Banking Union Time Bomb: Eurocrats Authorize Bailouts AND Bail-Ins

Ellen Brown

“As things stand, the banks are the permanent government of the country, whichever party is in power.” – Lord Skidelsky, House of Lords, UK Parliament, 31 March 2011)

On March 20, 2014, European Union officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Media attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM), a uniform system for closing failed banks. But the real story for taxpayers and depositors is the heightened threat to their pocketbooks of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins” – the confiscation of depositor funds. The deal involves multiple concessions to different countries and may be illegal under the rules of the EU Parliament; but it is being rushed through to lock taxpayer and depositor liability into place before the dire state of Eurozone banks is exposed.

The bail-in provisions were agreed to last summer. According to Bruno Waterfield, writing in the UK Telegraph in June 2013:

Under the deal, after 2018 bank shareholders will be first in line for assuming the losses of a failed bank before bondholders and certain large depositors. Insured deposits under £85,000 (€100,000) are exempt and, with specific exemptions, uninsured deposits of individuals and small companies are given preferred status in the bail-in pecking order for taking losses . . . Under the deal all unsecured bondholders must be hit for losses before a bank can be eligible to receive capital injections directly from the ESM, with no retrospective use of the fund before 2018.


Planned Turkish False Flag Exposed

Stephen Lendman

Welcome to police state Turkey. It's no democracy. Claiming otherwise is a convenient illusion.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is tyrannical. He's ruthless. He blames victims for his crimes. He's unapologetic. He heads Ankara's rogue government. Turkey is one of 28 NATO countries. Erdogan partners with Washington's imperial wars.

He's part of Obama's agenda to ravage and destroy Syria. At issue is ousting Assad. It's replacing him with pro-Western puppet leadership. It's denying Syrians all rights. It's exploiting them ruthlessly. It's stealing Syrian resources. It's eliminating an Israeli rival. It's isolating Iran before targeting its government the same way.

It's reckless. It's lawless. It's out-of-control. It risks regional war. It risks expanding it globally. It risks what no responsible leader would dare. It's happening in real time.

Obama wants a pretext for full-scale US-led NATO intervention. Last summer's false flag Ghouta chemical weapons attack failed. Hoped for popular US support didn't follow. Mass opposition emerged. Libya 2.0 was postponed. It wasn't cancelled. It remains another major false flag incident ahead.


Western Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

Paul Craig Roberts


IMF Director Christine Lagarde has been working very hard
behind the scenes coordinating the current conflict between
Ukraine and Russia.
(Soros & Lagarde vs Putin's Russia)

Instead of being indebted to the banks, Ukraine will now be indebted to the IMF.

It is now apparent that the “Maiden protests” in Kiev were in actuality a Washington organized coup against the elected democratic government. The purpose of the coup is to put NATO military bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia and to impose an IMF austerity program that serves as cover for Western financial interests to loot the country. The sincere idealistic protesters who took to the streets without being paid were the gullible dupes of the plot to destroy their country.

Politically Ukraine is an untenable aggregation of Ukrainian and Russian territory, because traditional Russian territories were stuck into the borders of the Ukraine Soviet Republic by Lenin and Khrushchev. The Crimea, stuck into Ukraine by Khrushchev, has already departed and rejoined Russia. Unless some autonomy is granted to them, Russian areas in eastern and southern Ukraine might also depart and return to Russia. If the animosity displayed toward the Russian speaking population by the stooge government in Kiev continues, more defections to Russia are likely.

The Washington-imposed coup faces other possible difficulties from what seems to be a growing conflict between the well-organized Right Sector and the Washington-imposed stooges. If armed conflict between these two groups were to occur, Washington might conclude that it needs to send help to its stooges. The appearance of US/NATO troops in Ukraine would create pressure on Putin to occupy the remaining Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.


Pushing Toward The Final War

Paul Craig Roberts


"All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” Dante Alighieri,
"Inferno", Canto III (*)(Illustration: Gustave Doré, 1857)

Does Obama realize that he is leading the US and its puppet states to war with Russia and China, or is Obama being manipulated into this disaster by his neoconservative speech writers and government officials? World War 1 (and World War 2) was the result of the ambitions and mistakes of a very small number of people. Only one head of state was actually involved–the President of France.

In The genesis Of The World War, Harry Elmer Barnes shows that World War 1 was the product of 4 or 5 people. Three stand out: Raymond Poincaré, President of France, Sergei Sazonov, Russian Foreign Minister, and Alexander Izvolski, Russian Ambassador to France. Poincaré wanted Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and the Russians wanted Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They realized that their ambitions required a general European war and worked to produce the desired war.

A Franco-Russian Alliance was formed. This alliance became the vehicle for orchestrating the war. The British government, thanks to the incompetence, stupidity, or whatever of its Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, was pulled into the Franco-Russian Alliance. The war was started by Russia’s mobilization. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was blamed for the war despite the fact that he did everything possible to avoid it.

Barnes’ book was published in 1926. His reward for confronting the corrupt court historians with the truth was to be accused of being paid by Germany to write his history. Eighty-six years later historian Christopher Clark in his book, The Sleepwalkers, comes to essentially the same conclusion as Barnes.

In the history I was taught, the war was blamed on Germany for challenging British naval supremacy by building too many battleships. The court historians who gave us this tale helped to set up World War 2.


The Struggle for Ukraine's Soul Continues

Stephen Lendman

'Ukraine's soul'? - Is there really such an ethereal thing as that? Maybe there is one; maybe not. Or maybe there's just nastiness and the vilest thuggery, depravity and unthinkable perversion. And...there's maybe even this: an evil that knows no bounds, free from all constraint, a willingness to plunge to unheard of depths...an evil from which, this time, not even the tiniest shaft of captured light could escape...

Ukraine remains a global flashpoint. Turmoil, possible internal power struggles and uncertainty reflect things. Plundering its economy is planned. Obama's Brussels speech was duplicitous. It was provocative. It stoked confrontation with Russia. Daily inflammatory Western headlines continue. Anti-Russian vitriol remains intense.

Lies substitute for truth. Friday's Wall Street Journal was typical. It headlined "Russian Buildup Stokes Worries."

No "buildup" whatever exist. Not according to Journal contributors. Propaganda substitutes for accurate reporting. Lies drown out truth. Unnamed US officials were cited. Credibility isn't Washington's long suit. Nor Journal editors and contributors. "Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims," the Journal reported. "Such an incursion could take place without warning because Russia has already deployed the array of military forces needed for such an operation," it added.

According to US officials, Russia massed 50,000 troops on Ukraine's border. An unnamed Ukrainian official said 100,000. A "senior US official" said "(w)hat matters is the intent. And we don't have a clear sense of that." - False! No Russian buildup exists. No Ukraine invasion is planned. Putin isn't expansionist. He respects sovereign rights of other nations. His agenda is polar opposite Washington's. Don't expect Journal editors or contributors to explain. Russia bashing continues daily. Its intensity exceeds the worst of Cold War years. It shows no signs of ebbing. Lies, damn lies, and misinformation remain official Western editorial policy.


IMF “Shock Treatment” for Ukraine: Collapse of the Standard of Living

Michel Chossudovsky


Into the blue (i.e. into Europe): "Welcome..." (to Paradise)

On March 27, Ukraine’s interim coalition government announced concrete policy measures as part of its agreement with the IMF: a 50 percent increase of the retail price of gas coupled with the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.

The hike in gas prices is required by the IMF as part of an 18 Billion dollar pledge, which was approved on March 27. The IMF has demanded that retail gas and heating tariffs be raised “to full cost recovery.”

It is worth recalling that following the instatement of a coalition government on February 23, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF.

Yatsenyk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (VoR, March 21, 2014)

Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.

In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.

In an address to Parliament on March 27, following the confirmation of the IMF’s pledged $18 billion loan, prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that Ukraine was “on the brink of the economic and financial bankruptcy”.

The proposed “‘solution” includes a significant increase in income taxes, a freeze on wages, curtailment of old age pensions and higher energy prices. “We have no choice but to tell Ukraine the truth,” said Yatsenyuk.


Obama Sells Confrontation with Russia

Stephen Lendman

On Wednesday, Barack Obama spoke at Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts (Palace of Fine Arts). Lies, damn lies, and demagogic Russia bashing were featured. He duplicitously hailed Western "ideals." They're being "tested," he said. US policy is polar opposite deceptive rhetoric. His address was a beginning-to-end litany of lies.

[He outrageously said America] "believe(s) in democracy, with elections that are free and fair, and independent judiciaries and opposition parties, civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices."

"Yes, we believe in open economies based on free markets and innovation and individual initiative and entrepreneurship and trade and investment that creates a broader prosperity."

"And yes, we believe in human dignity, that every person is created equal - no matter who you are or what you look like or who you love or where you come from."

"That is what we believe. That's what makes us strong. And our enduring strength is also reflected in our respect for an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people - a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law and the means to enforce those laws."

US policy is do what we say, not what we do. Washington rules are enforced. We're boss, they reflect. What we say goes. Nonbelievers face harsh crackdowns. War is America's bottom line option.


Obama’s speech on Ukraine: Propaganda and lies

Patrick Martin

The speech delivered by President Barack Obama in Brussels Wednesday was a call to arms for a US-NATO confrontation against Russia. With a series of lies and evasions, Obama presented a world turned upside down in which the US and European imperialists, who backed the coup in Ukraine spearheaded by fascistic forces, are the defenders of democracy and peace.


US President Obama at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

There was little in the speech that could convince working people, either in Europe or the United States, that a policy of open-ended conflict with Russia was in their interests. That was not the purpose of the speech, which consisted of one propaganda lie after another, uttered with the assurance that there would be no serious criticism, let alone opposition, within the ruling elites of the US and Europe or from their media mouthpieces.

Obama sought to elaborate the basis for a major turn in US foreign policy—what one of his foreign policy advisers called a “strategic pivot” towards confronting Russia, deliberately employing the same term that the White House has used to describe its systematic anti-China policy in the Far East.

One aim of this strategy of confrontation is to provide a new political axis for the US-dominated NATO military structure, which has visibly frayed in the absence of the old Cold War framework.

Much of the speech was devoted to rehashing long-discredited claims that American imperialism and its European allies represent democracy, freedom and the popular will. Obama invoked the conflict between democratic ideals and the authoritarian view that “order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.”

But the words rang rather hollow coming from a president who has claimed absolute and unreviewable power to order the drone-missile assassination of anyone he chooses, anywhere in the world, and whose government asserts the right to collect and store the e-mails, text messages and telephone calls of the entire human race.


Ukraine: Elite conspiracy theory

Xymphora

A Short Comment by Xymphora

Most Americans don't care about Ukraine, or are even aware there is an issue, but the American elites are energized by the possibility of resumption of the Cold War. The 80s were the last time Americans felt good about themselves. Since then it has been a series of financially and morally ruinous Wars For The Jews under ZOG and the debilitating Israeli-created 'War On Terror'. Under the Cold War, Americans were always right and good, and the Soviets were plain evil. Under ZOG, Americans slip further and further into a moral malaise that seems impossible to escape.

So it is ironic that the coup in Ukraine was just another War For The Jews. The entertaining apparent irony of the Americans arming al-Qaeda in Syria while financing neo-Nazis in Ukraine teaches us something about the realities of power and propaganda, but behind the incongruities there were no real American goals to the coup. The point of the coup was to weaken the Russian position in the Middle East and embarrass Putin personally for his thwarting Zionist goals, both of which were goals of World Jewry (the Jew-controlled media provided the propaganda basis by attacking Putin for his country's position on homosexuality, and denigrating the very successful Sochi Olympics). The fallback position of World Jewry, even of they didn't inconvenience Putin at all, was to play up the neo-Nazi element and spray a few swastikas on synagogues to scare the 200,000 Jews in Ukraine to move to Israel.


Tymoshenko: Nuke 8 million Russians in Ukraine

Jim W. Dean

Image: Glorified Beyond Recognition. - Jewish Yulia Tymoshenko channeling Lilith, the evil female demon
in Jewish mythology (Babylonian Talmud).
(Feminine Strategies in Ukrainian Politics...and the Case of Yulia Tymoshenko) (Painting by Illia Panyok. Oksana Kis)

When the first phone intercept came out with Victoria Nuland's famous F-bomb we knew the Russian security people must be sitting on a mountain of them, and how interesting things could get if they released one a week.

We also knew that all the other European heads and military leaders would have to start thinking about calls they have made ending up on YouTube...ones they would regret.

Tymoshenko's PR people at first claimed the phone call intercept was faked. Later on her Twitter she admitted it was real. But she claimed the part about killing 8 million Russians was not correct...as that was only referring to 'Ukrainian Russians'. I guess that makes a big difference, especially if you are a one.

The pretty blond lady wants to kill, and she seems to have a big appetite. My editorial line early on in this Ukraine madness was a dual track one. First, American leaders don't seem to be able to learn from past mistakes over fear of being held responsible and having to resign. Taking responsibility does not exist anymore. Our elitists don't really care what we think. That makes them very dangerous...really the biggest threat that we have.


How Much War Does Washington Want?

Paul Craig Roberts


A mural in Moscow depicts the Crimea peninsula: "Together Forever"

America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.” ~ Former US President Jimmy Carter

I doubt that the Ukraine crisis precipitated by Washington’s overthrow of the democratic government is over. Washington has won the propaganda war everywhere outside of Russia and Ukraine itself. Within Ukraine people are aware that the coup has made them worse off. The Crimea has already separated from the US puppet government in Kiev and rejoined Russia. Other parts of Russian Ukraine could follow.

In Kiev itself where the unelected, imposed-by-Washington dictatorial government resides, extreme right-wing Ukrainian nationalists, whose roots go back to fighting for National Socialist Germany, are at work intimidating public prosecutors, media editors, and the US imposed “government” itself. There is an abundance of videos available on the Internet, some made by the extreme nationalists themselves, that clearly reveal the intimidation of the imposed and unelected government installed by Washington..

In Kiev US bribes contend with naked neo-nazi force. Which will prevail?


Asia will not 'isolate' Russia

Pepe Escobar


U.S. President Barack Obama, center, listens to Rijksmuseum
director Wim Pijbes, seen from the back, in front of Dutch master
Rembrandt's The Night Watch painting during a visit to the Rijks-
museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday. Obama will attend
the two-day Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague.

Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime.

The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded with class; if you don't want us, we have better things to do. [1] Everyone knows the G-7 is an innocuous, self-important talk shop. It's in the G-20 - much more representative of the real world - where crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic issues gain traction.

The Hague Declaration comes complete with the kiss of death, as in, "The International Monetary Fund has a central role leading the international effort to support Ukrainian reform, lessening Ukraine's economic vulnerabilities, and better integrating the country as a market economy in the multilateral system." That's code for "wait till structural adjustment starts biting".

And then there will be "measures to enhance trade and strengthen energy security" - code for "we will destroy your industry" but "are not very keen on paying your humongous Gazprom bill".

All this in the sidelines of a supposed summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands, where US President Barack Obama, at the Rijksmuseum, in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, extolled Washington's "support of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people". Rembrandt's watchers have never seen anything like it in their glorious lifespan. It pays to be a Nazi after all; you just need to be in the right government, against the right enemy, and fully approved by the hyper-power.


Tymoshenko Caught in the Act

Stephen Lendman


Beauty Will Save The World!”: Feminine Strategies in
Ukrainian Politics...and the Case of Yulia Tymoshenko

Yulia Tymoshenko's leaked phone conversation was damning. She spoke with former Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council deputy secretary Nestor Shufrych. She called for turning Russia to ashes. Her comments are available on You Tube. More on this below.

Weeks earlier, Assistant Secretary of State for European and European Affairs Victoria Nuland was caught red-handed on tape. Her leaked conversation circulated on You Tube. It's more evidence of America's dark side. She and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussed regime change. Current putschist prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was named as a Washington favorite. The leaked video was damning. It's four minutes long. It's titled "Maidan puppets." It refers to Kiev's Independence Square.

In early March, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet's conversation with EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton was leaked. He was heard saying "there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition." Maybe more damning leaked conversations will follow. Don't expect scoundrel media coverage.

Tymoshenko is a billionaire mega-thief. She heads the fascist Batkivshchya/All-Ukrainian Union (Fatherland) party. She and neo-Nazi Svoboda co-founder Andriy Parubiy co-led Washington's 2004 Orange Revolution. He heads Ukraine's National Defense and Security Council. She was an illegitimate Orange Revolution prime minister.


"The Russians Are Coming" etc. etc.

Stephen Lendman

Winston Churchill once said a "lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Today it circulates instantly.

Joseph Goebbels said "(i)f you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." "(T)ruth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State," he added.

Goebbels operated in pre-television days. Media scoundrels embrace his doctrine. They echo official administration policy. They lie, distort, misinform, hype, stoke fear, and falsify information willfully. They bury truth. They suppress what readers and viewers most need to know. They one-sidedly support wealth, power and privilege. They cheerlead America's worst imperial crimes. They vilify its enemies maliciously. They endorse Israeli lawlessness. They blame victims for aggressors' wrongdoings.

Russia bashing rages daily. Putin is public enemy number one. Big Lies vilify him. They substitute for truth. Daily headlines are inflammatory. They're scandalous. They're abhorrent. They repeat with disturbing regularity.


Voices of Rationality on U.S. – Russian Ties Rise to the Surface

Wayne Madsen

To listen to the endless cacophony from American global interventionists who are regularly booked on the major American news networks to spew their neo-Cold War rhetoric, one might think that we are back in the 1960s during the dark days of fractious U.S.-Soviet relations. However, there are a growing number of voices in the United States who do not want to play the game of the neo-conservatives and «set back» the clock of Washington-Moscow relations to the Cold War era.

One of the voices of sanity is Dr. Stephen F. Cohen of New York University and Princeton and a veteran expert on Russian affairs. Although he has faced charges from the neo-con right and the Obama media sycophants, primarily the Daily Beast and New Republic, that he is a witting tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cohen undauntedly continues to make the case for American understanding of Russia’s position with regard to Crimea and Ukraine.

Cohen has echoed Russia’s fear of being encircled and squeezed by NATO and the United States. In an interview with CNN, Cohen said, «What if, suddenly, Russian power showed up in Canada and Mexico and provinces of Canada and Mexico said they were going to join Putin's Eurasian economic union and maybe even his military bloc? Surely the American president would have to react at least as forcefully as Putin has».

Individuals like Cohen, who oppose a fracture in U.S.-Russian relations, are considered by the U.S. corporate media of being mouthpieces for the Kremlin. These voices of sanity are also facing another vestige of America’s past that is steadily but assuredly creeping into the American body politic: McCarthyism.


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