Everything You Need to Know About the Greek Crisis and ECB Fascism in Two Paragraphs

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Yanis Varoufakis just sat down for his first interview since resigning as Finance Minister of Greece. He talked frankly with Harry Lambert of the New Statesman. Here are the two most important paragraphs from the transcript.

There is no democracy in Europe. None.

Varoufakis said that Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister and the architect of the deals Greece signed in 2010 and 2012, was “consistent throughout”. “His view was ‘I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous [Greek] government and we can’t possibly allow an election to change anything.

 “So at that point I said ‘Well perhaps we should simply not hold elections anymore for indebted countries’, and there was no answer. The only interpretation I can give [of their view] is, ‘Yes, that would be a good idea, but it would be difficult. So you either sign on the dotted line or you are out.’”

Any questions?

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Chinese Authorities Arrest Over 100 Human Rights Activists and Lawyers in Desperate Crackdown on Dissent

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More than 100 people were swept up in an unprecedented police crackdown on mainland human rights advocates on the weekend, with six – including four lawyers – criminally detained in what state media said was a nationwide operation to smash a “criminal gang”.

It said “the criminal gang” comprised Zhou, Wang Yu, Wang Quanzhang, Huang as well as Liu, Bao and high-profile activist Wu Gan, who masterminded many plots in the name of “rights defence, justice and public interest”. It accused them of “colluding with petitioners to disturb social order and to reach their goals with ulterior motives”.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said the action showed the Ministry of Public Security’s interpretation of “disturbing public order” was ever-expanding. “That these lawyers are a ‘major criminal gang’ is a new and serious allegation, one that demonstrates the authorities’ willingness to warp the law beyond all recognition,” she said.

– From the South China Morning Post article: Chinese Police Detain More than 100 Lawyers and Activists in Weekend Sweep

Essentially, every single nation on earth today is run by a thieving, corrupt oligarchy wielding control through undemocratic and centralized means. These governments intentionally rig their economies in order to enrich a few “insiders,” and their bought and paid for politicians, at the expense of everyone else. Such systems ultimately reach a breaking point in which the respective economies start to implode under their own fraudulent weight, and the people get restless. Every single country on earth is dealing with this as we speak, albeit at different stages of the process.

When “the people” get a little too uppity, the status quo gets scared and then the velvet gloves come off. I touched on this earlier today in the post: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves – Spain Officially Becomes a Police State. The same sort of thing is also happening in Greece, which is far and away the furtherest along amongst Western nations in this whole process. The Greeks actually went ahead and voted for one outcome in a referendum, only to be told by their masters in Brussels they will get something else. So the illusion of democracy is now dead and buried. The Greeks are now staring at a much more violent and dangerous outcome in the years ahead, coupled with a surge in popularity of truly radical political parties, if the latest “deal” is implemented. This would be a very sad and unnecessary outcome.

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The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves – Spain Officially Becomes a Police State

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On July 1st, 2015, Spain officially became a police state. There’s simply no other way to put it. The “gag law” passed late last year went into effect on that date, and if you still have any doubt about how extreme and oppressive these laws are, let’s take a quick look at a summary published by The Local:

1) Fines for protesting

Under the new law, anyone who organizes or takes part in an “unauthorized protest” could be fined between €30,000 and €600,000 if the protest takes part near institutions such as the Spanish parliament.

2) Distrupting public events

Disrupting events such as public speeches, sports events or religious ceremonies could face fines of between €600 and €300,000.

3) Botellón

The Spanish tradition of getting together with mates for outdoor drinking sessions looks to be officially over – drinking in public will be hit with fines of €600 under the new law. And teenagers won’t escape – Parents will be held responsible for the payment of their offsprings’ fines.

4) Social media activism

Using Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to call on people to protest will be fined under the new law, an attempt to put paid to the spontaneous protests that have proved very powerful in building the indignado movement.

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How the U.S. Government Squandered $1 Billion in Taxpayer Funds on “Ghost Schools” and Warlords in Afghanistan

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BuzzFeed News obtained internal Ministry of Education data for 2011 that has never before been made public. For Afghanistan overall, the data showed 1,174 schools — almost 1 in every 12 — was a ghost school, an educational facility that the Afghan government publicly claimed was open but that was, in fact, not operating. In the provinces that are the most dangerous to monitor — and into which the U.S. poured the most aid money — that proportion soared. In Kandahar province, where DeNenno served, a full third of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education publicly reported as open in 2011 were not functioning, and in Helmand, it was more than half.

But teacher salaries continued to go to these ghost schools — and still do, according to numerous Afghan and U.S. sources. While the Afghan government puts in some of its own money to pay teachers, more than two-thirds of teacher salaries are provided through a World Bank fund, to which the United States is the biggest donor. The World Bank fund did not respond to requests for comment, but USAID said that World Bank financial controls guard against salaries going to ghost teachers.

And just as with ghost students, the U.S. government has known about ghost teachers for years. Back in 2005 and 2006, an internal education ministry task force calculated that at least $12 million in salaries were going to so-called ghost teachers annually, according to several former employees of the USAID contractors embedded in the ministry. A scathing, confidential 2013 USAID audit of the Afghan education ministry obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals that the United States had been injecting hundreds of millions of dollars for more than a decade into a ministry marred by an “inadequate payroll system” and lacking even the most basic auditing practices.

In some areas, the belief that ghost schools have enriched fat cats at the expense of Afghan children has stoked such widespread ire that American education aid is actually doing the opposite of what the U.S. intended: It’s turning locals against the government.

– From the Buzzfeed article: Ghost Students, Ghost Teachers, Ghost Schools

In the wake of so many wasteful, inhumane and disastrous foreign policy failures, the U.S. government has been desperate to highlight some significant successes in order to justify all of these tragic foreign imperial blunders.

One such supposed success relates to education in Afghanistan, an area into which some $1 billion in taxpayer money has been spent to build schools and pay teachers according to Buzzfeed. U.S. Government officials have consistently trumpeted all of the good work that has been done in this regard, but there’s one slight problem. Not only are most of the statistics complete bogus, but in many cases, a lot of this U.S. wealth that was meant to be targeted for education, has gone straight to the coffers of some of the most ruthless warlords in the county. How could this happen you ask? Here’s how.

From Buzzfeed:

Nearly four years later, water seeps through the leaky roof and drips onto students in this more than $250,000 construction. Doors are cut in half; some are missing altogether. There is no running water for the approximately 200 boys — and zero girls — who attend. But the school did enrich a notorious local warlord. In exchange for donating the land on which the school sits, he extracted a contract from the U.S. military worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Over and over, the United States has touted education — for which it has spent more than $1 billion — as one of its premier successes in Afghanistan, a signature achievement that helped win over ordinary Afghans and dissuade a future generation of Taliban recruits. As the American mission faltered, U.S. officials repeatedly trumpeted impressive statistics — the number of schools built, girls enrolled, textbooks distributed, teachers trained, and dollars spent — to help justify the 13 years and more than 2,000 Americans killed since the United States invaded.

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Conspiracy Fact – How the Government Conducted 239 Secret Bioweapon Experiments on the American People

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It all began in late September of 1950, when over a few days, a Navy vessel used giant hoses to spray a fog of two kinds of bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii — both believed at the time to be harmless — out into the fog, where they disappeared and spread over the city.

The unsuspecting residents of San Francisco certainly could not consent to the military’s germ warfare test, and there’s good evidence that it could have caused the death of at least one resident of the city, Edward Nevin, and hospitalized 10 others.

Over the next 20 years, the military would conduct 239 “germ warfare” tests over populated areas, according to news reports from the 1970s.

These tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport just outside Washington, D.C.

– From the MSN article: ‘One of the Largest Human Experiments in History’ was Conducted on the Unsuspecting Residents of San Francisco

Regular readers of this site will be well aware of various conspiracy facts concerning a multitude of shady activities by the U.S. government, both past and present. But did you know that beginning in 1950, the U.S. government conducted a series of secret bioweapon experiments on an unsuspecting American public? Didn’t think so.

We learn from MSN that:

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Top Computer Security Expert Warns – David Cameron’s Plan to Ban Encryption Would “Destroy the Internet”

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BUSINESS INSIDER: What was your immediate reaction to Cameron’s proposals?

Bruce Schneier: My immediate reaction was disbelief, followed by confusion and despair. When I first read about Cameron’s remarks, I was convinced he had no idea what he was really proposing. The idea is so preposterous that it was hard to imagine it being seriously suggested. But while Cameron might not understand what he’s saying, surely he has advisers that do. Maybe he didn’t listen to them. Maybe they aren’t capable of telling him that what he’s saying doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand UK politics sufficiently well to know what was going on in the background. I don’t know anything about Cameron’s tech background. But the only possibly explanation is that he didn’t realize the full extent of what he was saying.

Then I wondered why he would even wish for such a thing? Does he realize that this is the sort of thing that only authoritarian governments do? Again, my knowledge of the UK is limited, but I assume they are a free country that champions liberty.

– From the Business Insider article: David Cameron’s Proposed Encryption Ban Would ‘Destroy the Internet’

I’ve discussed UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s idiotic, futile and extremely dangerous scheme to ban encryption previously here at Liberty Blitzkrieg. Most recently, in the post, Britain’s “War on Terror” Insanity Continues – David Cameron Declares War on Encryption, in which I explained how Cameron immediately seized upon the terrorist attacks in France to propose more fascist nonsense:

When it comes to the “war on terror,” the United Kingdom embraces a unique form of paranoia and hatred for civil liberties that leaves pretty much all other Western nations in the dust. Although it isn’t the country in which I reside, the extraordinarily close diplomatic ties between the U.S. and the UK results in my paying particular attention to what transpires over in Albion.

Unsurprisingly, the recent attacks Charlie Hebdo attacks across the English Channel were more than sufficient to get UK Prime Minister David Cameron hot and bothered enough to immediately call for more power for the government, and less civil liberties for the citizenry. In his latest twisted authoritarian fantasy, Mr. Cameron has decided to declare war on encryption. In other words, a war on private communications between citizens.

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A Message to the Peasants – Jeb Bush Says Americans Need to Work Longer Hours

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Over the past several years, as the U.S. economy has transitioned more and more into a corrupt oligarchy, we’ve seen an increase in statements by certain members of the so called “elite” class, in which they condescendingly lecture the average American. The message is always a variant of, “you need to work harder,” or “prepare for tough times ahead.” Of course, there’s never any reference to the fact that the entire U.S. economy has morphed into little more than a rigged fraud, intentionally set up to result in the current neo-feudal environment we see before us.

I first picked up upon this trend after witnessing a disgustingly ignorant appearance by real estate mogul Sam Zell on CNBC. It prompted me to compose a lengthy post titled, An Open Letter to Sam Zell: Why Your Statements are Delusional and Dangerous. Here’s an excerpt:

Your misdiagnosis of the root cause of the current dissent in America is a result of your obliviousness to the actual concerns of the 99%. A group about which you speak with such certainty, yet certainly know almost nothing about. In fact, my website is dedicated to highlighting all of the destructive trends happening in this nation today. From record high food stamp participation, to declining real wages and the reality that young people need to take on so much debt they become indentured serfs from the moment they enter the workforce. From a loss of 4th Amendment rights due to illegal NSA spying, to the militarization of the police force. From oligarch immunity from serious financial crimes that average citizens would be thrown in jail for life for, to trillion dollar bailouts with zero strings attached for the financial community. From the over-prosecution of some of our bravest citizens such as Aaron SwartzBarrett Brown and Private Manning to a fraudulent two-party sham political system entirely controlled by your socio-economic class.

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George W. Bush Charged $100,000 to Speak at Charity for Wounded Veterans

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Former President George W. Bush billed a charity for wounded military veterans $100,000 in speaking fees three years ago, a new report says.

The organization also provided Bush with private jet travel to Houston at a cost of $20,000.

Laura Bush, the former president’s wife, additionally pocketed $50,000 after appearing for the group in 2011, ABC reported.

Helping a Hero fundraises for homes that are specifically adapted for military veterans with lost limbs and other severe injuries, it said.

The group specifically helps those who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

– From the Hill article: George W. Bush Charged $100K for Speech at Wounded Veterans Event 

Only in America could it been seen as acceptable for the man most directly responsible for causing young veterans their wounds, to turn around and charge $100,000 to speak in front of a charity for those same veterans.

While one could argue (though it’s becoming increasingly hard these days with evidence of Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11), that the invasion of Afghanistan seemed justified at the time, the invasion of Iraq was nothing short of a horrific war crime. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th, and everyone with half a brain knew that. The Iraq war continues to be a gigantic crime scene. One in which thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. For absolutely no reason. 

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Florida Judge Who Tried to Ban Protests Forced to Backtrack After Lawsuit Filed

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This story is another example of what can happen when unethical people in positions of power feel like they can get away with anything. In the following case, Jacksonville Florida’s chief judge, Mark Mahon, issued an administration order on July 1 that:

In part banned demonstrations or dissemination of materials on the courthouse grounds that “degrade or call into question the integrity of the court or any of its judges.” The order also banned people from videotaping “all security features” of the courthouse, including any non-public entrance or exit.

The irony of a judge issuing a ban on the First Amendment on courthouse grounds should not be lost on anyone. What’s worse, he may have even gotten away with it if not for the folks at PINAC (Photography is Not a Crime), who sued the judge, and sheriff Mike Williams, forcing these two officials with fascist sympathies to back off.

The Florida-Times Union reports that:

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JP Morgan to Pay Another Slap on the Wrist Fine for Engaging in Systemic Consumer Credit Card Debt Fraud

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Just yesterday, I published a post titled: Florida Man Sentenced to 2.5 Years in Jail for Having Sex on the Beach. The purpose of that post wasn’t to justify his actions, but rather to highlight the difference between how average citizens are treated under the U.S. “justice” system, and how thieving, remorseless financial oligarchs are treated.

While, Mr. Caballero may have ruined the day of a few beach goers by crudely having sex on a public beach in broad daylight, he didn’t run the U.S. economy into the ground and cause destitution to tens of millions of Americans. Nor did he received trillions in taxpayer backstops and bailouts, only to turn around and pay himself a record bonus and then carry on with extremely profitable, illegal financial schemes. No, it was the bank executives who did (and continue to do) all of that. Guess who ends up in prison?

And now, for the latest financial scam perpetrated by JP Morgan, as well as the insignificant slap on the wrist fine, I present the following from Reuters:

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