Tuesday, 05 June 2012 10:04 'Europe's leaders appear to be edging towards an ambitious and controversial new blueprint for a federalised eurozone after Paris and Brussels threw their weight behind Spain's pleas for an EU rescue of its beleaguered banks. At the start of three weeks likely to be crucial to the survival of the euro, the new French government and the European commission voiced strong backing for a new eurozone "banking union" to save the single currency. The plan could see vast national debt and banking liabilities pooled – and then backed by the financial strength of Germany – in return for eurozone governments surrendering sovereignty over their budgets and fiscal policies to a central eurozone authority.' Read more: Germany Weighs Up Federal Europe Plan to end Debt Crisis Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:59 'Alabama became the first state to adopt a tough law protecting private property and due process by prohibiting any government involvement with or participation in a controversial United Nations scheme known as Agenda 21. Activists from across the political spectrum celebrated the measure’s approval as a significant victory against the UN “sustainability” plot, expressing hope that similar sovereignty-preserving measures would be adopted in other states as the nationwide battle heats up.' Read more: Alabama Adopts First Official State Ban on UN Agenda 21 Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:46 'As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime. Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel.' Read more: RFK Assassination Witness Tells CNN: There Was a Second Shooter Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:38 'Speaking today from a conference in Stockholm, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she has warned her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that the Russian government has to change its position on Syria. “My message to the foreign minister was very simple and straightforward,” Clinton said, saying that she believes Russia “has to be at the table helping” with the US-backed regime change in Syria. Naturally this is the exact opposite of the Russian position, as Russia has resisted calls to oust their long-time ally Bashar Assad and expressed concern that NATO nations, France in particular, seem to be using the ongoing unrest in the nation as an excuse for war.' Read more: Clinton: Russia Must Embrace Regime Change in Syria Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:33 'Ken Clarke was the last man out. I’m not surprised he was late up. Britain’s lord chancellor had the beery sheen and aspirin eyes of a man who’d found the closing banquet of Bilderberg 2012 more than usually chillaxing. He looks like he’s been pulled through a hedge fund backwards. I’m not even sure he’s wearing trousers. Poor Ken. It can’t be easy for him, trying to reconcile being an MP, the minister for justice and a member of Bilderberg’s steering committee. Imagine having interests so conflicted. No wonder if he’s got a sweat on.' Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:22 'Forget Grexit. Greece’s teeny, tiny economy is a footnote now. As is Ireland’s decision – which seemed more like a sigh of resignation than a plebiscite – to engage in however much self-flagellation the EU gods insist on, for however long it takes. What might have seemed dramatic a week or so ago has now shrivelled in importance by comparison to the realistic possibility of a spectacular crash in the fourth largest economy in the EU. Spexit (and Spanic) are lodged in the lexicon, and have become part of the psychological reality that moves markets. The equivalent of more than £55 billion was withdrawn and transported out of Spain last month – and that was before the country’s largest bank was nationalised. No one seems to be kidding himself that the collapse of the Spanish economy could be somehow weathered and overcome, as the default of Greece might be.' Read more: Spain is in 'Total Emergency’, the EU in Total Denial Tuesday, 05 June 2012 09:11 'A few days ago the Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, had the audacity to suggest that instead of resisting the neo-liberal austerity measures prescribed by her organization, in agreement with the EU and the European Central Bank, Greek citizens should focus on paying their taxes. Lagarde did not stop there. She later went on to add that she had more sympathy for ‘little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education’ than for the tax-avoiding Greeks. Now, it takes some nerve for someone like Lagarde to make such an outlandish statement. In my eyes, there is so much wrong about her view of the world and suggestions to improve it, that perhaps in a short piece like this one can only begin to unravel the mysterious and deluded inner world where I feel the Head of the IMF lives.'
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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