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Archive for the 'Europe' Category
Climate-Change: Copenhagen and now?
So the vast “show and photo opportunity” meeting in Copenhagen is coming to an end now and could someone please tell what has actually been achieved in this huge media event.
A 3 page document with some teasers but now clear road-map on who-does-what-and-when. The talks on atomic weapons between the U.S. and Russia that happened at the same venue might prove to be more outcome oriented then that other show.
Will the bankster be allowed to expand their casino games with derivatives / virtual money creation for them to the so-called “Cap & Trade” certificates and thereby will most certainly create a world-wide crisis that will be bigger by orders of magnitude than the current financial crisis?
Will someone start to limit the global levels of pollution instead of fostering opaque trading schemes that are only good for story telling and profiteering - read: the industrialized nations reduced their pollutions - e.g. by 30% while at the same time the polluters have just shifted those factories somewhere else where these are then for whatever reason not counted into the scheme?
Will the whole thing like in other areas e.g. pandemics be handled by some kind of fund or financial instrument that in the past have regularly proven to be the most inefficient way, without any accountability or actual transparency, blowing money on themselves and their buddies, often institutionalized corruption and rates as bad as US$ 1000 put in and a mere US$10 arriving at the actual cause?
Well let’s see what the soon to happen next meeting in Berlin will bring…
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Civil-Rights: (Official) Censorship is coming back to Europe
Today the German Parliament will vote on a new Censorship law to be put in place to block web content as decided by the German administration. Based on black listing web sites and blocking those at ISP level via DNS and the displaying of so-called Stop pages the planned law was originally been handed around and legislators were seeking public approval by false-flagging it as a solely preventive measure against child abuse / pornography.
While almost all experts heard on this matter (fighting such illegal material and use) have clearly demonstrated that the censoring of access is no way forward towards stopping such activities particularly as many of the web servers in question were even physically located in Germany and other means (take-down notice to providers) proofed that within shortest notice (often less than a day) the material was taken off the net, it became more and more clear that the German Government is seemingly following a completely different agenda. The latest text of the law not even contains a reference anymore to the previously so broadly used argument of fighting child abuse but provides the general right to block any Internet content as…
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The 2007 Mafia Inc. Balance Sheet
It looks like it was another very good year for Mafia Inc. in Italy.
With corruption and bribery on the rise almost everywhere the Neo-Liberals got a foot in the door and with the worldwide financial crisis 2008 might turn out to become even better.
With the Neo-Liberal deregulations and the loss of business ethics, new business practices that were just a few years ago considered as criminal and prosecuted as such together with the vacuum created by the loss of values, no wonder bribery and corruption is on the rise, and everybody seems to be doing it not necessarily because they want so, but because they are forced to.
Single persons to get a favor or place someone on an important position, companies to get contracts, and governments on a really, really big scale. And who would be surprised that at the same time these governments have…
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History: Kristallnacht - German pogrom of 1938
Tonight it is 70 years ago, that in the night of November 9th synagogues, Jewish shops and houses were destroyed throughout Germany and Austria. Almost a thousand Jews were murdered that night and 20-30,000 deported to concentration camps.
Sadly these days it looks like the extreme right wing thugs are creeping into society across Europe again. Where do you think that substantial amounts from all those Billions disappearing from military and so-called humanitarian aid programs are ending up?
This time it might not be the Jews, but will the majority of people again look to the other side and profit from…
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Russia’s answer on the U.S. Elections: Obama Matryoshkas
In Moscow, matryoshka - little wooden dolls - of Barack Obama have become one of the best selling souvenirs among tourists and Russians.
While before the election both Obama and McCain dolls were offered by shopkeepers, the interest in McCain dolls that even before November 4th had sold in much smaller numbers, has now more or less completely diminished. Or as one of the sellers put it “my stock in McCain dolls is now worth about as much as shares in Lehman Brothers”
Obama dolls are a new addition to …
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Stock Markets: VW speculations
How crazy the worldwide stock markets have become and how little effects the Trillion dollar packages, speeches and appeals of politicians had on the casino players could one more time be seen today in Germany.
Stocks of one of the worlds largest car makers, VW, rose more than 300 % with intraday peaks even higher - yes we mean it - more than three hundred percent. And some of the in-the-money call options have seen their prices increase of more than 27,000% (twenty seven thousand percent).
While car makers around the world tiptoeing along bankruptcy and demand forecasts for the next year(s) are at best catastrophic for some of them - BMW today stopped production for a few days in some of its factories and Daimler today announced that they will stop production for a few weeks later this year- the outlook for VW is anything but peachy as well.
It’s not fundamentals that are behind these price jumps, it’s plain speculation, the same casino plays like…
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Germany: Bank Robbers ante portas
There was a lot of hectic movement with governments around the world the last weeks to confine the disasters from betting / wild casino speculation within financial institutions. Approaches and road maps laid out (if any) are pointing to different directions even in the key G7 developed countries.
The U.S. - for example - first wanted to give absolute powers to the executive branch and the government - a move widely criticized and changed by the U.S. Congress in the debates following the first bailout plan.
France and the UK have taken another road and bailing out their banks by providing funds only against a collateral - meaning they are de-facto nationalizes key players in their finance industries. France even went a step further with President Sarkozy calling for the creation of national industry funds to stop the fire sales of key industrial players to overseas investors - an interesting step that found much applause with the European Parliament. If you think that further it…
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Germany: How to burn 300 Million of Taxpayer’s money in a second
I guess everybody in the banking world around the globe has heard about the Lehman bankruptcy latest this Monday morning, everybody besides Germany’s largest government owned bank - KfW.
In an attempt to win the Darwin award for banks or by taking the name of the bank to literally (KfW - translated: Bank for Reconstruction), they transferred 300 Million Euros to already bankrupt Lehman during Monday. At the same time their government colleagues were closing the German Lehman subsidiary…
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Internet warfare: All Georgia Government web sites down
About a month ago the website of Georgia’s President was under a distributed denial of service attack and offline for some time. Based on forensic analysis it became clear that the root of these attacks were to be found in Russia.
Now with a state of war declared as it seems all official Government web sites of Georgia are not responding, not reachable or do not display any content…
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RIP: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Much can be said about Alexander Solzhenitsyn who died this weekend in Russia, and many will certainly do. With a courageous person like him having left us a few words by us might be allowed as well. He was…
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