Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's JournalGeorge Herbert Walker Bush... head of CIA, Operation Condor, Argentina, 1976... etc...
... George Herbert Walker Bush died on Saturday. He was 94 years old. Thanks to decisions he made throughout his career, thousands – perhaps millions – of people never got near 94. He invaded Iraq in 1991, instituted sanctions that destroyed the country. He pardoned those involved in the Iran-Contra affair and was head of the CIA when Operation Condor launched the military coup in Argentina in 1976.
None of that makes it into The Guardian‘s obituary, of course...
https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/03/the-guardians-bush-obituary-plumbs-new-depths-of-sycophantic-hypocrisy/
... George Bush Sr was a sociopath from a family of corrupt sociopaths. The world would be a far better, and much safer place if just one major newspaper was willing to say that.
Really, there are two obituaries to write here:
First – George HW Bush, corrupt patriarch of an old and malign family, passing out of this world to face whatever eternal punishment (hopefully) awaits those who sell their immortal soul in exchange for a brief taste of power.
Second – The Guardian, perhaps a decent newspaper once-upon-a-time, now a dried out husk. A zombified slave to the state, mindless and brainless and lifeless. No questions, no reservations, no hesitation. Obediently licking up the mess their masters leave behind.
It’s sickening.
Stock Market Rattle: inflation, growing debt supply, rising Federal Reserve borrowing costs
... Creeping gains in U.S. Treasury yields are fuelling fears that portfolio managers may move money into safer fixed-income securities at the expense of riskier assets like stocks and emerging markets. The 10-year yield, a benchmark for global borrowing costs, has been driven steadily higher by a combination of concerns over inflation, growing debt supply, and rising Federal Reserve borrowing costs...
... “We’ve seen quite a lot of companies announcing above-estimate earnings and their shares falling sharply,” said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities... “If shares are falling when corporate earnings are rising 20 percent and the economy is growing at 3 percent, the market is in trouble. The market reaction so far feels as if we are starting to see an end of its long rally since 2009. Investors could be thinking that the best time will be soon behind us,” he said...
“Higher yields are no doubt having a negative impact on emerging markets. We are likely to see outflows from emerging market bonds,” said Takahiko Sasaki, market economist at Mizuho Bank...
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-rattled-by-rising-u-s-yields-cost-worries-idUKKBN1HW02J
"The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation."
Joseph Conrad
“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
Terry Pratchett
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
BeLeave revelations taint Brexit result. There must be another vote
... The revelations over the weekend from the brave and principled former BeLeave treasurer Shahmir Sanni are devastating. His claim that £625,000 was donated by Vote Leave to his supposedly independent pro-Brexit referendum campaign organisation – and channelled to a digital services firm with links to the controversial Cambridge Analytica – if proven, flagrantly violated election rules as it was not a genuine donation.
Sanni stated, too, that BeLeave shared offices with Vote Leave – fronted by Tory MPs Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – which allegedly in practice offered advice and assistance to the group and helped it to decide where its cash would be spent. British electoral law forbids different campaign organisations acting in concert unless they have a shared cap on spending.
In what one can only assume was a state of panic, Theresa May’s press office swiftly put out a statement that among other things outed Sanni as a homosexual – a tactic that places his family at considerable personal risk due to his Pakistani heritage...
... As transparency campaigner for more than 10 years, I have long had a sense that something was not quite right about the EU referendum. I warned back in November 2017 that the leave campaign seemed to be awash with dark money that may have circumvented rules designed to uphold the integrity of our democratic process. There have already been claims that the mysterious Constitutional Research Council routed £425,000 into pro-Brexit advertisements in London via the Democratic Unionist party. In 2016 the same organisation gave the Tory MP Steve Baker £6,500. At the time Baker was chairman of a Tory hard-Brexit caucus, the European Research Group, which was behind the letter that Johnson and Gove recently sent to the prime minister ordering her not to dare to stray from the Brexit path...
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gina-miller
... Vote Leave members 'may have committed criminal offences'. MPs to debate claims that official Brexit campaign colluded to breach spending limits
Members of the official Brexit campaign during the EU referendum may have committed criminal offences relating to overspending and collusion, according to lawyers advising whistleblowers who worked inside the organisation.
Clare Montgomery and Helen Mountfield, barristers from Matrix chambers, concluded in a formal opinion that there was a “prima facie case” that Vote Leave submitted an inaccurate spending return and colluded with BeLeave, which was aimed at students. They were reviewing a dossier of evidence supplied by solicitors Bindmans, which contained examples of alleged collusion showing that Vote Leave and BeLeave were not separate and therefore that the leave campaign spent over the £7m legal limit set by the Electoral Commission.
MPs will debate the allegations in the Commons on Tuesday, after the Lib Dems secured an emergency debate. The dossier has also been passed to the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for election law.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/26/vote-leave-members-may-have-committed-criminal-offences
Bunch of crooked conspirators.
Maldives ex-President Mohammed Nasheed calls for international help
... Mohammed Nasheed asked India to help release prisoners and the US to curb leaders' financial transactions.
Turmoil began when current President Abdulla Yameen refused to release political dissidents, defying a court order and sparking protests.
"We must remove him from power," Mr Nasheed said in a statement.
The government has declared a state of emergency and the chief justice of the Supreme Court has been detained with no further details given about his detention or charges...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42958179
Brexit journey from hubris to humiliation (Gary Younge)
... The past 18 months have illustrated the journey from hubris to humiliation. For a couple of generations, we have seen our attributes and others’ weaknesses through the wrong side of a magnifying glass; now our diminished state is becoming fully apparent, and, like Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, reciting Kipling in Myanmar, we are struggling to adjust.
This awakening would be funny (abroad they find it hilarious) if it were not so consequential. Johnson told the Commons the EU27 could “go whistle” for an extortionate Brexit bill. They whistled; now we will cough, to the tune of £35-40bn.
During her 2017 election campaign, Theresa May, channelling her inner Thatcher, boasted about being a “bloody difficult woman”. “The next man to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker,” she claimed. In fact Juncker, the president of the European commission, and his team have found May more overwhelmed and befuddled than overwhelming and belligerent. After one Downing Street dinner, European negotiators concluded that she “does not live on planet Mars but rather in a galaxy very far away”...
Maldives Supreme Court orders release of jailed politicians
In a statement, the court declared that their original trials violated constitutional and international law.
It also nullified a decision which resulted in 12 lawmakers losing their seats - effectively giving opposition politicians a majority in parliament.
Opposition supporters took to the streets to celebrate the ruling.
But their jubilation on the streets of the capital Male was quickly contained by police using tear gas...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42912911
... Rule of Law... Or rule or politics/corrupt economics...
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Canary Islands Archipelago
Home country: Spain
Member since: Wed Apr 19, 2006, 01:59 PM
Number of posts: 16,881
