Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'European Union' is associated with 54 posts.

Echoes of Maidan: Yugoslavia (Yesterday); Ukraine (Today)

We’ve been cov­er­ing infor­ma­tion point­ing to the sniper fire that ignit­ed the Maid­an coup as hav­ing come from the anti-gov­ern­ment forces. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, per­son­nel from Svo­bo­da and the fas­cist “pun­ish­er bat­tal­ions” crop up repeat­edy in the unfold­ing nar­ra­tive. German-Foreign-Policy.com fea­tures a com­par­i­son with the “cook­ing” of jour­nal­is­tic infor­ma­tion about Ukraine with what took place in the for­mer Yugoslavia, the NATO oper­a­tion against Koso­vo, in par­tic­u­lar. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


DigitalGlobe Strikes Again

Once again we are being treat­ed to pho­tographs pur­port­ing to show: Russ­ian mil­i­tary units “invad­ing” Ukraine and/or Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment being “giv­en to the rebels” by the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. The U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine–Geoffrey Pyatt–Tweeted what are sup­posed to be pic­tures “prov­ing” direct Russ­ian mil­i­tary assis­tance to Ukraine after the “Min­sk II” cease fire. Apart from the lack of coor­di­nates on the pho­tographs and the dubi­ous nature of the images pre­sent­ed, these pic­tures come to us cour­tesy of Dig­i­tal­Globe, dis­cussed at length in FTR #811. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


Jaanika Merilo, the Estonian (of Ukrainian Heritage) Minister Who Is to “Attract Foreign Investment” to Ukraine

In FTR #‘s 824 and 826 (among oth­er pro­grams) we dis­cussed the incor­po­ra­tion of for­eign nation­als (many of Ukrain­ian descent) into the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine. Join­ing Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can Natal­ie Jaresko (Min­is­ter of Finance) will be Jaani­ka Mer­i­lo, an Eston­ian of Ukrain­ian her­itage. Mer­ilo’s des­ig­nat­ed task will be to attract for­eign invest­ment. Ms. Mer­i­lo has not dis­played what would be con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al con­duct for a busi­ness­woman. Exam­in­ing the pic­tures Ms. Mer­i­lo has post­ed of her­self, we can­not help but won­der just WHAT type of “invest­ment” she is try­ing to “attract,” and WHERE, exact­ly, it is going to be “invest­ed?” All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


Ukrainian Government Slips Up, Admits No Russian Invasion

Although The Min­istry of Truth will nev­er admit it, occa­sion­al cracks in the dis­in­for­ma­tion wall sur­round­ing the Ukraine cri­sis have appeared. “On the ground” in Ukraine, George Elia­son informs us of a cou­ple of slip-ups on Chan­nel 5, owned (iron­i­cal­ly) by pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko. Both a Ukrain­ian gen­er­al and one of that coun­try’s intel­li­gence offi­cers let slip that there has been no “Russ­ian inva­sion,” as we have been told. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


Germany’s Debt is More than Double that of Greece’s!

A recent arti­cle in Forbes under­scores the flawed account­ing under­ly­ing the lethal fis­cal pol­i­cy imposed on the cit­i­zens of the “cra­dle of democ­ra­cy.” An uncon­ven­tion­al account­ing method has been used to cal­cu­late that Greek debt is 175% of GDP, the sta­tis­ti­cal foun­da­tion for the crush­ing aus­ter­i­ty that afflicts that coun­try. In fact, it is 18%, when cal­cu­lat­ed using the stan­dard “Ipsas” account­ing method. Ger­many’s on the oth­er hand, is 46%, when cal­cu­lat­ed under that stan­dard! All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


FTR #829 Fireside Chat about Eddie the Friendly Spook and the Ukraine Crisis

A con­tro­ver­sy ensued when it emerged that House major­i­ty whip Steve Scalise had attend­ed a meet­ing of David Duke’s Euro­pean-Amer­i­can Uni­ty Orga­ni­za­tion. The new­ly-seat­ed GOP-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress which Scalise will help to guide began attack­ing Social Secu­ri­ty on its very first day. Specif­i­cal­ly, the GOP began attack­ing the Social Secu­ri­ty dis­abil­i­ty pro­gram. These devel­op­ments serve as a point of entry into our dis­cus­sion. Snow­den is an advo­cate of elim­i­nat­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and the OUN/B fas­cists run­ning Ukraine are engag­ing in a sim­i­lar pro­gram to force those in East­ern Ukraine to stop their attempts at seces­sion. The ele­ments of the Snowden/WikiLeaks “op” are net­worked with Duke, as well. Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice, Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald, has been financed by Pierre Omid­yar of Ebay, who has also financed the Ukraine coup. The pro­gram notes many oth­er ele­ments of con­flu­ence between the Snowden/WikiLeaks “op” and the Ukrain­ian coup. The Snowden/WikiLeaks helped to deep-six Oba­ma’s “reboot with Rus­sia” and also alien­ate many of the young, ide­al­is­tic vot­ers who had sup­port­ed him in 2008, there­by help­ing to elect the 114th Con­gress.


The New World Ordoliberalism Part 5: The TLTRO and Waiting for Godot. And Sanity.

With Euro­pean Union con­tin­u­ing its slow steady fall into defla­tion, the ques­tion of “what’s to be done?” has becom­ing a per­ma­nent fix­ture for Euro­pean pol­i­cy-mak­ers. But for the euro­zone, with it’s shared mon­e­tary sys­tem, the ques­tion is a much more com­pli­cat­ed “what should we all be doing togeth­er?”. The answer to that lat­ter ques­tion, unfor­tu­nate­ly, has con­sis­tent­ly been “not enough”, despite pri­or promis­es.

Still, the ECB has­n’t giv­en up entire­ly in its attempts to reflate the euro­zone. Back in June, the ECB decid­ed to inject anoth­er 400 bil­lion euros into the euro­zone bank­ing sys­tem in a two-phase loan pro­gram. And as we’ll see below, in both phas­es the euro­zone banks want­ed far less than what was offered while con­tin­u­ing to pay back their pre­vi­ous loans. In oth­er words, while the ECB has been try­ing the expand the mon­e­tary base in the euro­zone’s finan­cial mar­kets that mon­e­tary base has con­tin­ued to shrink. As the excerpt below puts it, it’s like ‘Wait­ing for Godot’. And as we’ll see at the end, it real­ly IS like Wait­ing for Godot, the­atrics and all.


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.


Beware of Dragon Slayers Bearing Bad Ideas. They Might Not Be Fair. Or Useful

As should be obvi­ous to near­ly every­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion these days, Google is both real­ly use­ful and kind of ter­ri­fy­ing giv­en the scope of how much Google knows about near­ly all of us and how much it con­trols what we know. The fact that Google’s list of cor­po­rate ambi­tions includes things like ‘own­ing the inter­net’ and own­ing the inter­net’s pipes does­n’t real­ly. And then there’s the killer robots and wage-theft. All in all, it’s not hard to hope Google gets Scroogled. Soon.

But there’s more than one way to screw Google and not every­one that fears Google is some ran­dom con­sumer. Major cor­po­rate enti­ties also fear Google and it just so hap­pens that a coali­tion of many of the largest pub­lish­er in Europe has a plan to slay the Google Drag­on they fear so much. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this coali­tion might slay “fair use” across the inter­net in the process. That’s right, copy­right law could be get­ting a big ‘upgrade’ in the dig­i­tal realm as part of a new anti-Google ini­tia­tive in a way that upgrades the bot­tom line of the biggest pub­lish­ers and down­grades every­one else’s gen­er­al abil­i­ty to find news arti­cles and talk about the world. This is hap­pen­ing.


FTR #818 Can You Put Lipstick on a Nazi? (Part 3): Update on Ukraine and Timeline of Ukrainian Fascism

Fur­ther ana­lyz­ing the recent Ukrain­ian elec­tions, the broad­cast high­lights the incor­po­ra­tion of fas­cist and Nazi per­son­nel into the so-called “mod­er­ate” forces in that unfor­tu­nate coun­try. In turn, the “mod­er­ates” have imple­ment­ed polit­i­cal steps advo­cat­ed by the fas­cists. Exem­plary of this dynam­ic is Petro Poroshenko’s sup­port for “lus­tra­tion laws.” Osten­si­bly designed to root out the mar­row-deep cor­rup­tion that has plagued Ukraine and spurred social unrest, the laws are a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al prin­ci­ple and appear to be aimed at fur­ther purg­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in that coun­try. Poroshenko’s “point per­son” push­ing sup­port of the lus­tra­tion laws is Svit­lana Zal­ishchuk, who received finan­cial sup­port from Pierre Omid­yar, Glenn Green­wald’s finan­cial angel. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, includ­ing its com­man­der Andriy Bilet­sky, have been elect­ed to Par­lia­ment. The deputy com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion is the new chief of police in Kiev.