Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Paul Manning' is associated with 159 posts.

The Great Olive Oil Conspiracy

As one mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment observed, wryly, “Is it April 1st?” The EU (read “Ger­many”) has passed a ban on open con­tain­ers of olive oil that are a com­mon fix­ture of qual­ity restau­rants in Europe. This will almost cer­tainly hurt small pro­duc­ers in Por­tu­gal, Spain, Italy and Greece–four of the afflicted economies of the eurozone.


He’s BAAAAACK! Gerald Posner’s Latest Gig

Like Count Drac­ula, Ger­ald Pos­ner keeps com­ing back. Hav­ing led the media charges to dis­credit War­ren Com­mis­sion crit­ics, crit­ics of the offi­cial ver­sion of Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion and Ladis­las Farago’s research on Mar­tin Bormann’s pres­ence in Latin Amer­ica, Pos­ner is now defend­ing Afghan pres­i­dent Karzai’s brother against cred­i­ble charges that he has been on the CIA’s pay­roll, while par­tic­i­pa­tring sig­nif­i­cantly in the Afghan heroin trade.


The “Uber Bowl”: The San Francisco 49ers and SAP (Kudos to “R. Wilson”)

We’ve noted the links between orga­nized crime and the NFL in the past, high­light­ing the milieu of the San Fran­cisco 49ers. It devel­ops that much of the 49ers recent suc­cess was (allegedly) due to their use of sports soft­ware diag­nos­tics devel­oped by Ger­man soft­ware maker SAP and employed by the team’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Paraag Marathe. One can but won­der if the con­sum­mately cor­rupt world of the NFL will be used to enhance rev­enues for SAP (and who knows who, or what, else?)


Merkel: France is Europe’s “Biggest Problem Child” (Not with a Bang but a Whimper, Part 2)

Pre­vi­ously, we have noted how the euro­zone cri­sis is pre­cip­i­tat­ing a stun­ning, unprece­dented dis­so­lu­tion of national sov­er­eignty. With social­ist Fran­cois Hol­lande hav­ing called for more “stim­u­lus” in response to the continent’s austerity-driven, German-mandated depres­sion, the French leader is in the crosshairs.


Is Germany Using North Korea to Destabilize Asia and the US? (One Heckuva Conspiracy Theory)

TIMELINE–November, 2012: Germany’s for­eign min­is­ter encour­ages the U.S. to embrace both a “Trans-Atlantic” free trade pact and German-dictated “aus­ter­ity.” Jan­u­ary, 2013: Fol­low­ing Obama’s pivot to Asia, Ger­man lawyers and econ­o­mists decamp to North Korea, in the wake of a her­alded “eco­nomic and polit­i­cal open­ing to South Korea and the West.” Early spring, 2013: the Hitler-influenced Asian nation’s leader does just the opposite.


Not with a Bang, but a Whimper . . . .

In Europe, the nation-state is being forced into obso­les­cence, and there is lit­tle dis­cus­sion of this stag­ger­ing devel­op­ment. Angela Merkel has for­mally stated that EU mem­bers must be ready to sur­ren­der sov­er­eignty on fis­cal mat­ters.
Europol, its police force, has suc­cess­fully taken a num­ber of steps that many would see as intru­sive, with lit­tle or no real appli­ca­tion to law enforcement.


Germany’s STERN and Tagesspiegel: Germany Owes Greece Billions of Euros from WWII (Greek Citizenry, Political Parties Agree)

For years, we’ve been cov­er­ing the piv­otal issue of World War II flight cap­i­tal, now on the front burner. Germany’s STERN dis­cusses it. So does Tagesspiegel. 8 of 10 Greeks favor Ger­many pay­ing their WWII debt. So do that country’s polit­i­cal par­ties. Say­ing that the debt has been paid, Ger­many con­tin­ues to dis­sem­ble about the issue.


What Has General Wesley Clark Been Doing since His Retirement?

I.G. Farben’s Fischer-Tropsch process is expe­ri­enc­ing an indus­trial renais­sance. In Kosovo, for­mer NATO com­man­der Gen­eral Wes­ley Clark is chair­man of a com­pany using it to pro­duce syn­thetic fuel from Kosovo’s coal deposits. Coin­ci­den­tally (?) the head of NATO peace­keep­ing forces in Kosovo was the son of Nazi war crmi­nal and Third Reich finance min­istry offi­cial Fritz Reinhardt.


Von Clausewitz and the Politics of Debt: German War Reparations Owed Greece Re-Emerges as “Time Bomb”

Greece’s eco­nomic prob­lems have been exac­er­bated by Germany’s fail­ure to com­pen­sate Greece for dam­age done dur­ing the occu­pa­tion of World War II. Ele­ments within the Greek gov­ern­ment have com­piled a report doc­u­ment­ing the extent of the war com­pen­sa­tion owed Greece. Ger­many itself is the great­est debt trans­gres­sor of all. Its wartime pol­icy is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with its cur­rent political/economic posturing.


Deutsche Bank and the Financial Meltdown

It is impor­tant to under­stand that Ger­man banks are any­thing but blame­less in the Euro­pean finan­cial cri­sis. Deutsche Bank car­ried a large amount of bad debt on its books and lied about it in order to fool investors. In 2007, the Fed­eral Reserve had to help bailout Deutsche Bank. The U.S. sued Deutsche Bank over its manip­u­la­tion of the Amer­i­can mort­gage market.