Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'eurozone crisis' is associated with 58 posts.

FTR #984 Fascism: 2017 European Tour

We begin our tour by exam­in­ing overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments in the gov­ern­ing Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion of Boyko Borisov, evoca­tive of Bul­gar­i­a’s past as an ally of Nazi Ger­many in World War II. ” . . . May 17, Pavel Tenev, Min­is­ter of Region­al Devel­op­ment, at the time, was forced to resign, after pub­li­ca­tion of a pho­to, show­ing him with his right arm extend­ed in a Nazi salute, stand­ing in front of a wax fig­ure of a Nazi offi­cer in Paris’ Musée Grévin. May 19, anoth­er pho­to was pub­lished on the inter­net, show­ing the fresh­ly appoint­ed depart­ment direc­tor in the Min­istry of Defense, Ivo Antonov, also giv­ing the Nazi salute in front of a Sec­ond World War tank of the Wehrma­cht. . . .”

Oth­er coali­tion part­ners have made dis­parag­ing remarks about Roma (“gyp­sies”) and Jews. Worth not­ing that Borisov’s selec­tion of coali­tion part­ners: ” . . . .Fol­low­ing the recent March 26, par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, Borisov, the win­ner of the elec­tions (his GERB with 32.7 per­cent), did not begin nego­ti­a­tions for a gov­ern­ment coali­tion with the Bul­gar­i­an Social­ist Par­ty (27.2 per­cent) or with the Move­ment for Rights and Free­doms (9 per­cent) rep­re­sent­ing the Turk­ish-speak­ing minor­i­ty, but rather with the Unit­ed Patri­ots (9.1 per­cent). The Unit­ed Patri­ots is an alliance of three extreme right-wing par­ties. . . .”

In recent weeks, the strug­gle over the poten­tial seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia from Spain has gar­nered con­sid­er­able atten­tion

That strug­gle is framed against a larg­er polit­i­cal dynam­ic embrac­ing advo­ca­cy of the elim­i­na­tion of for­mal nation­al bor­ders in Europe in favor of “region­al­ist plans.” Just such region­al­ist advo­ca­cy was the focal point of a promi­nent arti­cle (with accom­pa­ny­ing maps of the pro­ject­ed realign­ment) in Die Zeit, a major Ger­man week­ly.

Region­al­ist advo­ca­cy has a sig­nif­i­cant past, with the ear­ly post­war CIA and Allen Dulles hav­ing embraced such a dynam­ic. ” . . . . the fed­er­al­ists had ini­tial­ly been sup­port­ed and con­trolled by the CIA pre­de­ces­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) and [one of its top spies] Alan Dulles, resid­ing in Bern, and lat­er by the CIA itself. . . .”

In addi­tion, the region­al­ist dyanam­ic enjoyed the sup­port of long-time Ger­man finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble, whose advo­ca­cy and imple­men­ta­tion of bru­tal fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty helped beg­gar much of the EU, includ­ing Spain, fol­low­ing the finan­cial cri­sis of 2008. ” . . . . Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, as Pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR) in the ear­ly 1980’s, was also pro­mot­ing region­al­ist plans. Inspired by for­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies, the AEBR crit­i­cized the ‘nation-state’s bar­ri­er effect’ of bor­ders in the inter­ests of large cor­po­ra­tions. . . . For­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies were active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing both on the AEBR’s com­mit­tees and in the imme­di­ate entourage of its plan­ning of the ‘region­al­iza­tion’ of the bor­der regions, includ­ing Gerd Jans, the for­mer mem­ber of the Waf­fen SS in the Nether­lands, Kon­rad Mey­er, respon­si­ble for the Naz­i’s ‘Gen­er­alplan Ost,’ Her­mann Josef Abs, of the Deutsche Bank, as well as Alfred Toepfer, described by the pub­li­cist Hans-Rüdi­ger Minow as ‘infa­mous for his bor­der sub­ver­sion of France’s Alsace.’ In an exten­sive study, Minow describes the con­ti­nu­ities of the Naz­i’s con­cepts. . . .”

Despite an ini­tial impres­sion of “region­al­ism” that many might see as alien, The Schauble/AEBR/regionalism dyan­mic ide­ol­o­gy may be seen as some­thing of a sub­sidiary ele­ment of glob­al­iza­tion. ” . . . .  .In 1979, Schäu­ble became pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), an orga­ni­za­tion with the objec­tive of down­grad­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of bor­ders in Europe. Busi­ness inter­ests played an impor­tant role, which is why the AEBR could find reli­able sup­port­ers in indus­try. A ‘Euro­pean Char­ter on Bor­der and Cross-Bor­der Regions,’ passed by the AEBR in 1981, stip­u­lat­ed that the ‘elim­i­na­tion of eco­nom­ic and infra­struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers’ must urgent­ly be pur­sued. . . .”

The imple­men­ta­tion of region­al­iza­tion would facil­i­tate Ger­man dom­i­na­tion of Europe, which has met resis­tance from poor­er EU and EMU coun­tries over the aus­ter­i­ty doc­trine favored by Wolf­gang Schauble. ” . . . . Eco­nom­ic maps by the EU’s Euro­stat sta­tis­tics admin­is­tra­tion show the regions where Europe’s wealth and, there­fore, Europe’s eco­nom­ic pow­er is con­cen­trat­ed, a block with its cen­ters in south­ern and cen­tral Ger­many, to the west, in Flan­ders and spread­ing to seg­ments of the Nether­lands, and to the South to parts of Aus­tria and North­ern Italy and in var­i­ous sep­a­rate regions of West­ern and North­ern Europe. A num­ber of these regions main­tain close rela­tions to Ger­many, or to the Ger­man regions. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[11]) This clear­ly Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed block would hard­ly have any dif­fi­cul­ty con­trol­ling a ‘Europe of the Regions.’ . . . .”

Also worth not­ing is the fact that the Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence move­ment embraces a Cat­alon­ian iden­ti­ty that involves peo­ple from France, as well as Spain: ” . . . . The Cata­lan move­ment cur­rent­ly push­ing for seces­sion is in fact large­ly defin­ing itself eth­ni­cal­ly. The autonomous move­ment has been close­ly coop­er­at­ing with French cit­i­zens, who live out­side the Span­ish region of Cat­alo­nia, but also con­sid­er them­selves ‘eth­nic Cata­lans.’ At their ral­lies one can hear ‘Nei­ther France nor Spain! Only one coun­try, Cat­alo­nia!’ . . . .”

The two Twit­ter accounts that appear to account for near­ly a third of all Twit­ter traf­fic with the #Cat­alo­nia hash­tag, in ref­er­ence to the Cat­alon­ian seces­sion move­ment belong to Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den.

 Of more  than pass­ing inter­est, under the cir­cum­stances, is the Twit­ter effort by both Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den on behalf of Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence.

 As seen in many past pro­grams and posts, Snow­den and Assange are as far to the right as it is pos­si­ble to be.

 Their cyber­lib­er­tar­i­an activism and their sup­port for Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence is root­ed in anar­cho-lib­er­tar­i­an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. See­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of nation­al gov­ern­ments as desir­able, their sup­port for the prin­ci­ple of seces­sion is root­ed in what Mus­soli­ni termed “cor­po­ratism.”

 Snow­den and Assange’s osten­si­bly “lib­er­at­ing” doc­trines, if put into effect, would leave cit­i­zen­ry  at the mer­cy of unfet­tered eco­nom­ic will, exer­cised by cor­po­ra­tions and their asso­ci­at­ed elites.

Snow­den specif­i­cal­ly appears to be advo­cat­ing that no seces­sion move­ment any­where ever can be reject­ed by the gov­ern­ment under the premise that self-deter­mi­na­tion is a human right, view­ing this as a “nat­ur­al law” issue.

In that con­text, the right to secede is cham­pi­oned by the Lib­er­tar­i­an far-right, all the way down to the right to indi­vid­u­als to secede from all gov­ern­ment. As this piece from Lib­er­tar­i­an David S. D’Amato demon­strates, extend­ing the right to secede down to the indi­vid­ual facil­i­tates the imple­men­ta­tion of an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety with no gov­ern­ment at all, as seen by fig­ures like Mur­ray Roth­bard. This is envi­sioned as an excel­lent way­of achiev­ing an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist utopia.

The Snowden/Assange pro-seces­sion­ist move­ment should also be seen against the back­ground of the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment, cham­pi­oned by Ron Paul and the Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute.

 Fol­low­ing cap­ture of 13 per­cent of the vote in Germany’s fed­er­al elec­tions on Sun­day by the Alter­na­tive For Ger­many (AfD), Alexan­der Gauland, the AfD leader, pro­voked out­rage after sug­gest­ing that Ger­mans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past.

This type of behav­ior appar­ent­ly moti­vat­ed AfD leader Frauke Petry to leave the par­ty, just hours after the elec­tion over its extrem­ism.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Review of Dorothy Thomp­son’s 1941 arti­cle about what a Nazi vic­to­ry in Europe would look like–a sce­nario that bears con­sid­er­able resem­blance to the region­al­iza­tion plan dis­cussed above.
2.-Discussion of the poten­tial for­tunes of Aus­tri­a’s Free­dom Par­ty, formed in 1956 as a vehi­cle for the re-intro­duc­tion of Aus­tri­an Third Reich alum­ni into that nation’s polit­i­cal process.


FTR #983 Fascism, 2017 World Tour, Part 2

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram exam­ines man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism around the world.

In Europe, we ana­lyze:

1.-The reca­pit­u­la­tion of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the cur­rent Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Boyko Borisov. (Bul­gar­ia was a Nazi ally in World War II.)
2.-The vital­i­ty of “regionalism”–a political/economic doc­trine that advo­cates the seces­sion of key pros­per­ous regions from nation states.
3.-Analysis of region­al­ism as an appli­ca­tion of glob­al­ist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry to Euorope.
4.-The his­to­ry of regionalism’s advoa­cy by Third Reich vet­er­an the­o­reti­cians.
5.-Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange’s sup­port for Cata­lan seces­sion from Spain.
6.-The suc­cess of the AfD in Ger­man elec­tions.
7.-AfD politi­cian Alexan­der Gauland’s state­ment that Ger­mans should be proud of what that country’s sol­diers accom­plished in World War II.
8.-The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Party’s pro­ject­ed suc­cess in upcom­ing elec­tions. The par­ty was formed in 1956 by Third Reich vet­er­ans as a vehi­cle for re-intro­duc­ing Aus­tri­an Nazis into the country’s polit­i­cal life.

In Latin Amer­i­ca, we exam­ine:

1.-The ver­dict that Argen­tine AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Alber­to Nisman’s death was a mur­der, not a sui­cide.
2.-Review of the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.
3.-The dis­cov­ery of a cache of Nazi arti­facts, includ­ing devices used for deter­min­ing racial puri­ty. Hitler appar­ent­ly posed with some of the arti­fi­cats.
4.-The role of Nisman’s wid­ow as the judge inves­ti­gat­ing the Nazi arti­fact case.
5.-Operational links between Amer­i­can Nazi Christo­pher Cantwell and the Koch Broth­ers-fund­ed Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute in Brazil.

In the Unit­ed States, we detail:

1.-How Bre­it­bart active­ly pro­mot­ed Neo-Nazism, while down­play­ing what it was actu­al­ly doing.
2.-How white suprema­cist and Nazi ele­ments are suc­cess­ful­ly using YouTube to main­stream fas­cist and racist views.

In the Mid­dle East, we high­light:

1.-Benjamin Netanyahu’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions with the Thyssen/Krupp firm, one of the lynch­pins of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.
2.-Yair Netanyahu’s attri­bu­tion of his father’s polit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties to sab­o­tage by an inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy.
3.-Ronald Regan’s 1981 cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun as a key advo­cate for sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.
4.-Review of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s embrace of the views of Ibn Khal­dun.


Growth of Slovakian Fascism Illustrates the Dynamic Underlying Brexit and the Trumpenkampfverbande

Por­trayed by the main­stream media as –of course–“populists,” the L’SNS led by Mar­i­an Kotle­ba (right) man­i­fest­ed their agen­da upon join­ing the Slo­va­kian par­lia­ment: ” . . . But one of the first acts of the new mem­bers of L’SNS in Slo­va­ki­a’s par­lia­ment was to demand a minute of silence to mark the day Jozef Tiso was hanged in 1947 for treason–Tiso was the head of Slo­va­ki­a’s pro-Nazi, total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment when 70,000 Slo­vaks were deport­ed to their deaths dur­ing World War II. . . .”


Germany, Greece and Franco’s Blue Division

Wolf­gang Schauble (Ger­many’s Finance Min­is­ter) has stat­ed that Ger­many need­n’t repay the bil­lions it stole from Greece dur­ing World War II, because a gov­ern­ment is not oblig­at­ed to ful­fill the pledges of pre­vi­ous regimes. The fact that Ger­many con­tin­ues to pay pen­sions to vet­er­ans of Spain’s Blue Divi­sion (which fought on the East­ern Front dur­ing World War II) sug­gests that the Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s judg­ments are self-serv­ing­ly selec­tive. 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.


Analyzing “Clausewitzian Economics”: Greek Politician Compares German Economic Hegemony to WWII

In past pro­grams, we exam­ined the Greek and Euro­zone debt crises in the con­text of the the­o­ries of Friedrich List and Carl von Clause­witz, as well as the real­iza­tion of those the­o­ries through suc­cess­ful manip­u­la­tion of the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate land­scape through both world wars and the “post­wars” that fol­lowed them. Recent­ly, a the Greek may­or of Cor­fu encap­su­lat­ed that devel­op­ment rather suc­cinct­ly: “What they didn’t man­age in World War II they are man­ag­ing now,” Kostas Nikolouzos, the left-wing may­or of Cor­fu, said of Ger­many, voic­ing a com­mon sen­ti­ment. “It may sound extreme, but it’s true.” 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.


They’re B‑A-A-A-C‑K! Subprime, er, “Non-Prime” Mortgage-Backed Securities

Hun­gry investors are now focus­ing on bonds backed by US res­i­den­tial mort­gages that do not meet strict cred­it guide­lines. We also note that, in FTR #412, we direct­ly fore­shad­owed the finan­cial cri­sis in ear­ly 2003. 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 #861 Greek Tragedy, Part 4

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the Greek eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal cri­sis, we begin with review of Greece and the late stages of World War II. The occu­py­ing British turned on the par­ti­sans who had played a large part in the defeat of Axis occu­pa­tion forces, set­ting the stage for a bru­tal civ­il war. Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on the fire-sale of major Greek infra­struc­ture, includ­ing the takeover of 14 region­al air­ports by a Ger­man cor­po­ra­tion. Much of Greek infra­struc­ture is now up for sale, includ­ing infra­struc­ture that is essen­tial for the recon­struc­tion of the econ­o­my of Greece. Hav­ing fig­ured sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the devel­op­ment of Greek debt, a num­ber of Ger­man busi­ness­men are now fugi­tives from Greek jus­tice, seek­ing to avoid pros­e­cu­tion for cor­rup­tion charges. After not­ing that Greek debt is actu­al­ly LOWER than Ger­man debt when cal­cu­lat­ed using a stan­dard account­ing scale, the pro­gram notes the pro­pos­al to have Greek youth work for free, in order to relieve the mas­sive youth unem­ploy­ment plagu­ing that coun­try. Record­ed on Labor Day week­end of 2015, the pro­gram con­cludes with rumi­na­tion con­cern­ing the past and future of slav­ery, scru­ti­nized against the back­ground of recent and future events.


German Company Buys Greek Airports

“. . . In the ear­ly 1980s, as Chair of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), [Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang] Schäu­ble had orga­nized the first eco­nom­ic ini­tia­tives [and not just] toward France. Theodor Veit­er, a for­mer Nazi spe­cial­ist for bor­der sub­ver­sion, was one of Schäuble’s advi­sors as chair of the AEBR. . . .” It is against this back­ground that we exam­ine the pur­chase of Greek region­al air­ports by a Ger­man com­pa­ny. 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 #855: Greek Tragedy, Part 3

Fol­low­ing Ger­many’s imple­men­ta­tion of an aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram on Greece that offi­cial­ly and as a mat­ter of course negates Greek nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and democ­ra­cy, we exam­ine that agree­ment and the his­to­ry that led up to it. Even rel­a­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can and Euro­pean observers are label­ing the devel­op­ment a “coup” against Greek democ­ra­cy. We would call it a for­eign occu­pa­tion by Ger­many. The events in Europe can only be under­stood in terms of the exe­cu­tion of a con­sum­mate­ly bril­liant, cyn­i­cal plan to imple­ment Ger­man polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic hege­mo­ny through a series of wars and what Von Clause­witz called “Post-wars.” The con­ti­nu­ity of Ger­man polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy through decades and across a chal­leng­ing diver­si­ty of events is far-sight­ed and rig­or­ous. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble’s use of Third Reich cross-bor­der sub­ver­sion spe­cial­ist Theodor Veit­er as a key advis­er on Euro­pean eco­nom­ic affairs; the explic­it con­trol of Greece’s eco­nom­ic affairs by “the insti­tu­tions” [of Ger­many and the EU]; Schauble’s appar­ent goal of dri­ving Greece out of the Euro­zone; Ger­many’s suc­cess­ful eva­sion of its World War II debt; an overview of the evo­lu­tion of Friedrich List’s blue­print for eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal con­trol of Europe and the world; review of the troika’s impo­si­tion of a 2011 Greek coali­tion gov­ern­ment that includ­ed the fas­cist LAOS par­ty; the fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent approach of Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions to car­tel agree­ments from that of their inter­na­tion­al partners/competitors.


Lucy Komisar vs. Wolfgang Schauble

At a recent address by Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble (giv­en to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions) Lucy Komis­ar braced the vet­er­an politi­cian over Ger­many’s hypocrisy con­cern­ing Greek debt. Schauble’s equiv­o­ca­tion on the issue did not shake Lucy’s efforts to pin him down. In a linked arti­cle, do note the obser­va­tions of Albrecht Ritschl, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who dis­cussed Ger­many’s debt: ” . . . . “If we accept that Germany’s nation­al prod­uct is some­where to the tune of over 2 tril­lion euros, which is beyond 2.5 tril­lion U.S. dol­lars, we would be talk­ing about a default and debt for­give­ness of some­where in the range of 10 tril­lion dol­lars. I would tend to think that this is prob­a­bly unri­valed in 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry. . . . .” 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.