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The nominal U.S. President, Donald Trump, will meet with the two main European leaders next week with the goal of pushing the President off his position to end the Iran Nuclear Deal, or JCPOA. But it is the bigger issues of energy security that will be the real focus.

From soy-boy Emmanuel Macron of France to the Gelded One of Germany, Angela Merkel, putting the European Union back in its place is one of the few things that Trump may still be able to affect the trajectory of when it comes to foreign policy.

He has no control over Syria, having ceded his authority to the neoconservative crazies who have been wrong about everything since the fall of the Soviet Union. I also don’t think he has much control over negotiations with North Korea.

While everyone on the right keeps talking about how he keeps winning, after the disaster of his strikes on Syria, why would anyone take him seriously during Korean demilitarization talks?

Does anyone think now Donald Trump has the leeway to negotiate an end to the Korean War and make those terms stick?

And if you do, do you think Xi or Putin or Kim himself do?

EU Fracturing

And that brings me back to Macron and Merkel. They were split on striking Syria. It’s obvious that Macron saw this as an opportunity to up his ‘street cred’ with the globalist oligarchy, cozying up to the U.S. and U.K. and finish what his predecessors started in Syria decades ago.

Macron is positioning himself to replace Merkel as the de facto leader of the EU. He’s been groomed for this position as Merkel’s time on the world stage comes to an end.

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Merkel Furious With Trump After “Unprecedented” G-7 Failure To Reach Consensus On Climate Change

May 27, 2017

Merkel Furious With Trump After “Unprecedented” G-7 Failure To Reach Consensus On Climate Change

In the end it was not mean to be. As discussed on Friday, during Trump’s first G-7 summit, world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new French President Emmanuel Macron, had hoped to persuade the the US president to endorse the Paris Agreement climate pledge to fight global warming. By the end of the summit – held at a luxury hotel in Taormina, Sicily that was once a Dominican monastery and base for the Nazi air force during World War Two – they realized they had failed, as Trump “underscored his determination to break the global mold” by refusing to follow the Group of Seven line not only on global warming but also by resisting measures on trade.

Furthermore, in what was described as an “unprecedented step“, the final G-7 communique gave the U.S. its own section to say that it is “undergoing a review process” and is unable to join in the discussion, an official cited by Bloomberg said. As a result while the US will remain excluded from the final affirmation, the other six, call it the G-6, will recommit to the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Trump tweeted Saturday he’d come to a decision on next week.

Needless to say, Merkel who had hoped to leave the Saturday summit with the G-7 agenda endorsed by everyone, including Trump, was furious at the US president.

“The whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Saturday. “Here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one. That means there are no signals until now whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Agreement or not.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

German Minister Seeks Jail Time, Fines In Criminal Crackdown Against Facebook “Fake News”

December 18, 2016

German Minister Seeks Jail Time, Fines In Criminal Crackdown Against Facebook “Fake News”

With Facebook having announced last week the launch of measure to flag and eliminate fake news from appearing on its website, Germany does not think the process is fast enough, and according to Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas, German judges and state prosecutors need to crack down straight away on fake news disseminated through social media platforms such as Facebook. Interviewed by Bild am Sontag, Maas, a Social Democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition, has repeatedly warned the U.S. technology company to respect laws against defamation in Germany that are more rigid than in the United States and added that the newspaper the principle of free speech does not protect against slander.

Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas

“Defamation and malicious gossip are not covered under freedom of speech,” Maas said cited by Reuters, just days after other top government officials called for legislation to tackle “hate speech” and fake news on Facebook and other social media platforms. He added that the government is keeping close tabs on how efficiently Facebook removes illegal content. If removal rates fail to grow, “urgent legal consequences” could follow.

Urging a criminal crackdown, the Justice Minister said “authorities must prosecute [hate speech], even on the internet,” noting that offenders could face up to five years in jail. “Anyone who tries to manipulate the political discussion with lies needs to be aware (of the consequences).”

“We expect significant improvements in Facebook’s removal practice. The standard for removals must be German law,” Maas told Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Friday.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Deutsche Bank Is Going Under: The Real Reason Germans Were Told To Prepare For A National Crisis?

October 1, 2016

Deutsche Bank Is Going Under: The Real Reason Germans Were Told To Prepare For A National Crisis?

There is a very real possibility that Deutsche Bank is going down.

If the most prominent bank in Germany fails, the effect on Europe will be profound, and I don’t think the United States will escape the effects. The ripples will turn into a tsunami as they travel across the Atlantic. Already, the bank’s troubles have stressed the American stock market.

Angela Merkel has stated that Deutsche Bank will not be getting a bailout from the European Central Bank – the lender of last resort for European banks.

The Department of Justice recently issued a $14 billion fine to the bank to settle a mortgage-backed securities probe…and the bank has no intention of paying.

“Deutsche Bank has no intent to settle these potential civil claims anywhere near the number cited,” the company said in a statement early Friday in Frankfurt. “The negotiations are only just beginning. The bank expects that they will lead to an outcome similar to those of peer banks which have settled at materially lower amounts.”(source)

Deutsche Bank shares fell alarmingly this morning on the news that Merkel won’t support the bank.

Deutsche shares fell as much as six percent to €10.67 in early Monday trading, the worst performance since 1992.

The bank has lost over 52 percent of its value since January and over 56 percent in the last twelve months. Earnings per share fell as much as €6.

The collapse has been prompted by a report in the German magazine Focus that said Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out any state assistance for the bank next year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Merkel Says No Aid for Deutsche Bank; Depositor Bail-In Coming Up?

September 24, 2016

Merkel Says No Aid for Deutsche Bank; Depositor Bail-In Coming Up?

The €72 trillion (notional) derivatives mess known as Deutsche Bank remains under severe pressure. It’s market cap is $17.43 billion. It has no earnings and pays no dividend.

On April 23, Deutsche Bank was Fined $2.5 Billion over LIBOR rate rigging. Twenty-one people face criminal charges following a seven-year investigation.

On September 16, the US Department of Justice Fined Deutsche Bank $14B for mortgage securities fraud leading up to the 2007-2009 global meltdown.

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel Rules Out Assistance for Deutsche Bank.

No Comment

Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out any state assistance for Deutsche Bank AG in the year heading into the national election in September 2017, Focus magazine reported, citing unidentified government officials.

The German leader also declined to step into the Frankfurt-based bank’s legal imbroglio with the U.S. Justice Department, which may seek as much as $14 billion in sanctions against Deutsche Bank’s mortgage-backed securities business, the magazine said. A German government spokesman declined to comment on the report Saturday. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman also wouldn’t comment.

Understanding the Fine

The Guardian reports $14bn Deutsche Bank Fine – All You Need to Know.

The prospect of a $14bn penalty from the US Department of Justice has rattled investor confidence in Deutsche. The penalty aims to settle allegations, dating back to 2005, about the way the bank selected mortgages, packaged them into bonds and sold on to investors. These bonds are known as residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Can Deutsche Afford the Bill?

Deutsche Bank has been quick to describe the fine as an “opening position” from Washington. It is easy to see why. It would be one of the largest ever fines levied by the US. It could also strain the bank’s finances. For 2015, the bank reported its first annual loss since 2008 and could be heading for another loss this year regardless of the threatened justice department fine.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BREXIT is Watershed for Europe

June 26, 2016

BREXIT is Watershed for Europe

Merkel admitted that: “There’s no way around it: Today is a watershed for Europe and the European unity process.” Of course, people like Schulz are the entire problem. His arrogance ensures the demise of Europe. He had the audacity to to say that there is “no chain reaction” after BREXIT. Once a politician makes a decision, they will NEVER concede error. They will take Europe down with their entire elitist ideas.

We will indeed see rising movements to exit the EU. Their policies are insane and this idea of forcing the federalization of Europe is exposing old wounds. It is not eliminating the threat of European war with one government imposed upon everyone, which was the idea of Hitler and Napoleon, What we are seeing the fragmentation of Europe. The sooner these referendums come from other states, the better it will be for Europe and the entire world. It is now the only way to save Europe since the people cannot vote to change those in Brussels.

Merkel’s unilateral decision to take in refugees was not a democratic decision at all since she made a decision in which no other country had any power to object. They cannot see that this is a system totally anti-democratic and forces the people into a corner with no recourse to change the direction of Europe or their own country. The EU has become a total disaster.

Germany Says “We Won’t Let Anyone Take Europe From Us”

June 25, 2016

Germany Says “We Won’t Let Anyone Take Europe From Us”

Yesterday we said that in the historic fallout and unprecedented confusion over Brexit, so far only one sure winner has emerged – namely Russia, where Vladimir Putin is watching the slow-motion collapse of this latest artifical aggregation of Europen states (a quick search of failed attempts at European integration results in tens of pages of results) with great interest and willingness to pounce at any opportunity – even as all of Europe is a loser, and nobody more so than Germany, whose chancellor Merkel is now watching her legacy go down in flames as first the UK, then France (National Front), Italy (Five Star Movement), Denmark (Danish People’s Party), and Holland (Freedom Party) have all called for either a EU referendum of their own or a renegotiation of their country’s EU membership.

As would be expected, the more worried and desperate Germany gets, the more ridiculous things Germany is apt to say. Case in point is what German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said earlier today, when he tried to reassure onlookers that the EU would weather the shock of the British vote to leave the union as he convened crisis talks.

Well, one small nuance: Steinmeier wasn’t focusing on the EU, he was far more concerned about Germany and how the one nation that has benefited more than anyone one else from the customers union and the common currency is struggling to keep up appearance that asll is well.

As Steinmeier was heading into a Berlin meeting with his counterparts from the EU’s six founding members, he said the following: “I am confident that these countries can also send a message that we won’t let anyone take Europe from us.”

Or else? Because while “us” was meant to refer to the EU, he really meant Germany.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Merkel’s TTIP policy is ‘wrong:’ German Vice Chancellor criticizes US-EU free trade deal

May 29, 2016

Merkel’s TTIP policy is ‘wrong:’ German Vice Chancellor criticizes US-EU free trade deal

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel (L) and Chancellor Angela Merkel. © Fabrizio Bensch

TTIP Hastiness would lead to an unfavorable agreement, German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to reaching an agreement with the US on harmonizing trade and investment regulations.

“It was wrong that, in the euphoria of [President Barack] Obama’s visit to Germany, the Chancellor said that we will be able to conclude negotiations under any circumstances by the end of this year – and that she recently repeated that statement,” Gabriel said in an interview to the German regional RND newspaper group, criticizing Merkel’s stance on negotiations concerning the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US.

Gabriel, who is the leader of Merkel’s German Social Democratic Party (SPD), also stressed that haste would lead to an unfavorable deal adding that he and his party will “never” agree to something they deem “bad.”

“The SPD will not to be part of a bad deal,” he said. “I will never approve an agreement that retains [the right for the companies to appeal to] nontransparent private commercial courts,” he stated, referring to the issue that the agreement would allow transnational corporations to challenge domestic laws and regulations in special tribunals thus potentially undermining national environmental and labor protections.

He also stressed that he would not approve any deal that envisages standards deemed lower than those included in the freshly-negotiated EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which has already been approved by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Germany Could Charge Comic for Insulting Turkey’s President

April 13, 2016

Germany Could Charge Comic for Insulting Turkey’s President

AMERICANS WONDERING WHAT life might be like in the near future — after a President Donald Trump acts on his promise to “open up our libels laws,” so that politicians with easily bruised egos can sue reporters or commentators for hurting their feelings — should pay attention to what is happening this week in Germany.

That’s because German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that her government, while being fully committed to the principle of free speech, is considering a request from Turkey to file criminal charges against the host of a late-night television show on the state broadcaster, ZDF. His alleged crime? Joking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s thin skin by reading examples of actual slanderous statements about him, in the form of a poem.

The poem, performed last month by the German satirist Jan Böhmermann, was a carefully calibrated insult. The host began the sketch by telling viewers of his show, “Neo Magazin Royale,” that he would read aloud from a text called “Defamatory,” in order to demonstrate the difference between the sort of satirical insults of the notoriously prickly Erdogan that are permitted under German law and legally prohibited slander.

“What I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public, that would be forbidden in Germany,” Böhmermann said, before launching nonetheless into a recitation of the full text, which describes Erdogan as a foul monster who has sex with goats and “watches child porn while kicking Kurds.”

As originally broadcast, the sketch included several interjections from Ralf Kabelka, Böhmermann’s sidekick, who interrupted to explain that under German law, certain sections of the poem were clearly not satire but defamation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Moving Into Meltdown?

January 22, 2016

Europe Moving Into Meltdown?

QUESTION: Marty, now the OECD is predicting a financial crash worse than the 2007-2009 event in Europe because they say there is over €1 trillion in bad loans that cannot be collected. They seem to be also changing their opinion to fit your model. Were they there in Berlin?

ANSWER: We cannot comment on if the OECD is following our model or whom has attended a World Economic Conference. They are the most widely attended and many just want to know where the computer stands.

We see a massive banking crisis. The European banks are in deep trouble. Deutsche Bank posted a shocking €6.7 billion euro loss with its shares falling 10% in a day. HSBC bought Republic National Bank in New York for a bit more than that. Barclay’s is pulling out of all emerging markets and cutting 1,000+ jobs.

The collapse in commodities will reek havoc on all emerging market countries, but there is one economy that nobody pays attention to closely: Germany. Yes, it is the largest economy and main supporter of the euro. They need open borders and the euro to maintain their economy that is EXPORT driven. China is advancing more rapidly than Germany and has focused on trying to develop its internal economy. Spain was the richest nation in Europe with all the gold coming in from America, but they failed to develop their internal economy and collapsed. Germany is declining. It cannot be sustained with open borders or the euro because the rest of Europe is in serious decline. The refugee crisis is a nightmare. Now, Italy is demanding taxpayer money to bailout banks in fear that a bail-in will cause a revolution.

Merkel was against allowing in refugees previously, but then changed her position to combat her poor view after her treatment of Greece. Additionally, she had the brilliant idea of bringing in cheap labor to help Germany.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US to bring in new advanced nuclear bombs to Germany – report

September 23, 2015

US to bring in new advanced nuclear bombs to Germany – report

The base in Rhineland-Palatinate in western Germany hosts German Panavia Tornado multipurpose aircraft that are capable to deploy the USAF nuclear bombs stored there under a nuclear sharing deal. The base is the only location in Germany that has nuclear weapons since 2007 and has 20 of them, according to the Royal United Services Institute.

The US is currently working on a new variant of the B61, Mod 12, which would be more accurate and have smaller yield than modifications 3 and 4 currently deployed in Europe.

ZDF cites budget documents indicating that in third quarter this year the base would receive funding for the future storage and deployment of the new B61-12s. That includes the upgrade of the Tornado aircraft.

The report notes that nuclear disarmament was part of the 2009 coalition parliament between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party and Free Democrats. In 2010, the German parliament called on the government to have the American nuclear weapons removed from its soil, citing public support for such a decision.

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Berlin also intended to retire its fleet of Tornados by 2015, with no plans to have a replacement capable of deploying the American nuclear bombs. The F-35 is capable of dropping B61, but Germany doesn’t intend to buy the expensive aircraft and chose Eurofighter Typhoon to be Tornado’s successor.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Will Station New Nuclear Weapons in Germany Against Russia

September 22, 2015

U.S. Will Station New Nuclear Weapons in Germany Against Russia

Germany’s ZDF public television network headlines on Tuesday September 22nd, “New U.S. Atomic Weapons to Be Stationed in Germany,” and reports that the U.S. will bring into Germany 20 new nuclear bombs, each being four times the destructive power of the one that was used on Hiroshima. Hans Kristensen, the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, says, “With the new bombs the boundaries blur between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.”

A former Parliamentary State Secretary in Germany’s Defense Ministry, Willy Wimmer, of Chancellor Merkel’s own conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, warns that these “new attack options against Russia” constitute “a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbors.”

German Economic News also reports on Chancellor Merkel’s decision to allow these terror-weapons against Russia: “The Bundestag decided in 2009, expressing the will of most Germans, that the US should withdraw its nuclear weapons from Germany. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel did nothing.” And now she okays the U.S. to increase America’s German-based nuclear arsenal against Russia.

Maria Zakharova, of the Russian Foreign Ministry, says: “This is an infringement of Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” which is the treaty that provides non-nuclear states the assurance that the existing nuclear powers will not try to use their nuclear status so as to take over the world.

German Economic News says: “The federal government had demanded the exact opposite: The Bundestag decided in March 2010 by a large majority, that the federal government should ‘press for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany.’ Even the coalition agreement between the CDU and FDP, the German government in 2009 had promised the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Büchel. But instead there will be these new bombs.”

Power and Compassion

August 1, 2015

Power and Compassion

Time to tackle a topic that’s very hard to get right, and that will get me quite a few pairs of rolling eyes. I want to argue that societies need a social fabric, a social contract, and that without those they must and will fail, descend into chaos. Five months ago, I wrote the following about Europe:

Europe, The Morally Bankrupt Union

The European Union is busy accomplishing something truly extraordinary: it is fast becoming such a spectacular failure that people don’t even recognize it as one.[..] the Grand European Failure is bound to lead to real life consequences soon, and they’ll be devastating. The union that was supposed to put an end to all fighting across the continent, is about to be the fuse that sets off a range of battles. [..]

The carefully re-crafted relationship with Russia, which took 25 years to build, was destroyed again in hardly over a year, something for which Angela Merkel deserves so much blame it may well end up being her main political legacy.

To its south, the EU faces perhaps its most shameful -or should that be ‘shameless’? – problem, because it doesn’t do anything about it: the thousands of migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe but far too often perish in the process. [..]

But the biggest failure is not even in politics outside of its own territory. The union rots from within. Which starts with its moral bankruptcy, obviously. If you allow yourself to be an active accomplice in the death of over 6000 East Ukrainians, and you simply look away as thousands of migrants die in the seas off your shores, it should not be surprising that you just as easily allow for a humanitarian crisis, like the one in Greece, to develop within your own borders. It comes with the territory, so to speak.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

July 26, 2015

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

Greece

As fact and metaphor the ongoing crisis in Greece is the vanguard of broad social disintegration across the capitalist West. IMF Director Christine Lagarde is being put forward as the voice of reason calling for writing down Greece’s debt to manageable levels. But her actual public statements have paid deference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion, a slight variation on Barack Obama’s mortgage ‘rescue’ packages, that maturities be extended but that people be left with debts far greater than they can reasonably pay. As attractive as permanent debt servitude might appear to those demanding it, it is a form of economic extraction, a transfer of economic production from nominal borrowers to banks and bankers.

Current IMF tactics are being placed in a neo-Cold War frame with the U.S. trying to maintain European political stability on the side of the U.S. against Russia and China. But the broader tendency is toward collective suicide through imperialist revival economics, a global race to replicate Western consumption through increasingly ‘managed’ capitalism and through renewed competition for resources that led to the catastrophic wars of the twentieth century. The geopolitical frame understates the crudeness of the economic logic that gives banker / creditor ‘workouts’ the appearance of geopolitical machinations. The economic relations in play are ‘political,’ but they derive from economic ideology that preceded the Cold War by a half-century or more.

The practical problem with the neo-Cold War frame is that it takes the underlying economic relations as given when they are in fact causal. The euphemistically-called ‘trade’ agreements being pushed by the ‘developed’ West grant broad authority over civil governance to multi-national corporations, the point being that the ideology that drives corporate actions is economic, not ‘political’ in the Western liberal sense of the term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Curse Of The Euro: Money Corrupted, Democracy Busted

July 18, 2015

The Curse Of The Euro: Money Corrupted, Democracy Busted

The preposterous Gong Show in Brussels over the weekend was the financial “Ben Tre” moment for the Euro and ECB. That is, it was the moment when the Germans—–imitating the American military on that ghastly morning in February 1968——set fire to the Eurozone in order to save it.

Some day history will judge good riddance……..but that get’s ahead of the story.

According to an American soldier’s first hand recollection of the Vietnam event, it was a Major Booris who infamously told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.

After the massacre of Greek democracy in the wee hours Monday morning, Angela Merkel said the same thing—even if her language was a tad less graphic:

It reflects the basic principles which we’ve followed in rescuing the euro. It now hinges on step-by-step implementation of what we agreed tonight.”

Now no one in their right mind could think that lending another $96 billion to an utterly bankrupt country makes any sense whatsoever. After all, the Greek economy has shrunk by 30% since 2008 and is wreathing under what is objectively a $400 billion public debt already in place today.

That figure follows from the fact that on top of Greece’s acknowledged $360 billion of general government debt there’s at least another $25 billion loan embedded in the ELA advances to the Greek banking system. The latter is deeply insolvent, meaning that some considerable portion of the $100 billion ELA currently outstanding is not an advance against good collateral in any plausible banking sense of the word, but merely a backdoor fiscal transfer from the ECB to keep Greece’s financial shipwreck afloat.

Likewise, as I demonstrated Friday, given the even deeper deep hole into which the Greek economy has tumbled during the last six months, the fiscal targets extracted from Greece under this weekend’s demarche are utterly ridiculous. Indeed, even if the targeted primary surpluses of 1,2,3 and 3.5% of GDP are miraculously reached through 2018, upwards of $15 billion of budget deficits after interest accruals would be incurred anyway, and a lot more than that if there are material budget shortfalls, which is a virtual certainty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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