banksters researching the "politics of rage"- no irony

One may never know why Banks do stuff, cuz it seems
as if they would only operate in their own interest, if
their robbing is any hint.

So, banks can and should research markets, but it gets
a bit close to home when banks study the politics of
rage. That is because the banks have consistently been
the main cause of that rage.
They have ripped off most western countries in a way
that only a cabal of international thieves can do. The
public of those countries have, as their present for
keeping calm, austerity and cuts to the services that
actual people need, like education and health.

But you have to laugh when the bankster researchers
write tart statements like this:

"change in the confidence in government since 2007"

That same bank is responsible for the theft of trillions
that has caused governments to stomp on people.
Hence the rage, isn't it?

For their next trick, banks are studying how to
make laws that benefit them. The answer:
They write the laws themselves, and guess what=
governments say "thanks, I just didn't have the time"

to wit: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-25/rise-politics-rage
The Rise Of The Politics Of Rage

by Tyler Durden
Oct 25, 2016 6:20 PM

Rage is all the rage these days, but as Barclays notes, what appears less well understood is that this voter rebellion, “the Politics of Rage”, spans nearly all advanced economies, has been taking place for more than a decade, is unparalleled in modern history, and is deeply entrenched.

This is not just about Brexit or the US election; it is about a global political movement.

More troubling, from a market perspective, is that its roots may be misunderstood. Misperceptions in politics tend to lead to volatile surprises, such as Brexit, or to misdiagnoses and to policy mis-prescriptions that imply even worse outcomes for asset prices.

Policymakers have focused on income inequality as the primary driver of the Politics of Rage. Although we cannot reject the thesis, we find little support for it in the data. Others have focused on anti-globalisation movements as the main driver. Our analysis agrees, but in results that may surprise some; we find that it is neither the most important source of rage nor as economically irrational as some have suggested.

We find that a deeper cause is a perception among “ordinary citizens” that political and institutional “elites” do not accurately represent their preferences amid a growing cultural and economic divide. These frustrations appear to be validated, with many caveats, by the data: median earners in advanced economies seem to have been the relative losers of globalisation, both within their own countries and relative to their emerging market peers.

Voter anger may be analogous to the Greek hero Achilles’ terrible rage, not for having received less than King Agamemnon, but for the perceived injustice in the manner in which Agamemnon distributed the spoils of battle. Achilles’ wrath cost the Greeks – and ultimately Achilles – dearly, as the Politics of Rage may cost global output. But it was not because Achilles’ sense of justice was in error.

Our findings have mostly strategic implications for asset markets, but they are not happy. Our research seems to support the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington’s forecast of continued political upheaval and highlights the trilemma of incompatibility among democracy, sovereignty and globalisation postulated by the economist Dani Rodrik. The Politics of Rage has been around longer than many realise and likely will remain for the foreseeable future. Despite this long arc, our findings also are highly relevant to near-term event risks.

The report is robust and detailed, but the issues and conclusions are framed in brief in the Executive Summary and on “Rage in a page”, below.

Prospects for the Politics of Rage

• Its roots run deeply through and across countries; Brexit was no exception

• Technology likely will nourish the roots of Rage by inflaming some of the key proximate causes

• Governments are ill equipped to fight Rage with already overextended fiscal positions and low levels of popular trust
The Policies of Rage

• Sovereignty: Reclaiming sovereignty delegated to supranational and intergovernmental organizations

• Representative reform: More direct democracy and a greater voice for “ordinary citizens” • Immigration: Greater sovereign control over immigration

• Trade: Restrictions on the free movement of goods and services

• Redistribution of income: More progressive taxation and income support

• Anti-corporatism: More sovereign assertion of tax and regulatory authority for multinationals
Effects of the Policies of Rage

• Direct de-globalisation: Restrictions on the free movement of goods and services, labour and capital

• Indirect de-globalization: Greater difficulty achieving harmonisation of international rules, standards and taxation Supranational entities like the EU and intergovernmental agreements like the Basel Accords and WTO likely will be at greater risk of dissolution

• Redistribution of income: Even without explicit policies to redistribute, de-globalisation likely will lead to a greater labour share of aggregate income
Implications of the Politics of Rage
Economic

• A slower pace of trend economic growth is likely with EM growth disproportionately affected

• We expect steeper advanced economy Phillips curves; but EM may see even more disinflation

• Fiscal policy likely is ambiguous for advanced economies, but more expansionary for EM

• Global savings should fall, and precipitating a rise in real interest rates to equate investment, but the pattern should shift, ironically, to decrease advanced economy current account balances relative to EM
Financial market

• Global nominal interest rates should rise, but more so in core economies; dispersion should increase

• G10 FX should outperform EM FX, but dispersion within each group should increase; JPY is a clear outperformer, EM and Europe are clear underperformers

• Slower global demand should dominate the outlook for commodity prices

• Equities and credit likely face a poor outlook in aggregate due to slower revenue growth and margin compression, but wide sectoral and country dispersion is likely

• “Fat tails” are likely as markets learn about the Politics of Rage, but a long-run increase in volatility is unlikely

Apple's money is under your noses

There are some stories in this the Great Bank Wars
(as they will be known) that are too hard to believe
because they imply that overlords are colluding
to rip us off and make their friends rich.

So, in the UK, when someone declares themselves
a "Non-dom" his foreign income is not taxed in
the UK and nor is his UK income, because he is
not-domiciled. There is a limit to the number of
days a non-dom can stay in the UK, but I'm sure
that this is never checked.
These people live, work, earn in the UK without
paying tax for all their wonderful life in what
is a publicly-paid-for road system and government
and police, for when they get mugged by somebody
who has been disadvantaged by the same system.
They are in plain sight, but cannot be taxed due to
signing a document that says "hi, taxman. you may
be setting your eyes on me, but for tax purposes,
I am actually not here."
I hope I am doing this expensive charade justice.

There is yet another boondoggle that I was not
expecting. It has to do with Apple's vaunted
$250Billion overseas. The US tax system promotes
the storing of money offshore for the purpose of
saving tax.
So, Apple is not the first company to offshore, But,
listen to this. Apple's money is not all actually
outside the country. It's not like it's a stack of
money you can chase and find. It is notional
money that flows down phone lines and around
the world. That money can flow in and out of
shell companies, but somehow people can still
find the owner of that money. It's just that the
taxman cannot.
Apple's money is invested in the US, but can
still dodge a taxman that is living in the stage-coach
19th century. While we pay for all the public
goods that rich people use,  their billions are
being invested right under our noses.

to wit: naked capitalism

Wolf Richter: Come on Moody’s, Spare Us These Falsehoods: That $1.3 Trillion “Overseas Cash” Is Already in the US
Posted on November 6, 2016 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Wolf addresses a pet peeve, and even better, in long form.

By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

Some falsehoods simply refuse to die. No matter how many times they get stabbed in the heart, and no matter who stabs them, they rise again in their full glory.

The falsehood that a vast amount of US corporate cash, including much of Apple’s $250 billion, is “locked away overseas” is one of them. We’ve known since May 2013 from the Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings into Apple’s tax-dodge practices that a big part of corporate “overseas cash” is actually invested in the US.

Now Moody’s Investor Services repeats the same falsehood and explicitly lobbies Congress to give our poor, multinational Corporate Titans with their hardscrabble businesses another tax break.

The biggest US non-financial companies that pay Moody’s to rate their credit worthiness “will increase their cash holdings to $1.77 trillion by the end of the year, from $1.68 trillion at the end of 2015,” Moody’s writes. And it goes on:

Most of the cash that companies have is generated and being held overseas. Moody’s estimates that the amount of overseas cash will reach about $1.3 trillion, or 74% of total cash, in 2016. That’s up from an estimated $1.2 trillion, or 72% of total cash a year earlier.

For US tax purposes, these funds are classified as “permanently invested overseas” and thus are exempt from federal corporate income tax until they’re “returned” to the US. These overseas cash holdings have “more than double in the last ten years,” Moody’s reports.

By contrast, US individuals have to pay federal income taxes on all their income, even income they earn from overseas sources while living overseas. The US is one of only a few countries that mistreats its citizens that way. But the largest corporations are coddled and get very special treatment.

On the forefront are our Tech Titans, which have on their books “almost half” of all cash “held by US non-financial companies. These are the top five “cash holders”:

And this is what Moody’s has to say about Apple’s wondrous cash hoard, much of it overseas:

Based on Apple’s reported results for its fiscal year that ended in September, Moody’s projects the company’s cash will exceed $250 billion by the end of calendar 2016, representing over 14% of total non-financial corporate cash.

And then it dives straight into tax lobbying, in behalf of its clients, directed straight at Congress:

“Without tax reform that reduces the negative financial consequences of repatriating money to the US, we expect offshore cash levels to continue increasing,” said Richard Lane, a Senior Vice President at Moody’s.

The financial media jumped on the bandwagon and quoted this falsehood for mass consumption in order to pressure Congress to give our multinational corporate heroes another opportunity to dodge taxes, on top of the countless opportunities already written into the tax code for them that small businesses don’t have access to.

But here’s the thing. In May 2013, Apple got into a pickle because it had decided to fund its stock-buy-back and dividend program by taking on a record $17 billion in debt rather than “repatriating” part of its “offshore” cash and paying income taxes on it.

The Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings, chaired by Senator John McCain, showed that Apple had sheltered at least $74 billion from US income taxes between 2009 and 2012 by using a “complex web” of offshore mailbox companies. The investigation found untaxed “offshore” profits of $102 billion held by Irish subsidiaries – which Apple refused to “repatriate” in order to keep that income from being taxed in the US.

But according to the Senate report, Apple doesn’t have to repatriate that moolah because it’s already in the US. The Irish mailbox subsidiaries, on whose books this money is for tax purposes, transferred it to Apple’s bank accounts in New York. The money is managed by an Apple subsidiary in Reno, Nevada, and is invested in all kinds of assets in the US. Apple’s accountants in Austin, Texas, keep the books,

Money doesn’t stop at borders. Tax accounting does.

These revelations explained another corporate mystery that had long baffled economists. In 2004, after heavy lobbying by our Corporate Titans, Congress declared a “repatriation holiday” to encourage the “return” of $300 billion in overseas cash to be invested in the US. This would cause a burst of investment and hiring in the US, it was said. This was similar to what Moody’s is now clamoring for on behalf of its clients, except this time, they want permanent tax reform rather than a one-time “repatriation holiday.”

So in 2004, our heroes made some adjustments on their books to “repatriate” these profits that were then taxed at the special and minuscule rate of 5.25%, less than the payroll taxes withheld from their US working stiffs.

And then nothing happened. There were no investments and no hiring and no benefits for the economy because the money had already been deployed in the US, as we now know. In May 2013, as a result of the Senate hearings, the New York Times summarized the 2004 phenomenon this way:

On the contrary, some of the companies that brought back the most money laid off thousands of workers, and a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research later concluded that 92 cents on every dollar was used for dividends, stock buybacks or executive bonuses.

This sort of “repatriation holiday” or tax reform would simply be a handout benefitting our Corporate Titans, but not the millions of smaller companies that don’t have the resources to lobby Congress, make special deals with foreign governments, and create that “complex web” of offshore mailbox companies. They’re too busy struggling on a daily basis in their dog-eat-dog world.

Subcommittee Chairman John McCain thundered in his opening statement of the hearings that it was “unacceptable that corporations like Apple are able to exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying billions in taxes.” Since then, nothing happened in Congress. The loophole wasn’t closed. And the falsehoods that had been stabbed many times during the hearings have once again risen to shine in even greater glory, with Moody’s adding some additional sparkle.

 

De-nuding political leaders

[Union Square Manhattan]

For those of you who think that humans have culture,
and scientific research, and complex spirituality means that
humans are not animals. Well, modern politics has
conspired to bring us right back to our base animal
instincts.
The most important instinct is survival and for
that reason, there will be instability as austerity
and robots and CETA start to bite the same
working/middle class butts at the same time.

If you recognise the physical implications
of all our major English insults, they deal
with the body:
asshole, jerk off, pussy, dick

This harks back to our baser days as butt-sniffing
wife-stealing cave dwellers, with the drapes
being picked by said stolen wife.

Today, though, we seem to be too smart for our
own good. We have this thing called polite society
wherein we have a polite democracy of one
vote per person and then the oligarchs distract the
government with bribes and we all lose our rights.
We can start with the bank crisis that governments
allowed to happen and go on from there. The 2008
Banker Coup was the start of the Slide into Austerity
that will followed by e-cash and the Rise of the
Machines which will be busted up by unemployed
men all around the world.

So, we are not allowed to assault anybody, and yet
politicians and their banker friends rob us on a daily
basis. That is not polite, but nobody's nose is broken
so we get to claim that we are a polite society.

Our politicians are beyond reproach. We are supposed
to respect them and give them space, while that space
creates room for them to make secret deals behind
closed doors. In the same way, their fancy expensive
clothing makes us instinctively sit up and take notice
of their refinement, when actually they're fat and
disgusting underneath. If we are polite and see
only the exterior, they get to hide their truly selves.

The only way to bring these politicians down is to
go back to our animal ways and look at them
naked, in public. That way we can laugh at their fat
and warped bodies and what stress has done to their
health. We can examine how much they stink. We
can laugh at their droopey and tiny
genitalia and boobs sagging around their knees.

 
It will allow us to have a good laugh that
those politicians should be allowed to hear. If they
are then cool enough to

not want to run away or

to not order us all shot, 

then they are good material

for public office.

Of course, the point is kind of lost if your
politicians are regularly naked, both on
video and in person, like the former sex
bomb Cicciolina (the MP) of Italy who found a
scumbag husband who liked sending
around fotos of her and himself naked
and frolicking, and even statues:

TTIP your hat to China

Updates 2 and 3: Trump kills TPP/TTIP
by exec order.
Also, we see another angle of TPP geo-
politics. The US wanted to control as
many Pacific Rim countries as possible
through TPP so that they don't fall into
the sway of China, cuz China knows
how to woo a country. Since this entry
was written, Philippines' Duterte has
told O to Flock off, and ended a
century of poverty brought on by US
fielty, and brought in the  Chinese who
will build him a world-class port.  
 --
Update 1: Recently, Max Keiser asked one of his
East Asia expert guests whether TTIP is really in
the interests of the US, seeing as it goes against
the interests of China from whom the US gets
the crap that fills every Walmart from sea to polluted sea.
 (video below)
Update since I started writing this entry, the CETA deal
has been signed. It has not been ratified yet, but if it goes
in, the TTIP that everybody was warned about was
trumped by the CETA, that, despite being 7 years in the
making, I had never heard of!! It is also the backdoor
that allows US businesses, through their NAFTA trade
deal, to enter the EU. So TTIP is redundant. But the
US will get that deal signed too, just because they
do not wish to be seen to be upstaged by Canada.
--
I finally figured out how the oligarchs in charge
of TTIP (and TPP) have managed to get governments
to the negotiating table.

I still don't know why they have never looked at
the anti-democratic corporatocracy document
that is the TTIP/TPP and just said :

"I can't support this agreement

because I will be strung up 

by my shorts."

It really is that stark a choice.

Now the reason is:

the fear of a Chinese planet

Now, that may seem bizarre for many reasons.

The chief reason is that China still makes the 

cheapest mass-produced goodies that we all

buy (admit it). There's no way to compete 

unless   ........

they use TTIP to batter everybody's wages down to Chinese level!

How can we compete when the pollution levels in China

are criminally high? same answer. Use TTIP to allow

companies to do whatever they want. 

So, my summation is that US and the now clearly,

acknowledged second-rate countries like 

Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia

want to keep up with China by going anti-democratic.

In China's case, it's a communist dictatorship, with 

money for most people.

In the case of the TTIP/TPP countries, it'll be an

oligarchic corporatocracy with money for

oligarchic corporatists only

Well done, Western democracies.

You've now sunk below the depravity of a communist

dictatorship. I blame Richard Nixon for all this.

I know how the oligarchs have done most of their work. It's
a simple bait and switch. They promise a China-beating plan
and then make the negotiations on false pretenses, not
allowing anybody to study the document, because it holds
the awful truth. But, once it's signed, they're like

any fly-by-night business legalese:

"well, you did sign here, didn't you"

Keiser 988 at 15:48 and before too

checkit: Liberty blitzkrieg

Merkel “Surprised” as Hundreds of Thousands March in Berlin Against TTIP “Corporate Dictatorship”
Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Oct 12, 2015 at 1:23 pm
In what is being described as the largest German protest in recent years, hundreds of thousands of enraged citizens descended upon Berlin over the weekend to voice their collective displeasure at the government’s attempt to consolidate corporate dictatorship by passing a democracy killing agreement being marketed as a “free trade” deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
The TTIP is basically the TPP but between the U.S. and Europe as opposed to the U.S. and Asia and parts of Latin America. Like the TPP, it further consolidates corporate power, destroys consumer protections and has been negotiated entirely in secret. For prior articles on the TPP, see:
How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship
U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP
Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”
Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”
As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP
It seems the Germans aren’t prepared to take this assault lying down. We learn from Reuters that:
At least 150,000 people marched in Berlin on Saturday in protest against a planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States that they say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labor and environmental standards.
Organizers – an alliance of environmental groups, charities and opposition parties – said 250,000 people had taken part in the rally against free trade deals with both the United States and Canada, far more than they had anticipated.
“This is the biggest protest that this country has seen for many, many years,” Christoph Bautz, director of citizens’ movement Campact told protesters in a speech.
That’s all well and good, but does it even matter? Japan recently saw its largest demonstrations in a generation against Abe’s “war legislation,” and he passed it anyway. Citizen opinion simply doesn’t matter in a neo-feudal oligarchy posing as a democracy.
Opposition to the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has risen over the past year in Germany, with critics fearing the pact will hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers.
“What bothers me the most is that I don’t want all our consumer laws to be softened,” Oliver Zloty told Reuters TV. “And I don’t want to have a dictatorship by any companies.”
Now here’s the most interesting part. Merkel was completely caught off guard. As such, her government immediately rushed to propagandize via the media.
The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government by surprise and underscores the challenge it faces to turn the tide in favor of the deal which proponents say will create a market of 800 million and serve as a counterweight to China’s economic clout.
In a full-page letter published in several German newspapers on Saturday, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned against “scaremongering”.
Personally, I would have gone with “scaremongering, conspiracy theorist, racist, sexist, anti-semitic, kooks.”
“We have the chance to set new and goods standards for growing global trade. With ambitious, standards for the environment and consumers and with fair conditions for investment and workers. This must be our aim,” Gabriel wrote.
Businesses hope the trade deal will deliver over $100 billion of economic gains on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even if that number proves to be true, we all know where 99.9% of that $100 billion would go. Straight to the bank accounts of the oligarchs, just like the trillions of dollars in central bank “stimulus” did. That’s just how rigged, neo-feudal oligarchies work.
Now for a few photos from the rally:
This will give you a sense of its size:
Now here’s Merkel blowing up democracy with a TTIP bomb:
Finally, nothing gets you in the mood like a little make out session between Merkel and a horned Obama

Nestle + hot water+ Flint = poison

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

localism and municipalism

As an anti-globaliser and an anti-imperialist
I see that large economic and political blocks
are just empires by another name.

I believe that for democracy to work and be
seen to work, you need to see the whites of
your politicians eyes. Only then can you
see if they're lying and, only then can you
go grab them and shake them a bit. Otherwise,
you can guarantee that politicians will use
your ignorance as a chance to rob and trick
you.

Here's a wonderful solution that is getting
a rough political ride.

I've appreciate David Graeber's work since
he was part of the Occupy movement. he's an
anthropologist who has studied economic
systems, and his book "Debt the first 5000 years"
is a good lesson in what money should do
for a fair society, as opposed to the one we have,
run by banks.
It will soon come to a choice between

bankocracy/ globalisation and

local democracy.

that will be brought on by TTIP. 

Are we going to chisel the headstone of
democratic governance at the end of this
year? or are we going to charge out of
this sick "democratic" sham and ponzi economy
and become free?

more later. read below

checkit: Guardian

Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?

David Graeber

Amid the Syrian warzone a democratic experiment is being stamped into the ground by Isis. That the wider world is unaware is a scandal

Wednesday 8 October 2014 09.04 BST

Last modified on Wednesday 15 October 2014 15.42 BST

Comments 482

In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women.

Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.

I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.

The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.

How can something like this happen and still be almost entirely ignored by the international community, even, largely, by the International left? Mainly, it seems, because the Rojavan revolutionary party, the PYD, works in alliance with Turkey’s Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a Marxist guerilla movement that has since the 1970s been engaged in a long war against the Turkish state. Nato, the US and EU officially classify them as a “terrorist” organisation. Meanwhile, leftists largely write them off as Stalinists.

But, in fact, the PKK itself is no longer anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it once was. Its own internal evolution, and the intellectual conversion of its own founder, Abdullah Ocalan, held in a Turkish island prison since 1999, have led it to entirely change its aims and tactics.

The PKK has declared that it no longer even seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state.

Since 2005 the PKK, inspired by the strategy of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish state and began concentrating their efforts in developing democratic structures in the territories they already controlled. Some have questioned how serious all this really is. Clearly, authoritarian elements remain. But what has happened in Rojava, where the Syrian revolution gave Kurdish radicals the chance to carry out such experiments in a large, contiguous territory, suggests this is anything but window dressing. Councils, assemblies and popular militias have been formed, regime property has been turned over to worker-managed co-operatives – and all despite continual attacks by the extreme rightwing forces of Isis. The results meet any definition of a social revolution. In the Middle East, at least, these efforts have been noticed: particularly after PKK and Rojava forces intervened to successfully fight their way through Isis territory in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yezidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar after the local peshmerga fled the field. These actions were widely celebrated in the region, but remarkably received almost no notice in the European or North American press.

Now, Isis has returned, with scores of US-made tanks and heavy artillery taken from Iraqi forces, to take revenge against many of those same revolutionary militias in Kobane, declaring their intention to massacre and enslave – yes, literally enslave – the entire civilian population. Meanwhile, the Turkish army stands at the border preventing reinforcements or ammunition from reaching the defenders, and US planes buzz overhead making occasional, symbolic, pinprick strikes – apparently, just to be able to say that it did not do nothing as a group it claims to be at war with crushes defenders of one of the world’s great democratic experiments.

If there is a parallel today to Franco’s superficially devout, murderous Falangists, who would it be but Isis? If there is a parallel to the Mujeres Libres of Spain, who could it be but the courageous women defending the barricades in Kobane? Is the world – and this time most scandalously of all, the international left – really going to be complicit in letting history repeat itself?

Proof that Germany runs Brussels

In a European Union that has no democratic legitimacy,
power is wielded by the most powerful, come what may.
There is no doubt in any person's mind that Germany
runs the EU. I think that they do so in the name of
their banks which are (like Belgian and French banks)
on the edge of a precipice, permanently, because of
their derivatives betting books.

So, here's proof that Juncker was installed as a prince
regent in the name of the German Empire.
The Brits didn't want Juncker in that post, because they
probably wanted one of their corrupt bankers to get
the job.

checkit: DAILYTELEGRAPH

Germany's record trade surplus is a bigger threat to euro than Greece

..

We watch with interest to see how Mr Juncker chooses to navigate these treacherous political reefs, especially since he holds his current job by German patronage. It was Chancellor Angela Merkel who shoe-horned him into the Berlaymont last year against British objections.

…

US v EU, part 4 Proof that US targets Germany

You could easily say that the US targets everybody,
unless they happen to be in the cabal at the head
of the snake which is doing the targetting.

The US scattered derivatives around the world
to trick everybody out of billions. But in the trade
world, the US is particularly targeting China,
even though the US created that monster, and
Germany.

Part of the fight is over how every nation or
trading block is trying to dump its own currency
in order to make their products cheaper for
foreigners to buy. Germany has stitched up
the Euro as the weak currency that the
Deutschmark could never be. All the Germans
have to do is let out some rumours that
Greece is about to default and the Euro tanks.

[Professor Werner]
[some people were in on it, and others not]

checkit: DAILY TELEGRAPH

Germany's record trade surplus is a bigger threat to euro than Greece

..

With a few honourable exceptions - such as Mr Fratzscher – the German policy elites refuse to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with their surplus policy, or even that there is any need to discuss the subject at all.

This refusal to view matters from anybody else’s point of view is testing patience around the world. Germany has displaced China as the arch-villain in the US Treasury’s reports to Congress on currency manipulation, and for obvious reasons.

…

Varoufakis tries to democratise a banking cartel

It still remains to be seen whether Varoufakis was indeed
the great defender of Greece. I tend to think he was.
The only question I have is whether he knew, by February
that come-what-may, the troika would screw Greece
anyway. If he knew, he should have said that.
He did indeed leave many hints to that effect. He
did inform Greeks and the world very clearly
about how corrupt Brussels was, and he has said
even more since.

Verdict: he was certainly a brave politician. Whether
he qualifies as a brave person or a brave Greek waits
to be seen.

Nevertheless, he has been lobbing logic-bombs at Brussels
and Frankfurt, rather effectively since jumping from the
burning ship that is Greece.
I saw him at the South Bank Centre. He has
certainly grasped this opportunity with both hands.
He now has a large number of followers. He has
decided, in his new venture, to attack the belly of
the beast which destroyed Greece.

The Brussels democracy-free zone

The Eurogroup and the Troika were born there.

To do that, he has decided to found the first 

pan-European party which has some basic goals

it wants to achieve. 

His main argument is that 

if the EU continues as is

(which it would otherwise)

it'll be dead in 10 years.

So, now is the time to change it.

He wants to rid the EU of the cartel-like nature 

of its head office and get every European citizen 

feeling as if the EU represents them. What we
have now is a coddled Brussels elite working
for the benefit of (mainly) German banks. The EU,
which began as a steel and coal cartel, is now
a banking cartel.

What will the reaction be?

I think Brussels is so numb and full of useless elites

that they will snicker at him. But when they 

see any success, they will begin to attack him

with all their devious shenanigans.

Here's a part of an interview with Red Pepper

about the party he will soon get off the ground.

Here, he mentions the sick nature of the Beast:

(1 below)

it's a bankocracy, stupid
The second bit (2 below) is about where the real power is
in Europe, on a day-to-day basis. Of course, the EU is
in permanent crisis, so the people making the "critical"
decisions are in charge. It's a banking crisis, so the
banks are in charge. Varoufakis (below), for me, kinda
misses the point, though I believe he knows it. Is he
trying not to piss off Frankfurt bankers? Eventually, if his party
succeeds even moderately, he will have to uncover the
Head of the Beast: Deutschebank. The other banks are
secondary, yet still very sick. When Varoufakis says
"noone is in control," I think he is trying to convey
that they're just putting out banking fires, or doing
what the banks say. It's "obvious" to me, as an outsider.
In crisis mode, politicians put out the fires for the people
who rule them. So, it looks as if they're not in control
because they're acting like bank clerks.
  They really have "no choice" at this point,
not being able to see how bank failure can be bad (short term)
but excellent in the long term (text 2 below).

Here, Mark Blyth explains the shitstorm very well,
in front of the benevolent employees of Google
in Cali :


[starts at 17:09 Soc Gen bank, ING,
17:55 bank debts are double EU GDP
18:25 UK banks 4x GDP (but with own currency)
18:35 France banks 3.5x GDP (in the Euro)
20:50 the EU dance with death.
Save German banks by-

Kill the Greeks, kill the Portuguese, kill the Irish

What Blyth actually said was, if things had been left
to the market, the troubles would have forced banks
to start dumping Greek debt which would have started
a bank run,
I think that the EU knew that those PIIGs countries
were the weakest, and so the troika decided to
put their countries on show-trial, keep them there
as a potemkin village, showing everybody that
the EU is handling its problems, meanwhile the
troika is quickly or slowly bleeding these countries'
economies dry.

checkit:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/01/29/why-a-pan-european-democracy-movement-interviewed-
by-nick-buxton/
1
Q: Is democratising Europe a matter of reclaiming fundamental principles or about developing a new concept of sovereignty?
A:
It’s both. Nothing is new under the sun. The concept of sovereignty doesn’t change, but the ways it is applied to multi-ethnic and multi-jurisdictional areas like Europe has to be rethought. There is an interesting debate that happens mainly in Britain, as the rest of Europe doesn’t seem interested. It was always frustrating trying to convince the French and the Germans that there is a profound difference between a Europe of Nations and a European Union. The Brits understand this better, especially the Conservatives, ironically. They are supporters of Edmund Burke, anti-constructivists who believe there has to be a one-to-one mapping between nation, parliament and money: One nation, one parliament, one money.

When I ask my Tory friends, ‘But what about Scotland? Are the Scots not a bona fide nation? If so, should they not have a separate state and currency?’, the answer I get takes the form: Of course there is a Scottish, Welsh, and English nation and not a UK nation, but there is a common identity, forged as result of wars of conquest, participation in empire and so on. If that is true, and it may be, then it is possible to say that different nationalities can be bound together by an evolving common identity. So this is how I would like to see it. We are never to going to have a European nation, but we can have a European identity that corresponds to a sovereign European people. So we preserve the old-fashioned concept of sovereignty but we link it to a developing European identity, that is then linked with the single sovereignty and a parliament that keeps checks and balances on executive power at the level of Europe.

At the moment, we have ECOFIN, the Eurogroup, and the European Council making important decisions on behalf of the European people, but these bodies are not answerable to any parliament. It is not good enough to say that members of these institutions are answerable to their national parliament, because members of these institutions, when they go back home to appear in front of their national parliament, say ‘Don’t look at me, I disagreed with everything in Brussels but I didn’t have power to affect a decision so I am not responsible for the Eurogroup’s or Council’s or Ecofin’s decision’. Unless institutional bodies can be censured or dismissed as a body by one common parliament, you don’t have sovereign democracy. So that should be the objective in Europe....

2
NEXT QUESTION: where is the day-to-day power in Europe
Q:
Where, then, is power in Europe?
A:
This is an interesting question. On the surface, the only powerful people in Europe are Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. But having said that, they are not even that powerful themselves. I have seen Mario Draghi look extremely frustrated in Eurogroup meetings, at what was being said, at his own powerlessness, at having to do things that he thought were terrible for Europe. At the same time, Angela Merkel clearly feels circumscribed by the demands of her own parliament, her own party, on the need to keep a kind of modus vivendi with the French that she doesn’t agree with.

So the answer to your question is that we have managed to create a monster in Europe, where the Eurozone is supremely powerful as an entity but where no one is in control. The institutions and rules that have been put in place in order to maintain the political equilibrium that set up the whole Euro currency project disempowers almost every player that has anything to do with democratic legitimacy.