Spanish society in freefall...

Spain currently has a mass unemployment rate of 24.1% and youth unemployment rate (15-24 y/o) that exceeds 50%, up from 18.2% in 2007.  In comparison Italy's youth unemployment is 29%; Portugal is 30%; and 24% of young people in France are without employment.  The Spanish economy has been contracting each of the past two quarters and is officially back in recession.  As the financial sector attempts to wade through the morass of over-development, massive consolidation of the banks and the crippling of credit has occurred.

The root cause of much of this disaster lies in the corrupt nexus between local bankers and regional politicians, which happen in many instances to be one and the same.  Lax lending standards, cheap foreign labor, and easy inflows of European capital all lead to a massive over-development.  The days of cheap credit ended with the financial crash of 2008.  Private debt was absorbed by the balance sheets of the state and ultimately the collective nations of the Eurozone.

Whereas the chicanery that lead to this bloody mess is a story that needs to be told, I'm interested today in discussing the impact on real people and the current generation of people who will have to pay for this economic catastrophe for the rest of their lives.  The decline and hopelessness felt across Spain has been chronicled in a number of newspapers and journals.  Here are some of the highlights.

In the Spanish daily La Pais, a 9-March article titled Generation Nimileuristra described the lives of young people who see opportunities denied and their lives stagnating with either low or no paying jobs.  

In 2005 youth unemployment was about 20%. Now [reaching] 50% while doubling the European average (22.4%) . The best educated generation has the worst outlook since the transition and feels a victim of the excesses of others...

In Spain there are 10,423,798 people between 18 and 34... Their average net income (including the unemployed), is 824 euros per month. And those who are working earn on average 1,318 euros a month (data from the Youth Council of Spain)...  Professions that seemed safe... are not. The Polytechnic University of Valencia followed the first steps in the process of engineers and architects who graduated in 2008: one in four did not reach [jobs with salaries over 1000 euros/month]. And what is worse: the [educated with jobs with salaries under 1000 euros/month] had advanced by 8% compared to graduates a year earlier.

In many cases youth are forced to abandon independence and relocate into their family's homes.

It has been established that even small levels of protracted unemployment in developed countries can have serious implications for the unemployed.  Those include reduced lifetime wages, reduced employment opportunities, and higher mental health issues.  With respect to society at large, depressed wages will promote educated youth emigrate to other jurisdictions, resulting in a brain-drain to the nation.  Undereducated and unemployed male youth on the other hand are statistically more likely to participate in criminal activity.

In many OECD countries the unemployment rate is substantially higher than the general population. An Economist article from Sept-11, 2011 discusses the various disadvantages and impacts under-employment and unemployment will have on these people.

Unemployment of all sorts is linked with a level of unhappiness that cannot simply be explained by low income. It is also linked to lower life expectancy, higher chances of a heart attack in later life, and suicide. A study of Pennsylvania workers who lost jobs in the 1970s and 1980s found that the effect of unemployment on life expectancy is greater for young workers than for old. Workers who joined the American labour force during the Great Depression suffered from a persistent lack of confidence and ambition for decades.

The implications of this situation are severe.  Not only will youth not be entering the work force, they will not be participating in the economy and doing normal things, such as buying cars, homes, furniture. So there is a negative cascade felt across the nation on all levels. Secondly, since they will not be paying taxes, who will bear the burden of maintaining the welfare state that Europeans are so proud of?   As fewer people are contributing to these pay-as-you-go programs, older generations will see a reduction in benefits.

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The financial crisis has lead to governments across Spain to drastically cut programs, services, and cash transfers to lower levels.  A New York Times article elaborates:

Just as Spain’s national and regional governments are struggling with the collapse of the construction industry, overspending on huge capital projects and a pileup of unpaid bills, the same problems afflict many of its small towns.

One town's mayor discusses his small community's problems:

“We lived beyond our means,” Mr. García said. “We invested in public works that weren’t sensible. We are in technical bankruptcy.” Even some money from the European Union that was supposed to be used for routine operating expenses and last until 2013 has already been spent, he said.

The banking upheavals have brought similar troubles to small and medium scale businesses, which represent "60 percent of the economy, and 80 percent of the jobs".  The vicious cycle has resulted in the shuttering of more than 500,000 small business according to the NY Times.  

“The cuts in credit have been so abrupt that some businesses not only lost specific projects they were working on,” said Carlos Ruiz Fonseca, the director of economy and innovation at Cepyme, Spain’s association of small and medium-size companies. “Some companies have just gone out of business.” 

How is any of this supposed to engender confidence in the international markets?  The same banks which are cutting credit lines, reducing exposure to risk, and contracting their businesses are simultaneously being downgraded by the various credit agencies.  Billions of Euros are being requested by the financial sector to keep these debt ridden entities from further collapsing and imploding the entire Spanish economy.

The net result of all these events is a society that is in freefall.  If these trends continue, not only will Europe have generated legions of angry, unemployed persons, they will have created the same foundations that gave rise to the extremists of the last century.

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Update: video link about squatters taking over an vacant apartment complex, built during the construction boom, in Seville

Chomsky on the Wall St. protesters, Bin Laden, & Israel

In this interview with Russia Today (RT) television Noam Chomsky discusses three main topics:

1. The current protests occurring in New York across from Wall Street and spreading throughout the world
2. The legal framework and international norms associated with kidnapping, torture, and murder
3. The current international versus American-Israeli perspective on the emergence of a Palestinian state.

For the most part I think what Chomsky has to say is true.

Criticisms leveled by Chomsky regarding economic matters and the control of the legislative process by corporations has been shown by this recent depression to have been wholly correct. America's political system is so badly broken that not even the greedy politicians can claim that the system works for anyone other than Goldman Sachs.

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What I found disappointing about this interview is Chomsky's rather weak argument that America is a lawless country because it assassinated Osama Bin Laden, invaded the sovereign nation of Pakistan, then dumped Bin Laden's body at sea. Unlike a great number of person on the left, Chomsky has never claimed that there were grand conspiracies at work during the 9-11 attack. What he does do is make the rather odd legalistic argument that everyone under American jurisprudence is entitled to the claim of being "innocence" until found guilty. That statement is true, but misleading. Bin Laden was never after 9-11 a conventional criminal. Rather, Bin Laden was the leader of an international organization whose purpose was to engage in terrorism that indiscriminately killed as many people as possible to draw America into a wider conflict in the Middle East. Bin Laden freely admitted and repeatedly boasted of his multiple attacks on American assets abroad and on 9-11. If we are talking about US law, under public law 107-40, the US Congress authorized the president of the United States “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Equally, under international law the UN charter provides nation states the right to use lethal force in individual and collective self-defense.

Second, Chomsky makes the error of claiming that the assassination has inflamed Pakistan's civilian population and enraged the quasi-military rulers of the state, thus exacerbating US-Muslim tensions and further destabilizing the Middle East. What Pakistan or its illiterate masses thinks about American killing of Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders on their territory is irrelevant. Pakistan exists because the United States for decades has been propping up this little Islamic wasteland run by kleptocrats and military dunces. The country is a failed state that exists as the central exporter of international terrorism across the world. What has become completely evident after the assassination is that individuals within Pakistan and its government have been hiding and protecting Bin Laden for years. Given the overall lawlessness and criminal actions of the Pakistani state, there is little reason anyone should consider anything that this country wants as legitimate.

Chomsky further states that Obama has become even more reckless than Bush in using drone attacks on targets. The problem with this statement is that is exactly what Obama didn't do when he sent military personnel to kill Bin Laden. Today Bin Laden's family members that were hiding with him in Pakistan are alive and not dead.  Something that Bin Laden's victims cannot claim.

I for one am in complete agreement with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who said

“The death of Osama bin Laden … is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism…Personally, I am very much relieved by the news that justice has been done.”

For all his faults, President Obama did the right thing and all civilized people should applaud his actions, instead of trying to score cheap rhetorical points in defending the indefensible.

Fighting for the liberation of mankind: Egypt 2011

Sarah Palin, accomplice in mass murder!

Is this a reasonable graphic?  Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in an induced coma, didn't think so when asked about the above graphic issued by Palin, which implores Republican supporters to "reload" and keep pursuing their Democratic Party opponents.  In fact, the local Arizonan Republican candidate to oust Ms. Giffords did far more than Caribou Barbie.  He actually had a gun rally, where they said "Remove Gabrielle Giffords from office, shoot a fully automatic M-16." (ref. below)

Again, this type of inflammatory rhetoric isn't coming from fringe elements and outliers, this is coming from Party leaders, and no less than a former Vice-Presidential candidate of the USA herself.

If the above isn't sufficient to validate the depravity of these so-called Christians, consider what another Republican candidate and Tea party-backed congresswoman Michele Bachmann had to say on the subject:

Controversial Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said this weekend that she wants residents of her state "armed and dangerous" over President Barack Obama's plan to reduce global warming "because we need to fight back."

Whether these politicians believe what they are saying or are merely ginning up the facile minded dunces of the gun-totting "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" crowd is irrelevant to me.  They are inciting political violence to achieve political aims.  That and that alone is what the last decade has been all about: the war and struggle against violent extremism and terrorism!

Neither their words nor actions have been misconstrued by anyone to be merely metaphorical.   They themselves clearly defend their stance as a violent defense against Washingtonian corruption and capitulation to liberalism.  The only question left, is when is the Department of Justice going to start applying the laws uniformly and start sending Republicans to enjoy the warm sunshine and if Dick Cheney can be believed, excellent health care, in Guantanamo, Cuba?

My Person of the Year: Neda Agha Soltan

Unlike TIME magazine and FT who respectively chose FED Chairman Ben Bernanke and Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein as their "person of the year", the Times of London (UK) newspaper has chosen a very modest person, who gave her life not in the pursuit of capital or saving the financial behemoths of Wall Street from their own self-inflicted greed, but rather for simple measures that we in the West take for granted every day.

Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran.

“Even if a bullet goes through my heart it’s not important,” she told Caspian Makan, her fiancé. “What we’re fighting for is more important. When it comes to taking our stolen rights back we should not hesitate. Everyone is responsible. Each person leaves a footprint in this world.”

In Iran Neda has become the face of the revolution against the aging, sclerotic, and corrupt Mullahs.  Vigils and shrines were established across the country to commemorate her murder by a Basij militiaman on a motorcycle as she protested and chanted, "Death to the dictator!"  The Times elaborates:

It was not hard to see why Ms Soltan so quickly became the face of the opposition, the Iranian equivalent of the young man who confronted China’s tanks during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations 20 years earlier. She was young and pretty, innocent, brave and modern. She wore make-up beneath her mandatory headscarf, jeans and trainers beneath her long, black coat, and liked to travel. She transcended the narrow confines of religion, nationality and ideology. She evoked almost universal empathy.

The cowardice of the Mullahs and their police apparatus reached new heights in the months that followed her death.  The regime banned public displays of mourning, intimidated and jailed witnesses who observed her death, harassed Neda's family to prevent them from talking in public, and blamed foreign journalists for her death.

The corporate yes-men who have bankrupted our states, the war-mongers intent on justifying torture and genocide, and the shifty immoral politicans who run our governments and collectively represent the very worst of humanity, deserve nothing but contempt.  We however, as individuals can look through the veil fashioned by the corporate media and find virtue and human decency even in the darkest corners of this world.  This is why I too, even though her life was short and her contribution an accident, feel that Neha Soltan deserves to be known by us all; because her struggles and the ideals of the Green Revolution are our struggles.

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For more information on Neda and the international response to her death, PBS's Frontline has an excellent documentary that is viewable online and also has a set of links on the subject.

Iran's Green Revolution Continues

Six months ago I started this blog to document the indolence of the mainstream press and the vast hypocrisy and duncery that masquerades as civil society across the world.  At the moment of this blog's inception the theft of the Iranian election by the Mullahs was presenting itself. The clerics terrified at their own dwindling domestic support, handed their lackey Ahmadinejad the election and brutally suppressed student protesters, reform minded civilians, and even former colleagues of the 1979 Iranian revolution, who disagreed with the Mullahs maniacal objectives.

Today I return to Iran, where thousands of people have rallied together in the face of certain prosecution, incarceration, torture, and possible death via the police forces that serve the criminal theocrats in Tehran.  Again, the slothful mainstream press have done a stupendous job at not providing coverage, insightful commentary, or acknowledging the seriousness that this revolution may portend to global politics.  Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, who in this particular case have replaced the MSM, has an excellent on-the-ground compilation of twitter, you-tube, and individual first-hand accounts by protesters from across Iran.

To contextualize this uprising further, one should first remind oneself that if the neo-conservatives of America and their belligerent and bellicose accomplices in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Pentagon had had their way, these very protesters -who are striving for Western ideals of freedom and liberty- would lay bloody and bleeding, not from the truncheon or pistol of the Iranian stormtroopers, but from American heavy armaments.  The nascent struggle for individual liberty against the corrupt and incompetent rule of the Mullahs would have been aborted, leaving the Islamic regime even more powerful.  Instead, the theocrats are now deprived of the old canard that the evil Satan, in the form of the Americans, the British, and the BBC, are stirring dissent and chaos within their borders.

In addition, it should be understood that the moral vacuousness and intellectual dishonesty of the neo-cons, which has been apparent for all to observe since the Iraq fiasco detonated in their collective faces, has an equivalent in the autocratic and murderous actions of the Iranian theocrats.  The leaders of the American war machine and the murderous Mullahs are the same: greedy, pugnacious old-men bereft of civil decency, who are dedicated to maintaining their own power at the cost of innocent lives.

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I have a series of earlier blog posts that explain the origins of dictatorships, outline the original rationals about the election fraud committed by the Mullahs (here and here), and the propaganda model as it relates to Western media (here).

Bankers Prepare for Open Revolution

Bloomberg has an article today on what may be the most interesting story of the year. The invertebrate vampire-squids of Goldman Sachs have been quietly seeking gun permits to protect themselves from the restless mobs and death-mail sending public. How is it that the proletarians could want to liquidate the robber-Barron's of the 21st Century? Surely, the masses know that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' CEO, and the squids are as Blanky said, "Doing God's work!"

The article reveals that Blanky and Company were fortifying their residences a year prior to the meltdown, by placing enhanced security fences and armed guards around their lavish estates, in excess to the norm. More importantly though, it blows the whistle on what the bailout was really about: saving the greedheads of casino-capitalism. As you see, this bullshit about efficient markets, innovative investing, and all that other gibberish spouted by the dunces on CNBC and virtually every financial bobble-head network, is just meant as high-fructose Kool-Aid for the cult-members as the real thieves take your money. Consider the following excerpt from the same Bloomberg article:

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

I have long said, if the people want to live free of the incompetent rule of plutocrats and their moneyed trolls, then they need to have the guillotine brought out in public and let the heads roll. Its all happened before and will happen again. We only have to remember the New Testament to know the solution:

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. (Matthew 21:12)

Statism and its believers

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

- CS Lewis

The real price of liberty...

What I find more infuriating and repellent than the pusillanimous double-speak of the Mullahs and the truncheon waiving crudity of their paid henchmen, is the abysmal coverage of this transformative event by the Western media. On one hand you have the Legion of Jackals in the likes of Brit Hume of FOX news, who have declared that the Obama administration has a vested interest in perpetuating the Ahmedinejad presidency. Other like minded public management organizations in the MSM (Mainstream Media) have paid equally scant attention to the issues at hand and/or given their standard mealy-mouth prognosis of the subject.

The reasons are simple: when you begin to understand that there are millions of people who truly live under the boot of tyranny, who know very well that any sort of protest against their leaders may lead to beatings, torture, and even death, but are willing to stand, shout, and let the world know that these filthy despots cannot control them and they will fight for their liberty, then our own pathetic lives seem terribly vacuous.

People should then ask the simple question of themselves; how it is that students, middle aged businessmen, and housewives can frighten dictatorships, but yet we the sovereign, we the people who supposedly hold the power in our democracy, we who own the airwaves, roads, and public institutions are powerless to change the events in our lives? Why is it that so few of us will stand up to our own lecherous governments when they institute torture as a national policy, remove rights that have existed for centuries, record our every conversations, emails, and movement, and when despite overwhelming opinion propel us into the maw of perpetual war?

Kurtz stated the answer in Apocalypse Now, "They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie, for those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them."

We are always being lied to. We are always being distracted. We are always being fed industrially refined and research tested propaganda. To make things worst, the dimmest of the population when asked will begin kicking sand in everyone's faces over such incredibly irrelevant issues such as gay marriage, what level of taxation your estate will be subject to when you're dead, and should stem cells be legally considered as fully formed human beings. So when the subject of revolution does occur, when people naturally ask why are people dying for their freedom, we are asked and told to look away, because the sight may be of detriment to our own government.

Ahmadinejad- A Useful Idiot

The Power Behind Ahmadinejad's Disputed Win: Ayatullah Khamenei - Yahoo! News

Christopher Hitchens in his 14 June Slate article describes the type of characters who are Ahmadinejad's adherents

I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special.

There certainly are attributes of fascism, which are clearly expressed in the convoluted theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nationalism, belligerent foreign policy, ethnic and class superiority, and authoritarianism are readily identifiable traits. However, the lack of a corporate dominated core and the weakness of the punditry class to adequately define Islamo-fascism other than in the most vague of metaphysical terms leads me to dismiss the label and accept that the Mullahs and their supporters are just good-ole-thugs at heart flying a revolutionary flag of convenience. The Iranian theocracy in my opinion is no different than any other autocratic junta who has seized power through military means and mob assistance. It is hardly a surprise that Ahmadinejad, instead of being a shrewd and refined politician is merely a punch-drunk lackey of the mullahs parading around in proletarian garbs and espousing populist shibboleths to convince the masses that he's one of their own.

The Yahoo news article outlines that the real power in Iran has always been the clerics and their security apparatus. Before the votes were fully counted the country was already operating under seige mode. Internet connections and cell phone lines were cut, opponents arrested, stormtroopers were sent out to control major institutions, foreign and domestic press coverage was stifled or completly removed, and the supreme (with extra cheese) leader himself declared (twice) that their man had won even before the votes were all counted.

Ahmadinejad's post-election responses to CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour about the integrity of the voting process, the validity of the election results, and the safety of electorial opponents were little more than farcial drivel that could have been written by Saddam Hussein's former Information Minister. For example, he claims that Iran, "Is the most stable country in the world" and it is a country where "all are equal." I'm sure that is true, unless of course if you belong to any particular minority group or are a woman.

He states that citizens can vote for any candidate that they wish for. Brilliant, you can vote for any candidate that the Mullahs allow you to vote for and in the present case you will have the representatives that the Mullahs have dictated, in spite of the popular vote. In other words, "You're free to do as we tell you to do!"

"The situation is very good... everyone is friends."

"Iran is a political power" and will make "economic, scientific, and
cultural" gains in the years to come.

The real question in my mind is how much knowledge and involvement did he personally have in this sorid affair? Did he instigate the ballot rigging or was he only told he won with the blessings of the Mullahs? At what point did he know the Mullahs had his back covered?

The reason for dictatorships...

"One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship."
-1984, George Orwell

Therein lies the gist of all so-called political revolutions. Nary one has occurred that didn't descend into a state of cronyism, criminality, and towards their end a persistent and extreme proclivity towards incompetence. Of course for the casual observer, one would say, "That's why it's called a revolution." You simply replace the current existing strata or ruling class with whatever group that happens to toil on the periphery of power. History also tells another story in which sooner or later the new organs of power will become diseased and the rot pervasive. Its all happened before and will happen again. Benjamin Franklin said this about the American revolution and the newly adopted constitution in 1787:

Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

Therefore with western eyes it comes as no surprise when the Chinese roll tanks into Tiananmen Square to butcher students, when Burmese Generals slaughter peasants and Buddhist monks and hold kangaroo courts against opponents, or as today has it, the Mullahs of Iran so fearful of transcendent change they dismiss the presidential elections as merely an academic exercise in public opinion management.

It's very simple to loath the "mad-Mullahs" and other religious-fanatics during these times. Theologically ordained gangsters, who issue fatwas declaring death to authors who fictionalize their precious religious mythology, permit rape and murder of foreign journalists who question their brutality, and execute children, can generally be described at their best as being detestable. On the economic front 82% of Iran's exports reside in oil and gas which flow East to China (another dictatorship) and Japan; inflation is listed at 25% per annum; and the state subsides gas, electricity, and a variety of consumer products. As all tyrants they claim divine right to authority, because they alone are the protectors of the sacred and defenders of society's integrity.

The early Romans, already well craft in Machiavellian arts, knew too well the religious undercurrents involved in subjugation, “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” Thus when Iranians who lead the coup against the Shah are asked if the revolution has been betrayed, they respond begrudgingly with a stern no. They know very well that this was how the revolution was always meant to be; a dictatorship of frauds masquerading in clerical robes. With the apparatus of the secret police under their control and the military as their eager partner in crime, the dictatorship was always guaranteed.

Unlike Western democracies where the forces of propaganda are far more sophisticated, Asian despots have no use in subtleties. Rather, heavy-baton weilding shock-troops and the public fear of torturous incarceration are their modus operandi. A compliant populace can also be obtained when economic growth, prosperity, and materialism rise and substitute for individual liberty and freedom. The Chinese, for example, have found a way to have a shiny happy dictatorship that the ruling class, the local communist chieftains, and the nouveau-rich masses can support. This however, is not the situation in Iran or for most dictatorships. There exists in each historical case a universal want for power. It is an unquenchable devotion that manifests itself in the relentless pursuit towards dominion over others and in a cruel desire to punish the populace for the slightest of inconveniences. This is not a practice that will lead to prosperity, but instead collapse, revolution, and cyclical historical repetition.