A new stage in the attacks on the European working class

[Steven Gaal]

Italian family's triple suicide 'blamed on government austerity measures which left them in huge debt'

• Couple hanged themselves at their home in Italian seaside town
  
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    • ^{http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305362/Anna-Maria-Romeo-Dionisi-Italian-familys-triple-suicide-blamed-government-austerity-measures-left-huge-debt.html}
      
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Edited April 8, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Big six energy firms accused of 'cold-blooded profiteering'

Doubling of retail profit margins prompts call for radical overhaul of regulation

Energy executives are due to appear before parliament’s energy and climate change committee on Tuesday. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The big six energy suppliers have been accused of "cold-blooded profiteering" after official figures showed they had more than doubled their retail profit margins over the last 18 months and were now earning an average of £95 profit per household on dual-fuel bills.

The industry regulator Ofgem, which produced the estimates, said profits per household would reach £100 over the next 12 months.

Other new figures obtained from British Gas, EDF and the four other suppliers showed their profit margin from power generation – a separate part of the business – averaged more than 24% in 2011. They are believed to have risen since.

The escalating earnings were condemned by fuel poverty campaigners, rival energy companies and the shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint.

They have led to further calls for the gas and electricity market to be reformed to break the stranglehold the big six have on supply, and will increase pressure on energy executives who are due to appear before parliament's energy and climate change committee on Tuesday as part of an inquiry under the title "energy prices, profits and poverty".

Sam Robertson, a campaigner with Fuel Poverty Action, said millions of UK households facing a choice of whether to heat or eat would be left wondering what difference an extra £95 could have made.

"This cold-blooded profiteering has to stop, but piecemeal market reforms will not go far enough, especially given the threat of a dash for gas that will send bills through the roof," Robertson said.

The big six, which include SSE and RWE, already under fire for increasing domestic bills during an economic downturn, but the latest weekly Ofgem projections show dual-fuel retail bills are now up to an average of £1,420 a year, delivering £95 in profit per customer – a profit margin for the firms of 7%.

That is up from an average bill in 2011 of £1,030 and a profit margin of 3.2%, according to figures provided earlier by the companies but only now published by Ofgem.

The 2011 figures – the first the companies provided under the regulator's drive to bring more transparency to the market – also revealed the profit margins of the big six on their power generation divisions. EDF, the French-owned business that is demanding huge subsidies from the UK government to build nuclear plants, had a profit margin of more than 30% in 2011 while Centrica's was 17%.

Ofgem said average margins in generation across the big six increased from 18.4% in 2010 to 24.4% in 2011.

Caroline Flint, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, said the Ofgem numbers revealed the true scale of the problems in the power market.

"Energy companies always claim that when they put up people's bills they're only passing on increased costs. What these figures show once and for all is that energy companies have increased their profits on the back of spiralling bills for hard-pressed consumers," she said.

"These companies like to pretend they are the victims of wholesale prices, but they have been allowed to arrange their businesses in a way that enables them to make huge profits whatever the cost of wholesale energy."

Ed Kamm, chief marketing officer at Warwick-based First Utility, a small energy provider, said the figures underlined the dangers of huge companies dominating the wholesale and retail markets.

"The control the big six have over the wholesale market makes it difficult for independent suppliers to compete on price, which ultimately harms consumers. The big six firms' generation margins are nearly 25% and increasing because they are not exposed to the market pressures which drive efficiency unlike other truly competitive industries. This is bad for competition and, ultimately, bad for consumers."

A spokesman for Centrica said the company's post-tax profit margins on the retail market had averaged 5% for the last five years and was currently the equivalent of £50 per customer.

He said the wholesale margin needed to be higher given that it funded power stations and forward contracts for up to £50bn of new gas supplies. "We believe it is a fair margin."

EDF was unavailable for comment.

SSE said retail operated as a standalone business as it did for all other energy companies. "Cross-subsidising energy supply with profits from the wholesale business would create a barrier to entry into the market, to the detriment of healthy competition. We expect to make a profit margin of around 5% in energy supply over the medium term, which we believe to be fair and sustainable."

An Ofgem spokesman said it was up to individual companies to justify their profits and prices to their customers, but the regulator was playing its part by forcing companies to release their internal figures while shaking up the market.

"We are planning the most radical changes to the market since competition began, to make it simpler, clearer and fairer," he said. "To achieve this we propose to cut down the number of complex tariffs and simplify their structure. This will make it easier for consumers to find a cheaper deal. We also want to introduce other major changes to increase competitive pressure on suppliers. Our reforms are due to take effect from this summer."

All of the big six energy companies increased their prices between October 2012 and January 2013. The firms blamed rising wholesale power and other costs.

Ian Marchant, the chief executive of SSE, which raised its gas and electricity prices by 9% from mid-October, said at the time: "The increases in costs that we have seen … can no longer be absorbed and mean that we are unable to keep prices at their current levels beyond this autumn. An increase in our prices has therefore, regrettably, become unavoidable."

The SSE boss warned last month that "there is a very real risk of the lights going out" in Britain.

[Steven Gaal]

CAMERON TO UK WORKERS,"DROP DEAD !! " ,Gaal

Business Backs David Cameron Call to Renegotiate UK Membership of EU

By Shane Croucher: IBT

April 15, 2013 9:16 AM GMT

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Almost two-thirds of business back Prime Minister David Cameron's proposal of Britain having a renegotiated membership of the European Union, according to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce.

Cameron has promised an in/out referendum on Britain's membership of the EU if he is re-elected at the next general election, likely to be in 2015. There is a common perception among Britons that the EU is a costly, undemocratic, bloated bureaucracy that has eroded national sovereignty.

BCC research found that 64 percent of businesses support a renegotiated relationship with the EU, with a focus on bringing certain business regulation - such as health and safety and employment law - back under the control of Westminster, not Brussels.

Of the 4,387 businesses surveyed, only 18 percent wanted full withdrawal from the EU.

"These results say a lot about the UK business community's attitudes towards Britain's relationship with the European Union," said John Longworth, director general of the BCC, which represents 104,000 firms employing 5m people.

"Companies believe that renegotiation, rather than further integration or outright withdrawal, is most likely to deliver business and economic benefit to the UK."

The prime minister said he would like the UK to remain a part of the EU, which accounts for around half the country's trade, on fresh terms, but wants to have the question over membership conclusively answered.

Tories think promising a referendum could be the election clincher they need to secure a full majority, something they failed to do in May 2010 which left them in a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

Cameron recently toured Germany, France and Spain to drum up support from their leaders for his call for a UK renegotiation of its relationship with Europe as well as for broader reform to make the single market more competitive and cut its costs.

Business is keen to cut red tape from Europe to make running a firm cheaper and more efficient.

However, European leaders have accused Cameron of treating the EU like an "a la carte menu" and that he cannot simply pick and choose which parts he wants the UK to be involved in as he wishes.

"This is not cherry-picking, but to argue as some do that you can't have a flexible Europe is wrong," said Cameron ahead of his mini-EU tour.

"We can have a flexible Europe where we don't all have to do the same things in the same way."

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, has accused Cameron of a "sinister" attack on workers' rights in his efforts to repatriate employment law from Europe to Britain.

"The UK government is making the most vulnerable pay for a crisis they didn't cause, and is set on a wholesale scrapping of workers' rights," said O'Grady at a January speech in Madrid.

"But there's one set of workers' rights David Cameron can't touch. Those are the rights provided for by social Europe - paid holidays, health and safety, equal treatment for part-time workers and women, protection when a business is sold off, and a voice at work.

"The prime minister wants to 'repatriate' those rights, and not because he thinks he can improve them.

"David Cameron wants to make it easier for bad employers to undercut good ones, drive down wages, and make people who already work some of the longest hours in Europe work even longer. To do that, he needs agreement from the rest of Europe."

Edited April 15, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

AUSTERITY BACKED UP BY FAULTY RESEARCH,Gaal

How Much Unemployment Did Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake Cause?

http://www.truth-out...c-mistake-cause

################################### ALSO SEE

Krugman: Holy Coding Error, Batman!

Short version: Two of the most cited pillars of the empirical case for deficit panic turn out to have reached their conclusions only through programing errors and improper data categorization.

Personal observation: A study that supports conventional wisdom tends not to be questioned very hard, even when wrong. I expect that these two papers, central to the 'serious' case for austerity, will continue to be cited, despite their non-reproducible results, because their proponents need them to be right. They are the fig-leaf for what is really ideology not inquiry, and no matter how full of holes the leaf gets it still looks better than going naked.

Holy Coding Error, Batman!

Paul Krugman

April 16, 2013, 1:38 pm

The intellectual edifice of austerity economics rests largely on two academic papers that were seized on by policy makers, without ever having been properly vetted, because they said what the Very Serious People wanted to hear. One was Alesina/Ardagna on the macroeconomic effects of austerity, which immediately became exhibit A for those who wanted to believe in expansionary austerity. Unfortunately, even aside from the paper’s failure to distinguish between episodes in which monetary policy was available and those in which it wasn’t, it turned out that their approach to measuring austerity was all wrong; when the IMF used a measure that tracked actual policy, it turned out that contractionary policy was contractionary.

The other paper, which has had immense influence — largely because in the VSP world it is taken to have established a definitive result — was Reinhart/Rogoff on the negative effects of debt on growth. Very quickly, everyone “knew” that terrible things happen when debt passes 90 percent of GDP.

Some of us never bought it, arguing that the observed correlation between debt and growth probably reflected reverse causation. But even I never dreamed that a large part of the alleged result might reflect nothing more profound than bad arithmetic.

But it seems that this is just what happened. Mike Konczal has a good summary of a review by Herndon, Ash, and Pollin. According to the review paper, R-R mysteriously excluded data on some high-debt countries with decent growth immediately after World War II, which would have greatly weakened their result; they used an eccentric weighting scheme in which a single year of bad growth in one high-debt country counts as much as multiple years of good growth in another high-debt country; and they dropped a whole bunch of additional data through a simple coding error....

http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems

http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf

___

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/holy-coding-error-batman/

Edited April 17, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

April 18, 2013

28 migrant workers working at a strawberry farm in Manolada, Greece have been shot because they demanded to get paid (how dare they !!,Gaal), after six months of unpaid work

28 migrant workers working at a strawberry production farm in Manolada, Greece were shot because they demanded to get paid, after six months of unpaid work. According to the press reports, there were no fatal injuries among the Bangladeshi workers.

New Manolada is in Peloponnese and according to Greek daily Kathimerini the farm owners have a history in abusing migrants. The incident occurred when approximately 200 workers demanded six months’ worth of unpaid wages from their employer. According to ilialive.gr the representatives of the farm owner informed the migrant workers that they are not going to get paid and they demanded from them to get back to work. Then the strawberry pickers became involved in an argument with three Greek supervisors. According to the police, one of the supervisors opened fire and injured 28 migrant workers.

The farm owner was arrested but the three supervisors were being sought. However, the police claim to know the identity of the man who opened fire. According to Kathimerini, Manolada has been at the center of cases involving violence against migrant workers a number of times in recent years. Last year, two Greek men were arrested for beating a 30-year-old Egyptian, jamming his head in the window of a car door and dragging him for around one kilometer. Back in 2008, workers on farms in New Manolada went on a four-day strike to protest against the low wages and the poor living conditions.

According to enet, several thousand migrant workers (many of them reportedly undocumented) are employed as strawberry pickers in New Manolada. Back in 2008, the government had ordered a labour inspection to stop the abuse.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

(AUSTERITY Hows that working UK ??,Gaal)

Food poverty in UK has reached level of 'public health emergency', warn experts

published by Tom Sullivan on Wed, 2013-12-04 20:30

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Hunger in Britain has reached the level of a “public health emergency” and the Government may be covering up the extent to which austerity and welfare cuts are adding to the problem, leading experts have said.

In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored.

A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

Despite mounting evidence for a growing food poverty crisis in the UK, ministers maintain there is “no robust evidence” of a link between sweeping welfare reforms and a rise in the use of food banks. However, publication of research into the phenomenon, commissioned by the Government itself, has been delayed, amid speculation that the findings may prove embarrassing for ministers.

“Because the Government has delayed the publication of research it commissioned into the rise of emergency food aid in the UK, we can only speculate that the cause is related to the rising cost of living and increasingly austere welfare reforms,” the public health experts write.

Source and full story: The Independent (UK), 4 December 2013

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RELATED

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/austerity_is_americanizing_european_labor_markets/
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http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/30/europe-austerity-eu-prophets-suffering-growth
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http://euobserver.com/justice/122338
Spain’s new €600,000 fine for civil disobedience

Edited December 4, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Poverty skyrockets in Ireland as the ruling elite gets richer

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/poverty-skyrockets-in-ireland-as-the-ruling-elite-gets-richer/
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By Dermot Quinn and Emily Doyle
6 December 2013
Sixteen percent of the Republic of Ireland‘s population, 734,120 people, now live in poverty.

Since the financial and economic crisis engulfed the country in 2008 there has been a huge redistribution of wealth from the working class and poorer sections of society to the very wealthy ruling elite. Successive austerity budgets introduced by the ruling Fine Gael/Labour coalition and the previous government led by Fiana Fail have impoverished whole sections of society who depend on social protection.

To alleviate some of the worst aspects of the vicious social spending cuts introduced in the last five consecutive budgets, a huge number of impoverished families have turned to relief from one or other of the 40 religious charities, even though state funding to charities has been cut by over 30 percent.

The Dublin Archdiocese charity Crosscare is now involved in supplying food to 10 different charities throughout Dublin, which is distributed to the growing number of poor and homeless in the city. Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, last week appealed for food from shops and large food outlets, stating that “demand for basic items is outstripping supply.”

The charity expects to have distributed 750 tonnes of food by the end of this year, 50 percent more than last year.

The Catholic charity Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVP) is now making 400,000 home visits a year to families who are struggling to survive as poverty increases. SVP Vice-President Tom MacSweeney stated, “The families we visit are not just those on social welfare, they include people in low-paid employment, the self-employed and people in employment with debts that they cannot handle. The cumulative impact of austerity measures to date on individuals, families and communities has been devastating.”

The increasing gap between the super-rich and the majority of the population is rooted in the crisis-ridden capitalist system, in which the working class has borne the brunt of bailing out the banks after the financial and housing crash of 2008. In total, the spending cuts and tax hikes implemented amount to more than 20 percent of Ireland‘s economic output.

The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office show that without social welfare and other state support, 50.7 percent of the population would be at risk of dire poverty.

In an attempt to boost profits, the government with the collaboration of the unions has played a leading role in facilitating a long-term strategy by employers to depress wages.

Since national wage bargaining was ended indefinitely in 2009, a significant minority of employers have cut basic pay levels while requiring employees to work extra hours with no additional pay. The result is that those in low-paid or insecure employment earn a wage that is not adequate to cover the basic costs of living for themselves and their families. The number of people earning less than €11,000 a year has continued to grow since 2011 to a staggering 733,000 people. This means that almost three quarters of a million people in employment are experiencing “at risk of poverty” conditions.

With youth unemployment having remained at 30 percent for the last four years, the majority of the half a million people who have emigrated since the recession began are young people. The slashing of dole rates for those under 26 in the October budget has created a reserve army of young people now being forced to work on “jobbridge” schemes for as little as €50 (US$68) a week.

Cuts to supports like child benefit, household benefits, medical cards and education as well as the property tax have left many families with little or no disposable income. A 500 percent increase in prescription charges over recent years and the fact that over 10,000 people have been cut off the medical card this year have left thousands of older people living in fear and struggling to survive. The youngest suffer too, as five children a week become homeless while the number of families becoming homeless has doubled in the past year.

At the beginning of November there was widespread anger over the treatment by the Health Service Executive (HSE) of a child from Cork, which exemplified how health service cuts are forcing young families into poverty. Jackie and Ray Connolly were refused a renewal of a medical card for their five-year-old daughter Katie, who suffers from Down’s syndrome, asthma, juvenile arthritis and a heart condition. Katie’s mother Jackie had already suffered a pay cut earlier in the year and was facing mounting care costs for her daughter. The family organised a protest outside Cork city hall on November 9,, which was attended by around 40 other children with Down’s syndrome and their parents who have lost their discretionary medical cards in recent months.

“Katie needs her medical card to access community care services within the HSE, so what are we to do now?” Jackie asked. “If Katie does not see a doctor her condition could worsen. She has a compromised immune system and is susceptible to various ailments.”

The Irish Examiner reported in October that there were now more than 1,000 people a month losing their discretionary medical cards, with a total drop of nearly 10,000 in the first eight months of the year. The cards entitle their holders to free health care services.

The government plans to make a further €666 million in cuts to the health service and €230 million to the social care budget in 2014, as part of the €2.5 billion (1.5 percent of GDP) cuts introduced in the 2014 budget. According to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, published on November 21, Ireland has experienced the worst drop in health spending per capita across the European Union. The drop in health spending between 2009 and 2011 was 6.6 percent, second only to Greece with 11.1 percent.

By contrast, the wealthiest 10 percent have never had it so good. This section of the population have actually grown their wealth by 8 percent since 2008. They sit on top of a divided and crisis-ridden society, with one eye on the state and political establishment that genuflects before its every need.

According to the 2013 Sunday Times Rich List, the number of Irish billionaires has doubled since the economic crash. The richest 300 of the country’s billionaires and multi-millionaires saw their wealth grow by almost 6.3 percent, or €3.9 billion, last year. The wealth attained by the wealthy elite in Ireland has now grown to a staggering €66 billion. Another review of the wealth of the super-rich in 2013 in the Irish Independent revealed that there are just 105 people with net assets of €100 million each. Denis O’Brien, owner of Telecom, is the richest billionaire on the list with a net worth of €3.8 billion.

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With permission
Source: WSWS

[Steven Gaal]

^{(AUSTERITY Hows that working UK ??,Gaal)}

^{Britain: Disabled widow commits suicide after benefits withdrawn}

^{Dec 11, 2013}

^{http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/britain-disabled-widow-commits-suicide-after-benefits-withdrawn/}

[Steven Gaal]

(AUSTERITY,Gaal)

• Severely sick Italians fear job loss
  published by Tom Sullivan on Thu, 2013-12-19 08:40

  Almost half the number of Italians suffering from severe illnesses prefer not to take time off work over fears they will lose their job, according to figures from the Associazioni Dei Malati Cronici (Association of the Chronically Sick).

  The association said 49 percent prefer not to take time off work for treatment, while 43 percent are forced to hide their condition, according to a report on ArticoloTre. Meanwhile, another 43 percent are in jobs that could worsen their health condition.

  A rise in the number of cases of unfair dismissal - or employers not renewing contracts - has stoked the fears. The report found that in cases of those trying to juggle the demands of work with treatment, 63 percent lost their jobs.

  In another 41 percent of cases, family members were dismissed after taking time off to care for sick relatives. Sixty percent also reported difficulty in obtaining permission for paid leave.

  Source and full story: The Local (Italy), 17 December 2013

Edited December 19, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[John Dolva]

...

European and international capitalism cannot be reformed. The dictates of the financial markets can only be repulsed by a social revolution. This requires the mobilization of the European working class on the basis of a socialist program.

Bourgeois governments must be replaced by workers’ governments, pledged to expropriate the banks, hedge funds and large corporations, seize large fortunes and organize economic life to fulfill social needs rather than the profit needs of the financial markets. The European Union, a tool of the banks and corporations, must be replaced by the United Socialist States of Europe.

Peter Schwarz

There are a number of divisions on the left. It's very fragmented. Are the bourgeoisie? I don't think so. Nowhere near as fragmented as those who can carry out this revolution. It's this fragmentation of the working class on an international scale that is the real problem and a call for a separate union of socialist states reinforces this fragmentation. The vanguard must become more international in order to have the strength to overcome an already very strong united bourgeoisie. It must get back to basics to re form a working cadre, though education and communication.

edit typo et.c. & add

At the moment workers are getting an education through life experience. The answers and options are presented by the bourgeoisie. It is always incumbent on a class conscious and educated grouping, that transcends industries and national borders, to provide alternatives. It is particularly important at times when fascist groups are providing one. (for example in Ukraine with those guys with the flag with a hand pointing up three fingers. It is crucial there that working people never accept an alliance with such groupings, they will always drag things down. That's what their role is in a capitalist society. If that means backing off and using legal means that do not inconvenience all working men and women in Ukraine then it must be so for now. Rejection of the far right is the only way that Ukraine can move forward with a minimum of disruption to the lives of the Ukranian people.) As such it can have the universal credibility to rule in its own right and make an informed choice about the future. In such situations workers have the opportunity to credibly connect with brothers and sisters throughout the world. This sort of unity stops wars, heels rampant capitalism and further educates the people about what capitalism fundamentally does when people demand freedom and democracy knowing that the demands can be achieved through solidarity. This will steel the working class to extend itself proportionally into all significant spheres of society. So given that the working class is today so fragmented the task is to seek union. This then becomes a permanent cycle of experience and education which is fundamentally what a successful revolution must be.

This sort of class consciousness clearly defines the respose to Syria where the actions of the so-called 'rebels' does not depend on the people it seeks to 'liberate', but rather on not so benign forces outside of Syria like the F, UK, US alliance and its allies which themselves are dealing with social unrest caused by the sort of system these powers seek to impose on those outside its sphere of influence clearly thereby denying that which they purport to stand for. What they do stand for is power. Only a united workers of the world can confront such powers.

Edited December 20, 2013 by John Dolva

[Steven Gaal]

The Global Economic Crisis: We Cannot Afford to Remain Powerless

By Global Research

Global Research, December 20, 2013

In 2010, at the height of the financial crisis, Global Research published a highly-acclaimed book entitled “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century” (Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors)

Now in 2013, even the minority elite and their back-pocket media pundits – who were pushing the public to believe that the crisis was over — can no longer deny that today’s economic outlook is far from healthy.

This important volume, featuring 20 chapters by some of Global Research’s top contributors, is essential reading for those who want to truly understand how the public is being manipulated into poverty. We cannot afford to remain powerless.

The complex causes as well as the devastating consequences of the economic crisis are carefully scrutinized with contributions from Ellen Brown, Tom Burghardt, Michel Chossudovsky, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Van Auken, Claudia Van Werlhof and Mike Whitney.

In the words of reviewers:

“You want to read The Global Economic Crisis if you meet these criteria: you welcome information and analysis about critically important issues that come from great thinkers outside the mainstream media and publishing world; you can handle brain pain from detailed and brutally honest revelations; you are willing and able to challenge your own biases and preconceptions to let in new explanations of how the world really functions. If millions of Americans read this book, we would probably see a far stronger uprising against the political establishment that has refused to severely punish the countless guilty people in the financial, banking and mortgage sectors that brought down the US and global economic system.”
–Joel S. Hirschhorn (Click for full review)

“Made up of twenty essays organized into five topics, The Global Economic Crisis describes the genesis and development of the collapse in ways that exhibit how serious and intractable it is, and the editors have had the good sense to not indulge in any Pollyanna prescriptions of how it will all end up with the world being better off than it ever has been. They have also had the good sense not to present the crisis as a doomsday event. As such, they presents things in ways that show what went wrong and what needs to be fixed and leaves the fixing to us if we can generate the courage to fix them.”
–John Kozy (Click for full review)

“The Global Economic Crisis describes the big picture, the global macroeconomics that translate into high unemployment, massive foreclosures, drastic cuts in local governmental services, and bankruptcy for millions of individuals, and businesses large and small, worldwide. And the understanding of economics at the global level, not how to open a checking account or how to shop for an auto loan, is the financial literacy the public needs most.”
–Kéllia Ramares (Click for full review)

^{The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors}

^{Available to order from Global Research!}

^{Print Edition: $16.00 (+ shipping and handling)}

^{PDF Edition: $9.50 (sent directly to your email account!)}

^{ISBN: 978-0-9737147-3-9 | Year: 2010 | Pages: 416 pages with complete index}

Edited December 20, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Italy's pitchfork movement - waking the world up to a new reality

published by Tom Sullivan on Sun, 2013-12-22 10:19

Peter Koenig, former World Bank economist speaks to the Voice of Russia and shares his views on the Pitchfork movement in Italy, the crisis in Ukraine and the economic reasons for Europe's social problems.

Reality Check: It seems that the economic crisis in Europe creates the perfect environment for popular discontent. For instance, the Pitchfork movement in Italy clearly shows that the poor strata of Italian society won't tolerate the government's economic policies. Are the economic austerity policies the main driver behind such popular movements?

Peter Koenig: The Pitchforkmovement started in December 2012 in the South of Italy by farmers protesting against higher taxes, higher fuel and fertilizer prices due to Mario Monti’s (then PM), imposed austerity program – which is in turn imposed by Monti’s countryman, Mr. Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB) and – what many want to ignore – former Goldman Sachs executive. The same austerity imposed on other Southern European countries, like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland – causing unspeakable human misery, unemployment, close to 30% in Greece and Spain (Spain – 57% youth unemployment!), widespread famine, increasing mortality rates in children – especially in Greece, where a third of the population can no longer afford privatized health insurance, therefore their children are no longer routinely vaccinated.

In addition under Draghi, the chief European Central Banker, the infamous troika – International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU) and ECB – loaded these countries with debt - which generations to come may be burdened to repay.

Reality Check: Western media likes to blame the people of Greece, Spain and Italy for their countries' economic woes, but the European Commission and the ECB should shoulder at least a part of the blame. Their economic policies have poured gasoline in the fire of the European economic crisis. Their measures strangle the economy, without giving those countries a possibility to quit the Eurozone and regain their competitiveness.

Peter Koenig: These are typical draconian pro-cyclical measures that no ‘rich’ OECD country would accept. It is a means by the Gods of Money to continue keeping the pressure on Europe, on the euro, to salvage their worthless currency, the dollar.The Gods of Money are the masters of Wall Street, the US Fed (Federal Reserve), and the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) – the central bank of central banks; i.e. the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and JP Morgans of this world. They control the (Western) gold and monetary markets by keeping the pressure on Europe – and the euro.

This is but a nutshell summary of what’s at stake, and what’s at the origin for so much misery and so many ‘liberation’ movements, such as the Italian Pitchfork crusade, currently timidly making its way from Sicily up north – and hesitantly into some newspapers.

Reality Check: Do you think that the Pitchfork movement has the potential to become something bigger and threaten the political status quo?

Peter Koenig: Originally Pitchforkwas heavily Sicily centered – a protest of Italy’s separated South against the elitist Rome. In the meantime the movement is growing in strength and has reached Rome, where it is clashing with police. The farmers are being joined by truck drivers and worker unionists – and eventually by people from the street. It is still weak in numbers, has the potential to grow, but the media shun it, don’t talk about it, ignore it. The elite controlling the media know that if and when the knowledge about the crusaders spreads, it could become a dangerous avalanche throughout Europe; it could grow almost infinitely – it could mean the end of the dominating class. Unhappiness is everywhere.

Reality Check: Pitchfork movement is unlikely to be the first of its kind. Do you recall similar movements in other countries?

Peter Koenig: Pitchfork reminds of the May 15 or M15 movement that originated on 15 May 2012 in Madrid, Spain, with protests against Rajoy’s austerity measures. It followed the ‘Occupy Wall Street Movement’, OWM, that began on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park of New York’s Wall Street financial district, as a modern sit-in against the banksters abuses at home and abroad.

While Wall Street was a novelty and caught initial media attention, it grew in visibility and was emulated throughout the world – it was henceforth the strongest nonviolent movement for justice and against the Western boundless banking greed on humanity and the planet.

All of these strong-willed nonviolent protests of the people for the people against a merciless elite have an enormous potential of changing the social landscape of the Western world. But - the media have purposely and miserably failed them. Social movements need media attention in order to propagate. But largely ignored by the media, they gradually fade into oblivion.

Reality Check: The mainstream media don't cover the movements and the protests disliked by the Western political class. Actually, if the mainstream media cover and show sympathy for a 'popular' movement it can serve as a conclusive proof that the movement is not grassroots, but pure astroturf. Do you think that Ukraine is a good example of American "astroturfing"?

Peter Koenig: A completely different media scenario presents the Ukraine, where President Viktor Yanukovych is facing pro-Europe mass protests, since he is backing away from a trade agreement with the European Union. Yanukovych is questioning the honesty of the treaty. Against a compensation of at least 20 billion euros – the estimated amount his country would lose with the deal – he might reconsider. Fair enough, since it is clear that so called ‘free’ trade agreements are always slanted in favor of the stronger. Finally this is a question of local sovereignty. Yet the world media zoom in and make believe that Ukraine’s President is acting against the people’s will, never analyzing the size of the protests, where they come from and who pays for them.

Reality Check: It is obvious that signing the Association agreement would have killed the Ukrainian economy. The EU demands modernization and strict compliance with the European technical standards, but is not going to pay for modernization and compliance, implying that a big of the Ukrainian industry must simply disappear in order to let European exporters conquer the Ukrainian market. For Yanukovich, signing the deal with the EU would have been a political disaster.

Peter Koenig: In the case of Ukraine there is even more at stake than an unfair trade deal. If linked with the US puppet, called Europe, NATO will not be far. Imagine – NATO at Russia’s doorstep – and 50% of the US Naval fleet already in the Pacific, surrounding China's East Coast. – Imagine US reaction, if Russia were to build up missile bases in the Caribbean – and China’s naval flotilla would cruise up and down the California Coast!

But the protests in Kiev get plenty of media attention. Media attention of protests against elected governments fuels the Western greed economies, when these governments second-guess, for good reasons, a pro-western stance. Protests which aren’t even genuine. They are ‘implanted’ cells, like those that triggered the so-called Arab Spring. Or those that marched against Mr. Putin’s election in different Moscow parks.

They are infiltrated, trained and paid by US conservative think tanks (sic) which receive hundreds of millions from the State Department for precisely that purpose – to train demonstrators to cause unrest in countries where ‘regime change’ is desired. Media coverage will make sure that the complacent and blinded Western public at large will take position; increasing the pressure on Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Putin. The US – via the arch-reactionary and hawk, senator McCain – is even threatening with sanctions if Yanukovych should renege on his ‘commitment’ towards Europe. --- And, not surprisingly, nobody within a blinded Western populace asks what business of Washington this may be.

But the media is there. Playing up a lie. They are not reporting the Pitchfork and other movements throughout Southern Europe, fighting for sheer survival of the people in their artificially but effectively destroyed economies – social systems built up by the people, sucked empty by banksters with the help of the criminal troika – IMF, ECB and EU Commission.

Reality Check: Recent events show that American-controlled 'revolutions' are not the ultimate geopolitical weapon and that such 'revolutions' can be stopped. Do you see any hope for Ukraine?

Peter Koenig: There is still hope. Russia and China are not going to be intimidated. If the media are not covering peoples’ movements for sheer existence – they will have no choice but to cover the consequences of Russia’s and China’s actions, when these and other nations will drop the dollar as reserve currency, when they start trading hydrocarbons in their local currencies, when they are proceeding with the “de-americanization” of the world – in China’s words.

China has already shown its muscle by decisively harassing a US missile cruiser in the South China Sea and by enforcing their air space vis-à-vis Washington’s military and civil aviation. – And what’s more – China has already declared to no longer purchase US Treasury Bonds, alias US debt – and is quietly shedding its huge – US$ 1.7 trillion – dollar holdings.

No doubt, the disastrous consequences of these actions for the Western greed economies will get media attention.

Reality Check: What is the future of the real popular movements? What happens when the fake revolutionaries run out money and the real grassroots movements that demand social justice become more powerful?

Peter Koenig: The Pitchforks, M15 and OWM --- and all those peaceful social movements that fight for their rights and justice and for their people’s sovereignty across the globe --- will eventually be vindicated, when the world wakes up to a new reality – when the imposed debt and austerity programs will be wiped out by new governments run by the people and for the people – and when the police and soldiers awaken to the fact that they are brothers and sisters of the people they have been ordered to fight.

Imagine – the lame mainstream media – they would be at a loss of explaining what happens when the paradigm shifts from the haves to the 99.99%!

Source: Voice of Russia, 20 December 2013

Edited December 22, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Germany: 87-year-old imprisoned for fare-dodging

By Konrad Kreft WSW
24 December 2013

Tucked away as a minor news item, the German media reported in December, that an 87-year-old destitute pensioner had been arrested and sent to prison by a Wuppertal court for persistent fare-dodging on public transport.

The elderly lady from Ennepetal near Wuppertal was caught without a ticket 22 times between February and September 2012. In June 2013 the Wuppertal court ruled that she should pay a fine of €474 (US$649). The pensioner was in no position to pay this sum and, after failing to make the agreed payment installments, she was sentenced to prison for 40 days.

The court verdict swiftly aroused public reaction, prompting the Bild newspaper to feature the story and intervene to provide bail, enabling the woman to leave the women’s prison in Gelsenkirchen after a few days. Bild thus hoped to defuse the scandal.

With regard to her fare-dodging, the woman said, “I had no other choice. Although I am still able to get around on foot, I simply can’t walk long distances anymore.” She has to get by on a pension of €560 a month, out of which she must pay €470 for rent. To supplement her pension, she works as a daily cleaner for €3 an hour. She was clearly using public transport in order to get to her workplace, but could not afford to pay the fares.

She had been required to go to another Wuppertal court hearing this September, but failed to attend. As a result, the court put out an order for her arrest, which the police eventually carried out in December.

Media presentation of the incident is typified by the Westdeutsche Zeitung newspaper report bewailing that “the court should imprison such a frail and elderly lady just before Christmas.”

Such reportage is deliberately intended to draw attention away from the socio-economic background to the case. The same paper wrote that “the incident has provoked a wave of outrage”. In order to divert this wave of outrage, directed against rapidly spreading poverty, the yellow press and popular dailies are painting the picture of a wayward, headstrong old woman, whose vulnerability should be pitied.

The reality is that her individual circumstances typify that of millions of others who have been plunged into poverty and are struggling desperately to find a way to survive. These include hundreds of thousands of pensioners who cannot make ends meet with their miniscule pensions. For years pensions have been reduced while rents have soared, driving many elderly into dire financial straits with no way out.

Widespread poverty has become a fact of daily life. It is the result of government policies over the last decade which have drastically reduced the living standards of broad swathes of the population.

According to “Poverty Report 2013”, published by the Association for Equal Welfare, the number of those living in poverty in Germany has risen from 14 percent in 2006 to 15.2 percent today. Any positive trends from previous years have been halted or put into reverse due to the policies of successive German governments. “Germany has never been as divided as it is today”, said Ulrich Schneider, the association’s director, and this division is accelerating further as austerity policies continue and intensify.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Susan George on the secret capitalist cabal behind European austerity

The How to Win the Class War satirist turns the spotlight on the shadowy global 'plot' to claw back working-class gains

• Link to video: Susan George: austerity means socialising losses and privatising profits

In a discreet villa in Switzerland, carefully chosen experts have been assembled by a shadowy group of wealthy and powerful commissioners and tasked with answering a single big question: how, amid the global financial crisis, can a renaissance of western capitalism be best ensured?

This is the Machiavellian scene that opens the latest book from Susan George, the prolific Franco-American political scientist and global justice activist. While perhaps best known for her work on world hunger, poverty and debt, George has turned to Europe and the US in How to Win the Class War, a satire of the 1%, or the "Davos class", as she puts it, in reference to the elite annual gatherings of the World Economic Forum.

Tongue-in-cheek and at times bizarre, the book is likely to strike a chord with those involved in movements such as Occupy and others increasingly suspicious of political parties and elite institutions. "I don't think preachy books work," says George, who was in London this month. "I think sometimes people are more moved by [satire] and black humour … God knows there's plenty to satirise out there."

George, 79, has spent decades studying and critiquing mainstream economic policy and is a key figure in alter-globalisation circles. Born in Ohio during the Great Depression, she moved to France in the 1950s and never left, joining activist movements against France's colonial war in Algeria and America's war in Vietnam. Today, she is honorary president of Attac-France, a group founded to push for taxes on foreign exchange transactions but which now works on a range of issues, and heads the board of the Transnational Institute network of "scholar-activists".

Satire is an ancient political tool and George has turned to it before; her latest book is a sequel to The Lugano Report, published in 1999 and sold as a secret report drafted by researchers hired to advise on whether global capitalism could survive the next millennium.

International in scope, The Lugano Report concluded that the four horsemen of the apocalypse (conquest, war, famine and pestilence) should be set loose to help rid the planet of its many "useless" people. Brutal enough to earn comparisons with the 18th-century satirical essay A Modest Proposal – in which Jonathan Swift suggested that the impoverished Irish should sell their children as food to rich people – The Lugano Report flew off the shelves in France and has since been published in more than a dozen languages.

While she has spent much of her life thinking globally and writing about challenges facing developing countries, George says European governments' commitments to push through austerity policies despite their social costs has given her a new focus. "We are very preoccupied with our own situation and that's where the militant strength is going now, it's not going into fighting hunger or debt," she says.

George is quick to argue, however, that there are important links to be drawn between European austerity policies and the structural adjustment programmes that poor countries adopted in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Ordinary people in the [global] south from the late 1970s until today have had to pay for the crimes and the greed and the odious debts of the dictators of their own governments, of their own upper classes, and they know very well what this means for the population: it means deep cuts in housing, education, culture, health," she says.

"Now it's our turn. Now it's called austerity. Call it what you like, but it's the same policy – it's socialise losses, privatise profits … [and] this has been pushed to a point where, although we began richer than the countries of the south … we are really creating now a situation where there are desperately poor people in Europe, in Britain, in normally wealthy countries."

The question for George is whether the austerity programmes pushed by European governments despite their social costs are mistakes, or deliberate policies. She is convinced of the latter and argues there is a class in Europe that has never accepted the gains working people have made since the second world war and has decided that this is the perfect moment to try to claw them back.

In her latest book, George's imagined working group of experts give their benefactors the good news first: that they (the 1%) are winning and are "even more firmly in control of economic, political and even social developments than was the case before the crisis struck". The bad news is that the situation remains precarious.

Her tips for the rich include exploiting divisions among peoples' movements and exercising restraint in public displays of wealth. Above all, the working group argues that "to persuade is to win", and for the relentless repetition of lines such as: "the private sector will always outperform the public"; "a truly free society cannot exist without a free market"; "inequality is not a so-called problem but is intrinsic to society and could be genetic".

If George can seem obsessed with secret cabals hatching grand plans for world domination, she's quick to say she does not believe in conspiracies – only interests and well-thought-out strategies to further them. She also has retorts ready for anyone who suggests she's pessimistic about the future. "I think that when things get to such a point, everyone is disgusted with how the politicians are behaving, that we can innovate and bring new ideas and policies to the fore."

Edited January 10, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

_{^{please dont forget post #44 above and also companion posts #31 & #38}}

_{^{(AUSTERITY Hows that working UK ??,Gaal)}}

_{'Bedroom Tax' Suicide: Grandmother Was Exempt}

_{Sky sources reveal that a woman who killed herself, blaming the "bedroom tax", was exempt from the subsidy after all. 3:52am UK, Saturday 11 January 2014}

_{http://news.sky.com/story/1193394/bedroom-tax-suicide-grandmother-was-exempt}

Edited January 11, 2014 by Steven Gaal