hints that it is a child from Iraq (cruel Bush).

Perhaps a further search will lead you to more options -choose your preferred one.
.

20 June 2010

Is there a Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy?

[An article by Les Leopold]

Senate and House conferees are about to reconcile a financial reform bill that is virtually designed to institutionalize "too big to fail." And when they do we'll lose another battle in the ongoing war between global financial markets and democratic nation-states.

This war has been going on for decades -- but democracy hasn't always been in full retreat.

The New Deal Conquest: During the Great Depression democratic forces gained the upper hand in the war. We realized that financial markets, which are driven by the largest banks and financiers, had to be tightly controlled. We knew that global speculation on currencies only deepened the Depression and had to be strictly limited. We knew that an iron curtain was needed between commercial and investment banking to protect Main Street depositors from market madness (that was the Glass-Steagall Act). And most importantly we knew that the key to preventing economic upheaval was to limit the wealth of the super-rich and to increase the wealth of working people through progressive taxes, Social Security, wage and hour laws, and the promotion of unionization. The Bretton Woods agreements forged by the Allies during WWII set up strict rules for global finance, rules that kept financiers in check for more than a quarter century.

And it worked pretty damn well. As economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, this era saw only one financial crisis (Brazil, 1964), and working people in western democracies made huge gains. Since the era of deregulation took hold in the late 1970s, the world has suffered over a hundred financial crises and middle-class incomes have stagnated.

The Deregulatory Counter-Offensive: By the late 1970s, bankers regained the advantage through the spread of a new faith in self-regulated markets. The economic apostles of unfettered markets lobbied against progressive taxes, unions, and social welfare programs. The new orthodoxy was: Let the elites collect the money--they'll invest wisely (instead of consuming), and all boats will rise. This near-religious revolution rapidly spread through the economic and policy establishment. Regulations were dismantled right and left, and the revolving door between government and Wall Street started spinning. The American financial catechism ruled the world. And on Wall Street, the money tap was open. It did not trickle down.

Then, suddenly, in 2008, the market gods destroyed themselves as the unregulated financial casinos crashed and burned, just like they did in 1929. For a few months, it seemed like the deregulatory theology become a global heresy. It was obvious that Wall Street's reckless speculation and its bold new wave of financial engineering had caused the Great Recession. (See The Looting of America for an accessible account.). It was also clear that if government didn't come to the rescue, Wall Street would lay in ruins, along with the rest of the economy. This was the perfect moment for democracy reassert democratic control on financial markets, just as we did during the New Deal. We blew it.

The Victory at Too Big to Fail: At the moment when Wall Street was on its knees, we decided to bypass serious reform. Instead, we rebuilt Wall Street, using taxpayer money and guarantees - more than $10 trillion worth. We let bankers use our bailout money to pay themselves $150 billion in bonuses -- at a moment when over 29 million Americans were jobless or forced into part-time jobs. We allowed the top hedge fund managers to walk off with over $900,000 an hour (not a typo) in 2009. Windfall profits taxes? No. In fact we let hedge fund honchos pay an extra-low tax rate by calling their income "capital gains." We didn't restore Glass-Steagall, we didn't break up "too big to fail" financial institutions. In fact the biggest banks became even bigger, courtesy of the U.S. government.

The Invasion against Democracy: The war is escalating. Right now, financial elites aren't just fighting a defensive battle against new regulations. They're playing offense: They're whipping up deficit hysteria around the globe and calling for drastic cuts in middle class programs. Why? They want to ensure that their loans to governments aren't threatened by rising public debt. Ironically, the public debt they're so worried about was created in large part by them -- the result of huge bailouts and other expenses stemming from the crash they caused. Although the bankers want us to dismantle what remains of our worker-oriented policies, welfare for the financial elites is still fine and dandy.

This is the most dangerous counter attack in the history of finance. We had better know a great deal more about the attackers. Who makes up this shadowy force called "global markets"? Who fights their battles? Do they have a high command?

Not really. There is no executive committee of financial elites. There's no international conspiracy, no Elders of Zion. Instead these markets are pulled and pushed by about 50 very large banks and financial institutions. This is where much of the nation's $2 trillion in hedge fund money roams. This is where the top six US banks frolic. They don't have to sit around a table strategizing. They instantly sense threats to their power. They instantly smell profitable openings and they're poised to grab what they can, whenever they can. They thrive on turmoil, which gives them new "proprietary" trading opportunities to exploit. Volatility means big bucks, especially now that the largest players know that the government will back up even their wildest gambles. History has just proven that they are way too big to fail.

Of course they still have to lobby government officials--many of whom either were bankers, or will be once they leave office. But their most powerful lever on government is through the market itself: Here, by moving vast quantities of money around, they can instantly veto policies they don't like. If the EU talks seriously about financial transaction taxes, the markets go down the Euro grows weaker, and interest rates rise--making it more expensive for governments to borrow the money they need to operate. Politicians have learned to "listen" to the markets and are conditioned to placate them.

Should a nation state get out of line (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc), the markets slap them silly. Politicians rush to the scene and start slicing social spending. If instead they demand new taxes on financial elites to reduce public debt, the markets respond with even more fury. Money flees.

All the external machinery of democracy still clanks along. We still pull the levers in the voting booth. But the decisions that affect us the most are made in a profoundly undemocratic way. Faceless financial markets exercise far more control over politicians than the voters who elected them.

So the problem isn't just the corporate campaign contributions, or corporate media control or the academic consensus supporting our financial theocracy. It's the raw power of the markets. They've been roaming free and virtually unregulated for more than a generation, and now their power is unparalleled. Just months after they brought our economy crashing down, they're right back to their old tricks, setting the stage for the next crash and the next bailout while getting filthy rich along the way.

Bill Clinton nailed it on the head when he reportedly said:
"You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fxxxing bond traders?" (See Agenda by Bob Woodward)

No Retreat, No Surrender? There's no room for pacifists in this war. Clearly, Wall Street and its global minions are not seeking a truce. Instead, they're coming after our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. They want us to work longer before we retire and get less when we do. They want us to pay more for health care and get less of it. They want less public money to go to schools, teachers and public infrastructures. And they want us to get used to a jobless recovery with double digit unemployment rates. (And when millions and millions of people are unemployed, we can't maintain high labor standards, and our wages and benefits erode.) In short, they want to undermine all the policies and programs that have built and sustained middle class life.

Already government officials in the UK, Germany and here are telling us we must endure austerity for "decades to come." As Fed Chair Ben Bernanke candidly put it:

"We can see what problems can arise in a country if investors lose confidence in the fiscal position of that country, so it is very important that we address this problem."
Of course, he's not going to point out that this austerity is only for the masses, definitely not for the financial elites. Or that the underlying cause of the debt investors are so worried about is the giant economic crater caused by the very same financial elites who now might "lose confidence" in financing a middle class society.
We shouldn't kid ourselves about the pitched battles ahead. Fighting back won't be easy, and winning will be even harder. People in country after country will have to mobilize themselves in defense of real democracy, in defense of each nation's right to provide its people with a decent quality of life. In my opinion, that includes sustainable jobs with decent benefits and a solid public infrastructure that promotes equity, protects the vulnerable and enriches the environment.

Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that democracy will prevail in the war against financial theocracy -- just recall the totalitarian chaos in Europe during the Great Depression. But don't count it out, either. It's true that many of us regular folks have been diverted by the media, distracted by the Internet or lulled into a stupor by pharmaceuticals. But when we realize that we've been shoved into a corner with no way out, we'll act. A popular struggle will begin. And when it does, we'll at least have a fighting chance to recapture our democratic souls.

22 March 2009

Crimes against sanity

Imagine a country under an embargo that causes great hardship to the population: it is the perfect environment for black market of course. Now imagine that 42 black marketeers are caught profiteering by raising the prices of staple goods in breach of state rules during the economic suffering that came with the embargo. Instead of a mild sentence, the 42 are summarily executed. A deplorable response to a deplorable act.
However cruel, would you call such punishment of 42 unlucky rascals “a crime against humanity”? I guess most sane people wouldn’t go that far. Yet, things are different if you are a US-supervised Iraqi court that must somehow punish a Saddam-era celebrity.
This is the case of Tariq Aziz, a well known figure in Saddam’s regime, who was surrendered to the US ‘coalition forces’ in 2003, shortly after Baghdad’s fall (the US military reciprocated by flying his family to the safety of Jordan -Timesonline). Aziz has been in detention without any conviction for almost 6 years. A few days ago, he was once again brought to court with some other Saddam’s aids and relatives; this time, the mouse was cought!
Let the mainstream news outlets tell you the story as they see fit:
Deutche Welle: “Two relatives of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have been sentenced to death for their roles in the killings of 42 merchants in 1992. The traders were executed after being accused of raising the prices of goods in breach of state price controls at a time when Iraq was under United Nations economic sanctions over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The judge at a Baghdad court said the two were guilty of crimes against humanity. Former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz was also sentenced in connection with the event, but received a jail term.”
Deutsch Welle does not specify the length of Aziz’s jail term. CNN News is more illuminating in that ‘little’ detail, but quite vague about the basis of the sentence: “The men were sentenced for their roles in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants.” –not a single word about why those merchants were executed.
BBC News does cite the 15-year sentence and a few details about the summary trials of the 42 black marketeers. However, the term “crimes against humanity” is omitted, perhaps realizing the absurdity of such allegation.
It is interesting to note that all the news reports use the term ‘merchants’ to describe the 42, not ‘black marketeers’. But the issue here is not how the big media present the news. It is the fact that victor’s justice labels minor incidents like the swift trial of 42 crooks as “crimes against humanity”. It is distressing to see this over-used term becoming cheaper and weaker, drawing attention from other -more sinister and real- global crimes…

BTW, in case you are suspicious about the way Saddam’s Iraq has been portrayed by the brain-washers, you might like to check this
-it's a long page, so use Find: Iraq to jump to relevant parts.

10 February 2009

Is there life after Bush?

It is impressive to have this kind of speech just a few weeks after the Bushit era!
So, there might be hope in America after all...

That's the spirit!

The ultimate symbol of consumerist non-sense:

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work


29 January 2009

Laughing vampires



Robert Fisk in The Independent, 20.01.09:

"The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert's shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert's right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany."
[full article]

10 January 2009

Numbers vs. bullshit

Next time you hear the repetitive argument about "the innocent Israelis that have been slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists" as a justification of any atrocity, just remember this simple graph [click on it for large size]:





04 January 2009

European crocodiles


The mild display of ‘humanitarian sensitivity’ by the EU bosses on the Gaza slaughter reminds me of crocodile tears.
Just remember what happened in 2006, when the Palestinians dared to elect Hamas as their major political group in admittedly fair elections: In one more shameless illustration of Western hypocrisy, the ‘humanitarians’ of today suspended economic aid to the Palestinian Authority because Palestinians cast the ‘wrong’ vote!
The Guardian wrote on 11.4.06: "The EU yesterday increased the pressure on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to recognise Israel and renounce terrorist violence by suspending all direct aid to the new government. ... Aid organisations warned that the decision to cut off assistance would simply damage people living on about £1 a day and drive them further into the arms of extremists. Aid accounts for 25% of Palestinians' incomes."
You probably remember that, after a while, clashes started between Hamas and Fatah, in a classic example of Divide & Rule.
You see, the foreign ‘democrats’ wanted Fatah to win regardless of Palestinian voters will. The match finally ended in a draw, with Fatah dominating in West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.
The same hideous 'scribes and Pharisees' that 3 years ago used misery to blackmail refugees, come now and beg Israel politely to show self-restrain in dealing with the same disobedient ‘desperados’.
Some years ago, during the Albanian ‘genocide’ in Kosovo by the ‘blood-thirsty’ Serbs, they had demonstrated their humanitarian sensitivity much more vigorously, bombing for 78 days the ‘bad’ civilians of Belgrade and Novi Sad.
Now their concern can only reach up to theatrical appeals, equalizing Hamas home-made rockets with Israeli ‘smart’ bombs and 400 dead Palestinians with 4 dead Israelis…
Seriously, who has elected such ludicrous hypocrites that are supposed to represent us?
Or they just snatched the wheel without us knowing (like many others have done)?
.

28 June 2008

It’s Nice to Be Rich

[NY Times editorial, published June 28, 2008]

Millionaires are already wildly overrepresented in Congress. The Supreme Court gave a big boost to rich candidates this week by striking down the “millionaire’s amendment,” which was designed to help level the playing field for candidates running against wealthy opponents... [read full text]


09 May 2008

Reporting the future



[Originally posted here in 2001]

The year is 1990.
Margaret Thatcher & Michael Gorbachev are in full power.
Comrade Yeltsin is regularly portrayed as a pathetic drunkard by the Western media (not knowing yet how useful he would be soon, forcing them to reverse his image building).

President George Bush (Sr.) is preparing for the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, his former ally against Iran (who just 3 years earlier had been pardoned when his Exocet missile hit US Navy frigate 'Stark' killing 37 American sailors).
The Berlin Wall has fallen just a few months ago, and the European Community has 12 member countries, still not merged into the European Union that will appear 3 years later.
The Soviet Union is on the map as it has been for 45 years, and so is Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe, East and West.


In that context, the November 26, 1990 issue of Newsweek magazine presents a special report on the future of Europe as seen by its reporters (Pascal Privat and Michael Meyer, Scott Sullivan, Fred Coleman, Daniel Pedersen & Andrew Nagorski).
The report includes the following two maps of Eastern Europe & Yugoslavia:


Click for larger size; notice 'new countries' and 'border disputes' as foreseen in 1990











































The remarkable similarity to the present map of Europe and especially Yugoslavia, a decade later, can be explained by one of the following:
  • The reporters had an impressive skill to foretell the future, perhaps using Tarot cards or other magic tricks.
  • The reporters have been very lucky in their wild guess or wishful thinking.
  • The reporters had very good connections to those that shape the New World Order today; thus they managed to obtain an outline of the goals set by those powerful circles, a plan that has been promoted with impressive persistence & efficiency during the subsequent decade.
The bloody 'chess game' in Yugoslavia during the '90s, the clever series of all too obvious 'forced moves' which lead to the demolition of an 80 years old federation that had been 'too independent', the extradition, trial, and sudden death of the defeated 'Black King', plus the recent Montenegro and Kosovo independence, are strong indications that the third interpretation cannot be too far from the truth...

Or do you believe in magic?



08 May 2008

Myanmar and "bioclimatic" shelters

I’m sure you heard the news about Myanmar [Burma for those yearning for the nostalgic past].
Here are a few reminding photos from Yahoo



A few months ago, ARES-UIA competition jury selected the scheme shown below as the best answer to natural disasters, using “Renewable energy sources and bioclimatic architecture for shells, to shelter people affected by natural disasters”.

According to its designers, the scheme can be adapted to different regions of the world by changing the fabric colour; for Myanmar type of environment, green canvas is suggested.

The current humanitarian crisis of more than a million homeless people in Myanmar is a good test for the suitability of the selected design.

In this case, about 150-200,000 units from a prefabricated stock somewhere in the world should be flown to Yangon, and then transported by a fleet of trucks to the affected areas (care should be taken to send green units only, not yellow or blue ones which are for different climatic regions).
Legions of IKEA-trained specialists should accompany the shipments in order to unpack and assemble the units on site after the flooded land is dry again.
Once the costly PV panels and their batteries are in place, the lucky ex-homeless will be able to watch their favourite TV show in order to burry their grief.
Shortages of drinkable water or the danger of epidemics will be addressed by the ultra hi-tech sanitation compartments contained in each individual unit.
As for financial relief, the penniless refugees
could fetch a good price for those expensive PV panels and batteries (before being blown away by the next storm).

Now, isn't that holistic sustainable design indeed?


20 April 2006

A letter

This is a message that I emailed few days ago; whoever agrees with its contents should send a similar -or copy/paste- message to Mrs. Ferrer-Walder and other EU personae [see EU Parliament members list]. Remember, 'apathy is the fertilizer of intimidation'


To Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner
Commissioner for External Relations
European Union



Madam,

This is to strongly protest against the recent European Commission’s disgraceful decision to suspend direct economic aid to the Palestinian Authority because of the Hamas agenda.

The fact is that the Hamas platform –like it or not- reflects the will of the majority of Palestinian voters, a fact that the Commission must acknowledge if its members truly accept the principles of democracy.

It is more than obvious that the Commission’s act has no other aim than to increase the misery of Palestinian people –as if they do not suffer enough already- in the hope that they will cancel their January vote and replace their elected representatives with others more of the Commission’s liking.

In case the Commission insists on that shameful blackmailing, there can be no doubt that its members want to impose their own views upon the Palestinian electorate, either because they believe that they have the right to do so in a good-old colonialist manner, or because they have actually turned the EU into a willing instrument of Israeli policy.

Until the EU decision is withdrawn, allow me to believe that the democratic rhetoric in Middle East or elsewhere is just a selective fig leaf to cover an immense hypocrisy.