"The end of Growth", Richard Heinberg's new book

The world's biggest economy will expand between 2.7pc and 2.9pc this year, weaker than it expected just two months ago. The latest evidence from manufacturing, the housing market and the consumer – still the engine of the economy – all suggest the deterioration that started in the first quarter of this year has extended into the second.
"Part of the slowdown is temporary, part of it may be longer lasting," said Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We don't have a precise reading on why this slower pace of growth is persisting." "Economists insist that recovery is at hand. Yet, unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in our economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits."The End of Growth describes what policymakers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth’s budget of energy and resources. We can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than continuing to pursue the now-unattainable prize of ever-expanding GDP." http://richardheinberg.com

Is the beginning of a new era of progress without growth?

The obscure disease of the West

Yesterday I was leafing through some newspapers on the net when a China Daily's article caught my eye. I couldn't believe it was true.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesman Yao Jian said Chinese companies invested $20.35 billion in non-financial sectors in 110 countries and regions during the first five months, up 42.3 percent year-on-year. Chinese companies investing overseas should abide by local laws and should not be discriminated against, he added.

Well, what can I say?

I guess we will have big big troubles with China in the next few years.

Chilean students get naked in the name of education

In Valparaiso, about 121 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago, students marched through the streets to demand the government change the public state education system. The banners say: "Free Education now".

From Europe to Midlle East to America people are asking for the same things: Rights, Freedom, Future, Health.

Since the panic of 2008 Britain, US, European Union and Japan spent $5 trillion in quantitative easing to save those "self-styled masters of the universe" from Wall Street. 

Why do we never find money for what people really want?
In the meanwhile, China has allocated a total of 10.3 billion yuan ($ 1.58 billion) this year to reward outstanding college students and provide aid to those with financial difficulties.
Who is wrong?

Prominent Swiss Politician Calls For Arrest of Kissinger at Bilderberg

A prominent member of Switzerland’s largest political party has called upon federal authorities to arrest Henry Kissinger as a war criminal if he attends the 2011 Bilderberg conference of global power brokers at the Hotel Suvretta House in St. Moritz.

Swiss People’s Party representative Dominique Baettig wrote a letter to the General Prosecutor of the Swiss Federation in which he asked, “In the name of Cantonal Sovereignty and independence, but especially of the Justice’s independence from executive power – may it be Federal or Cantonal – I ask you to check abroad for Arrest Warrants delivered by various Courts, Judges and also for all valid criminal complaints against the persons who were, amongst others, cited as mere examples in my (enclosed) letters to Mrs. Simonetta Sommaruga, Federal Counselor and Mrs. Barbara Janom Steiner, Cantonal Counselor and of course, to arrest them before diligent extraditions.”

Baettig’s letter also calls for the apprehension of George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but neither are likely to be attending the conference. However, Kissinger is a regular Bilderberg attendee and is almost certain to be present in St. Moritz.
Kissinger, National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State for President Nixon and President Ford, has been accused of being complicit in a number of war crimes in Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor. Numerous activists have attempted to arrest him over the years under the Geneva Conventions Act.

Prison Planet.com

Germany protects 17 nazi war criminals

After more than 15 years in hiding, onetime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was in a Belgrade jail Thursday night to face charges that he presided over Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
Unfortunately, in Europe there are still about seventeen former Nazi war criminals who live happily in their homes in Germany despite having been definitively convicted to life imprisonment as they are responsible for some of the worst massacres of World War II !. The story sounds incredible, about seventeen former Nazi war criminals are still among us!. European arrest warrants haven't brought them to jail yet.
The story was confirmed by an Italian military prosecutor in Rome, Marco De Paolis. In Italy the prosecutor is currently handling the larger number of these cases after the discovery of the "armoire of shame" (where hundreds of cases like them were found) when he was a military prosecutor in La Spezia. 

In particular, eight people had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Italian Supreme Court for the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (560 victims), three for Marzabotto's (770 victims), one for the massacres of Civitella Val di Chiana, Cornia and San Pancrazio (244 victims), one for Branzolino and San Tome's (10 victims), one for the Certosa di Farneta's (more than 60 deaths) and one for Falze of Cortona's (16 civilians killed). Only Josef Scheungraber, 93 years old, is in prison serving the sentence just because he was sentenced in Germany too.

G8 France 2011: Berlusconi to ask Obama to intervene in Italy!?

Generation 2.0: Duma intern fired after whistleblowing blog

A college student who blogged about State Duma deputies playing cards and surfing the Internet during sessions has lost his Duma internship.
Some politicians even tried to give their identities to friends and so forth and fly for free where they weren't supposed to.

The sharp-eyed blogger posted a raft of time-wasting and expense fiddling violations on his “Diary of a Democratic Extremist”.
The blogger's angry blast was reported in Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, but while his blog was still accessible at LiveJournal, the incriminating pages were unavailable on Tuesday morning. Russia is not the only country to experience expenses scams among its lawmakers. In 2009 Britain's parliament was rocked by an expenses scandal, which saw MPs claiming inappropriately for housing expenses and led to criminal charges and public uproar.

Will we ever see anyone caring for our poor asses?

Many people from Wall Street think inflation is now the biggest threat to the U.S. economy. In Brooklyn many more than Wall Steet's rather think the biggest threat is falling into another recession. 

Who is right?

Meanwhile the most significant economic news from the first quarter of 2011 is the decline in real wages. 

In fact, millions of Americans, in order to keep their jobs, are accepting lower wages. 

What do you get like this?

The only thing you get is consumers who can't buy enough to keep the economy going.

Why doesn't Wall Street get it?

How Asia Copes with America’s Zombie Consumers

NEW HAVEN – Asia needs a new model consumer. A post-crisis generation of zombie consumers in the United States is likely to hobble growth in global consumption for years to come. And that means that export-led developing Asia now has no choice but to turn inward and rely on its own 3.5 billion consumers.

Of course, this is not the first time that Asia has had to cope with the walking economic dead. Japan’s corporate zombies were at the epicenter of its first lost decade in the 1990’s. Sclerotic companies were put on life-support credit lines by their zaibatsu – like banking partners – delaying their inevitable failure and perpetuating inefficiencies and disincentives that resulted in a post-bubble collapse in Japanese productivity growth.

Similarly, the crisis of 2008-2009 led to zombie-creating bailouts in the West. From Wall Street to AIG to Detroit, the US was quick to rescue corporate giants that would have failed otherwise. Britain and Europe did the same, throwing lifelines to RBS, HBOS-Lloyds, Fortis, Hypo Real Estate, and others. In the West, the excuse was too big to fail. How different is that from Japan’s mindset nearly 20 years ago?

French entrepreneur offers to pay veil fines

A businessman is offering to sell properties to help Muslim women pay any fines that they may receive for wearing the full veil in public if a law is voted through the French parliament. 

The man, Rachid Nekkaz who tried to run French presidential election in 2007 , has set up an association, ‘Hands off my Constitution’, which fights banning the veil in the street as unconstitutional. 

Critics see the bill as unconstitutional and difficult to enforce and say only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear the full veil, and that the legislation is a step towards tighter restraints on individual freedom. 

Supporters of the ban argue that wearing garments which hide women’s faces violates the republican ideals of secularism and gender equality.
In this story everyone has his reasons and the Truth is always somewhere in the middle. 

I myself do support individual freedom but at the same time I must also remember that France already bans any other religious symbols from schools and voters have indicated support for a ban of the full veil.

In brief, Law must be respected in the same way as people do in the rest of the world.

(From http://touchepasamaconstitution.wordpress.com/)

"Let us remain human, even in the most difficult moments"

"I arrived in Gaza on the 23rd of August 2009 on a boat of the Free Gaza Movement with about 40 actvists from 17 different countries. We arrived and broke a siege lasting since 1967. I remember this day as one of the happiest and most emotional of my life, thousands of Palestianians came to the port to welcome the first foreign boats since 1967. Afterwards with about 15 activists, Italian, British, American, Spanish; we decided to restart the activities of the Interantional Solidarity Movement that were stopped in 2003 after the assesination of Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall by the Israeli Army. My grandfathers were partisans who fought and died struggling against an occupation, another occupation, in Italy, it was the Nazi-fascist one. For this reason probably, in my DNA and blood there are particles that push me to struggle for freedom and human rights. The message of solidariety from outside has been well understood and especially thanks to us who have committed ourselves to fishermen and farmers, and particularily after the massacre of the  Mavi-Marmara when it became clear not only to the world but even to Palestianians that some people from elsewhere, despite the governments that are complacent and  accomplices of the Zionist Israeli government, are ready to spend their lives in order to come to hug their brothers here in Gaza. The problem with the International co-operation and, above all, the UN is that they treat it [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] as a humanitarian catastrophe, so I, an Italian, Edi, a British, Vera, a German who have our normal lives as student, workers in our countries had to come here to dare snipers, to be on board of boats as human  shields, exactly what the UN should be doing, an international  inter-position force to ensure respect for the rules of the international law".

(From an interview to Vittorio Arrigoni published by PeaceReporter)

Vittorio Arrigoni (1975-2011), an International Solidarity Movement (Ism) activist, was kidnapped and killed in Gaza

see also Vittorio Arrigoni's video interview

The War you see: wag the dog

"Truth is the first casualty of war" (Aeschylus, Greek Tragic Dramatist, 525 BC-456 BC) . It's as old as history. 
Who remembers the pictures of the fake mass grave in Rumania that everybody broadcast in 1989?
This was one of the many horror stories published by media and that's similar to other fake events such the Iraqi incubatores and the non-existent mass graves in Kosovo. 

Something like that seems to have happened in Libya. I am talking about the burial site discovered in Tripoli by the supporters of OneDayOnEarth.org. It's the "Timisoara syndrome".
It's highly probable that, rather than "mass grave", those are one of many "collective burials" of african migrants whose boats capsize frequently near the Libyan coast and whose bodies are then carried by the tide on the beach. What we can seen clearly from the video of the "mass graves" is that they're not "common". Those seems to be single-hole, dug out calmly and even with some care. Media and newspapers speak of "makeshift cemetery"on the beach. Cemetery certainly, but actually not improvised.
It is propably a cemetery at Sidi Hamed, who is close to the beach near the residential district of Gargaresh in Tripoli.
There are too conflicting reports on the number of killed, airstrikes by Gaddafi forces, the number of cities controlled by the opposition - about literally everything

In brief, the entire Western narrative is misleading people again. 

see also The War you don't see by John Pilger

US shutdown: regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race

Sometime ago Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Chinese President Hu Jintao a "dictator". It was surely right but it wasn't ok. Why?.
When questioned on congressional Democrats' end-of-year compromise with Republicans that gave tax cuts to America's highest earners, Reid spoke about the need for Democrats to work within the system as it exists - a system, he said, that is very different than that of China. That was all right too,  so what's the matter? I myself agreed on it, if he would mean just that but he didn't unfortunately.

Beckhams are 'too working class' for posh Haberdashers' Aske's school

"As soon as you're born they make you feel small/By giving you no time instead of it all/Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all/A working class hero is something to be/A working class hero is something to be /They hurt you at home and they hit you at school/They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool/Till you're so crazy you can't follow their rules/A working class hero is something to be/A working class hero is something to be...".

John Lennon was right that's why he had been killed. After a bank worker fired for Facebook post comparing her £7-an-hour wage to Lloyds boss's £4,000-an-hour salary, someone was proud to write "the Beckhams are too working class". The comments were made on the popular internet site Mumsnet, the website set up by mothers to give advice on parenting and family issues. Beckhams' apparent choice of £14,000-a-year Haberdashers’ Aske’s upset somebody. One former Haberdashers’ pupil, calling herself crazygracieuk, wrote: "David and Victoria are working class". Is this Cameron's Big Society?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373853/Beckhams-working-class-posh-Haberdashers-Askes-school.html#ixzz1ImFzk8S7

NO OIL-NO CARE: escaping from the Arab Spring (English subtitles)

Who armed Gaddafi? Which EU countries export the most arms to Libya?

EU arms exports to Libya 
full data at www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog 

   

Swiss TV channel censors the Simpsons

The Swiss channel SF has decided to suspend all those episodes of the Simpsons which are set in the Nuclear Power Plant where Homer uses to work without care. The network judged it as offensive because of the recent and dramatic news from Japan. 

Should anyone be allowed to decide what we must think?

In the name of Feedom! please, don't say it again (part 2)

Sarkozy’s humanitarian war had already begun in early March. The onset of hostilities can be dated with the arrival in a cargo of 105 mm guns and anti-aircraft batteries in Benghazi, disguised as humanitarian aid to civilians. The sender was the French government, which accompanied the consignment with its military instructors, whom started training the rebels as soon as they touched the ground
Everybody knows it in Paris. French weekly Le Canard enchaîné gave the news on 16 March, hidden between its insider pages.
The reporter Claude Angeli wrote on the delivery of weapons by a DGSE’s action, (French intelligence).
Therefore, any deployment of weapons and military personnel took place before the resolution 1973, adopted by the UN Security Council on 17 March that called for "an immediate cease-fire" and authorized the international community to establish a no -fly zone in Libya and to use all necessary means to protect civilians.

In the name of Freedom!, Please, don't say it again

I am not surprised that the USA, the UK and France have just chosen to free Libya among many current conflicts in the world.

We must be honest, this is another war for oil. There is not Freedom in Sarkozy's dreams but oil  and a  new mandate which are why he is taking dangerous risks. “Sarkozy has a huge investment in seeing Qadhafi go,” said Justin Vaisse, the director of research for the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings in Washington. “He’s going to be a constant force in favor of hardening the stance and the action.” Once we’ve eliminated the air defense sites — then what next?.....

On Libya, "Free countries" should shut the fuck up

After Bush's preemptive war, in 2010 "free countries" made a joke of our laws again. In fact, Libya was voted to join U.N. Human Right Council. Despite appeals by numerous human rights advocacy groups for a clear rejection of Libya’s candidacy for the world body’s top human rights body, only 33 countries did so in a secret ballot election. Muammar Gaddafi’s regime garnered 155 votes out of 188 cast, far more than the minimum 97 required. Five countries abstained.