Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'austerity' is associated with 41 posts.

FTR #825 Generalissimo Francisco Franco May NOT Be So Dead, After All

Fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co passed away decades ago, yet his polit­i­cal lega­cy lives on. Through­out Spain, memo­ri­al­iza­tion of Fran­co and his sol­diers con­tin­ues. The per­pet­u­a­tion of that lega­cy is evi­dent in the polit­i­cal resume of Mar­i­ano Rajoy, the son of a Fran­co judge. Rajoy’s Pop­u­lar Par­ty is a “kindler, gen­tler” edi­tion of Fran­co’s Falange. In addi­tion to jin­go­is­tic saber rat­tling at the British ter­ri­to­ry of Gibral­tar, Rajoy is join­ing with Argenti­na to pres­sure the UK over the Fal­ka­lnd Islands. By danc­ing in tan­dem with Argenti­na, Rajoy is embrac­ing the geo-polit­i­cal lega­cy of Hitler, who select­ed Spain as his first tar­get for con­trol because of its influ­ence in Latin America–Argentina in par­tic­u­lar.


Surprise! Merkel Just Vetoed the Presidential Vote. She Has Other Plans In Mind.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the upcom­ing EU elec­tions sched­uled for lat­er this month and the tight race for EU Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent. And if you’ve been fol­low­ing that race close­ly, you’ve no doubt been bored out of your mind. But at least now, for the first time ever, EU vot­ers will get to vote for their future col­lec­tive pres­i­dent. Then again, maybe not. Either way, big changes could be com­ing. Soon. .


The GOP Pulled Off the Medicaid Bandaid. Next Up? Medicare Amputations.

When “God’s Sen­a­tor”, Sam Brown­back, became “God’s Gov­er­nor” of Kansas back in 2010 it was clear some pret­ty big changes were on the way for Kansas. After all, when a GOP mem­ber of Opus Dei is your new gov­er­nor, some form of aus­ter­i­ty for the mass­es is prob­a­bly in the cards. And fol­low­ing the 2012 intra-GOP “mod­er­ate” purge, aus­ter­i­ty for Kansas has arrived in full force. As once might expect, this includes the aus­ter­i­ty that comes with refus­ing to accept the Oba­macare Med­ic­aid expan­sion. Utter­ly point­less, yet still painful, self-fla­gel­la­tion. And that’s just the begin­ning...


The New World Ordoliberalism Part 4: Meet the New Plan. Same as the Old Plan. Deregulated.

There have been quite a few devel­op­ments in the euro­zone recent­ly with major pos­si­ble pol­i­cy changes announced in recent weeks. Things like buy­ing bonds to shore up mar­kets and stim­u­late the econ­o­my (“quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing”) are now on the table. Quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing is nor­mal cen­tral bank stuff that has been effec­tive­ly shoved off the table of ECB pol­i­cy options by the Bun­des­bank’s unortho­dox eco­nom­ic the­o­ries until now. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s look­ing like the quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing is going to be unortho­dox too. No ‘eas­ing’ for the gov­ern­ments. Much ‘eas­ing’ for the banks. And the aus­ter­i­ty con­tin­ues.


FTR #788 Greek Tragedy, Part 2: “Clausewitzian Economics–The Continuation of War by Other Means”

This pro­gram details the hor­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ments unfold­ing in Greece. Embody­ing Carl von Clause­witz’s con­cept of “pol­i­tics as a con­tin­u­a­tion of war by oth­er means,” Greece is a cru­el and depress­ing exam­ple of the long-stand­ing strat­e­gy of German/Underground Reich geopol­i­tics. Real­iz­ing a strat­e­gy for Ger­man polit­i­cal dom­i­na­tion of Europe and the world, the EU and EMU are direct man­i­fes­ta­tions of the strat­e­gy first advo­cat­ed by Friedrich List in the 19th cen­tu­ry.


General Francisco Franco May NOT Be So Dead, After All

In addi­tion to its aggres­sive, nation­al­is­tic stance toward the British ter­ri­to­ry of Gibral­tar, Spain has been man­i­fest­ing ele­ments of its fas­cist past. Mar­i­ano Rajoy’s Peo­ple’s Par­ty incor­po­rat­ed much of the cadre of Fran­cis­co Fran­co’s Falange. With social unrest grow­ing from Spain’s dire eco­nom­ic straits, that fas­cist her­itage is evi­dent in that coun­try’s present polit­i­cal land­scape.


The GOP Pulls Off the Medicaid Band-Aid. Ouch.

A con­se­quence of last years Supreme Court rul­ing that upheld Oba­macare — but allowed states to opt out of the Med­ic­aid expan­sion — is that we would see GOP state gov­er­nors placed in a real dilem­ma: They could either accept the Med­ic­aid expan­sion and receive bil­lions of dol­lars for their state health care sys­tems from the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the risk of enrag­ing their far-right base of sup­port­ers. OR the gov­er­nors could reject the Med­ic­aid expan­sion, leav­ing mil­lions with­out cov­er­age but still being able to say they stood up to that evil social­ist plot to destroy Amer­i­ca. Deci­sions, deci­sions...


Snowden’s Ride, Part 9: Catherine Ashton, EU Defense and Intelligence Structure and the Muslim Brotherhood

The so-called “dis­clo­sures” by “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook Snow­den have had some inter­est­ing fall­out in Europe. This infor­ma­tion has, almost in its entire­ty, been on the pub­lic record for years. Nonethe­less, Snow­den’s “rev­e­la­tions” have led to the appar­ent for­ma­tion of a new EU intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary struc­ture, which will include the devel­op­ment of drones and inter­net sur­veil­lance, in what crit­ics have called the for­ma­tion of a Euro­pean ver­sion of NSA. This force will be under the direc­tion of Cather­ine Ashton–widely viewed as a Ger­man tool. Ash­ton has been lob­by­ing for the release of Mohamed Mor­si in Egypt. Shilling for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ever since his ouster in a mil­i­tary coup, Ger­many has been run­ning inter­fer­ence for their erst­while World War II ally.


“. . . They Shall Reap the Whirlwind”, Part 2: Is Germany Using Environmental Modification Technology Against the United States? (One Helluva Conspiracy Theory)

Munich Rein­sur­ance fore­casts sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in the fre­quen­cy and sever­i­ty of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in North Amer­i­ca. We’ve exam­ined the Euro­pean (read “Ger­man”) Space Agen­cy’s 2001 project to use microwave tech­nol­o­gy to alter tor­na­does, seen by crit­ics as like­ly to make the storms more destruc­tive. As we we sur­mised, the head of the project is indeed the cre­ator of HAARP.


The Troika Knows That Confidence Fairies Don’t Want To Know. It Makes Them Uncomfortable

The euro­zone troi­ka recent­ly eased mar­ket wor­ries a bit by rene­go­ti­at­ing part of Ire­land’s mas­sive bailout. But the pub­lic still wants answers on why the 2010 bailout hap­pened in the first place and those answers could reignite the cri­sis. It isn’t easy being the ECB. Or the EU. Or the IMF.