Judging Brevik (Video)

The euro crisis is now deadly serious. Where are the leaders to save us? (and yes, I mean you Dave)

By Simon Heffer
20 April 2012

Europe has been on the verge of economic meltdown so often in the past few years that to warn of another one seems like the boy who cried wolf. However, the wolf is now very much in the sheepfold, and it is drooling.

The euro, shored up in December by a fiscal stability pact — the one Mr Cameron refused to sign up to — is now under intense pressure again.

It has tumbled against sterling, which is good news for those taking trips abroad, but is indicative of the fragility of Europe’s currency union.
Warning: Directors of the IMF at their news conference in Washington, duting which they said it is possible that the euro will collapse

The reason for its weakness is that the economic conditions some countries must meet under the pact are politically and socially impossible.

The leaders of the International Monetary Fund, meeting this week in Washington, know this, which is why the IMF has said — for the first time — that it can envisage the euro collapsing.

It is also seeking more money, and has been offered almost £10bn from Britain for a bail-out fund — something the Government should have resisted at all costs, for it will be throwing good money after bad.
Austerity: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is imposing swingeing cuts on the country

Europe’s leaders are desperate to avoid the break-up of the euro, because more than a currency is at stake. The whole credibility of the European project — and of its political leaders —depends on the euro’s survival.

It seems the rest of Europe will do almost anything to preserve the currency union.

There have already been bail-outs for Portugal, Ireland and, most notably, Greece, primarily underwritten by the Germans. Italy is in trouble, again.

But the biggest problem is Spain. It elected a new, conservative, prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, last November. Quite fairly, he blamed the country’s dire economic state (exemplified by an almost 25 per cent rate of unemployment) on his socialist predecessor.

However, to meet the demands of the European Central Bank, its German paymasters and the European Commission, Mr Rajoy must make even deeper cuts than his electorate expected.

He has undertaken to cut his deficit by more than three percentage points this year, from 8.5  per cent of gross domestic product to 5.3 per cent. In money terms, this means taking as much as £52bn out of the economy.

He can only do that by sacking tens of thousands of state employees.

This means cuts to regional health, education and welfare budgets.

The political implausibility of this has already registered with the markets, which have driven up the price of Spanish debt to unaffordable levels this week.

The truth is nobody thinks Spain can sustain such an austerity programme.
Unsustainable: Spain has already been brought to a halt by general strikes in protest at the Government's measures

Unsustainable: Spain has already been brought to a halt by general strikes in protest at the Government's measures

Nobody, that is, apart from the head-in-the-sand lunatics in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin who wish the political project of a federal Europe with a single currency to be driven ahead, whatever the price.

The only realistic solution to Spain’s problems is to allow it to default on its debts in an orderly fashion, and re-establish a devalued peseta, which would eventually allow it to export its way out of trouble.

For the moment, that is not allowed.

If difficulties were confined just to Spain, the project would be hard enough to support.

But they are not. Italy, despite its Brussels-imposed ‘technocratic’ — in other words, undemocratic — government, is also teetering on the brink. With the country in recession, Mario Monti, its unelected prime minister, announced this week that Italy could not keep its promises about deficit reduction. Its debt is an unsustainable 120 per cent of its GDP. It, too, would benefit in the long run from leaving the euro and re-establishing the lira: but again, that course appears to be unthinkable.

The timing of all this is frightening, for the tectonic plates of Europe’s politics are also about to move. Tomorrow, France holds the first of two rounds of its presidential election.

Opinion polls show the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is trailing his socialist rival, Francois Hollande.

Mr Hollande has threatened to tear up last year’s EU fiscal pact, and with good reason. He knows that, after the election, France will find it politically impossible to keep to the EU’s stringent fiscal rules.

The election campaign has been characterised by denial on both sides about just how grave the country’s economic problems, and notably its deficit, are.

The presidential contest has a second round on May 6, where the two remaining candidates go head-to-head. That same day Greece goes to the polls.

Anti-austerity candidates look likely to win in Athens, leaving Greece’s future compliance with the fiscal pact — and therefore its future membership of the euro — in serious doubt.

These elections bring closer the moment of truth for Europe.

So does the Spanish problem. Its economy is six times the size of Greece’s, and if it starts to collapse it may be beyond the means of the rest of Europe to save it — even if Brussels decides to do so.

Worse, Spain is a country riven by political unrest. There was a general strike last month accompanied by violent disturbances in several cities.

It is only 31 years since an army officer fired a gun into the ceiling of the Spanish parliament, hoping to trigger a coup d’etat.

Could something similar happen again? Certainly, the King is unpopular, not least for recently abandoning his destitute people to go elephant-hunting in Africa.

Another large rise in unemployment could destabilise the whole country. For all these reasons, it is deeply irresponsible of the Commission, the ECB and, indeed, the EU’s puppet master Germany, to put the continuation of the political project above the stability of individual states. It is not purely that unrest could be averted in several countries if they were helped to have orderly defaults and devaluations: it is that such a move is the only feasible way for countries such as Spain, Greece and Italy to revive their economies.

One man who must see this is David Cameron. He was at the Treasury as Norman Lamont’s special adviser during the calamitous events of Black Wednesday in 1992, when Britain was forced to devalue the pound by leaving the exchange rate mechanism.

Within a few years our economy was booming, and the value of the currency had recovered.

Mr Cameron has been much criticised lately for the incompetence of his administration, and rightly so.

He will need a much surer hand on the tiller if — or rather, when — the euro becomes unsustainable, because the collateral damage to British banks, financial institutions and export businesses would be severe.

That is why Mr Cameron should be taking a much more proactive role in trying to manage the potential disaster that is the eurozone, not least because we are being asked for money to bail it out.

There are few more statesmanlike acts in which he could engage now than touring the chancelleries of Europe, trying to persuade his peers that the game is up, and that a sensible exit strategy must be devised without delay.

Certainly, there is no easy way out. The eurozone will either end painfully, or very painfully.

In the interests of at least securing the former, those responsible need to act now.

Mr Cameron’s message — which he should deliver to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, and Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank — should be that since the end of the euro as we know it is inevitable, it had better start being handled properly.

Such an appeal may well fall on deaf ears. Brussels’s utter disregard for political and economic reality has had to be seen to be believed.

Do they not know that only this week the IMF stated it was now very possible the euro would implode?

Someone has to take political action to avert this. The alternative, without exaggeration, is economic meltdown, widespread civil disorder, and years of destitution.

Mr Cameron needs to persuade his fellow European leaders that if the collapse of the economic project in Europe is properly managed, the EU, in some form, might survive.

But if Europe’s leaders go on ignoring the obvious until everywhere goes up in flames, they and the EU will be finished: and the economic consequences of their stupidity and arrogance will be felt around the world.

Secret Service Punished - Hillary Clinton Praised (Video)

Le Pen confident she will cause upset in poll as Sarkozy camp shows despondency

by Ruadhan MacCormaic
The Irish Times
April 20, 2012

The "far-right" leader claims she will win the National Front its highest score in history, writes in Paris

Leader Marine Le Pen has predicted she will cause an upset in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday by winning the National Front its highest score in history.

Le Pen, who is credited with 14 to 17 per cent in opinion polls, said she aimed to surpass the 16.7 per cent her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, achieved in 2002, a result that secured him a place in the run-off against the eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.

“Sarkozy has no chance of winning. He knows it himself,” Le Pen said, telling right-wing voters that opting for the incumbent would be a wasted vote.

Even if she does not qualify for the run-off, a prospect that has grown more remote in recent weeks, Le Pen hopes to use the presidential race to gain momentum for legislative elections in June.

At a rally in Paris on Tuesday night, Le Pen was cheered wildly as she hit out at banks, the EU

and immigration. “We will not abandon our fates to these stupid technocrats,” she said, referring to EU officials and her plan to withdraw France from the euro.

“I am the only candidate of the nation.”

“This is our home,” the audience shouted back.

Le Pen has attempted to refashion the front’s image since taking over from her father, the party’s founder, last year.

Using left-wing language, she has positioned herself as a critic of globalisation and a champion of protectionism and workers’ rights, and until recently gave less prominence to attacks on immigration and crime.

“I am in favour of redrawing political life to move away from the left/right division, which I find old-fashioned and artificial, towards a division between those who believe in France, in the nation state, and those who no longer believe in the nation state,” Le Pen said.

The gap between Le Pen and French president Nicolas Sarkozy has widened from as little as one percentage point in January to more than 10 points today.

Barring an upset, her focus now is on securing third place ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate whose rapid rise in the polls, from 7 per cent to 14 per cent, has been the surprise of the campaign.

Despite insisting in public that the contest is still wide open, there have been signs of growing despondency in the Sarkozy camp.

The pro-government Le Figaro put the incumbent’s recent dip in support down to “apparent hesitation” between hard-right and centrist strategies.

In a departure from its usual editorial line, the paper noted Sarkozy’s mantra that “there will be surprises” but said his “heart wasn’t really in it”.

A number of former Sarkozy allies from the right and left have declared this week that they will vote for Socialist François Hollande. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadela Amara, two of Sarkozy’s ministerial recruits from the left, and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.

‘Fed up’ French Muslims mobilize to unseat Sarkozy

By Karine G. Barzegar
April 19, 2012

PARIS — France’s Muslim community is mobilizing voters to reject President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s election to punish the conservative leader for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam rhetoric.

“[French] Muslims can’t stand it anymore. They are fed up with these debates about national identity, halal meat, the veil or fundamentalism all over the place,” said Francoise Lorcerie, a sociologist with the Institute of Studies on the Arab and Muslim World near Marseille.

“The terms [Islam, immigration and fundamentalism] are being used interchangeably, without care, with people being targeted, denigrated and used for [votes].”

The debates and rhetoric aren’t new and have been at the heart of French political campaigns for the past decade.

Muslims - especially those living in the “banlieues,” France’s poor immigrant suburbs - sometimes have been courted by candidates with promises of jobs and better living conditions, but they mostly have been stigmatized as threats to the French identity, analysts say.

The rhetoric escalated last month after Mohammed Merah, a French-born Muslim who claimed to be inspired by al Qaeda, killed seven people in a shooting spree.

Mr. Sarkozy, of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, called for tightening immigration because there are “too many foreigners” in France.

Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate of the far-right National Front party, talked about “green fascism” (a reference to the color of Islam) and wondered “how many Mohammed Merahs are arriving on boats and planes each day, filling France with immigrants.”

In the banlieues

The speeches infuriated French Muslims and reignited the debate over origins and identity. As Europe’s largest Islamic community, French Muslims account for as much as 10 percent of the country’s 65 million people.

[ed. Frightening...]

“Merah was born in France. He did not come by boat or plane, but everyone talks about his origins, despite his being French,” said Mohamed Mechmache, president of AC Le Feu, a community association working to improve conditions in the banlieues. “The French Republic has not been fair: She has forgotten some of her children.”

Mr. Mechmache says what residents of the banlieues really need are education and jobs, not a fight over Islam: The youth unemployment rate is above 45 percent in some of the neighborhoods.

In November, AC Le Feu launched an initiative to warn candidates about addressing the situation in these districts. It is working with Muslim community groups to get out the “Muslim vote” in the banlieues, which have had nonparticipation rates as high as 50 percent in some elections.

“There has been so much disillusion, deception and unfulfilled promises that there is a general climate of mistrust in our neighborhoods,” Mr. Mechmache said. “People say, ‘There is no point voting.’ We tell them they have the opportunity to change things.”

In a notice to its members, the Union of Muslim Families of Bouches du Rhone (UFM13), an apolitical association, asked voters to “punish arsonists … who by calculation and political maneuvers have thrown Muslims, inner-city youths, the unemployed and foreigners to the mob.”

Without mentioning any candidate’s name, the association accused some politicians of dividing the nation and “betraying the republican pact” and warned against “those hoping to win or retain power by stoking fear, xenophobia, the rejection of others.”

The Muslim vote

Muslims have no voting bloc, and political preferences apparently have been based on socioeconomic factors. But activists and researchers say there is an increasing tendency for the community to lean left in support of immigration.

“I prefer the left; I think when you’re born Lamia Messaoui, it can’t be any other way,” said Lamia Messaoui, a French business executive of Algerian descent. “Besides, for me, Sarkozy is not an option. His politics, even when he was the interior minister, his use of borderline expressions such as ‘of Muslim appearance,’ it’s just too much for me.”

In April 2007, polls found that French Muslims voted mainly for the Socialist presidential candidate: Segolene Royal won 64 percent of their vote, while Mr. Sarkozy got just 1 percent in the first round and 5 percent in the second.

“People who would have originally voted for the center or the right-wing are now determined to vote against Nicolas Sarkozy,” Ms. Lorcerie said.

“However, this is a short-term response to the current anti-Muslim craze. In the long run, votes of Muslims and citizens of North African and African decent will eventually blend into the overall trends of the French society.”

For now, French Muslims, like a slim majority of their compatriots, seem to prefer Socialist Francois Hollande: He is the clear front-runner in the runoff on May 6, according to polls.

“Hollande said he will lower rents and bills. That’s what everybody cares about because our salaries aren’t enough to make ends meet,” said Chaker Alain, 28, a Parisian born to French parents of North African descent. “Besides, when you listen to the right-wing speeches, the way they call immigrants and their religion every name, automatically you lean toward the left.”

[ed. Of course you are going to vote for leftist parties. They make it nice and easy for you to
continue colonising France - not that Sarkozy is any better at stopping it...]

Climate Alarmist Calls For Burning Down Skeptics’ Homes

“Let’s start keeping track of them…let’s make them pay”

by Paul Joseph Watson
April 19, 2012

Writing for Forbes Magazine, climate change alarmist Steve Zwick calls for skeptics of man-made global warming to be tracked, hunted down and have their homes burned to the ground, yet another shocking illustration of how eco-fascism is rife within the environmentalist lobby.

Comparing climate change skeptics to residents in Tennessee who refused to pay a $75 fee, resulting in firemen sitting back and watching their houses burn down, Zwick rants that anyone who actively questions global warming propaganda should face the same treatment.

“We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices,” writes Zwick, adding, “They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

As we have profusely documented, as polls show that fewer and fewer Americans are convinced by the pseudo-science behind man-made global warming, promulgated as it is by control freaks like Zwick who care more about money and power than they do the environment, AGW adherents are becoming increasingly authoritarian in their pronouncements.

Even as the science itself disproves their theories – Arctic ice is thickening, polar bears and penguins are thriving, Himalayan glaciers are growing – climate change alarmists are only becoming more aggressive in their attacks against anyone who dares question the global warming mantra.

Earlier month we highlighted Professor Kari Norgaard’s call for climate skeptics to be likened to racists and ‘treated’ for having a mental disorder. In a letter to Barack Obama, Norgaard also called on the President to ignore the will of the people and suspend democracy in order to enforce draconian ecological mandates.

But that’s by no means represents the extreme edge of eco-fascist sentiment that has been expressed in recent years.

In 2010, UK government-backed global warming alarmist group 10:10 produced an infomercial in which children who refused to lower their carbon emissions were slaughtered in an orgy of blood and guts. After a massive backlash, the organization was forced to remove the video from their website and issue an apology.

The same year, ‘Gaia hypothesis’ creator James Lovelock asserted that “democracy must be put on hold” to combat global warming and that “a few people with authority” should be allowed to run the planet because people were too stupid to be allowed to steer their own destinies.

In 2006, an environmental magazine to which Al Gore and Bill Moyers had both granted interviews advocated that climate skeptics who are part of the “denial industry” be arrested and made to face Nuremberg-style war crimes trials.

ClimateDepot.com’s Mark Morano is encouraging AGW skeptics to politely inform Steve Zwick ( info@ecosystemmarketplace.com) that calling for people who express a difference of opinion to be tracked and have their houses burned down is not a rational argument for the legitimacy of man-made global warming science.

Indeed, it’s the argument of a demented idiot who’s obviously in the throws of a childish tantrum over the fact that Americans are rejecting the global government/carbon tax agenda for which man-made global warming is a front in greater numbers than ever before.

'For Dummies' Publisher Sues over Web Sharing

by Newsmax
18 Apr 2012

The publisher of the popular “For Dummies” books on a variety of subjects is demanding a trial by jury of people accused of copying its books.

Papers filed in New York said four defendants were involved in the alleged piracy against John Wiley & Sons, according to the BBC. The lawsuit was originally reported by the Torrent Freak website.

The firm's lawyer told the BBC that he believed this would be the first trial of its kind based on the use of Bittorrent.

Wiley had previously filed 15 lawsuits to obtain the identities of about 200 people believed to have infringed the copyright of its titles.It said in papers filed last October that users had "engaged in the illegal copying and distribution of Wiley's 'For Dummies' books through the peer-to-peer file sharing software known as Bittorrent".

Although it said that it was unable to give a precise figure for the amount of revenue lost, it described the sum as "enormous". One title -- "Photoshop CS5 All-In-One For Dummies" -- had been downloaded 74,000 times over a 16-month period, Wiley said.

Wiley's lawyer, William Dunnegan, told the BBC: "We are asking people who are identified by their ISPs as being copyright infringers to pay the minimum amount due under the Copyright Act as statutory damages. That sum is $750.

"For the most part people are owning up and complying with the law. However, the named defendants have not."

The US Copyright Act allows a penalty of up to $150,000 to be imposed per infringement if the accused loses the case.

[ed. A difficult issue. People put work out there and want to be paid but we obviously live in an entirely new age that the print media has not caught up with, one where free accessibility to information has never been easier and almost impossible to curtail...]

Is The Climate Consensus Beginning to Change?

by David Solway
18th April, 2012

The current scientific consensus on Global Warming and Climate Change (or Global Weirding or Global Climactic Disruption, etc.) may be slowly shifting away from the catastrophism of the United Nations IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. True, the shift has been tentative. Carbon-driven global warming was an easy sell, but it will be a hard buyback—too many professional reputations are on the line. Nonetheless, the evidence is piling up to suggest that the human contribution to (earlier) global warming is far less than originally assumed and that a meteorological calamity is highly unlikely. Two-thirds of the scientists attending the 33^rd International Geological Congress in Norway in August 2008 were “hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN’s IPCC report” (U.S. Senate Committee & Public Works online, December 10, 2008).

More recently, a coalition of 49 former NASA scientists and seven Apollo astronauts has accused the bureaucracy of both NASA and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, with which it is affiliated, of diddling with the facts. They write: “We believe that [their] claims that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.” (Watts Up With That, April 10, 2012).

Further, the Interim Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) of August 29, 2011 showed unambiguously that the UN suppressed or ignored much of the countervailing data that challenged its official position. This is hardly surprising since the IPCC, which certified and entrenched the so-called “scientific consensus,” is essentially a political body with an agenda of its own. Mark Hendrickson of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College points out that the IPCC “does not speak as one voice,” since some of the “leading scientists on the panel contradict its official position.” Others have resigned in protest against its policymakers’ summaries, which are “produced by a committee of 51 government appointees, many of whom are not scientists.” It turns out that those “who compose the summaries are given considerable latitude to modify the scientific reports,” and Hendrickson quotes a U.S. State Department official who informed an IPCC co-chair that “it is essential… chapter authors be prevailed upon to modify their text in an appropriate manner” (Doc’s Talk, May 25, 2009).

Hendrickson cites warmist crusader and suspect guru Al Gore’s ally, former Under-Secretary of State Tim Wirth, who has gone on record justifying the kind of scientific fraud perpetrated by the IPCC. “Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,” he said, “we will be doing the right thing.” Further data casting serious doubt on this railroaded consensus may be found at Inhofe EPW Press Blog, Daily Tech online, and the journal Energy and Environment, whose findings are based on a survey of the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database covering almost 9000 scientific publications.

But the fix is still in and soldered tight by all sorts of disreputable means. In her new book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Scientist, Donna Laframboise shows that “IPCC has been recruiting 20-something graduate students” as lead authors, many of whom had not even earned their degrees and some of whom were majoring in non-climate disciplines. More than a third of the 2007 IPCC report (or Climate Bible) consisted of so-called “grey references,” that is, unaccredited studies. The IPCC has also chosen “to muddy the water by aligning [itself] with lobbyists” and relies heavily on non-peer reviewed material, including newspaper items, press releases, magazine articles, unpublished graduate theses and Green activist sources.

And then there is the taradiddle, emanating from a University of Illinois 2009 survey, that 97.4% of scientists agree that mankind is responsible for global warming. This is easily debunked when one considers its selection methodology. As Rich Trzupek explains (FrontPage Magazine, August 30, 2011), citing Lawrence Solomon’s crushing putdown (FullComment, December 30, 2010), the Illinois researchers decided that of the 10,257 respondents, the 10,180 who demurred from the so-called consensus “weren’t qualified to comment on the issue because they were merely solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists, astronomers and the like. Of the remaining 77 scientists whose votes were counted, 75 agreed with the proposition that mankind was causing catastrophic changes in the climate. And, since 75 is 97.4% of 77, ‘overwhelming consensus’ was demonstrated once again.” The real percentage of concurring scientists in the survey is less than .008%. That these 75 were, as Solomon writes, “scientists of unknown qualifications” adds yet another layer to the boondoggle.

This sort of thing is not a little white lie but a big green one, which has reached the point where it must be maintained by the omission of details, the distortion of data and the suspicious liability to error. The plot had already thickened in 1989 when the late Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University—who twenty years earlier had been warning the world of an advancing ice age—wrote: “So we have to offer scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have” (Detroit News Editorial, November 22, 1989).

Twenty years later, in November 2009, the Hadley Climate Research Unit was hacked, releasing thousands of files suggesting a covert mega-operation to propagate an Anthropogenic Global Warming myth. It had become undeniable that data was tampered with to paint the desired canvas, that counter-evidence was deliberately squelched, that character assassination against climate skeptics was an accepted tactic and that experimental results were falsely replicated. The notorious Wikileaks cable dump made it even clearer that the climate “consensus” was more of a political gambit than a scientific project (guardian.co.uk, December 3, 2010).

A new bundle of “hide the decline” email dumps, known as Climategate 2.0, has confirmed that “climate science” has been cooked and that, in the words of science and technology writer Charlie Martin, “the ‘consensus’ is political, not scientific” (The Tatler, November 22, 2011). Writing in The Weekly Standard for December 12, 2011, Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute is equally if not more emphatic: “the new cache offers ample confirmation of the rank politicization of climate science and rampant cronyism that ought to trouble even firm believers in catastrophic climate change… it’s another case of policy-driven science, and not science-driven policy.”

Even some of the specialists involved in the enterprise have begun to question or object to the findings as, to quote from the emails, “not statistically significant,” as “truly pathetic,” and as “defending something that increasingly cannot be defended.” Nevertheless, “The same science personalities at the top of the United Nations climate research machine,” writes Terence Corcoran, “are back, parading before readers in all their blundering glory” (National Post, November 23, 2011). The lead researcher at the East Anglia CRU, Phil Jones, has gone so far as to recommend deleting all incriminating emails and/or changing the wording of others.

Myron Ebell, director of the nonprofit Competitive Enterprise Institute Center on Energy and the Environment (CEI), has said it definitively. “If there were any doubts remaining…the new batch of E-mails…make it clear” that the IPCC “is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response” (CEI online, November 22, 2011). Of course, as noted, it is not only the IPCC which is tainted, but most of the GW outfits whose theorists, adherents and practitioners are at least as concerned with saving their careers as saving the planet. These frauds and true-believer scientists who have profaned their discipline have clearly become a danger to us all. But to our great good fortune and irrespective of the obstacles raised before them, the mavericks refuse to go away. With luck, diligence and belated good sense, one of the greatest scams of our time may eventually be exposed.

Decrying Imaginary Racism

by John Perazzo
Apr 19th, 2012

Given the way the left has depicted Trayvon Martin’s death—as a case of a “white Hispanic” who “hunted down” a young African American and was subsequently given a pass by a corrupt and racist criminal-justice system—one could hardly have been shocked to learn that on April 7th in Gainesville, Florida, a group of at least five black men shouted “Trayvon!” before proceeding to beat an innocent, 27-year-old white pedestrian so badly as to leave his face permanently disfigured. Neither was it particularly surprising when, four days later—again in Gainesville—a black crowd shouted “Trayvon!” while assaulting a white man who was trying to wrest his female companion’s purse from the hands of a black man who had just stolen it. Nor could it be described as stunning that someone in Sanford, Florida shot six bullets into an empty police cruiser on the morning of April 10th—to register an unmistakable vote of disapproval over how local police had purportedly mishandled their response to George Zimmerman’s recent killing of Martin.

The foregoing actions were those of people seeking retribution for two very separate offenses. First, of course, there was the killing of Martin—an act which, according to a Gallup poll, 72% of blacks (as compared to 31% of non-blacks) view mainly a result of Zimmerman’s own racial bias. Second, and much more important, was the perception that law-enforcement’s decision not to incarcerate the gunman in the immediate aftermath of the shooting reflected a racial bias that pervades the entire criminal-justice system of the United States. Gallup reports that 73% of blacks (vs. 35% of non-blacks) believe that Zimmerman would have been arrested (and presumably jailed) if his victim had been white, while a new ABC poll finds that 84% of blacks feel that the justice system—from the police to the courtroom to the penitentiary—treats them inequitably.

While it is virtually impossible to overstate the implications of this core belief which has so firmly embedded itself in the worldview of black Americans, one vital question begs for an answer: Is it true? Let us briefly survey the mountain of empirical evidence that the champions of “civil rights”—likeJackson and Sharpton—have so carefully avoided mentioning amid their incessant, thundering denunciations of the U.S. and its justice system.

The criminal-justice process is comprised of a number of stages, or decision points, at which law-enforcement personnel (such as police and judges) must determine how they should proceed—arrest or release a suspect; convict or acquit; impose a harsh or mild sentence; etc. Contrary to popular mythology, there is virtually no evidence of racial discrimination at any of these decision points. Black overrepresentation is almost entirely at the arrest stage,reflecting the simple fact that the “average” black engages in criminal activity more frequently than the “average” white. Not only are the outcomes at other decision points nearly identical for both races, but the slight differences that do exist tend to favor blacks. Further, the arrest rates of blacks living in cities that are the politically black-controlled are no lower than the arrest rates of blacks in white-controlled cities. Nor are these realities anything new; they have been true for decades.[1]

Consider that as early as 1983, the liberal-leaning National Academy of Sciences found “no evidence of a widespread systematic pattern of discrimination in sentencing.”[2] In 1985 the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology concluded that a disproportionate number of blacks were in prison not because of a double standard of justice, but because of the disproportionate number of crimes they committed.[3] That same year, federal government statistician Patrick Langan conducted an exhaustive study of black and white incarceration rates and found that “even if racism [in sentencing] exists, it might explain only a small part” of the black overrepresentation among prison inmates.[4] In a 1987 review essay of the three most comprehensive books examining the role of race in the American criminal-justice system, the journal Criminology concluded that there was little evidence of anti-black discrimination.[5] The most exhaustive, best-designed study of comparative sentencing patterns—a 1990 analysis of more than 11,000 recently convicted criminals in California—found that the severity of sentences depended heavily on such factors as prior criminal records, the seriousness of the crimes, and whether guns were used in the commission of those crimes; race was found to have no effect whatsoever.[6] A 1991 RAND Corporation study found that a defendant’s racial or ethnic background bore little or no relationship to conviction rates; far more important than race were such factors as the amount of evidence presented, and whether or not a credible eyewitness testified.[7]

In 1993 a Justice Department study tracked the experience of more than 10,000 accused felons in America’s 75 largest cities found that black defendants fared better than their white counterparts—66% of black defendants were actually prosecuted, versus 69% of white defendants; among those prosecuted, 75% of blacks were convicted, as compared to 78% of whites.[8] Similarly, a 1996 analysis of 55,000 big-city felony cases found that black defendants were convicted at a lower rate than whites in 12 of the 14 federally designated felony categories.[9] This finding was consistent with the overwhelming consensus of other, previous, well-designed studies, most of which indicated that black defendants were slightly less likely to be convicted of criminal charges against them than white defendants.[10] In 1997, liberal criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen conducted a painstaking review of the voluminous literature on charging and sentencing, and concluded that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” and not racism, explained why proportionately more blacks than whites were in prison—and for longer terms.[11]

The foregoing realities remain as true today as they were two and three decades ago. Even though a massive industry, devoted entirely to uncovering any trace evidence of bias in the justice system, has arisen in America’s law schools and the civil-rights establishment, the net result of its cumulative efforts has been nothing more than an occasional study indicating a miniscule, unexplained racial disparity in sentencing, while most other analyses continue to findno racial effect at all.

Of course, one could never learn any of this from the “civil rights leaders” who were apparently struck mute in the aftermath of an April 3rd shooting that occurred outside a south Phoenix Taco Bell restaurant, where a 22-year-old black motorist at the drive-through window got into an altercation with Daniel Adkins, a 29-year-old, mentally disabled “white Hispanic” pedestrian. The argument grew heated, and the driver shot and killed Adkins. When police arrived at the scene, the gunman reported that Adkins had swung a bat or metal pipe at him. Though no such items were ever found at the scene, an independent witness reported that Adkins had swung his fists in the driver’s direction several times. Arizona, like Florida, has a “Stand Your Ground” law that allows a person to use deadly force when faced with a life-or-death confrontation. The gunman accordingly claimed that he had acted in self-defense, and thus he was not arrested.

While Daniel Adkins’ death was undeniably a human tragedy, it is quite conceivable that from a legal standpoint, the gunman, if in fact he felt that his life was in danger, acted within the bounds of the law. What is noteworthy, however, is that few Americans have ever heard of Daniel Adkins. Jackson and Sharpton have said nothing about him. Famous athletes and entertainers have not “tweeted” about him. And President Obama has felt no compulsion to exhort his countrymen, as he did in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, “to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen.” Now, why do you suppose that is?

A £7m TV channel in 22 languages and the Second World War airbrushed from European history at a £44m museum... eurocrats are spending like never befor

By James Slack
17 April 2012

As the euro crisis grips the continent, threatening the economies of a number of countries in the bloc, self-serving eurocrats have seen fit to splurge almost £50million of taxpayers' money on the 'House of European History' where the Second World War is known as the European Civil War and 'Year Zero' for the continent is set at 1946, when the forerunner to the EU was formed. Here James slack reports from the Brussels La-La-Land where money is being wasted on vanity projects like never before...

One thing that symbolises the European elite’s sense of delusion as they cling to the dream of an unviable single currency is the grandiose decision to build a House Of European History.

At a cost of £44million, eurocrats have invested in this project, which is intended to promote ‘an awareness of European identity’.

There is one problem, though. The governments of the EU countries are unable to agree over fundamental aspects of the showcase museum in Brussels.

They have been arguing, for example, over diverging interpretations of events such as World War II — which EU enthusiasts risibly call the ‘European Civil War’.

Farcically, it’s been decided to omit any exhibit on which agreement cannot be reached.

And because of their differing views about World War II, the museum will begin with an EU ‘year zero’ of 1946.

Martin Callanan, the European Conservatives’ group leader in Brussels, has highlighted the madness of such a narcissistic project — particularly when Europe is in a deep economic crisis.

‘The European Parliament should not be in the business of running museums,’ he says. ‘Even in good times, the money would be a waste, but during these hard times it is scandalous.
Disaster

‘Even if we put the exorbitant cost to one side, differing perspectives of European history mean the museum’s content must be confined to post-World War II.

‘It is hard to see how this will be an objective history museum, rather than a centre for propaganda about the EU.’

And Belgian centre-right MEP Derk Jan Eppink has said: ‘No one wants to be involved in this when people can’t even agree what happened in the last war. It is self-aggrandisement at the expense of taxpayers.’

But then this is just another example of the out-of-control juggernaut of mis-spending of British taxpayers’ money that is happening in Brussels.

Eurocrats continue to pour endless amounts of taxpayers’ money into propping up the collapsing political EU ‘project’.

On a visit to Brussels in recent days, I was shocked to see just how detached from the real world they are, even as disaster unfolds across the Continent.
Ignored: There is no mention of the billions of euros that the European Central Bank (pictured) has poured into propping up the single currency

I heard barely a mention in the European Parliament of the Greek sovereign debt crisis.

There were no debates about the 386 billion euros committed — so far — to save Greece, Ireland and Portugal from bankruptcy or of ways to prevent the debt contagion spreading to Spain, as has happened in the past few days.

And there was no discussion of the devastating official figures that show one in ten in the eurozone is unemployed.
Detached: What about the catastrophe of Spain's 50% youth unemployment, which is causing social tensions to boil over?

In some countries, youth unemployment is close to a catastrophic 50 per cent and experts largely agree the eurozone has slipped back into the throttling grip of recession.

Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund warned for the first time that Europe’s debt crisis could trigger a break-up of the eurozone.

Yet the European Parliament sails along like a partying cruise liner, utterly oblivious to the disasters ahead.

In Brussels, the foyers are packed with art exhibitions. In the chamber, debates take place on enlarging the EU to take in still more member states.

While the European dream of a strong single currency evaporates, the only thing that seems to concern MEPs is their own self-importance.

The bars and restaurants surrounding the European Parliament are heaving. Money and drink flow freely. Little wonder.

Staff working for the EU pay tax at a rate of 21 per cent (though our MEPs pay British tax rates, so as not to benefit from this racket).

In stark contrast, the waiters who serve trays full of Belgian beer, steak and frites pay 40 per cent tax.

As one veteran remarked of life in the Brussels bubble: ‘There is no recession here.’

Indeed. But what there is — in spades — is vanity.

Behind the main European Parliament complex, I was directed to a newly opened 65,000 sq ft visitor centre called the ‘Parliamentarium,’ which cost nearly £18 million (the original estimate for it was £14 million).

It is a shrine to excess, packed with expensive technology and featuring welcome messages from every MEP.

It celebrates the creation of the EU with barely a nod to the crisis raging all around. France’s recent history is marked by a picture of the Tour de France, and Germany’s by the famous Berlin address by Barack Obama in 2008.

Interestingly, the image used to represent Britain (which, of course, is not a member of the euro) is much less positive.

We get pictures of the bombings in London in July 2005 and of staff packing boxes at the London arm of Lehman Brothers after its collapse.
Bias? The new £18m 'Parliamentarium' visitor centre represents France with a picture of the Tour de France (above), but shows victims of the 2008 banking collapse for Britain (below)

Sadly, such vanity projects as the House Of European History are visible everywhere — regardless of the crippling debts of individual member states.

Overall, the European Parliament costs £1.69 billion a year to run — an increase of 18 per cent since 2009.

It rents, leases or owns 63 buildings, double the number a decade ago.

Tory MEP Geoffrey Van Orden, who heads the New Direction think-tank, says the main reason for the spiralling cost has been the massive increase in Parliament’s bureaucracy.
Grotesque

Since the enlargement of the EU in 2004 (which increased the number of member states from 15 to 25), staff levels have grown from 3,946 to 6,245 — even though there are only four more MEPs than in 2004.

More than 1,000 European Parliament officials earn more than the MEPs — who themselves are very well paid.

By comparison, just 83 staff members of the British House of Commons are paid more than our MPs.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that a TV propaganda channel for the European Parliament, which has only 830 viewers a day, costs £7 million a year to run — largely because most of the shows telecast are translated into 22 languages — including Gaelic, which is spoken by just 80,000 people.

During my visit, it emerged that the head of the EU’s environment agency — a British scientist — has been using public funds for staff training in the Caribbean and Mediterranean.

Jacqueline McGlade, a marine biologist, also spent £250,000 to decorate its Copenhagen-based headquarters with plants.

Eurocrats are so used to such grotesque expenditure of other people’s money that barely an eyebrow was raised.

Worse, the eurocrats fail to see that they are doing anything wrong.

Every year, £180 million is squandered on dragging the entire eurocracy to France for a handful of sessions in the Strasbourg Parliament building.
Squandered: The moves to Strasbourg (pictured) cost £180m a year

This happens for no other reason than to placate the French — whose economy benefits from the millions spent in hotels, bars and restaurants by the travelling EU circus.

In a laudable move, Tory MEP Ashley Fox fought to stop the European Parliament travelling to Strasbourg for a single month — a saving to Europe’s taxpayers of an estimated £15million.
Privilege

Yet the plan is being challenged in the European Court of Justice — yet another expensive EU institution.

No one is betting against the court ruling in favour of France, and of the waste continuing unchecked.

Of course, the European Parliament is responsible for only a fraction of the EU’s profligacy.

Cut back! David Cameron has insisted that Britain will not contribute any more to the EU's increased budget

The EU’s entire budget is an obscene £120 billion — with Britain making a net contribution (money we dole out, but do not get back in grants or our historic rebate) of £6.12 billion.

That is £233 for every household in the UK.

Indeed, as research by the MEP Richard Ashworth shows, only Germany pays more, in net terms, for the privilege of being a member of probably the most spendthrift club on earth.

Yet the Brussels establishment still does not recognise the need for the kind of efficiencies being implemented at home by their member states.

Outrageously, the Commission’s budget committee has just demanded an increase in the EU budget of 5 per cent a year for the next seven years.

David Cameron insists that Britain will not pay. But we have heard tough talk over budgets from him before, only for him to cave in, as he did last year over the same issue when he agreed to a 2.9 per cent increase in the budget.

If he finds himself wobbling in negotiations, he should think of the unforgivable act of vanity that is the new House Of European History.

If that doesn’t convince him to stand his ground, then nothing will.

The EU is living in a state of near criminal delusion and waste. History will surely record that its bureaucrats fiddled while the euro dream burned.

Obama lawyer: Birth certificate irrelevant to eligbility

by Jerome R. Corsi
16th April, 2012

An attorney representing Barack Obama has argued in court to prevent the long-form birth certificate image that was released by the White House nearly a year ago from being placed into evidence.

It was on April 10 at a three-hour eligibility hearing before a New Jersey administrative law judge that the argument came from Alexandra Hill.

She is legal counsel representing Obama’s re-election campaign, and argued then that New Jersey law does not require Obama to present a valid birth certificate to establish his qualifications under Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution to be on the New Jersey Democratic Party primary ballot.

Hill repeatedly explained to Judge Jeff S. Masin that, “We do not believe the president’s birth certificate is relevant to this case.”

Agreeing with Hill, Masin ruled in a written opinion the same day that New Jersey law does not require Obama to produce any proof he is eligible to be president in order to be placed on the primary ballot.

Noting that New Jersey law allows a nominating petition endorsing a particular person for president to be filed without the consent of the person endorsed, Masin said “There is no obligation upon the person endorsed to prove his or her qualification for office.”

At the hearing, Masin prevented petitioner’s counsel, Mario Apuzzo, who has argued eligibility issues in the courts before, from placing Obama’s birth certificate into evidence. Nor was Apuzzo allowed to call to the stand a witness willing to offer expert testimony that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery.

Is Obama ready to throw the birth certificate under the bus?

“What is emerging in the various state legal challenges to including President Obama on the presidential ballot appears to be an attempt by the White House to divorce itself from the Obama long-form birth certificate released,” said Mike Zullo, the lead investigator in Arizona Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s law enforcement investigation into Obama’s birth certificate and eligibility to be president.

Challenges to Obama’s name on the 2012 election ballot have appeared in more than half a dozen states already.

At a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 1, Arpaio announced his law enforcement investigators had established probable cause to believe Obama’s birth certificate and his Selective Service Registration card are forgeries.

Zullo questioned why the White House did not instruct Hill to champion the birth certificate as legitimate.

“The White House appears to be acting as if the Obama birth certificate is of no consequence in establishing the fact of Obama’s birth,” Zullo continued.

“Instead of producing the birth certificate to the New Jersey secretary of state and arguing to Judge Masin that the document was legitimate, Obama’s legal counsel did everything she could to keep the document from coming into evidence. Why?”

Reviewing the three-hour court hearing, it is clear Hill remained adamant on the birth certificate being irrelevant in New Jersey.

Hill affirmed to Masin in response to a direct question from the bench that Obama’s birth certificate had never been presented to the New Jersey secretary of state to establish his eligibility and she affirmed that the Obama re-election campaign had no intention of doing so.

At one point in the hearing, Masin, apparently agreeing with Hill’s argument, dramatically explained to Apuzzo that Obama’s birth certificate was not at issue in this case.

“I have nothing before me that I can look at and can say, ‘Okay, this is what has been produced as his [Obama’s] birth certificate,’” the judge said from the bench.

“There is nothing here,” he continued, referring to the birth certificate. “The campaign has not produced me anything and I assume you’re not planning on doing that. The campaign hasn’t shown me anything on the Internet. There’s no birth certificate that has been presented to me – good, bad, indifferent – real, forged, certified, anything – it’s not here.”

Apuzzo pressed to be put on the record a stipulation by White House counsel that the Obama campaign was not utilizing the long-form birth certificate as proof that Obama was born in Hawaii or as proof he was qualified to be president as a “natural born citizen” under the Constitution.

In response, Hill repeated she had no intention of presenting Obama’s birth certificate to the court.

“It’s not here,” she told Masin. “I don’t have it.”

“There appears to be no affirmative requirement that a person endorsed in a nominating petition for the presidency present to the Secretary of State any certification or other proof that he is qualified for the office, at least not at the time when nominating petitions are to be accepted or rejected by the secretary,” Masin wrote in his decision.

“In this matter, as the petitioners’ objection is that Mr. Obama has not provided the secretary with proof of the place of his birth by means of a birth certificate or otherwise, the lack of any obligation on his part to do so means he has not failed to act in accordance with the applicable law.”

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin

by Ian Katz
15 April 2012

The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world". "I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "It's scary."

The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

The 38-year-old billionaire, whose family fled antisemitism in the Soviet Union, was widely regarded as having been the driving force behind Google's partial pullout from China in 2010 over concerns about censorship and cyber-attacks. He said five years ago he did not believe China or any country could effectively restrict the internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong. "I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he said.

He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."

Brin's criticism of Facebook is likely to be controversial, with the social network approaching an estimated $100bn (£64bn) flotation. Google's upstart rival has seen explosive growth: it has signed up half of Americans with computer access and more than 800 million members worldwide.

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive," he said. "The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."

He criticised Facebook for not making it easy for users to switch their data to other services. "Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years," he said.

Brin's comments come on the first day of a week-long Guardian investigation of the intensifying battle for control of the internet being fought across the globe between governments, companies, military strategists, activists and hackers.

From the attempts made by Hollywood to push through legislation allowing pirate websites to be shut down, to the British government's plans to monitor social media and web use, the ethos of openness championed by the pioneers of the internet and worldwide web is being challenged on a number of fronts.

In China, which now has more internet users than any other country, the government recently introduced new "real identity" rules in a bid to tame the boisterous microblogging scene. In Russia, there are powerful calls to rein in a blogosphere blamed for fomenting a wave of anti-Vladimir Putin protests. It has been reported that Iran is planning to introduce a sealed "national internet" from this summer.

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, the 14 million-strong online activist network which has been providing communication equipment and training to Syrian activists, echoed Brin's warning: "We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realising the power of this medium to organise people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world."

Writing in the Guardian on Monday, outspoken Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei says the Chinese government's attempts to control the internet will ultimately be doomed to failure. "In the long run," he says, "they must understand it's not possible for them to control the internet unless they shut it off – and they can't live with the consequences of that."

Amid mounting concern over the militarisation of the internet and claims – denied by Beijing – that China has mounted numerous cyber-attacks on US military and corporate targets, he said it would be hugely difficult for any government to defend its online "territory".

"If you compare the internet to the physical world, there really aren't any walls between countries," he said. "If Canada wanted to send tanks into the US there is nothing stopping them and it's the same on the internet. It's hopeless to try to control the internet."

He reserved his harshest words for the entertainment industry, which he said was "shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot" by lobbying for legislation to block sites offering pirate material.

He said the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by the film and music industries would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. The entertainment industry failed to appreciate people would continue to download pirated content as long as it was easier to acquire and use than legitimately obtained material, he said.

"I haven't tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like; it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work – and then when you have to jump through all these hoops [to buy legitimate content], the walls created are disincentives for people to buy," he said.

Brin acknowledged that some people were anxious about the amount of their data that was now in the reach of US authorities because it sits on Google's servers. He said the company was periodically forced to hand over data and sometimes prevented by legal restrictions from even notifying users that it had done so.

He said: "We push back a lot; we are able to turn down a lot of these requests. We do everything possible to protect the data. If we could wave a magic wand and not be subject to US law, that would be great. If we could be in some magical jurisdiction that everyone in the world trusted, that would be great … We're doing it as well as can be done."

[ed. Very nice that one of the 'foxes' warns us 'chickens' about the impending doom, isn't it? The internet was never meant to facilitate "megacorp" monopolies like google or facebook and certainly not ubiquitous "government" either...]

Tell The Truth About Islam (video)

The sound of Euro dominoes: Billions wiped from world stock markets and the currency shaking AGAIN

By Mitch Feierstein
13 April 2012

Regular readers of this column will remember that I’ve got a thing about inflation. You know: inflation is bad, printing money makes more of it, isn’t it about time we stopped making a bad problem worse?

Trouble is, though, constant repetition of a theme gets boring after a while. Yes, fuel prices are up. Yes, asset prices are crazy. Yes, food and utility bills are weirdly expensive these days. But, same-old same-old. So what’s Rihanna wearing these days?

But listen up. I’ve got a new illustration for you. What does €1 trillion buy you these days? Answer: it buys peace and quiet … for about six weeks. That’s how much money the ECB had lent out to weak Eurozone banks by the end of February – and six weeks is about how long the subsequent period of calm has lasted. And because inflation spirals upwards, nobody now thinks that another trillion euros will do much to ease the panic. Would a trillion euros now buy another four weeks, even? I doubt it.

And that’s the point really. There’s a difference between a circle and a death-spiral. If you’re in an infinite loop, you can in principle go on for ever. The death-spiral might look the same to begin with – the same old scenery coming round time after time – but oh boy, the ending is different.

What we saw this week might look like more of the same. A government bond auction in sudden crisis (Spain’s in this instance, though Italy’s auction was pretty ugly too.) Billions wiped from world stock markets. The euro shaking again. Global leaders saying confidently that no bailout would be needed. (Just as the bailout wasn’t needed in Greece. Until it was. Or Portugal. Or Ireland. Just as Greece could never default on its debts, until it did just that.) And a hopium rally may just follow this chatter.

And now we’re starting to talk dominoes again. If Spain falls, then what about Italy? If Italy falls, what about France? And those aren’t speculative questions. If Spain falls, neither France nor Italy could possibly survive as things stand.

Yet please don’t think of this as just another loop of the merry-go-round. It’s more than that; much more. The event which spooked the markets this week was the Spanish government’s dismally unsuccessful auction of €2.6 billion worth of bonds. That sounds like a lot of money, but Spain needs to raise €200 billion this year alone. Then again for year after year after year.

If the country’s finances were under control and the economy was reasonably strong, those things could be manageable. Germany also has a lot of debt – more as a proportion of its income than Spain – but the economy is strong and the government not desperately addicted to spending more than it raises. Spain, unfortunately, has a government deficit which is out of control and an economy forecast to shrink. (Forecasts which will probably turn out to be way too optimistic, by the way. The Greek economy hasn’t shrunk. It’s collapsed.)

That would be bad enough on its own but Spain had a real estate bubble even worse than our own. Even worse than the American one. And the losses stacked up in that boom are still lurking in Spain’s many small savings banks, each of which is like an undetonated bomb. A bomb, whose fuse is ticking every closer to the detonator.

There are different ways you can respond to all this. If you have any savings or investments, you’ll be thinking about how to protect your cash. Just what do you do, when you can’t trust governments to repay their debts? What’s left? What’s safe?

There’s also a human response. Just stop to think a moment about the human tragedy implied by Spain’s worse than 50% youth unemployment. What a heart-breaking statistic that is! It reminds you that behind the cold financial stats, young people’s lives are being ruined by awful decisions made by their political masters. Worse still, those scars may never heal. Economists have found that the ‘earnings scar’ left by a bout of prolonged unemployment is visible for literally decades afterwards. And that’s just to talk about money. What about the injury to self-esteem? To pride and self-fulfilment?

Which brings one, I suppose, to a political response: the place where these considerations need to end. Politicians created this messbecause they forgot the basic rule of capitalism: if you win, you win; if you lose, you lose.

Capitalism, of the sort that’s operated across Planet Ponzi these last decade or two, has played by different rules. The winners win. The losers … well, their losses get shuffled away. They get magicked away by Wall Street. They get bailed out by governments. They get printed away by the money presses of the world’s central banks.

Britain is tiptoeing uncertainly away from that awful politics right now. America hasn’t yet woken up. The Eurozone is resolute in its reality avoidance. But the nature of reality is that you can’t avoid its arrival. Clickety-clickety-click – is that dominoes I hear?

Hungarian PM attacks EU 'blackmail' over IMF loan

Fri, 13 Apr, 2012

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban attacked the European Union for imposing political conditions on an EU-IMF loan desperately needed by Budapest, in an interview on Friday.

"Creating political conditions -- for example over the justice system -- would amount to blackmail, which is unacceptable within the European Union," Orban told national radio MR1 in his weekly interview.

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not set financial conditions, but the EU is flirting with the idea of imposing political conditions," Orban added.

Hungary asked the International Monetary Fund and European Union for a 15-20 billion euro ($20-26 billion) credit line last November, as the forint dropped to record low levels against the euro and borrowing costs rose to record highs.

But Brussels later warned that any money would depend on Budapest proving its commitment to democratic principles.

Orban's government has come under fire for a series of laws as well as a new constitution that critics say curb the independence of its central bank and judiciary, and limit press freedoms, among other things.

Last month, the European Commission gave Hungary one month to bring two controversial laws -- on the judicial system and its data protection authority -- in line with EU principles or face court action.

On Friday, Brussels appeared reluctant to get drawn into a new argument with Orban.

"I will not react to the Hungarian prime minister's declarations," said Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly.

"We are analysing the response we received from the Hungarian authorities (to Brussels' concerns), we will inform you of the commissioners' response as soon as the evaluation has been made and a decision has been taken."

Orban is due to meet with Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels on April 23.