Thanks for putting up this valu­able info, Dave.........also, thanks to Grum­pus­Rex and Ter­rafractyl for their fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions. =)

Here’s an even more depress­ing take on the sit­u­a­tion in Greece...that mak­ing LAOS part of the gov­ern­ment has actu­al­ly weak­ened its pop­u­lar sup­port:

...
One los­er from the process has been LAOS, the far-Right par­ty — a split off from New Democ­ra­cy, which then attract­ed sev­er­al fas­cists from the “Gold­en Dawn” move­ment, want­i­ng to go main­stream. LAOS’s entry into gov­ern­ment, in pur­suit of respectabil­i­ty, appears to have cut it off from sup­port that polls sug­gest­ed it could have gained, as an anti-sys­temic par­ty. One left­ist said to me that LAOS’s entry to the inter­im gov­ern­ment was “an enor­mous relief — they lost their chance to become a Le Pen style par­ty”.
...

Aaaar­rgh, the stu­pid­i­ty...it hurts!:

Harsh real­i­ty on the streets of Athens

By , For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent online assign­ment

Updat­ed Novem­ber 09, 2011 16:49:52

With Greece in tur­moil, world atten­tion has focused on a nation wracked by strikes and aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures.

Vio­lent march­es on Par­lia­ment have become rou­tine.

On assign­ment for For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent ear­li­er this year, I watched as pub­lic ser­vants joined ranks with anar­chists and railed against declin­ing liv­ing stan­dards, gov­ern­ment cuts and the harsh demands dic­tat­ed by Greece’s de fac­to mas­ters — the politi­cians and bankers of the Euro­pean Union.

But once the rage was spent, the bro­ken glass swept away and shops re-opened, many of the faces in the street clear­ly weren’t of Greek ori­gin.

Athens has under­gone rad­i­cal demo­graph­ic change in recent years.

In the Pla­ka, under the shad­ow of the Acrop­o­lis, tourists were mobbed by hordes of Nige­ri­ans sell­ing fake design­er hand­bags, while Pak­ista­nis and Afghans flogged pirat­ed DVDs on the pave­ments of the down­town com­mer­cial dis­trict.

There was an air of ten­sion that did­n’t exist a few years ago when times were good. Greeks blamed undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants for a sharp rise in vio­lent crime. With unem­ploy­ment run­ning at 16.5 per cent, migrants were accused of tak­ing Greek jobs and were tar­get­ed in sav­age attacks by neo-Nazis of the ‘Gold­en Dawn’ move­ment.

...

So the Greeks need­ed to include a bunch of neo-nazi “Gold­en Dawn” bud­dies in order to keep them from gain­ing more pow­er. It’s like a Catch-22 fused with a Pyrric vic­to­ry.

I think “Gold­en Dawn” & Friends boost­ers maybe be a lit­tle con­fused. The thugs they’re sup­port­ing are actu­al­ly called “The Gold­man Dawn” and they are very thank­ful for the sup­port.

I won­der how these new gov­ern­ment part­ners are being received by the local media:

Per­son­al inter­ests ahead of nation­al good

By Pan­telis Boukalas

No one has the right any­more to claim that PASOK betrayed its found­ing char­ter or that it broke its fun­da­men­tal promis­es. Sure, it took some time, but the Pan­hel­lenic Social­ist Movement’s fore­most pledge made when it first came to pow­er in 1981 has final­ly mate­ri­al­ized. “PASOK in gov­ern­ment, the peo­ple [‘laos,’ in Greek] in pow­er,” the party’s late founder Andreas Papan­dreou promised at the time. And here we are, 30 years lat­er, thanks to Andreas’s son, George Papan­dreou. Well, almost. You see, the new slo­gan is “PASOK in gov­ern­ment, LAOS in pow­er.”

Don’t under­es­ti­mate the threat. Strange­ly, most media have pre­sent­ed the involve­ment of the ultra­na­tion­al­ist LAOS par­ty in the tran­si­tion admin­is­tra­tion not only as nat­ur­al and pain­less but also as con­struc­tive and pro­duc­tive.

It almost feels like LAOS is a group of col­or­ful politi­cians with a soft spot for smart sound bites who spend most of their time parad­ing through Greece’s tele­vi­sion stu­dios — instead of what it real­ly is: a polit­i­cal par­ty that accom­mo­dates the worst kind of nation­al­ists, apol­o­gists of Greece’s mil­i­tary jun­ta (as well as late Greek dic­ta­tor Ioan­nis Metaxas), immi­grant bash­ers, anti-Semi­tes, for­mer mem­bers of the nation­al­ist Chrysi Avgi (Gold­en Dawn) orga­ni­za­tion, and big­ot­ed preach­ers of the notion that build­ing a mosque in Athens — with or with­out a minaret — would sig­nal an attack on the Hel­lenic nation.
....

I think we’re in need of a new term for jour­nal­ists that kiss fas­cists ass because I’m not sure “syco­phant” cap­tures it. This could work.

When Democ­ra­cy fails try, try again:

...
LAOS par­ty leader, Gior­gos Karatze­feris (whose pop­u­lar nick­name among Greeks is KaratzaFührer) once said in an inter­view to Eth­nos news­pa­per (26/10/10) in an attempt to jus­ti­fy why Voridis wasn’t the party’s can­di­date for the Athens region­al gov­er­nor in the 2010 local elec­tions:

Gioro­gos Karatzaferis: I was sim­ply afraid that Voridis has a his­to­ry which I have man­aged to cov­er after con­sid­er­able effort…
Chris­tos Machairas (jour­nal­ist): What exact­ly do you mean by “his­to­ry”?
Gior­gos Karatzaferis: About his rela­tion with Jean Marie Le Pen, the axes and all the rest. I am just think­ing that sud­den­ly, on the 30th of Octo­ber (i.e. a bit before the local elec­tions) some guy from New Democ­ra­cy or from Tsipras’ team (i.e. SYRIZA left­ist par­ty) can throw a video on the air and drag me explain­ing about all these things.

Makis Voridis is now the new Min­is­ter of Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Net­works.
...

It is so sad what is hap­pen­ing to Greece. And it is even more sad for Israel, as it is now com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by anti-semi­tes with all those regime changes in the region.

For those who would like to watch a good doc­u­men­tary on Oper­a­tion Glad­io which Dave ref­ered to, here is a post by Pub­li­cRecord web­site. The inter­views are great as they fea­ture peo­ple who are in a posi­tion to talk about it from the inside. Don’t miss it. Orig­i­nal Ital­ian with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles.

http://pubrecord.org/commentary/7333/gladio-conspiracy-demands-attention/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gladio-conspiracy-demands-attention

Here’s a Krug­man piece on the US’s psy­cho­phants. It’s just one the par­al­lels between the US “Super Com­mit­tee” and the new Greek gov­ern­ment:

...
So the super­com­mit­tee brought togeth­er leg­is­la­tors who dis­agree com­plete­ly both about how the world works and about the prop­er role of gov­ern­ment. Why did any­one think this would work?

Well, maybe the idea was that the par­ties would com­pro­mise out of fear that there would be a polit­i­cal price for seem­ing intran­si­gent. But this could only hap­pen if the news media were will­ing to point out who is real­ly refus­ing to com­pro­mise. And they aren’t. If and when the super­com­mit­tee fails, vir­tu­al­ly all news reports will be he-said, she-said, quot­ing Democ­rats who blame Repub­li­cans and vice ver­sa with­out ever explain­ing the truth.

Oh, and let me give a spe­cial shout-out to “cen­trist” pun­dits who won’t admit that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has already giv­en them what they want. The dia­logue seems to go like this. Pun­dit: “Why won’t the pres­i­dent come out for a mix of spend­ing cuts and tax hikes?” Mr. Oba­ma: “I sup­port a mix of spend­ing cuts and tax hikes.” Pun­dit: “Why won’t the pres­i­dent come out for a mix of spend­ing cuts and tax hikes?”

You see, admit­ting that one side is will­ing to make con­ces­sions, while the oth­er isn’t, would tar­nish one’s cen­trist cre­den­tials. And the result is that the G.O.P. pays no price for refus­ing to give an inch.

...

Well, I don’t know if the GOP is refus­ing to give an inch here and there:

...
At the very end of the debt lim­it fight, Repub­li­cans crowed that the Super Committee’s inher­ent design would make it dif­fi­cult for the panel’s Democ­rats to insist on tax increas­es. Because of how the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office typ­i­cal­ly scores leg­is­la­tion, they argued, any attempt to raise mar­gin­al tax rates from their cur­rent Bush-era lev­els would actu­al­ly score as a big tax cut and thus a bud­get buster — a fact that would make it dif­fi­cult for the Com­mit­tee to hit its $1.2 tril­lion tar­get.

The CBO defaults to what’s known as a “cur­rent law base­line.” It weighs how pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would impact the bud­get com­pared to what would hap­pen if Con­gress does noth­ing. Well, if Con­gress does noth­ing, all the Bush tax cuts will expire auto­mat­i­cal­ly at the end of 2012, large­ly elim­i­nat­ing the country’s medi­um-term deficits. As a result, Democ­rats on the Super Com­mit­tee have been unable (and per­haps unwill­ing) to insist that the Bush tax cuts for top earn­ers expire — if the rest of those tax cuts become per­ma­nent, it scores as a huge tax cut.

For that very rea­son Repub­li­cans insist­ed to reporters that they’d hold the Super Com­mit­tee to the cur­rent law base­line. I know. I was one of those reporters.

Fast for­ward three and a half months, Repub­li­cans now want to use the Super Com­mit­tee report as a vehi­cle for mak­ing all the Bush tax cuts per­ma­nent. But com­pared to cur­rent law, that scores as an even big­ger tax cut — it drops tril­lions of dol­lars in pro­ject­ed rev­enue off a cliff.

So to make the math work out, they want to revert to what’s known as a “cur­rent pol­i­cy base­line.” Since the Bush tax cuts are in effect right now (i.e. they’re “cur­rent pol­i­cy”), extend­ing them for­ev­er is bud­get neu­tral com­pared to that base­line. The only dif­fer­ence, as far as deficits are con­cerned, is about $4 tril­lion over the next decade. But what’s $4 tril­lion between friends?
...

$4 tril­lion in extra cuts? This sounds like a job for “The Ham­mer!”. Oh wait, he’s busy.

Caveat: i don’t agree with all the opin­ions in this edi­to­r­i­al, but it’s note­wor­thy to see the obvi­ous being stat­ed regard­ing the ascen­dant far right here, despite some “iffy” con­clu­sions.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/economics/the-extreme-right-benefits-most-from-euro-zone-failure

The extreme right ben­e­fits most from euro-zone fail­ure
Dani Rodrik

Nov 16, 2011

As if the eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions of a full-blown Greek default were not ter­ri­fy­ing enough, the polit­i­cal con­se­quences could be far worse.

A chaot­ic euro-zone break-up would cause irrepara­ble dam­age to the Euro­pean inte­gra­tion project, the cen­tral pil­lar of Europe’s polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty since the Sec­ond World War. It would desta­bilise not only the high­ly indebt­ed Euro­pean periph­ery, but also core coun­tries such as France and Ger­many, the archi­tects of that project.

The night­mare sce­nario would also be a 1930s-style vic­to­ry for polit­i­cal extrem­ism. Fas­cism, Nazism and com­mu­nism were chil­dren of a back­lash against glob­al­i­sa­tion that had been build­ing since the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, feed­ing on the anx­i­eties of groups that felt dis­en­fran­chised and threat­ened by expand­ing mar­ket forces and cos­mopoli­tan elites.

Free trade and the gold stan­dard had required down­play­ing domes­tic pri­or­i­ties such as social reform, nation build­ing and cul­tur­al reasser­tion. Eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the fail­ure of inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion under­mined not only glob­al­i­sa­tion, but also the elites who upheld the exist­ing order.

As my Har­vard col­league Jeff Frieden has writ­ten, this paved the path for two dis­tinct forms of extrem­ism. Faced with the choice between equi­ty and eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion, com­mu­nists chose rad­i­cal social reform and eco­nom­ic self-suf­fi­cien­cy. Faced with the choice between nation­al asser­tion and glob­al­ism, fas­cists, Nazis and nation­al­ists chose nation build­ing.

( ... )

The result is that mount­ing con­cerns about the ero­sion of eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty, social sta­bil­i­ty and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty could not be han­dled through main­stream polit­i­cal chan­nels. Nation­al polit­i­cal struc­tures became too con­strained to offer effec­tive reme­dies, while Euro­pean insti­tu­tions still remain too weak to com­mand alle­giance.

It is the extreme right that has ben­e­fit­ed most from the cen­trists’ fail­ure. In Fin­land, the hereto­fore unknown True Finns par­ty cap­i­talised on the resent­ment around euro-zone bailouts to fin­ish a close third in April’s gen­er­al elec­tion. In the Nether­lands, Geert Wilder­s’s Par­ty for Free­dom wields enough pow­er to play king­mak­er; with­out its sup­port, the minor­i­ty lib­er­al gov­ern­ment would col­lapse. In France, the Nation­al Front, which fin­ished sec­ond in the 2002 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, has been revi­talised under Marine Le Pen.

Nor is the back­lash con­fined to euro-zone mem­bers. The Swe­den Democ­rats, a par­ty with neo-Nazi roots, entered par­lia­ment last year with near­ly 6 per cent of the pop­u­lar vote. In Britain, one recent poll indi­cat­ed that as many as two thirds of Con­ser­v­a­tives want Britain to leave the EU.

Polit­i­cal move­ments of the extreme right have tra­di­tion­al­ly fed on anti-immi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment. But the Greek, Irish, Por­tuguese and oth­er bailouts, togeth­er with the euro’s trou­bles, have giv­en them fresh ammu­ni­tion. Their Euro-scep­ti­cism cer­tain­ly appears to be vin­di­cat­ed by events. When Ms Le Pen was recent­ly asked whether she would with­draw from the euro, she replied: “When I am pres­i­dent, in a few months’ time, the euro zone prob­a­bly won’t exist.”

Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, the best of the bad options is to ensure that the inevitable defaults and depar­tures from the euro zone are car­ried out in as order­ly and coor­di­nat­ed a fash­ion as pos­si­ble. Polit­i­cal­ly, too, a sim­i­lar real­i­ty check is need­ed. What the cur­rent cri­sis demands is an explic­it reori­en­ta­tion away from exter­nal finan­cial oblig­a­tions and aus­ter­i­ty to domes­tic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions and aspi­ra­tions. Just as healthy domes­tic economies are the best guar­an­tor of an open world econ­o­my, healthy domes­tic poli­ties are the best guar­an­tor of a sta­ble inter­na­tion­al order.

The chal­lenge is to devel­op a new polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive empha­sis­ing nation­al inter­ests and val­ues with­out over­tones of nativism and xeno­pho­bia. If cen­trist elites do not prove them­selves up to the task, those of the far right will glad­ly fill the vac­u­um, minus the mod­er­a­tion.

That is why George Papan­dreou, who has just stepped down as Greek prime min­is­ter, had the right idea with his abortive call for a ref­er­en­dum. That move was a belat­ed attempt to recog­nise the pri­ma­cy of domes­tic pol­i­tics, even if investors viewed it, in the words of a Finan­cial Times edi­tor, as “play­ing with fire”. Scrap­ping the ref­er­en­dum sim­ply post­pones the day of reck­on­ing and rais­es the ulti­mate costs to be paid by Greece’s new lead­er­ship.

Today, the ques­tion is no longer whether pol­i­tics will become more pop­ulist and less inter­na­tion­al­ist but whether the con­se­quences of that shift can be man­aged with­out things turn­ing ugly. In Europe’s pol­i­tics, as in its eco­nom­ics, there are no good options — only less bad ones.

Dani Rodrik, a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal econ­o­my at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, is the author of The Glob­al­iza­tion Para­dox: Democ­ra­cy and the Future of the World Econ­o­my.

I wish I could bring a ham­mer down on this Makis son of a bitch.

@R. Wil­son: Yeah, it looks like we’re already see­ing the right-wing make the pre­dictable elec­toral gains.

The sad les­son of the day seems to be “When it rains pain, stu­pid­i­ty gains”:

The peo­ple of the Peo­ple’s Par­ty
The like­ly next Span­ish prime min­is­ter is a man of some mys­tery

Jun 16th 2011 | MADRID

SPAIN will soon be a coun­try for old men. Most new prime min­is­ters are in their ear­ly 40s. But the next one will be a grey-beard­ed vet­er­an. The choice will be between Alfre­do Pérez Rubal­ca­ba, the Social­ist deputy prime min­is­ter, who must lead his par­ty into a tough gen­er­al elec­tion due by next March, and Mar­i­ano Rajoy of the con­ser­v­a­tive People’s Par­ty (PP). ...

...

Mr Rajoy has played watch and wait, being care­ful not to fright­en vot­ers with dra­mat­ic, dras­tic pro­pos­als. He has shed the “nasty par­ty” bag­gage that dam­aged the PP in 2008. He has aban­doned overblown claims that Mr Zap­a­tero is tear­ing Spain apart by giv­ing more auton­o­my to its regions or destroy­ing the fam­i­ly. PP hints that the region of Castil­la-La Man­cha is bust or that Spain’s health sys­tem will not sur­vive the year also look alarmist. Mr Rajoy also rarely men­tions ter­ror­ism prac­tised by the Basque sep­a­ratist group ETA. Yet many in the par­ty, espe­cial­ly on the right, wish he were more forth­right and dynam­ic. Oth­ers offer the faint praise that he will be a bet­ter prime min­is­ter than oppo­si­tion leader. Some blame Britain’s David Cameron, a fel­low con­ser­v­a­tive: Mr Cameron scared vot­ers by being too open about aus­ter­i­ty, they say, and failed to win an absolute major­i­ty.

All this leads to frus­tra­tion about the PP’s plans. “I don’t think any­one real­ly knows what he will do beyond bal­anc­ing the bud­get, and that doesn’t help calm mar­kets,” says Jesús Fer­nán­dez-Villaverde, an econ­o­mist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. “The degree of courage will depend on the size of the par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty,” says Loren­zo Bernal­do de Quirós, of Freemar­ket Inter­na­tion­al Con­sult­ing. That the PP now runs many regions may not help, as some vot­ers may start to see it as an incum­bent rather than an oppo­si­tion.

Mr Rajoy is famed for a trait of his native Gali­cia: leav­ing peo­ple guess­ing about his real inten­tions. But he is also tena­cious. Plots to dethrone him as leader have come to noth­ing. In a par­ty that cov­ers the spec­trum of the Span­ish right, some­body will always gripe. He and his eco­nom­ic team deny they are hid­ing their plans, point­ing to numer­ous par­lia­men­tary motions.

A Rajoy gov­ern­ment will try to repeat the trick of the first PP gov­ern­ment of José María Aznar after 1996. It met its deficit tar­gets, cut tax­es and enjoyed strong growth. Mr Rajoy will quick­ly pass an aus­ter­i­ty pack­age and cut cor­po­rate tax. He will push through more labour reform, with or with­out union con­sent. And he will hack at busi­ness-suf­fo­cat­ing red tape. But this is not 1996. Spain has few­er pub­lic com­pa­nies to pri­va­tise and can­not count so much on Euro­pean Union mon­ey. How the Aznar mod­el can apply now will depend large­ly on Mr Rajoy’s first finance min­is­ter. And who will that be? Like so much sur­round­ing Mr Rajoy, it remains a mys­tery.

This les­son in pain-induced stu­pid­i­ty brought to you today from Spain:

Spain elec­tion: Peo­ple’s par­ty sweeps to crush­ing vic­to­ry over Social­ists

Mar­i­ano Rajoy gains absolute major­i­ty with 16 per­cent­age point win over José Luis Rodríguez Zap­a­tero’s Social­ists
Giles Trem­lett in Madrid
guardian.co.uk, Sun­day 20 Novem­ber 2011 18.40 EST

The con­ser­v­a­tive Peo­ple’s par­ty (PP) of Mar­i­ano Rajoy has swept to a land­slide vic­to­ry in Spain’s gen­er­al elec­tion, inher­it­ing sky-high unem­ploy­ment and one of the shaki­est economies in Europe.

Rajoy’s PP gained an absolute par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty with a crush­ing 16 per­cent­age point win over the Social­ists of out­go­ing prime min­is­ter José Luis Rodríguez Zap­a­tero.

The Social­ists lost a third of their seats as vot­ers dumped a gov­ern­ment that presided over a dra­mat­ic eco­nom­ic slump which has left 23% of Spaniards out of work.

With the PP win­ning 186 of the 350 seats in par­lia­ment, 56-year-old Rajoy was giv­en a free hand to car­ry out sweep­ing reforms and impose fur­ther aus­ter­i­ty in an attempt to turn the coun­try around.

“It is no secret to any­one that we are going to rule in the most del­i­cate cir­cum­stances Spain has faced in 30 years,” he said. He plead­ed for time. “There will be no mir­a­cles,” he said. “We haven’t promised any.”

...

They can expect an imme­di­ate dose of added aus­ter­i­ty, with experts say­ing Rajoy must find at least €18bn (£15.4bn) through cuts or tax ris­es next year. “This could calm the mar­kets, but until the new gov­ern­ment does what it says it’s going to do, noth­ing will change,” said Angel Labor­da, chief econ­o­mist at the Span­ish sav­ings banks’ think­tank, Fun­cas.

...

Zap­a­tero has also extend­ed the retire­ment age and changed the con­sti­tu­tion to allow for a long-term deficit lim­it to be set on the bud­get. Rajoy has said one of his first mea­sures will be to set that lim­it.

Rajoy’s promis­es of major reforms, more aus­ter­i­ty and strict deficit con­trol are in tune with mar­ket demands and with those of Ger­many’s Angela Merkel, the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank and the Euro­pean com­mis­sion.

...

Zap­a­tero has also extend­ed the retire­ment age and changed the con­sti­tu­tion to allow for a long-term deficit lim­it to be set on the bud­get. Rajoy has said one of his first mea­sures will be to set that lim­it.

Wait, so part of their new reforms will involve set­ting con­sti­tu­tion­al bud­get lim­its. Yeah, I’m sure that will turn out well.

Con­tin­u­ing...

...

PP shad­ow finance min­is­ter Cristóbal Mon­toro has said the new gov­ern­ment will act hard and fast, intro­duc­ing reforms imme­di­ate­ly. Rajoy must now name his future finance min­is­ter. He has said in the past that he is hap­py to choose some­one from out­side the par­ty, so may end up nam­ing a mar­ket-friend­ly tech­no­crat.

Fur­ther spend­ing cuts on top of those already imposed by Zap­a­tero risk tip­ping the coun­try into reces­sion. They may also be ener­get­i­cal­ly opposed by the peace­ful “indig­na­do” move­ment that took over city squares ear­li­er this year.

“From a mar­ket stand­point, an absolute major­i­ty for the PP is just what the doc­tor ordered,” Nicholas Spiro, of Sov­er­eign Strat­e­gy told Reuters in Lon­don. “The risk, how­ev­er, is that more retrench­ment push­es the econ­o­my back into reces­sion.”

....

So the “free-mar­ket” friend­ly approach is to appoint “tech­nocrats” to lead the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. Except the mar­ket is also con­cerned that their planned aus­ter­i­ty will under­mine the econ­o­my (which is what pret­ty much always hap­pens).

I nev­er real­ize the term “free-mar­ket” includ­ed real­i­ty-free mar­kets. Buy­er beware.

Dear Mr. Thall;

Per­haps this will help, at least as a start­ing point.

Fol­low the links.

https://spitfirelist.com/news/democracy-muslim-brotherhood-style/

Use the “search” func­tion.

@Nelson: Hamas may not be any­where near a major pow­er, that is true, how­ev­er, though, they DO exhib­it some very fascis­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, e.g. the scape­goat­ing of the Jew­ish peo­ple for all the world’s ills, etc. As seen here, Dave has kind­ly pro­vid­ed one of his MANY qual­i­ty pieces of research on these anti-Semit­ic pieces of garbage and their ilk.

Cap­i­tal­ism, in cri­sis, inevitable turns to Fas­cist enforcers to pound down resis­tance.

Ahoy, Nel­son!
As far as Hezbol­lah goes, try this for open­ers:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2057561_2252658,00.html

What do you think these lit­tle charm­ers are doing?

Audi­tion­ing for an anti-per­spi­rant com­mer­cial?

After that, use the web­site and look up the “devo­tees of islam”,
Shi­ia off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that men­tored Khome­i­ni, et al.

Also look up “fran­cois genoud” and his links to Islamist forces.

I think one of the stum­bling blocks appears to be equat­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry with fas­cist real­iza­tion.

This is fal­la­cious, in my opin­ion.

A Nazi, Ital­ian black­shirt, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood street goon or any oth­er form of fas­cist is the same ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, regard­less of the qual­i­ty of his (or her) weapon­ry or fund­ing.

Makis “The Ham­mer” did­n’t have much in the way of weapon­ry when he earned his nick­name, and look where he end­ed up.

Indeed, fasism rep­re­sents itself to the dis­en­fran­chised as a path to redress of social griev­ance.

In addi­tion to the con­cept of the
Cor­po­rate State, as artic­u­lat­ed by Mus­soli­ni, one might think of fas­cism as “cap­i­tal­izm on full-auto.”

I think a greater under­stand­ing of the Islamist com­po­nent of the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al may derive from exam­i­na­tion of FTR #498/499.

@Dave: So true. Why, here in the Unit­ed States, we have our own brand of fascists(and oth­er sus­pi­cious fig­ures) try­ing to appeal to the poor and disenfranchised....I believe one of them is called the ‘Tea Party’?(how iron­ic, right?) And let’s not for­get the nut­ty Ron Paul, the Huey Long of the 21st cen­tu­ry. =)

(The good thing here, though, is that many peo­ple here in Amer­i­ca have begun to wake up to the com­ings and goings of the Teabag­gers & their boss­es + bene­fac­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly the shady-as-all-hell Koch Bros. Let’s hope the peo­ple of Greece can do the same.)

I think “Mr. Thall” is try­ing to troll Dave.

(1) I don’t believe that Mr. Thall works for the CIA — such a per­son would­n’t drop that fact into the con­ver­sa­tion. Think about it. Think about why that fact was dropped into the con­ver­sa­tion, and what would jus­ti­fy it.

(2) Clas­sic troll tech­niques include wild mis­di­rec­tion about Hamas — which is not the top­ic Mr. Thall came here to dis­cuss. The top­ic that Mr. Thall came here to dis­sem­i­nate dis­in­for­ma­tion about is that old Neo­con favorite, Iran.

(3) Would an alleged CIA employ­ee assert such a brazen­ly “con­fused” def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes fas­cism? On so many lev­els?

(4) Would some­one who “val­ues Dav­e’s opin­ion” not already know the links that Dave felt oblig­ed to post, or already know the basic back­ground facts that are a sta­ple for For The Record lis­ten­ers? I smell a fake, and a care­less Rov­ian one at that.

Nice touch with “The Marx­ists” ... so Neo­con.

You know your radio efforts are hit­ting sig­nif­i­cant chords when you start get­ting trolls with such sophis­ti­cat­ed creepi­ness that they smell like Michael Ledeen.

@R. Wil­son: Per­haps so. How­ev­er, though, I must admit Mr. Thall cred­it for hav­ing been cor­rect on one thing: The gov­ern­ment in Tehran, is indeed fas­cist. Too bad pret­ty much every­thing else he said was bull­shit, though.

And yes, I agree: Dave is REALLY kick­ing ass these days. =)

That con­ver­sa­tion is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly (or not?), it hap­pens that I am a pre­vi­ous lis­ten­er of Mr Thall radio show, “Shock Talk With Bloom and Steele”. In the begin­ning I liked it but, lit­tle by lit­tle, I began to feel unsat­is­fied by it. The same thing hap­pened when I was lis­ten­ing to Alex Jones. No offense Nel­son, if that’s real­ly you. Then I dis­cov­ered Dav­e’s show, iron­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed by you, “Lenny Bloom”, AKA Nel­son Thall on your show...and then I real­ized what it was to inform the pub­lic with FACTS, detailed, pre­cise, with doc­u­men­ta­tion, analy­sis, all things Bloom and Steele can’t do, even if you do your best to put the best show you can. In the end, tal­ent, work and com­pe­tence make the dif­fer­ence and that’s why Dave belongs in a cat­e­go­ry of him­self. There are sev­er­al pro­gres­sive radio hosts but there is only one Dave Emory.

Even if I liked your show, Nel­son, I always though there was some­thing wrong but I could­n’t iden­ti­fy what. I agree with R. Wil­son that an intel­li­gence agent would­n’t blow his own cov­er. It’s one of the basics. It’s like a base­ball play­er who would for­get to bring his bat at the plate. On the oth­er hand, you defin­te­ly do “some­thing” oth­er than just a radio show. I don’t know what it is but there is some­thing.

On the ques­tion of islam, you know that Dave is right but you can’t admit it. If you are relat­ed to the own­er of the Toron­to Star, then you belong to the Left. As the Left can’t accept that Islam may cause prob­lems and encour­age peo­ple to behave like crim­i­nals, it tries to por­tray Hamas and Hezbol­lah like kinder­gar­den mom­mies. And we all know that they are not.

Any­way, I could con­tin­ue but there is no point. It is the qual­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al that you put out that will give cred­i­bil­i­ty to you, not the oth­er way around. I don’t ref­er­ence your show on my blog very often and it will stay like that until you begin being more seri­ous.

Think about it and stop “trolling” Dave with that ridicu­lous fish­ing expe­di­tion. We are all very busy with our lives and research. You should read the Nation­al Post. Maybe it would open your hori­zons.

Sheesh, the Span­ish right-wing just had a his­toric day at the bal­lot box and Spain is still get­ting killed in the bond mar­kets because Spain’s new Prime Min­is­ter did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly give the details on just how exact­ly he’s going to impose aus­ter­i­ty:

No respite for Spain on mar­kets despite elec­tion result

By Paul Day and Sonya Dowsett

MADRID | Tue Nov 22, 2011 8:55am EST

(Reuters) — The elec­tion of a new con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment failed to curb mount­ing mar­ket pres­sure on Spain on Tues­day with Madrid forced to pay the high­est inter­est in 14 years on a sale of gov­ern­ment debt.

The auc­tion of short term paper was seen as the first test of whether Prime Min­is­ter-elect Mar­i­ano Rajoy could reas­sure investors after his cen­ter-right Peo­ple’s Par­ty (PP) won the biggest vic­to­ry for 30 years in Sun­day’s elec­tion. The answer was a resound­ing “no.”

The aver­age yield on a three-month bill more than dou­bled to just over 5 per­cent from almost 2.3 per­cent a month ear­li­er. The inter­est paid on a 6‑month bill also soared to over 5 per­cent from over 3.3 per­cent paid in Octo­ber.

With Spain at the heart of a euro zone cri­sis that is esca­lat­ing by the day, the final aver­age yields on both bills leapt more than 70 basis points even from sec­ondary mar­ket lev­els on Mon­day after­noon.

The dis­mal per­for­mance in the auc­tion piled pres­sure on Rajoy, who does not take pow­er until just before Christ­mas, to give some detail on his aus­ter­i­ty plans — some­thing he refused to do on Mon­day night to the frus­tra­tion of mar­kets.

“Rajoy has to hur­ry with the mea­sures. The mar­ket will not give him much time,” said a senior Span­ish banker, who asked not to be named.

Fitch rat­ings agency said the incom­ing gov­ern­ment must out­line addi­tion­al mea­sures to cut Spain’s deficit.

“It must pos­i­tive­ly sur­prise investors with an ambi­tious and rad­i­cal fis­cal and struc­tur­al reform pro­gram,” it said in a state­ment.

Jo Tomkins, a strate­gist at con­sul­tan­cy 4Cast, said bor­row­ing costs were at “eye-pop­ping lev­els.”

“The lack of relief on the back of Sun­day’s elec­tion speaks vol­umes despite what was a very sol­id major­i­ty win for Rajoy. No doubt about it he will have his work cut out, but a bold if not brazen mes­sage could be what is need­ed to shore up con­fi­dence in Spain,” she said.
...

Rajoy says he will hold his first cab­i­net meet­ing on Decem­ber 23, and has resist­ed pres­sure to at least give some crumbs to ner­vous investors on pre­cise­ly what he intends to do to cut the deficit and restore mar­ket con­fi­dence.

The PP’s man­i­festo was short on detail, as Rajoy sat back and relied on anger over a grind­ing cri­sis that has put one in five Spaniards out of work — the high­est rate in the Euro­pean Union — to rock­et him to over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry.
...

As Krug­man has been say­ing, to some extent what we’re see­ing is neo-Calvin­ism become the only viable solu­tion as the cri­sis takes the form of a larg­er moral­i­ty play. Then again, with folks like “The Ham­mer” in the pic­ture and the mar­kets threat­en­ing nation­al death if lead­ers don’t promise more blood, this is start­ing to look like anoth­er type of sto­ry.

Yes indeed, well said Dave. This becomes espe­cial­ly acute in a polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment lack­ing a cred­i­ble pro­gres­sive alter­na­tive.

In pre-WWII Ger­many the rise of Hitler was aid­ed and abet­ted by the inabil­i­ty of social­ist and pro­gres­sive forces to estab­lish a viable alter­na­tive. Stal­in and his agents worked to con­scious­ly sup­press such a “unit­ed front” with dis­as­trous con­se­quences for Ger­many and the world.

=========

Indeed, fas­cism rep­re­sents itself to the dis­en­fran­chised as a path to redress of social griev­ance.

In addi­tion to the con­cept of the
Cor­po­rate State, as artic­u­lated by Mus­solini, one might think of fas­cism as “cap­i­tal­izm on full-auto.”
===========

@Claude: Just remem­ber that not all of us left­ies are naive.......check out Demo­c­ra­t­ic Under­ground some time. =)

@Stu: Nice­ly put, Stu. =)

The Greek con­nec­tion to UC Davis “Chem­i­cal” Lin­da Kate­hi

Its inter­est­ing how she left Greece after democ­ra­cy was restored. Good tim­ing?

@GrumpusRex: I’ll have to look this up.......

Prob­a­bly noth­ing, but she seems to have more than sur­vived the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois clout scan­dal, mov­ing up and on to her new posi­tion at US Davis.

Before com­ing to UC Davis, Kate­hi served as provost and vice chan­cel­lor for aca­d­e­m­ic affairs at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign. She over­saw the admis­sions office dur­ing much of the time peri­od that came to be inves­ti­gat­ed as part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois clout scan­dal. Kate­hi denied involve­ment, say­ing the “Cat­e­go­ry I” deci­sions were made at high­er admin­is­tra­tive levels.[9]
Her imme­di­ate ‘boss’ was Chan­cel­lor Richard Her­man.
Pres­i­dent Bush appoint­ed Dr. Her­man to the President’s Coun­cil of Advi­sors on Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, serv­ing on sub­com­mit­tees which advised the Pres­i­dent on nan­otech­nol­o­gy, net­work­ing and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and uni­ver­si­ty-pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships. He co-chaired the High Per­for­mance Com­put­ing Ini­ti­tia­tive for the Coun­cil on Com­pet­i­tive­ness as well as serv­ing on the steer­ing com­mit­tee for its Ener­gy, Secu­ri­ty, Inno­va­tion and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive and the Council’s Exec­u­tive Com­mitt­tee.
He has some big oil con­tacts, too.
In addi­tion to abet­ting an increase in the research pro­file of the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­man pro­mot­ed pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships by sup­port­ing the cre­ation of a Research Park and, in par­tic­u­lar, by help­ing to secure a $500 mil­lion grant from BP in part­ner­ship with Berke­ley [3][4][5]. Com­mit­ments to the cre­ation of the Insti­tute for Genom­ic Biol­o­gy and the gar­ner­ing of the Petas­cale Award with IBM from the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion ensured con­tin­ued sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal lead­er­ship for the uni­ver­si­ty [6]

@StevenL: There is sup­posed to be links in that last post. (I haven’t quite fig­ured out all the for­mat­ting con­ven­tions here) Nev­er­the­less, all that info is from Wikipedia. Just first glance stuff.