Sarkophagus*
Money from Somewhere
18 May 2013
"Il est dur d'être Balladur."* Photo: AFP/Gérard Cerles
Back in the mid-90s, when he was prime minister under François Mitterrand, Éduard Balladur decided to throw his hat into the ring for the 1995 presidential elections. To be able to pay for it, he concocted a scheme wherein part of the (then legal) kickbacks received by the Pakistani and Saudi officials as a thank-you for the acquisition of French weaponry, was to boomerang back to his war chest. The foreign parties consented, and the cash began to flow through Saudi and Lebanese intermediaries, and into Swiss bank accounts. All looked good for the moment.
But then Chirac won. Having previously sniffed out the scheme, he immediately ordered a halt to further payments of the commissions. Pakistani military, feeling shafted, got peeved, and exploded a bomb at the naval shipyards in Karachi, where construction work on the submarines acquired under the deal was under way, killing a number of French personnel. The debris hit the proverbial fan, and a big investigation got under way.
"When in doubt", used to say Chief Inspector Japp, "arrest a vagrant". And so, conveniently, the blame for the attack was hung on al-Qaeda. The slight problem was that it didn't want to stay there, despite repeated attempts to re-hang it. Finally, after some leaks, it transpired that the reason for the attack was none other than non- payment of the commissions. Magistrates began the laborious task of tracing the cash flow. Soon enough they discovered that some of it made its way to Switzerland and, subsequently, in briefcases, to Balladur's campaign kitty.
So what's the big deal, you may ask? Water under the bridge, no?
Well, almost. The interesting bit is that the treasurer of Monsieur's campaign was none other than Nicolas Sarkozy, who, as such, was certain to know all. The knowledge of something of course is not an easy thing to prove in court. And it wasn't expected to be in this case, until today; nearly 20 years since the events took place, the judge in the case, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, made the key breakthrough interrogating one of the intermediaries in the affair, a Saudi named Abdul Rahman El-Assir.
Things are bound to become very interesting from now on. Rest assured DD, a great fan of Sarko, will keep you posted.
* "It's hard to be Balladur".
16 May 2013
Ramallah. Still ours, we think. Photo: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman
Sirens sound for 65 seconds and a giant Palestinian flag is unfurled on Ramallah's central square in commemoration of the 65th anniversary of Nakba
The New York Times and BBC haven't noticed.
13 May 2013
"Pssst... it can only go up." Photo: AFP/Marc Tril
Exuberance once again took over the international markets. Dow hit 15,000 the other day, while FTSE, seemingly unfazed by the KO the City received from George Osborne, hovers at a historically high 6,000. Not far behind are the DAX, at 8,300, and CAC40, at 4,000. Champagne corks pop at MSNBC and Fox News.
So what is happening?
DD thinks it knows: it's quantitative easing. Or, rather, the mountain of ready cash the banks have accumulated in its wake. Differently put, Fed's got the paper, banks got the cash.
The cash, of course, was meant for investment, new factories, you know, that kind of stuff. As in the Teahouse of the August Moon, where, instead of a new school, the village gets a teahouse (to call it politely), the main beneficiary of this bonanza turned out to be the casino on Wall Street. Fueled by this high octane the indices duly took off.
The one slight problem is there is no real value behind this performance, and what went up will have to come down, as it did in 2000 and then in 2008, when the bubbles popped.
It will be very sad when this happens again, and pregnant with danger, because the economy is already on artificial life support. Very many people have been waiting for a return to a more normal life, where production leads to real jobs and to stability. DD doesn't think this outcome is in the cards. Moreover, the hitherto anasthetized populace may come out of its television-induced stupor to ask more or less violently for a change.
The saddest part in this is that the depressed masses will be the likely recipients of this violence.
9 May 2013
"Make it short, mother." Photo: AFP/Toby Melville
Abdications may be the thing in Amsterdam, but they are not in London, assure us the experts. Nonetheless, a transition seems to have been launched. Two extra thrones appeared at the House of Commons during Queen's speech the other day, and it was announced that Charles, rather than his mother, will be going to Colombo for the opening of the Commonwealth conference.
Hail to the Regent, if you're into that kind of things.
8 May 2013
"He looks guilty to me." "I know what you mean."
DD thinks it has spotted presidential material.
Manuel Valls, the French interior minister, and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, woman's rights minister, and spokeswoman for the Hollande government, have cancelled at the last minute their trip to Florence, where they were expected to attend a European Forum dedicated to the state of the Union. The reason? Presence of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss prof with whom Valls happens to disagree. Better yet, with whom he wants to be seen to disagree.
DD speculates Valls is burnishing his credentials with CRIF, which will readily treat you to antisemite, if you happen to voice any criticism whatsoever of the Israeli expansionist policies in Palestine. But why would such a gloss matter? It does because it's a way of burnishing his credentials with Israel and with the Americans, both of whom he will need when he runs for president four years hence.
But, you will say, he hasn't said anything about running. That's true, and he may not run, but building foundations takes time and effort, and has to be done way in advance. A judiciously canceled appearance, such as the one at the Forum, will be noted. And if he runs, it won't do any harm. DD thinks these are the taletales that show he will.
So what is it exactly about the toxic Prof. Ramadan that so offended the delicate sensibility of Manuel Valls? Well, if it's for the appearances sake, it doesn't matter—support of "terrorism" has been alluded to. What matters is that points have been scored. Ramadan's reputation as a man of peace is solid, attacks on him notwithstanding. Valls', on the other hand, isn't. He (born in Spain), as Interior minister, cracked down on the Gypsies, just as Sarkozy did, when he was in his post.
Valls is an ambitious man. Watch his footwork.
7 May 2013
"Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill requiring state officials to resell rather than destroy firearms collected in gun-buyback initiatives"
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
5 May 2013
Off to London you go. Painting by unknown master
Distress emanates from the City, London's financial district. "It's a bloody nuisance, if you asked me", was even heard in one local pub. This bitter sentiment was last heard when the Spanish Armada came to within eyeshot of the green shores of England. Or, so assures us John Cleese.
So what's going on?
After Luxembourg and Vienna, London decided to jump on the transparency bandwagon.
The consequences will be grave and ranging far and wide. Aside for the City itself, which generates 10% of UK's GDP—keeping in mind that not all GDP necessarily represents constructive value, and this might be particularly true of the financial sector—and employs thousands, pain will befall the Crown's ex possessions scattered across the globe, and which are to the City what the beaters are to a traditional English fox hunt.
So what prompted George Osborne, the Chancellor, to descend so heavily on his friends in the City (and, even more directly, on their beaters offshore), given they are the biggest contributors to the Tory war chest?
Necessity, of course.
Le Monde itemizes thusly. First, Britain currently enjoys high visibility presiding over the G8 group. Dragging her feet on what others have already done would look bad in these trying times. The volte-face is sure to humiliate David Cameron, who, not so long ago, publicly instructed British businesses to go offshore to save themselves from paying (British) taxes. Yes, reader, you are reading correctly, even though this put him squarely in the company with Leona Helmsley, who held the view that paying taxes was reserved for "the little people". (If the photo accompanying the Wikipedia article looks to you like a mug shot, it's because it is, being a discretely cropped fragment of this photo, and, yes, it is related to her outlook on paying taxes.)
Second, the vast budget deficit and the declining tax revenue due to depression finally focused Cameron's mind. Fiscal "optimization", as tax cheating is known in the financial community, was the only remaining game visible among the shrubbery. It had to be taken out.
Third, Downing Street faces increasingly hostile populace, constantly exposed to the spectacle of grand scale tax evasion on the part of the British multinationals and the subsidiaries of foreign corporations operating in London, while ever being asked to tighten its own belt. The role of Cyprus, an ex-British colony, in laundering Russian money, and the tax evasion tricks of the Greek shipping magnates installed in London, add to the discontent.
Too bad Maggie didn't linger for a bit longer. She would have seen some alternatives.
May Day 2013
New Harmony. Still under construction. Painting by F. Bate
A Wikipedia search for "Haymarket massacre" will lead you to a delicately titled "Haymarket affair", as if it concerned some skulduggery at a bank, or a government ministry. Yet, it was a massacre. A number of demonstrators were killed and scores wounded. The police too suffered casualties, but, aside from the effect of the bomb (likely a provocation), they were self inflicted, as, at one point, a gunfight broke out among the brave enforcers of the law.
Minds inclined toward banality will tend to speak of "celebrating" May Day. It should be rather a day of remembrance, as its origin is the Haymarket massacre, which should be remembered, not celebrated.
The massacre took place at a rally of protest against the conditions in the sinister workshops of Chicago during the industrial revolution, when the wages were meagre, hours long, and holidays non-existent. The "affair" is normally presented as a whodunnit mystery, given that the identity of the bomber remains unknown. But it should be first of all regarded as an assault by the henchmen of the robber barons on a peaceful gathering of workers looking to improve their miserable lot.
The power of the robber barons, after receding in the post-depression era, remains enormous, and growing so rapidly that it is now justifiable to speak about a corporate coup d'état. Rather than lowering the wages and beating up the workers they "outsource" their jobs to China, and let the resulting pain be socialized under the approving eye of the politician permanently and institutionally on the take. Even the up till now coddled high tech worker isn't safe. Jobs go to India, while cheap and pliable Indian programmers come by the planeload to Silicon Valley. This in addition to the slave-like working hours in the sector.
Try to search Wikipedia for "May Day". You will discover that "May Day on May 1 is an ancient Northern Hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures.".
Right. It is also an international distress signal.
In more than one sense, unfortunately.
29 April 2013
Distressed yodeling came out of the business district of Vienna as the bankers' collective lederhosen were getting into a twist. The reason for this trauma was the annulment by the Austrian government, under pressure from the EU, of the banking secrecy law, which made Vienna a tax haven on the par with Zurich, Vaduz, London, Monaco, or the Caimans, and a home to a pile of foreign money, of which only the Russian and the Middle Eastern accounted to some €53bn. If one were to extrapolate from the Swiss figures, another €70bn a year should have been evading the attention of fiscal authorities in Europe and elsewhere to find its way to Vienna. This began to add up to real money, especially in a smallish country, such as Austria.
Now all that looks ruined, as it is in Luxembourg, which gave up its secrecy a few weeks ago.
But not all is lost everywhere. These latest ructions still leave the tax cheaters with a choice of Switzerland, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco, and Liechtenstein, not to mention locations further downrange, such as Singapore, Taipei, Macau, Panama, and the various tropical islands in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Not all is lost, not yet.
27 April 2013
A dream: Safe and fuel efficient. Photo: AFP/Stephen Brashear
On the occasion of the first post-grounding flight of the 787, BBC News posted this piece. All well and good, except that it contains two porkies. First porky: 787 is the most fuel efficient plane within its class. Nope, according to Wikipedia, it's the new Airbus A350 that gets the banana, being 8% more fuel efficient than the 787.
Another porky comes out of the mealy-mouth of the Boeing VP Randy Tinseth, who says flying is the safest form of transportation known to man. It sure is, if you fall for the trick used by the airlines, which is to count deaths per mile flown. When these are counted per outing, the safety rating of commercial aviation drops to somewhere between that of driving a car and riding a motorcycle, ie, not so brilliant.
27 April 2013
First the good news. According to the just-released figures, Britain's first quarter GDP went up by a whopping 0.3%, beating by the factor of 300% the economists' bullish estimate of 0.1%. (Hey, it may be a zero.point territory but it's a positive zero.point territory!) What's more, it exorcised, at least on paper, the demon of the triple-dip recession. Ugh!
Unfortunately, that's about it for the good news. Now the rest.
In short, the British anti-Keynesian experiment ended in a total fiasco. But that's not all. Government's investment budget, which is subject to an important multiplier effect, has dropped by 40%. Roads, railway lines, schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure will not see the light of the day. Labour speaks not so much about increasing expenditures as about reducing the cuts. Given the size of the debt, the room for the manoeuvre even for that is at best limited. Unfortunately, if not tragically, the Brits have more confidence in the Tories than in Labour.
There is almost no chance for Cameron to change the course. With 62 million seeing a dropping income, 2.5 million unemployed, and a maimed youth, the current economic course has tragic consequences.
Maggie famously proclaimed that "there was no alternative". She may have been more right than she thought.
25 April 2013
A place to be if you're into chest x-rays. Image: NASA
An atypically good sci piece from BBC Future. While it's mostly about how to protect spam from getting fried by cosmic rays, it presents an unbleary eyed picture of the delights awaiting space cadet embarking on travel beyond Earth's magnetosphere. It gives ammunition to DD's argument condemning the idea of human space flight.
25 April 2013
...while disconnecting them from taxes. Photo: HSBC
Files discovered at a home of a nerd working for HSBC appear to show the bank went on an expedition to woo rich French to open undeclared bank accounts in Switzerland. Owning such an account is illegal in France. Paris prosecutors are investigating.
Meanwhile UBS, a Swiss bank, is under investigation in France for similar activities.
A target customer for these banks is someone who can deposit a minimum of €10m.
24 April 2013
Yin: Liaoling, Yang: on the drawing board. Photo: China Daily/Reuters
After denying the idea just last September, China has announced launching construction of a new aircraft carrier, which will be its second. This is a third instance in recent weeks of muscle flexing on the part of the Chinese navy, whose warships are currently making rounds in the Mediterranean (of all places), and ostentatiously parading near the Japanese islands of Senkaku.
Its first carrier, the Liaoling, is a revamped ex-Soviet vessel, which China had bought from Ukraine.
24 April 2013
Major Tom to Ground Control, for now. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curious about the absence of news from Curiosity, the Editor investigated. In fact, in order to avoid signal corruption by the Sun, JPL imposed a radio silence on all transmissions to the equipment operating on Mars during the Mars Solar Conjunction taking place at the moment. There are some transmissions from Mars, but few.
The silence period began on April 4, it will last until May 1.
23 April 2013
Two Graces. So, what's your new number, ma puce? Photo: AFP/Lionel Bonaventure
Until yesterday, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Rachida Dati (cabinet ministers in the Sarkozy government) were contending a 7th arrondissement seat in the upcoming municipal elections. But then, over a coffee, Rachida confided to Nathalie she wouldn't be running after all, seeing NKM too far ahead.
You might think NKM would jump for joy seeing the field all to herself, but no. Apparently, she judged this bad for the mobilization of the electorate, and thought throwing in the towel was bad for the exercise. She tried hard to persuade Dati to stay in the race, to no avail, alas.
Dati, who is mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris (known as the seventh heaven), said she would be helping NKM win the seat. Warms one's heart.
23 April 2013
Czech Republic began trending on social media after it was reported that the Tsarnaevs were ethnically Chechen.
This and more in this week's particularly rich Review from Harper's.
22 April 2013
21 April 2013
Observations of the biggest and the smallest come together to confirm that the human understanding of the physical reality is not half bad. LRB has a nice article on the subject, with a link to the ESA/Planck project, which has high-resolution pictures (worth seeing at maximum magnification), and additional explanations.
It is worth noting that all major breakthroughs in physics over the last two decades have emanated from Europe, which had laid out a long-term plan of investment in the sector, and has doggedly followed it. This in contrast to the US Congress, which had abandoned high energy physics in favour of faith-based science. The non-fruits of this decision are there for all to see.
17 April 2013
Some among you may remember when, back in 1995, Nick Leeson managed to singlehandedly sink the oldest British bank, the Barings, taking speculative positions on the Nikkei Index over at the Singapore office. A billion quid vanished into thin air at a short notice. A billion was real money back then.
Thousands lost their jobs, many more their deposits, Her Majesty among them. For his part, Nick got himself locked up, then released and relegated to languish in some doghouse.
That was then and now is now. As is often the case with people of Nick's talent, they come back. And so, Nick is back building a nice retirement fund giving talks on the after-the-lunch circuit. He has also recently joined GDP Partnership in Belfast, where he advises people who face losing their houses owing to non-payment of mortgage dues. The brochure says, "Mr Leeson is said to have done in Barings. He knows what he's talking about." No joke.
"No one drew any lesson from my case", says Leeson, "and the same thing can happen again. It's unbelievable how lax the financial security is in big enterprises."
The freshly-appeared $6bn hole in the assets of JPMorgan due to the trading activities of the "London Whale" seems to prove the point.
16 April 2013
Behold a miracle! If we are to trust BBC News, in two short weeks, JPMorgan Chase managed not only to pull itself out of a nasty imbroglio (see our earlier report), but, in fact, to realize a fat profit for the first quarter of 2013. There's a company to invest in!
But DD is not so sure, and sloppy reporting, such as in the sample which follows, doesn't help:
"JP Morgan said it had cut mortgage loan loss reserves by $650m and property asset reserves by $500m."
Very well, but from what initial figures? Such incomplete reporting is no different from disinformation. And why exactly is it prudent to cut loan loss reserves in expectation of a favourable outcome, which may or may not come, quite far in the future? And that before tackling the laundry list of problems enumerated in the preceding story.
Smoke and mirrors?
15 April 2013
Here we call them fries. Photo: Vincent Kessler/Reuters
McDonald's wants to build 40 new feeding stations in France this year (the word "restaurant" seems too big in the context). "Their prices are right", says an observer, "it's that the rest of the bill will have to be paid by the Sécu (French public health insurance system) 10 years hence."
12 April 2013
The main unanswered question hanging over his head is why, knowing what was going on, he never protested the atrocities of the Videla junta. That silence was deafening enough for all to conclude that the needle in his moral compass is so bent as to render him unfit to be telling people how to behave, a serious predicament for a pope, whose main business is just that. The argument that everyone was too terrorized to speak out doesn't wash; the Church in Brazil and Chile had confronted their respective juntas to no great harm to life and limb. So why not in Argentina? Why not Father Bergoglio, whose own Jesuits were languishing in political prison?
A small incident casts light on the prelate's mindset, at least in those days. After coming out of the junta jail, drugged, half-naked, and beaten up, Orlando Yorio thought to call Father Superior to say hello. Bergoglio got peeved and told him to "go away and fuck himself".
Daily Detox calls on Pope Francis to resign.
Photo: Habemus Papam/01 Distribution
10 April 2013
But not only, says a French lab, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides as well. Only organic wines are free of them, retaining all the veritas, asserts the lab.
While EU has standards setting maximum permissible concentration levels of these substances in grapes, no such norms exist for the wine. The founder of the lab in question says he will be setting his own ceilings, adding he's planning to lobby the European Commission to do the same.
The Editor drinks to that.
10 April 2013
Look, poverty everywhere. Photo: AP/Osservatore Romano
Depending on whom you listen to, Bergoglio is either a Snow White washing the feet of the poor, or a nasty collaborator with a junta of generals which sodomised Argentina from the late 70s to the early 80s.
Intriguing bits and pieces keep coming. The most damning, in the view of the Editor, is a statement from Father Franz Jalics, who, a good soldier, said, in effect, sorry, no comment. Jalics, together with his Jesuit buddy, Orlando Yorio, got locked up and tortured by the junta, being suspected of belonging to the guerrilla (their work with the poor in the barrio of Buenos Aires sure didn't help.) The question now is what was the role of Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio in this affair. On the one hand there's the testimony of the little people, on the other the PR machine of the Vatican.
Watch this space for more.
8 April 2013
DD was going to publish the following:
More headaches for François Hollande. The front page of today's Libération speaks of hectic behind-the-door consultations at the Elysée to decide what to do with yet another hot potato. It appears that another "socialist" got imbroglied in un-socialistlike comportment: Laurent Fabius, the ex-mayor of Paris, now Hollande's Foreign Minister, is rumoured having an undeclared Helvetic bank account, replete with un-socialistlike millions. Having an undeclared foreign bank account is strictly illegal in France.
Then came the news that Libé jumped the gun, reacting prematurely to rumours that Mediapart, a news website, made a scoop on Fabius. But nothing really was known.
So DD was going to park the piece and wait.
Then it reconsidered. The reason for this change of mind was the manner in which Fabius reacted to the news. Instead of flatly denying the accusation, he said that Mediapart had no evidence of him having a Swiss bank account. Wait a minute! The account may well be there, it's just that they had no evidence for it!
That word mincing was a mite too fine for DD. It thus decided to stick its neck out and declare there is a good probability that Mediapart got it right.
6 April 2013
Le Monde reports that an investigation by Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, into the dealings of the country's biggest bank, the Deutsche Bank, revealed an un-Germanlike mess, as well as activity to cover-up a €12bn loss in derivatives speculation. The cover-up was apparently deemed necessary to maintain the appearance that DB didn't need any federal prop up, as a request for one was thought to spell death to its reputation.
5 April 2013
...and a bank account far from the prying eye of the fisc. Photo: Wikipedia
Fast in the tracks of the Cahuzac affair currently rattling François Hollande, another affair stands poised to rattle the veritable Who Is Who of the world politics, business, and finance.
The Operation OffshoreLeaks, a cooperative effort headed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the help from Le Monde, The Guardian, The Washington Post, SonntagsZeitung, and
Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others, conducted investigation which produced a report describing tens of trillions of dollars missing from the treasuries of some 170 countries and territories, and some 130,000 individuals who benefited from this fleecing of the more traditional taxpayer.
ICIJ gives a foretaste of what will be coming down the pipeline over the next weeks and months on their website.
To add to M. Hollande's chagrin, the name of the treasurer of his presidential campaign, Jean-Jacques Augier, figures prominently on the list of clients of the banks in the Caimans.
4 April 2013
Limassol. "Vasily, UBS says it's a whole note again!" Photo: Reinholdbehringer/flickr
Radio France reports the oligarch money in Cyprus, having been tipped off about the impending confiscation, transferred the loot elsewhere, thus limiting the damage and further shifting the burden of the bailout to small depositors. All is well then.
The original story
2 April 2013
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At what cost "because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people" in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall, just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy. But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil, but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day, think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us, to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?
Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
2 April 2013
"America's most high-profile Catholic official, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has warned that the church needs to "do better" to ensure its "defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people". But he added that gay people were only entitled to "friendship" not "sexual love"."
Guardian reports.
1 April 2013
BBC News interview here.
31 March 2013
While everybody's eyes are fixed on Cyprus, cracks are appearing on one of Wall Street's main pillars. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest American bank by assets, is being presented by the justice with a veritable laundry list of accusations of malfeasance, ranging from neglect to criminal, all of which is bound to cost it dearly.
Against a background of silence from the Wall Street Journal, Friday's Le Monde presents the list:
29 March 2013
28 March 2013
27 March 2013
And why not automatically send every n'th photo to the Centre?
BBC News reports.
26 March 2013
LM says Zuckerberg and his buddies are launching a lobbying shop ostensibly dedicated to campaigning on behalf of immigrants to help them obtain American citizenship. In addition, the ambition of the shop is to push for an education reform, and to boost funding for scientific research.
Nice, no?
DD is not so sure. Immigration, OK, but whose, exactly? Might it not be of cheap programmers from Bangalore, willing to work 12x6 for a third of a native's pay? And that education reform? Might it not come in the form of a "University" of Phoenix "market-driven" model, with papar submissions strictly over Facebook? And how about that research funding? Could it be that the reform means socializing the bill for private R&D? These are the questions to which the enquiring mind would like to know the answers.
26 March 2013
European Parliament. Full of bad ideas. Photo: CherryX/EUP
Planeloads of GAFA lobbyists have descended on Strasbourg in order to sabotage the currently debated legislation meant to protect personal data against snooping and exploitation.
25 March 2013
This
25 March 2013
24 March 2013
Facebook is a social network, right? It keeps you in touch with your friends, so that you know what they are up to, and so that they know what you are up to. And, hey, look at these pictures from the party at Bob's last Saturday! See Beth? See the kids? Wow, way cool! And Mark Zuckerberg says your info is protected, people only know what you want them to know. Way cool!
Only no. A scoop by France Inter reveals Facebook shares your private information with companies whose main product is, well, how to break it to you? you. And it's not the photos of the kids.
The FI reporter got to interview an employee of the French division of Acxiom ("the biggest company you've never heard of"), who spilled the beans, revealing Facebook let them into the larder. For free, we are sure. So much for social networking. Hello to the commercial one! (At one point during the interview there was a commotion and the interview got abruptly terminated.)
This potato is getting hot. So hot no one is being able to hold it any longer. France Inter has already put a question mark on their relationship with Facebook, and has said so on the air. Its many listeners are listening
Now back to Acxiom. The aforementioned French division claims a 20 percent penetration of the French society. That's 13m people about whom they know a lot, certainly all that's needed to target them with specific marketing campaigns. These 13m might also represent the most valuable segment of the society from the point of view of purchasing power. The effective penetration might therefore be much greater. One wonders what these figures would be for the US, their original, and the biggest target.
Check Acxiom's Wikipedia entry, as well as this article from last June's NYT. Watch this space for more.
Photos: Steve KeeseeArkansas Democrat-Gazette and Ken Cedeno/Bloomberg News
23 March 2013
DD hopes to see you there, if not in flesh, then in spirit.
Check his support network site.
22 March 2013
The article says that between now and 2020, traditional operators stand to lose half-a-trillion dollars to Voice Over Internet.
21 March 2013
STASI, the most efficient of all the Soviet Block secret services, managed to penetrate and monitor 10 percent of the East German society. NSA, aided and abetted by Facebook and Twitter has penetrated and monitors 90.
For the sake of everybody's personal liberties, DD urges you to disassociate yourself from either.
20 March 2013
There's a new acronym to get familiar with: GAFA, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon.
Personal information is to GAFA what petroleum is to oil companies.
20 March 2013
This picture on the front page of BBC News:
But should he?
19 March 2013
"...in Amsterdam 70-year-old twins Louise and Martine Fokkens retired from prostitution. “It is very different now,” said Louise. “No sense of community these days.""
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's
18 March 2013
Limassol. "Vasily, it was a whole note just yesterday!" Photo: Reinholdbehringer/flickr
Anyone old enough to have witnessed, and attentive enough to pay attention to such trivia, will remember, back in the halcyon days of the early 2000s, the reports of an exodus of the Soviet money to the fiscally paradisiac Cyprus. Planeloads of it, all in greater or lesser need of laundering, descended on Nicosia to the ruptured disbelief of the local banking community.
Miles of red carpet were ordered forthwith, and pretty girls at the banks and estate agencies crash trained in Russian. Boom followed just as surely as the day follows the night. Super megayachts fanned out into the blue Mediterranean. Lest there be any doubt that it was indeed the Barracuda that came to port, their names, already emblazoned in shiny steel, were backlit in electric blue, and beaconed across the harbour for all to see the proof of the excellent solvency of the hegemon.
Fast forward to March 2013.
From one day to the next, a gaping, $3.5 billion hole appeared in the Russian assets hoarded away on the island, as the government, in cahoots with the Troika, announced a one-time tax on bank deposits in order to avert, it says, an imminent meltdown of the local economy. The Russians, who are the biggest depositors, took the hardest hit—nearly 10 percent. Screaming can be heard across the Mediterranean basin, and the turquoise waters around Cyprus turned red. The question now is whether this will be followed by a raffle of machine gun fire coming from the general direction of the aforementioned opening. One would not want to be in the shoes of Michalis Sarris, the Cypriot Finance Minister.
The story does not end there, for who says the Troika will stop in Nicosia, and not repeat the trick wherever it deems the fiscal rectitude not up to its liking? The unitended effect of this bungle might come in the form of a mother of all runs on the bank.
18 March 2013
Photo: harpers.org
by Joe Villarreal 16 March 2013
Joe Villarreal is a businessman in Houston. Photo: AP
15 March 2013
The arrival of the new pope gives an occasion for casting an eye on the good deeds of the old one. Not many people would know, for example, that between 1981 and his election to be pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had served as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Holy Inquisition to you and me. Yes, Ratzinger used to be Great Inquisitor.
It's impossible to say if in the nomination of Jorge Mario Bergoglio there had been an attempt to atone for the South American sins of his predecessors, or, simply, to put a reasonable guy on the throne of St Peter. But the sins there were. For instance, the refusal (on the advice of the Inquisitor Ratzinger) by John Paul II to bless, during a rally in Managua, the children of the Sandinista rebels killed by the Nicaraguan death squads, or various brow-beatings and excommunications of the clergy too comfy with the Liberation Theology.
This could have been a matter of ignorance. John Paul II, having come from behind the Iron Curtain, harboured an instinctive hostility to anything looking to be on the left. If so, his fault was incomprehension and heavy handedness. He failed to understand that the Liberation Theology movement had little to do with the Brezhnevian dictatorships in the Soviet style, and much to do with helping the desperately poor and oppressed masses of Latin America. Ratzinger did nothing to clarify the situation. From a distance, it looked as if the popes were always siding with South American oligarchs, and the military juntas there to protect them, leaving the poor to their prayers.
The Church has a rich history of siding with the rich, so a closer look at what Bergoglio was up to during the military rule in Argentina is necessary. As of this writing, BBC opens up the hostilities with this entry. Watch this space for more.
March 14, 2013
Why was it such a big deal, you may ask? It was because Lapid announced he would use education to re-shape the Israeli society. Given Lapid's hostility to the ultra-orthodox religious factions—he ran on an anti-ultra-orthodox platform—Netanyahu must have interpreted it as a menace to his traditional allies, with whom he threatened to form a coalition if the deal with Lapid fell through.
Netanyahu comes to the coalition with a baggage, Neftali Bennett's orthodox Jewish Home movement, which won 12 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Bennett's objective, not surprisingly, was the ministry of education, but it's not going to be.
Avigdor Lieberman's Beitenu will be part of the coalition, but without Lieberman who faces trial on charges of fraud and breach of trust.
There was pressure an Netanyahu to arrive at a deal before the March 20 visit to Israel by Barack Obama.
March 12, 2013
Investigation by the Guardian newspaper revealed James Steele, a top adviser to U.S. general David Petraeus while he was the commander of coalition forces during the Iraq War, to have trained paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, and alleged that both men knowingly allowed prisoners to be tortured in Iraq. “While this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele in the room,” said an American reporter, “there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting: ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’ But it wasn’t religious ecstasy.
This delight and more in this week's Review from Harper's
March 8, 2013
The biggest effect has been abroad. The Chávez revolution has engendered a sea change across Latin America, bringing in progressive governments from Nicaragua to Argentina. There too, natural riches begin to benefit local populace rather than a rapacious foreign conglomerate. Henry Kissinger is having oesophageal reflux.
But not all has been well in the kingdom of Bolívar. Reports from the oil field speak of poor husbandry of the petroleum sector, of rusty pipelines, creaky refineries, reckless rates of extraction. While the Comandante had the cojones to launch the revolution, he didn't seem to have the acumen, or, indeed, the time to look after the treasure. His followers must tighten this loose nut on the wellhead, while maintaining the gas supply to the revolutionary flame.
Some had reproached el jefe for seeking medical help in Cuba. He's dead, so we won't know if he was right or not. What we know is that, unlike many other things there, Cuban medicine is good, and that Cuban doctors and medications are helping the sick in many distressed places in the world, where few others would venture to go. Seeing this was pleasing to his eye. It may have also been true that he was reluctant to seek local help, suspecting that many doctors in Caracas may have been eager to help him out. Dr Guevara, thanks to Uncle Sam, was no longer there to offer alternative medicine.
All taken together, Hugo Chávez was a worthy successor of Simón Bolívar, his hero, and should be remembered as such. ¡Saludos Comandante!
Further reading...
February 28, 2013
So what's the big deal? The big deal is that Grillo doesn't fit and his base consists of ordinary people who, to use a colorful Italian expression, hanno le palle piene (have the balls full, ie, enough) to see the same five teste di cazzo parading every night on telegiornale. This base is spoiling for political action, and Grillo has a nasty habit of calling a spade a spade. More...
Your Land is Our Land*
Nakba at 65
Casino Royal
Froth and Bubbles 3
Kings and Queens
Prince Regent II
Ambition
Florentine Valls
Photo: AFP/Thomas SamsonTragicomic Relief
Debit Suisse
A Bloody Nuisance, I Say
Haymarket
May Day
Debit Suisse
A Schnitzel too Far
On a Carbon Wing, Lithium Battery, and a Prayer
Back in the Air
Muggie Woz Hear
Waves Rule Britannia
Saturday's Le Monde casts light on the economic predicament of the UK, which we summarize, with some comments, here.
Now the question is, have the austerity measure put in effect three years ago strangled the economy? For the opposition it's self-evident. Less predictable voices lean the same way; half of the economists who in 2010 signed a letter calling for tightening of the belt recanted. The IMF is calling for a relaxation of the austerity regime. The argument is simple, growth remains invisible and the deficit hasn't diminished. National debt will reach 100% of the GDP in two years. Ironically, London, unlike the eurozone, is subject to no external pressure with regard to the austerity measures. The wounds are self-inflicted.
To Boldly Not Go
Ill Wind
Debit Suisse
Data Housing
Marco Polo
A Strong Boat from China
Martian Chronicle
Walkie but not Talkie
Kinder Gentler Politics
Girl Talk
Tragicomic Relief
Dismal Science
Spreadshit
A bungled spreadsheet calculation has led to a wrong conclusion in an oft-quoted paper by two Harvard economists, and given fuel to austerity zealots everywhere. The message of the paper was sweet music to a political mind naturally predisposed to punitive measures. The likes of Angela Merkel and Paul Ryan sprung into action. Misery beaconed to the masses already afflicted by the depression. Never mind, tough love was what the doctor ordered, tough love was what was coming. The slight problem was that the paper's conclusions were badly off. Two articles on the subject, one from The Economist, the other from BBC News.
Long Time Ago and Far Far Away
Planck Meets the LHC
This is how it all looked at the beginning. Image: ESA/Planck Collaboration
Banco Fiasco
Nick's Back
Sir Francis, does the name Leeson tell you anything? Image: Wikipedia
Banco Fiasco
JPMorgan, no longer chased?
What a difference a fortnight makes. Photo: AFP/Timothy A. Clary
Lucullus
Make it a double-dequeur
Chevalier Sans Foy
Habemus Wrong Papam
Jorge Bergoglio's position as pope is becoming untenable.
Daily Detox
In Vino Veritas
Chevalier Sans Foy
Pope of the Poor
Debit Suisse
Fabius in Deep Fondue?
Banco Fiasco
Curious at the Bundesbank
Debit Suisse
Yellow Bird Up High in Banana Tree
Banco Fiasco
A Hole in One, cont'd.
Bush
The Spy who Was Right
A decade ago, as Bush was loading his gun in preparation for the mugging of Iraq, John le Carré sent a letter to The Times, in which he described with remarkable precision the circumstances, the foul motives, and the consequences of this undertaking. We reproduce the letter here.
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.Chevalier Sans Foy
God Told Him
Friendship, my son. Photo: Franco Origlia/Getty ImagesChevalier Sans Foy
The Most Darwinian Daniel Dennett
A potshot at God from a Tufts prof. DD hopes his flack jacket is up to the modern, Jesus-approved, armour-piercing ammunition.
Banco Fiasco
JPMorgan, chased
Smoke and mirrors. Photo: AFP/Timothy A. Clary
Mishka und Grishka
The Life and Times of Boris Abramovich Berezovsky
While the Scotland Yard are trying to figure out how he managed to hang himself, and then proceed to lay down on the floor, Peter Pomerantsev offers this account of some of Berezovsky's antics.
Photo: AFP/Carl Court
Pretty Good Privacy
Help is on the Way
If your browser is Firefox, Chrome, or Opera, or your phone is of an Android type, you can separate yourself from advertising by downloading AdBlock Plus. The Editor attests to its efficacy.
Winston, You Can Stay Where You Are, I Can See You Anyway
The Spy in Your Eye
Google Glass. Veni, vidi, recordi. Photo: Antonio Zugaldia/flickrIn Today's Le Monde
Winston, You Haven't Googled Lately
Privacy my Foot
Winston, You Can Stay Where You Are, I Can See You Anyway
The Spy in Your Pocket
Tin Hat
UK Chief Scientist Takes Potshot at Homeopathy
See this from BBC News.Winston, You Haven't Googled Lately
Pssst...want some info?
Acxiom: Scott's got the goods, Jenny the privacy.Bush
Trouble à boul' Mich'
If you are old enough, you may remember the 1968 confrontation between Sorbonne students and the police on the Place Saint-Michel in Paris, which had launched the '68 Movement. In that tradition, this Saturday, there will be a manifestation on the Place Saint-Michel in support of Bradley Manning.Winston, You Haven't Googled Lately
Skype's The Limit
Today's Le Monde says the big telecoms are peeved at Skype for robbing them of what's duly theirs, and have adopted an aggressive posture. This ranges from dragging Skype into courts, to doing the same, or both.Winston, You Can Stay Where You Are, I Can See You Anyway
The Lives of Others
NSA: The eyes, the ears, and the antenae of the state Photo: WikipediaOrwell
GAFA
Friend-and-Ally
Yes, He Could
The same subject, if somewhat less cropped, in yesterday's Le Monde
Tragicomic Relief
Banco Fiasco
A Hole in One
Illustration
Sieg Heil!
The Conservatives
A 180
They hate fags, queers, homos, and oppose same sex marriage because it is ordained by God that marriage is between one man and one woman. That is, until one such Republican politician discovered that the fruit of his loins, his pride and joy, his little Johnny, likes boys. Oh my God, he's gay!
According to Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), "The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue. I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married."
So, this kinder, gentler GOP is fully capable of empathy, but only when misfortune penetrates the bubble they live in. Rob Portman does a 180 on gay issues now that he has a gay son. What would Paul Ryan's austerity budget look like if one morning he woke up and discovered his children were poor and sick?
Chevalier Sans Foy
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Galileo before the Holy Office: "Now, if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about."
Musée du Luxembourg
Bibi Watch
Netanyahu Scrapes By to Form New Government
Avoiding a sequestration of sorts, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud announced a last-minute deal with Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party to form a new government. Bizarrely, the bone of contention was who would run the ministry of education. In the end it was Netanyahu who blinked first, further showing his weakness in the wake of the last elections.
Photo credit: Reuters/Pool
Tragicomic Relief
Editorial
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez
"To those who wish me death", said once Hugo Chávez, "I say, may you live a long life, so you can see with your own eye the fruit of our revolution!" To some, the revolution has already delivered; the illiterate are reading, the sick in the jungle and the barrio get medical help. Given the immense oil riches of Venezuela, and world's insatiable thirst for it, there is no reason the lot of the little people shouldn't but continue to improve. Viewed form the outside, the lot of the rich is satisfactory, and they know how to keep it that way. Viewed from the inside, it is no good, for how can it be good unless you own everything? The revolution may have put a crimp on the progress in that direction, hence the winter of discontent. Equally, the revolution hasn't delivered anything to Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco, with slim hopes of it happening in the future, hence the wrath of Fox News and Pat Robertson.
Editorial
The Meaning of Beppe Grillo
The Italian oligarchs and their shills in the media have got their knickers in a twist: Beppe Grillo's Movimento Cinque Stelle, the Five Star Movement, emerged winner from last weekend's parliamentary elections, and will be the biggest individual party in the Italian parliament. The others are nervously building coalitions. Given that Grillo has rejected the idea of forming one, simple arithmetic shows Five Star will have no shot at governing.
