Stefan Steinberg & Barry Grey
WSWS

A pedestrian walks past graffiti on a wall, in south Dublin. (Reuters)

In a revealing admission concerning the relationship between capitalist governments and international financial interests, the Financial Times on Tuesday wrote of “Europe’s dirty secret.”

The newspaper editorialized against the plan of the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund to loan Ireland tens of billions of euros in order to guarantee in full the investments of international bankers and bondholders in the country’s failing banking system.

Under the plan, Ireland will effectively surrender sovereignty over its economic policy to the EU and the IMF and agree to claw back the latest bailout of the global financial elite by imposing a new and even more savage round of attacks on the wages and living standards of the working class.

The Financial Times argued that using the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to cover the bad debts of the financial elite by propping up zombie banks, while driving the Irish state closer to default, would be “a fatal mistake.” The Times insisted that such a policy was shortsighted and self-defeating, since sovereign defaults would trigger new financial panics and bankruptcies.

The Times wrote:

“It would keep the Irish people indentured to those who recklessly fund their banks: EFSF funds must, after all, be paid back by taxpayers. It would also give an official EU imprimatur on Europe’s dirty secret: public treasuries will do anything to make private bank creditors whole.”

What the Financial Times calls a “dirty secret” is hardly news to those who have followed developments since the collapse of Lehman Brothers 26 months ago. What is remarkable, however, is the bluntness with which this organ of British finance capital acknowledges the existence of a dictatorship of the banks over government policy throughout Europe. Nor is it any different in North America, South America, Africa or Asia.

More »

Steve James
WSWS

A beggar sits on O'Connell Bridge in the centre of Dublin

The accelerating economic crisis in Ireland is taking a terrible toll on broad layers of workers, particularly the more vulnerable—children, the elderly, those on low incomes and with insecure housing.

Hundreds of thousands of people face privation and suffering as every area of social life comes under intense stress from savage spending cuts and increased unemployment. This is in advance of the measures now being put in place by the Irish elite, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to implement another major subvention of public funds to the banking system.

Dublin City Coroner’s Court heard last week that 81-year-old Ann Cumiskey died in the early hours of the morning when fire broke out in her Dublin house. Ms. Cumiskey lived with her son-in-law, Patrick Gorman, who could no longer afford to pay electricity bills and had removed all the fuses in the house. Ms. Cumiskey appears to have used candles for lighting her hallway and bedroom, one of which is suspected of starting a fire in her bedroom. She was overcome by smoke. Other members of the family suffered burns and broken bones. Mr. Gorman had recently lost his job.

The tragedy points to countless unidentified personal crises that lie behind unemployment figures for the Irish republic, which currently stand at 13.6 percent, up from 4.3 percent in 2005 and 7.6 percent in 2007. The figure for October fell slightly, from 13.8 percent, but this is due to a rapid increase in emigration.

More than 1,250 students are reported to be leaving the country every month. Thousands of mostly younger workers are now once again emigrating in search of a livelihood. Recent press reports included interviews with workers who have travelled as far as South Korea in search of work, along with more traditional destinations such as the United States and Canada.

More »

Stephen Lendman

On September 15, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council's (HRC) Goldstone Commission issued its findings on Cast Lead, Israel's war of aggression against Gaza, inflicting enormous loss of life, thousands of injuries, massive human suffering, and vast destruction, despite no provocation or threat to Israeli security.

The Commission concluded that "there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity."

Notably the Commission said:

"While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right of self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole."

Defensive rocket attacks in response to repeated Israeli provocations were, in fact, a pretext for naked aggression.

On September 27, 2009, Haaretz writer Nathan Guttman headlined, "Israel, US working to limit damage of Goldstone report," saying:

"Because of joint efforts, it's all but certain the report will not reach any binding international forums."

With US help, Israel was obstructionist all along, refusing to cooperate in the investigation, including by preventing Goldstone from entering Israel. Its "drive to counter the report began moments" after its release, blasting it as biased and pressing Washington to block Security Council action.

More »

David Walsh
WSWS

Swedish authorities, stepping up their persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, have issued an international arrest warrant for his detention in relation to trumped-up “rape” charges.

Sweden’s Director of Prosecution, Marianne Ny, claims that Assange needs to be questioned. “So far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogations,” she said. The court ruling will allow prosecutors to seek assistance from other nations to have him arrested.

The case against Assange is aimed at discrediting or weakening WikiLeaks, which has made public hundreds of thousands of secret US documents exposing the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. (See “The WikiLeaks documents and the rape of Iraq”) The Swedish prosecutor’s campaign has all the hallmarks of a “dirty tricks” operation organized or encouraged by either the Pentagon or the CIA, or both.

The charges have nothing to do with sexual assault, despite screaming media headlines. They relate to Assange’s encounters this past summer with two Swedish women. Rebutting prosecutor Ny’s comments in a strongly worded statement Tuesday, Mark Stephens, one of Assange’s British lawyers, explained that the allegations

“do not constitute what any advanced legal system considers to be rape; as various media outlets have reported ‘the basis for the rape charge’ purely seems to constitute a post facto dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex days after the event.”

The charges against Assange were, in fact, properly dropped last August within 24 hours by chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who found there was no “reason to suspect that he [Assange] had committed rape.” However, Assange’s identity had already been unlawfully disclosed to the right-wing media by the Swedish authorities. Stephens asserts, “The so called ‘rape’ story was carried around the world and has caused Mr. Assange and his organization irreparable harm.”

More »

John P. Curran
Documentaries.net

[Abolish The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 -Petition] On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. The Christian Law Fellowship has exhaustively researched this matter through the Federal Register and Library of Congress. We can now safely conclude that this Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superceded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid.

When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy - the author of Profiles in Courage -signed this Order, it returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency -money - without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 [the full text is displayed further below] gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This means that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held there. As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. $10 and $20 United States Notes were never circulated but were being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated. It appears obvious that President Kennedy knew the Federal Reserve Notes being used as the purported legal currency were contrary to the Constitution of the United States of America.

"United States Notes" were issued as an interest-free and debt-free currency backed by silver reserves in the U.S. Treasury. We compared a "Federal Reserve Note" issued from the private central bank of the United States (the Federal Reserve Bank a/k/a Federal Reserve System), with a "United States Note" from the U.S. Treasury issued by President Kennedy's Executive Order. They almost look alike, except one says "Federal Reserve Note" on the top while the other says "United States Note". Also, the Federal Reserve Note has a green seal and serial number while the United States Note has a red seal and serial number.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation. Federal Reserve Notes continued to serve as the legal currency of the nation.

More »

Kenneth J. Theisen
The World Can't Wait!

In October 2001, then Vice President Dick Cheney said that the just launched U.S. “war on terror” was “different” than other wars: ‘‘in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime’’. President Obama picked up the baton passed to him by Cheney’s boss, and has expanded and extended the wars started in the Bush-Cheney era, continued the policies of torture and extended the life of the dungeons where this torture is done.

Immediately after taking office President Obama announced that he was ordering the closing of the hellhole prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by January 2010. That atrocity is still open.

Now the Obama administration has announced that its much trumpeted deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan will be extended three years, to 2014.

In 2009, at a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Obama – in the midst of dramatically escalating the U.S. war in Afghanistan, announced a deadline of July 2011 as the time when U.S. troops would begin withdrawal. He made that announcement in part to deflect any opposition to his sending of tens of thousands of U.S. troops into that war-torn country. Since that West Point speech, Obama and his minions have been waffling on the withdrawal date. It now appears that the White House is all but abandoning the date or at least rebranding it by changing the “withdrawal” to a “transition.” But a transition to what - more war?

The Obama administration is scheduled to present its “transition plan” for Afghanistan at the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon, Spain this coming Friday, November 19th. President Obama will attend the conference where the administration is expected to tell NATO of the U.S. commander in AfghanistanGeneral David Petraeus’ plan of a four year transition where NATO will turn over security responsibilities to Afghan puppet troops in 2014.

More »

Philip Giraldi

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and first lady Michelle Obama are
led on a tour by Grand Imam Ali Mustafa Yaqub at the Istiqlal Mos-
que in Jakarta November 10, 2010. Reuters/Adek Berry/Pool

So if you doubt that the United States is tied hand and foot to Israel in terms of its ability to take independent action in the Middle East, just listen to what Dennis Ross, Joe Biden, and Eric Cantor are saying. Does it sound like they are articulating policies beneficial to the US? They are insisting that Americans have to support Israel unquestioningly no matter what it does and are little more than advocates for monsters like Bibi Netanyahu, pure and simple. The word Quisling comes to mind when one thinks of them and also Hoyer and Ros-Lehtinen.

President Barack Obama’s speech in Indonesia in which he conceded that the United States must do more to establish a good working relationship with many Muslim nations would have ranked as one of the more pathetic performances by an American president in recent years but for the fact that there have been so many awful performances to choose from. The president’s grammar and syntax were perfect and the speech was cleverly crafted, exactly what we have come to expect. It was replete with carefully designed pauses, Indonesian words and phrases, and some self deprecating humor, but it was characteristically bloodless and completely tone deaf. One almost longed to see Bill Clinton choking up and shedding a tear or two.

Obama’s spin team made a heroic effort to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. They likened the Indonesia speech to his Cairo offering seventeen months ago, in which he likewise committed his administration to establishing a new, more convivial modality for dealing with Islamic nations. That speech was received respectfully and even positively in many quarters, but this time no one was fooled. It’s funny how a year and a half of inaction and even retreat can reshape how someone thinks. One Indonesian commented afterwards "What will Obama do in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? If we don’t see any progress, what he says is just a speech."

More »