Evening Blues Preview 7-8-15

This evening's music features delta bluesman and sole pupil of Robert Johnson Robert "Junior" Lockwood.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners

As Greece’s spending on weapons shows, it’s not pensions or benefits that cripple economies, it’s the military-industrial complex

Somewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government’s purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.

There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it’s not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army. ... Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world’s fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.

So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. Is this an unfair characterisation? A bit. It wasn’t just Germany. And there were many other factors at play in the escalation of Greek debt. But the postwar difference between the Germans and the Greeks is not the tired stereotype that the former are hardworking and the latter are lazy, but rather that, among other things, the Germans have, for obvious reasons, been restricted in their military spending. And they have benefited massively from that.

Keiser Report: Yanis Varoufakis 'Shane' of Greece

Pentagon Found Only 60 Syrian Rebels for Training Scheme

From the moment Congress put aside a huge chunk of money to train a new faction of pro-US Syrian rebels, the plan has been heralded by officials as an eventual game-changer. The Pentagon was to train some 5,400 rebels a year, a figure they later revised down to about 3,000.

There was a lot of debate about whether 3,000 or even 5,000 new rebels would be a difference maker, but all that debate seems sort of silly as officials today revealed that after many months of careful vetting, they’ve found a grand total of 60 rebels to train.

Since the Pentagon pumped some $500 million into this training program, they are getting Syrian rebels for about $9 million each, a bad deal even by Pentagon standards.

Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists

In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.

The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:

“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera. ...

The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters. But Kramer does bluntly acknowledge the Nazi truth about the Azov fighters. He also notes that American military advisers in Ukraine “are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the Azov group.”

While the U.S. advisers are under orders to keep their distance from the neo-Nazis, the Kiev regime is quite open about its approval of the central military role played by these extremists – whether neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Islamic militants. These extremists are considered very aggressive and effective in killing ethnic Russians.

The regime has shown little concern about widespread reports of “death squad” operations targeting suspected pro-Russian sympathizers in government-controlled towns. But such human rights violations should come as no surprise given the Nazi heritage of these units and the connection of the Islamic militants to hyper-violent terrorist movements in the Middle East.

Has the World Abandoned Gaza? Region Remains in Ruins a Year After Deadly Israeli Assault

Gaza One Year On, Life Amid the Ruins

According to the United Nations (UN), 18,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged during last summer's war. More than 120,000 suffered minor damage. One year on from the end of the war, 108,000 people — more than five percent of the strip's population — remain homeless and not a single destroyed home has yet been rebuilt. 

While the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism — a UN-brokered agreement aimed at enabling building materials needed for reconstruction to be brought from Israel into Gaza — has increased the amount of building materials entering the strip, much of it has been earmarked for Qatari road building projects, and in total it still only equates to five percent of need. Further slowing progress is the massive shortfall in the $3.5 billion in donations pledged by the international community to help rebuild Gaza. Only around 27 percent had actually reached the strip by mid-April, according to the International Monetary Fund.

According to Oxfam, if reconstruction continues at this pace it could take "more than century" to repair the damage to Gaza's hospitals, schools and homes.

One year on from the war, hundreds of Gaza's poorest are still living in makeshift accommodation. In Khuzaa, a town nestling the Gaza-Israel border and the scene of the ferocious fighting, scores of families still live in metal containers without electricity or running water. In the winter temperatures sink to below zero while in summer they can soar to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, posing a major health risk for the young and elderly. Last winter one four month old baby died after suffering complications resulting from the cold and damp living conditions in the caravans. Many of families living here depend entirely on international aid and other charitable donations. Most cooking is done outside on fuel stoves.

Also of interest:

On the One-Year Anniversary of Israel’s Attack on Gaza: an Interview with Max Blumenthal

TTIP in the EU: Rejecting Democracy at Every Turn

Attack on Greeks in European Parliament today

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

mimi's picture

just went into Allenjo's diary, as I missed it during the day. The contrasting articles over Greece are an excellent way to get a full picture. Kudos. May be I won't say anything on the EB tonight. Unless I can't help it.

up
0 users have voted.

A Ukrainian army

In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.
The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:
“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera.
“Another, the Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the ‘Wolf’s Hook’ symbol associated with the [Nazi] SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol, the Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they loved their homeland and hated the Russians.”

But these are the 'good guys'.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

the intercept had this article about it a while ago: The Final Days of a Chechen Commander Fighting in Ukraine.

i've also read a number of pieces suggesting that the ukraine conflict was one source point of a pipeline of western arms, money and islamist fighters that wind up in various struggles across the middle east.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Russian forces did commit horrible crimes in Grozny / Chechnya back in the 1990s, with only the feeblest of protest from Western Europe.

Peoples in the Caucasus have been trying to throw off Russian rule since the days of the czars. They didn't start out being Islamic fundamentalists and jihadists. A younger generation of them only became so when they discovered that, except for Islamic fundamentalists, no one else would so much as lift a finger to keep them as a people from being slaughtered.

So the Chechen involvement, at least, is understandable.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/how-britain-and-us-abandone...

So, the Western powers were all willing to countenance "some" atrocities in order to give the Serbs a more contiguous territory . . . "No one could have imagined", eh?

Knowing these things, who would ever trust U.S. and U.K. diplomacy?

up
0 users have voted.

The reason that no one talks about.

Somewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government’s purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.
...
Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world’s fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.

So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

is that the troika doesn't want greece to cut its military spending:

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, Yiannis Bournous, the head of international affairs for Greece’s ruling Syriza party, heartily endorsed defense cuts as a way to meet the fiscal targets of Greece’s international creditors.

“We already proposed a 200 million euro cut in the defense budget,” Bournous said at an event hosted by the Center for Economic Policy and Research and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, referring to cuts in Syriza’s most recent proposal to its creditors. “We are willing to make it even bigger -- it is a pleasure for us.”

A German newspaper reported on Saturday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had vetoed a compromise plan put forward by the European Commission that would have allowed Greece to substitute 400 million euros in pension cuts for equivalent military spending cuts.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

as it goes hand in hand with your first article here.

up
0 users have voted.
shaharazade's picture

when I read that the UK is still paying off debt incurred from that most insane war (not that any other war is sane) WW1. I can't find the story from the Guardian it's down the rabbit hole, but the Brits are still paying obscene amounts for WW1. How mad is this. Why do people, regardless of where they live have to pony up and eat austerity for these want to rule the world psycho's that have power and make humanity and the planet pay for this madness? Sorry to go off on a tangent here but come on people why should any human anywhere have to pay for the oligarchical collectivists psycho wet dreams of ruling the world cause they are the chosen or some such nonsense. I am hoping this whole latest greatest ever NWO brought to us by Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Davos crowd just crumbles under it's own weight. Or even better maybe people globally will get fed up and say like the Greek people fuck you.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

just recently made it's last payment on ww1 (from the first article upstairs):

Indeed, it was only this year, back in March, that the UK taxpayer finally paid off the money we borrowed to fight the first world war. “This is a moment for Britain to be proud of,” said George Osborne, as he paid the final installment of £1.9bn. Really?

heh, as orwell explained in 1984, the reason for war (and war debts) is to destroy excess production that might advance the state of the proles beyond a grasping, hand-to-mouth existence which hinders their ability to educate themselves to the point that they would realize that they really don't need the elites.

up
0 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

While most pundits and market savants were preoccupied with the Greek crisis and the plunge in Chinese stocks, a potentially far more important event, with deep political, economic and financial implications for the US, began to take place on Wednesday.

A new bank for a new era

Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit and the seventh BRICS Summit, both of which are being held from July 8 to July 10 in Ufa, Russia. The meetings will focus on regional trade and infrastructure, bilateral cooperation within multilateral frameworks as well as coordination and cooperation in regional and international affairs, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.

SCO and BRICS are part of the alternative world order that China is building with the help of Russia. This matters because last year the combined economic output of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries was $17 trillion, almost equal to the U.S.’ gross domestic product, according to Bloomberg. In 2007, the US’s GDP was double the BRICS’ output.


The faces of the non-Anglo world reshaping global finance and equality.

The BRICS agreement to forge ahead with a $100 billion New Development Bank (NDB) was signed last year in Brazil. The bank also possesses a reserve currency pool worth another $100 billion. The new bank will finance infrastructure projects in the BRICS countries and across other developing countries. NDB is expected to start functioning by the end of 2015, with its headquarters in Shanghai.

Both the New BRICS Bank and China's AIIB will facilitate the nations of the world in dumping the US Dollar as a Reserve Currency and as an economic weapon of mass destruction. There is an urgent interest among nations to avoid Dollar hegemony and to begin trading in their own national currencies. China's AIIB will be able to facilitate currency swaps between nations, outside the Dollar, or act as a currency settlement bank. China will run launch an alternative "SWIFT" system in late 2015, so that nations suffering under US sanctions can now trade normally with the rest of the world. In addition, China will begin their own global daily gold price fix, usurping the role of the century-old London gold fix, which has come under suspicion, tainted by the City of London's rampant institution corruption revealed by its Libor-rate manipulation.

“We definitely see a growing interest from the countries to make settlements in local currencies,” the CEO of Russia’s second biggest bank, Andrey Kostin, said. 40-50 percent of all the mutual settlements among the BRICS countries can be performed in domestic currencies, Kostin estimated, RIA reported.

The Chinese yuan as the leading currency can be used in settlements among BRICS member states, Kostin said, adding that the Russian ruble can be used for that as well.

Meanwhile, the IMF is meeting on October 20th, 2015 and is widely expected to designate the Yuan as a global reserve currency. This single event may likely prove to be a massive game changer for the US economy — one that could impact the meaning and purpose of the 2016 elections.

China in particular has ambitions of elevating the yuan to the status of global reserve currency, which would make it a rival to the dollar. It has been trying to coax the IMF into adding its currency, also known as the renminbi, to the IMF’s special drawing rights basket, which would be an important milestone for the currency. The IMF is expected to decide later this year on adding the yuan. The basket is revised every five years.

The China International Payments System (CIPS), set to come online by the end of 2015 also threatens the $USD as an international trade currency:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/03/10/the-one-ch...

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

link

George W Bush charged a charity $100,000 to guarantee his attendance at a fundraiser for military veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been reported.
The former president was also flown from Dallas to Houston by private jet and provided accommodation, which added $70,000 to Helping A Hero's bill, the charity told ABC News.
It transpires the extortionate fee was in fact a reduced rate, bartered down from $250,000.
And a year earlier, his wife former First Lady Laura Bush received $50,000 from the charity to make an appearance.
The revelation has sparked outrage among many of the board members who lost limbs fighting the War On Terror which Bush declared in 2003.
'You sent me to war, I was doing what you told me to do, gladly for you and our country and I have no regrets. But it’s kind of a slap in the face,' raged former Marine Eddie Wright on ABC News.
Wright lost both hands in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004 after being hit by a rocket.
up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

(Sméagol voice:) "Because it's my birthday, and I wants it."

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Very few of our fellow Americans care one whit about the suffering and death inflicted on Iraqis anymore, if they ever did.

It just isn't important, or even "real," to them (it's not on their large-screen HD TV). The truth is, Arabs — except for royal oil clans who hobnob with Western billionaires and get favorable publicity and pictures of princes in the papers — aren't even fully human to them.

Veterans just happen to be in the same boat.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/02/torture-absolute-power

They could rightly claim that they were just following the lead of the world's self-proclaimed moral leader. And the poison that was personified by the Idiot King W worked its way down into the mindless minions, empowering a whole class of cruel automatons, our heroes in uniform. Drones, that now spent, face the nightmare of their complete moral emptiness, an un-curable PTSD.

How many of my fellow countrymen and women who did not take to the streets, who did not murmur any word of protest, on that night when that mouthpiece of death announced the commencement of "shock and awe" gave even a moment's thought to the thousands of innocent lives that were going to be snuffed out in a matter of minutes? Blown to bits of broken flesh, blood, and bone against the broken walls and pavements of a broken future — the New American Century.

up
0 users have voted.