IMF: Confessing to the sin in order to repeat it

This could be a valuable lesson for those in the US of A to use in drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of AUSTERITY.

“The only two differences between 2012 and 2015 are that: (A) In 2015/6 the Greek economy is ever more frail than it was in 2012, its people closer to the edge of desperation. And (2) In 2012 the troika’s toxic, illogical ‘program’ was being implemented by a government representing the corrupt, oligarchic ancien regime responsible for the crisis. In 2015/6 the troika’s ‘new’ toxic, illogical ‘program’ is being implemented by a government of the Left, thus denying the Greeks the hope that elections could stop the unnecessary pain.” [excerpt]

Yanis Varoufakis

You have read about the most recent IMF confession over its immolation of Greece. The question is: Does it signal a change in policies? Do not hold your breath! Recent history is pointing to a repetition of the crime-against-logic first committed in 2012 – an IMF tactic of confessing to the sin in order to repeat it with impunity!

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The IMF confesses it immolated Greece on behalf of the Eurogroup

…an urgent apology is due to the Greek people, not just by the IMF but also by the ECB and the Commission whose officials were egging the IMF on with the fiscal waterboarding of Greece. But an apology and a collective mea culpa from the troika is woefully inadequate. It needs to be followed up by the immediate dismissal of at least three functionaries.

… Mr Poul Thomsen – the original IMF Greek Mission Chief… Mr Thomas Wieser, the chair of the EuroWorkingGroup… [and] Mr Klaus Masuch of the ECB.

Finally, and most importantly, the apology and the dismissals will count for nothing if they are not followed by a complete U-turn over macroeconomic, fiscal and reform policies for Greece and beyond.

Yanis Varoufakis

• TIME FOR RESIGNATIONS AT THE IMF, THE ECB & THE COMMISSION

• TIME FOR AN APOLOGY TO THE PEOPLE OF GREECE

• TIME  FOR A POLICY U-TURN, BEGINNING WITH IMMEDIATE DEBT RELIEF, THE END OF AUSTERITY & THE CESSATION OF FIRE SALES

• TIME FOR THE RESTORATION OF GREEK DEMOCRACY

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On the Purpose of a Movement

Before I begin: Let me take a moment to make something perfectly clear––I don’t care who started the institution of slavery not even the institution of chattel slavery, nor do I care who participated in that institution, nor when they participated in it, nor do I care who sold whom to whom. All of that is mere history and cannot be altered and we should not attempt to alter our understanding of that history. We should only attempt to understand our history as clearly and concisely as possible with as few misconceptions as possible.

This movement, to remove all emblems of that Southern Confederacy from my state’s official emblems, that I am involved with is not about those emblems themselves nor really even about the ideologies behind those particular emblems as reprehensible as those ideologies were and still are; rather, this movement is about EXTENDING THE RIGHT OF DIGNITY TO ALL citizens of the Great State of Mississippi. A dignity that over a third of the citizens and/or residents of this great state is, in my opinion, besmirched by the use of emblems that were once used to defend the right of ancestors of one race to own the ancestors of another race as personal property or as chattel.

The only thing I care about is providing the conditions that will allow each and every person in the state of Mississippi – The Privilege To Live With The Dignity Of Being Thought Of And Treated As Fully Human.

In my efforts to take references to the Confederate States of America from the official flag of my native state, Mississippi, many of the people I meet, mostly EuroAmericans, seem to think our efforts to remove those emblems are all about hating The Rebel Flag.

Because my Granny always told me:

“We don’t hate things; we dislike them,”

thus, I, for one, do not hate the flag. However, having read the proceedings of the secession conventions of as many of the seceding states that I have so far been able to find (seven as of now) I do find that the ideology behind those emblems and symbols is reprehensible. I repeat: I find their justifications and rationales reprehensible. As the symbols those men chose to represent their reprehensible ideals carry with them the disdain the designers (of those symbols) held for their chief commodity I find the use of those emblems equally reprehensible. That commodity was AFRICAN SLAVES (which those men held as chattel or as personal possessions.

Point of curiosity: the most valuable commodity in the antebellum south was a 14 or 15 year old virgin–the lighter her skin the more valuable she was. Her price in today’s money could be as high as seventy thousand dollars––that is $70,000 for one human being.)

Ninety-five plus precent of the paper and ink that those men used to justify their actions in seceding from the Union and forming their “Southern Confederacy” was directly related to what they, themselves, called the The Institution of African Slavery: aka, That Institution Vital to the Southern Way of Life, Our Peculiar Institution, as well as, The Institution upon which The Southern Way of Life is Built and others. I emphasize these euphemisms for the enslavement of their fellow human beings because those euphemisms are quotes lifted directly from their documents that they produced in their own hand on their own paper with their own ink in efforts to justify their own actions to secede from the US of A so they could form a regional government which would allow them to continue, ad infinitum, to profit from the cheapest form of labor they could imagine. An effort made, even, at any cost of the lives of approximately one and a quarter million (1,250,000) American lives [over half of which were their fellow southerners. The vast majority of those fellow southerners were poor as if a man owned twenty or more slaves he was not obligated to fight to protect that insane institution he profited so greatly from; plus any man who could afford it could buy his way out of serving in the War which was the case with most Slaveholders (point of fact: this latter fact was true on both sides of the war as in almost all wars of the modern era.)]

This movement is about providing an emblem that will allow each and every Mississippian the right and privilege to be able to choose to feel pride in their state’s official emblem.

Then there is the eternal nihilistic comment:

“You won’t change that many minds.” 

The truth is I’m not expecting to change any minds for no one can change any other persons mind: only the person him/herself can change his/her own mind by what he/she chooses to think and feel. I do, however, hope to influence a few of those whose minds are not already set, as if in stone.

This I hope to do primarily through education and a rational and reasoned explanation of the need to have a symbol common to all Mississippians that allows each Mississippian an opportunity to feel equally represented by their state’s flag.

It should be the right and privilege of each and every citizen of any body politic to be equally and fairly represented by the flag of their nation, state or locality: that is, to be represented by an emblem not representative of a war “to maintain the heavenly ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race,” as stated by William T. Tappan gave in a description for his design of the Confederate National Flag*.

Even the most marginalized resident of a state, like all other citizens of any juridical district, deserves to have a flag flying over the executive, legislative and judicial branches where their government is housed. Even the most marginalized resident deserves to have a flag that fairly represents them without prejudice flying over their courthouses and city halls where they are subject to be tried and sentenced to jail or prison, and where they pay their taxes, etc. Even the most marginalized resident deserves to have their children educated in schools over which flies a flag that does not represent a history nor a heritage that “rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.” Alexander Stevens VP of the Confederacy**.

          

Each and every citizen of this and every state deserves and has the right to be represented as fully human with all the rights, privileges and dignity of any and all other human beings. 

          

*“As a people we are fighting to maintain the heavenly ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause. Such a flag would be a suitable emblem of our young confederacy, and sustained by the brave hearts and strong arms of the south, it would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN’S FLAG.”

**http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/stephens.html

Roger W. Mills II

roger.1flag4all@gmail.com

EU ECONOMICS MEETS DEMOCRACY – interviewed by the Green European Journal

There is an architecture in Europe, and the powers that be can’t accept that that architecture is not fit for purpose, and they want to preserve it in spite of this. But they even disagree among themselves. The reason the Franco-German axis is falling apart is because we have an economic structure which has imploded. The key to answering your question is this: German and French Ministers of Finance, Mr Schaüble and Mr Macron, for instance, fundamentally disagree on what design is needed to replace the current model. And while the two elephants in the room are clashing, the mice suffer and, instead of fixing the architecture, they buy time putting plaster on the cracks. It is a political failure. And this is where we, progressives from Europe and Europeanists, must come in, because these two will never get it together.

Democracy is a combination of majoritarianism and rule of law and respect for individual rights. You cannot pick and choose. It’s all or nothing. If you have a group of misanthropists, there is no system of government that can produce results. There is no doubt about it. The only reason that ultra-nationalism is raising its ugly head is because Europe [and America in some sense] is failing and because it has annulled… democracy in the centres of power. And whenever you do that, and you combine negative interest rates and inflation in some parts of the Union, then, just like in the 1930s, the scapegoating phenomenon will emerge. People will need to point fingers at somebody tangible next to them – they cannot understand an abstract concept like inflation or the capitalist crisis – so it’s the [Mexican or the Muslim], or the Other that gets scapegoated.

Yanis Varoufakis

The architecture of the European Union institutions is flawed. Its leaders seem to deny the ineffectiveness of the response given to the financial and economic crisis as we see inequality and extremism on the rise. The European Union will be unprepared for the next crisis unless it profoundly reforms its governance and enhances democracy.

Today in Europe we see it being bashed, mistrusted, and loaded with negative emotional charges. Why? What do you think are the big disintegration forces at play today in Europe?

Yanis Varoufakis: The European Union is a construct which was simply not fit for purpose. 

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On homelessness, street papers & Brexit – in The Big Issue

“Europeans are turning against the European Union because of its hypocrisy. When it suits the established order to interfere, they interfere in a way that is akin to invasion. Last year they shut down our banking system to impose cuts upon the Greek government. In 1967 we had a coup d’état using tanks, last year we had a coup d’état using banks. There can be no greater interference in the life of a country than to close down its banks. And at other times, when you have clearly misanthropic government interventions which violate the rulebook of the European Union, as we do today in Hungary, in Poland, in Romania, sadly interference is not an important principle. Any union that disrespects consistency to such an extent eventually turns its people against it. And I say this as someone who does not want to see the European Union disintegrated but who feels that it is increasingly difficult to convince people out there that we should not allow it to perish.”

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis on the consequences of Brexit – and why homelessness in Greece is set to rapidly escalate

Click here for The Big Issue sire or…

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On the present and future of capitalism – my TED debate with Dambisa Moyo

We have the largest saving rate in the history of capitalism and the lowest investment rate, and this imbalance is at the bottom of the various manifestations of a crisis that’s been happening now for a while. 2008 as far as I’m concerned, was our generation’s 1929. In exactly the same way that after 1929 the world ceased to make sense in terms that people used to understand their world prior to 1929. After 2008, it’s a different ballgame. If you look between the 1940s and 2008, we have a situation where the United States of America was playing a rather efficient but complicated role in global recycling [of saved income]. Recycling [income] surpluses from where they were being produced to where there were deficits. Initially in the first twenty years after Bretton Woods, America was a surplus country and it was recycling its own surpluses politically, using political machinations, I mean, the Marshall Plan is just one example.

But with the end of Bretton Woods, which happened because America lost surpluses and could no longer recycle a surplus it didn’t have, we moved into completely different phase, again with America in the driving seat, where the American economy, through its strong deficit spending, was recycling everybody else’s surpluses. It didn’t have surpluses to recycle itself so it recycled other people’s surpluses by acting as a huge vacuum cleaner that was sucking into American territory. That broke down in 2008. Wall Street has lost the capacity to do this recycling in a way that maintains savings and investment. And the fact that our political sphere is imploding is a reflection of the breakdown of this global recycling mechanism. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis

Click here or…

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Who was planning a coup? Tom Strohschneider in Neues Deutschland

“However, because Varoufakis embodied that which public opinion had been criticising throughout Europe since January 2015 – an anti-politician, an intellectual in office, an economist who was suddenly faced with the business of politics – this finance minister remained the center of indignant headlines until just a few months ago. But now that Varoufakis has founded a movement to continue his fight for solidarity in Europe, the opposition in Greece isattempting to blame Tsipras himself for defending against Grexit.”

“The newspaper’s source: a German government official who was familiar with the negotiations of the time. “What shocked us about the discussion paper was the way in which they laid down the conditions for Greece remaining in the eurozone. The conditions were so humiliating that they appeared to have the goal for Greece to reject them.” This would have resulted in Grexit.

So who here really pursued a “Plan B”? Looking back, Galbraith writes that it had not been the task of his working group to make recommendations for a euro exit. So they had not made any. “We prepared for a scenario that everyone hoped to be able to avoid.” The ones planning a coup were certainly not the Yanis Varoufakis group.” [excerpts]

Yanis Varoufakis

This article by Tom Strohschneider was first published in the German newspaper Neues Deutschland. Read the German original here or the English version on the DiEM25 site. 

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On the Question of Service

On the Question and Nature of

Service to Humanity

A friend of mine had made what I considered to be an absurd statement about Dr. Cornel West’s comments concerning the president’s public comments (and/or the lack of those comments) concerning the recent spate of police killings of persons of color (who, by the way, were all citizens of this great nation thereby possessors of all the legal and constitutional guarantees to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the rest of us.) So, I asked my friend what was the nature of his particular concern about Dr. West’s statements which made those statements so objectionable to my friend? When he answered me with an extended paragraph reminiscent of a reply I might make, in length and style, I had to call into question my style of discourse.

At a moment of leisure sometime later I began to consider the discourse I had had with this friend of mine. The first thing that occurred to me was that he was reacting from a point of view of an rigid ideology which informed, intellectually and emotionally, a strongly held conviction which is a conviction I happen to disagree with. This lead me to ask myself what is the nature of ideology? Sadly, even though I feel compelled to ask the question, “What is the nature of ideology,” I am not entirely sure that I am able answer this question adequately. Perhaps, however, some description of my personal experiences with being ideological might be illustrative.

My first experience with being ideological started at the age of 17. It was then that I began to accept the teachings of a certain fairly regressive version of Christianity. I soon knew their doctrine and teachings at a level of near perfect recall. Before long I was able to recite “chapter and verse” quotes that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the validity of these beliefs which I had adopted as the very essence of who I was. These beliefs had come to define who I was. During my association with this “church” the Apostle of the Church proposed what to me was a most intriguing concept: Animals, specifically domesticated mammals, had what he referred to as “rudimentary mind”. To my mind this made perfect sense as it seemed to confirm the observations I had made throughout my life yet had never quite articulated before. I applauded this development; however, for various reasons I soon left the church.

Disassociating myself from the physical communication with the body of the church did not, however, clear my mind of the indoctrination I had so long subjected myself to. This “clearing of my mind” would take a number of years and a return to the church to reorient my mind in a more inclusive habit of thought. When I once again began to attend the church I found that all the regressive elements that had precipitated my original departure was still the order of the day there; even more unfortunately, the more progressive and enlightened developments that had began to appeal to me toward my original association with the church had long since been abandoned, seemingly never to have been suggested at all.

It was not long before I left the church again because not only was the church’s doctrinal teachings just as regressive as ever the interim respite I had indulged in introduced me to a much more expansive mode of thinking about the world and all things therein contained. Plus, my experience upon my return of witnessing the shift backward in church teachings coupled with the ability to view, as if from afar, the manipulation of the laity for the material benefit of the top echelons of the church hierarchy provided the key to freeing my mind from the grip of their influence. Thus I was no longer held in thrall by their particular ideology.

However, being somewhat young and zealous I had not yet fully learned the lessons of my personal history, thus I was doomed to repeat those lessons.

I continued to adopt some of the ideologies of the various teachings I studied for some years to come. These periods of adopting new ideologies tended to diminish in duration and intensity with each succeeding new ideology adopted. I am now very hesitant to buy anyone’s “pig in a poke.” However, as my father taught me while I was but a child that “Knowledge is a wonderful thing for what you know can never be taken away from you.” One of the things I learned from “the church” was “to question all things and hold fast that which is good.” To their (and each succeeding teacher’s chagrin) I never quite quit questioning things even when “the authority” told me that I had found “that which was good.”

I have now pieced together a basic philosophy of life from parts of the various teachings of each of my chosen teachers and from the many other contacts throughout my life. It occurs to me that each and every person we meet in the course of our lives is a teacher for us if we but “have an ear with which to hear and/or an eye to see” with. I will now offer part of that philosophy for your consideration. While not the whole of my philosophy of life these two points are essential:

The first principle that I hold at this point in my life is “to question everything” and to never stop questioning even when I have found that which I THINK is good because if it is truly good it will withstand the test of further questionings. That is, that which is worthy of adoption as part of who each of us chooses to be is not concerned with our doubts that teaching or ideology because it can and will be proved over and again.

My second principle is to be as inclusive as I can be. Inclusion is the great principle of life for there is but one life: one life within which we live, move and have our being and all things are therein contained. It is every human, every animal, every plant and yes every molecule and atom in the universe. However this particular aspect is a bit aloof and impossible to execute considering the feeble nature of my limited mind, so I am forced to discriminate a bit here. Life on my home, the planet earth, is probably the very best I can hope to conceive in any degree of totality. And even that is rather difficult to wrap my brain around.

If someone is excluded from my sphere of concern the fault is not with them but with the nature of how I choose that which is included in my sphere of concern. This does not mean I have to agree with any given person nor do I have to approve of their actions nor even their thoughts. I may even find it necessary to work at cross purposes to their desires. What it does mean is that I have to have an overwhelming desire for their greatest good even if they fail to understand what that greatest good is. Please understand this wish of mine for their greatest good is not something that is to be enforced upon them; rather, it is my thoughts, words and actions which should tend toward that beneficial goal, but tend toward it in as peaceful a manner as is effective to use. Also, I am not allowed to consider the greatest good of any given individual or group of individuals alone. According to this philosophy I am compelled to consider the well-being of the largest group affected by my actions, i.e., the whole of humanity and the health of the planet if possible.

Thus I endeavor to do the best I can within my rather small community with an eye toward the greater whole. During this epoch of my life my sphere of influence is a bit larger than I might have hoped thanks to several persons of good will who has recently allowed me into their sphere of influence. Thanks, Katt and Lea for providing me with this larger field of service. This field while not utterly inclusive now extends [to some small extent] across much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and potentially into the entire state.

Back to the issue at hand: what is the nature of ideology. Ideologies can be regressive, progressive, conservative, liberal (you name it) but ideologies that are progressive today may come to be the regressive ideologies of tomorrow, or next year or century… Ideologies like any other phenomenological concept have a tendency to change with time and experience. This change, however, can be so slow and subtle that an ideology once thought to be good can become less beneficial without our ever noticing the change, thereby, without our consciously critiquing this shift in its social impact.

If the nature of ideology is, as I am suggesting, so fragile and fluid what is the answer for people who would choose to be “a person of good will”? Surely we cannot do without believing in some form of ideology? That would seem to make us empty vessels for those who would mold us in their own image or whichever image they might find most useful at any given time: to vote for a given candidate; to permit a war of aggression; or, to permit the oppression of particular groups of marginalized people to name but a few possibilities.

Thus having some ideology seems to be a prerequisite for a person of good will. But how can we know whether we have an ideology that best serves the needs of the world at large. (Remembering to be as inclusive as possible.) And, provided we have found that seemingly “perfect” ideology for the time in which we now live how can we know if and when that particular ideology becomes regressive? This seems to be very difficult to answer as each person must define regressive and progressive according to the experiences and circumstances of their individual lives.

The solution I will advance came to me from my second great teacher (great, so to speak, because their purpose was to teach as many people as possible.) This solution is deceptively simple yet it took me nearly four decades to understand its basic nature. Simply put, it is to be a person of good will and to surround ourselves with persons of good will regardless of variations in their particular ideologies. A second aspect of this solution is for us to be as inclusive as we can possibly be and to constantly and continuously be on guard for greater degrees of inclusion. All of this being motivated by an outgoing concern for those (as the Christ suggested) who are the least among us.

Once we have achieved the enviable situation of an association with people of good will, being constantly on guard to be as inclusive as we can while being motivated by a deep and abiding concern for service to humanity, should someone in our sphere of service no longer provide an attitude of good will then we should consider reconsidering a continued association with that given as a member of our inner sphere. Only persons of good will who through their service to humanity and the planet upon which our lives depend should be held within our sphere of activity.

When we find others of good will, even when they hold differing ideologies than we do, we should seek to work with them as closely as is practicable in our common service to humanity. We must also recognize that not all persons of good will will fit in any single group or organization. There are, of a necessity, many spheres of service to humanity and to the life of the planet which we all share in common. Each group of persons of good will will work in a greater or lesser degree with other groups to achieve our common goal of peace on earth and good will to humankind. While each of us in our public and private lives should be as inclusive as possible none of us have the right to demand others include us in their active spheres of service.

I have but one final comment: I am most fortunate in my latter years. I have a growing circle of persons of good will with whom to associate myself. And there are a rather large group of them who I believe not only have the traditional requisite good hearts but they possess the vibrant energies needed to actuate the basic nature of good will which informs their lives and actions.

Roger W Mills II

#Yes #ThereIs #RacialBias in #PoliceShootings — Karmic:Reaction

“The following is a guest post by Michelle Phelps. A new study by Harvard Economist Roland G. Fryer, Jr. hit The Upshot column at the New York Times today, with “surprising new evidence” that there is no racial bias in who gets shot by the police. The study is currently posted as a working paper with […]

via #Yes #ThereIs #RacialBias in #PoliceShootings — Karmic:Reaction

Vote for Hillary??? Hell No!!!

Should we vote for Hillary?

Hell No!!!

Good luck getting more than lip service from Hillary or the DNC.

The System is bought and paid for and the bosses expect to get a return on their investment.

Hillary was guaranteed the nomination in 2008. Nothing was ever going to be allow to prevent it. I supported and continue to support Bernie not because I ever thought he could win the nomination but because any challenge to the NEOLIBERAL Democratic Party is good for the people, good for the US of A, and good for the world at large.

This was never going to be allowed to be a contest. The DNC will be happy to co-opt as many Bernie supporters as they can in there efforts to totally dismantle the New Deal and institute a Milton Freedman, Chicago School, haven of Buyer-Beware-Laissez-Faire-Capitalism, 1920s style of capitalism they can get away with. However, Bernie did give it his best, but the establishment was never going to tolerate a Sanders candidacy. The Game was rigged eight years ago. The only way to influence the DNC or their party is outside political agitation on the order of the Populace Party of the 1880s-1890s which produced the Progressive wing of the Republican party as well as a more moderate Democratic Party which lasted only until Teddy Roosevelt retired as president in 1909. Or, a socialist/communist/labor movement on the order of that in the 1920s and 1930s which both forced and provided the impetus TR’s cousin FDR used to build the New Deal. The demise of the New Deal as a Democratic Party initiative was guaranteed when the party elites forced FDR to jettison his preference as VP, Henry Wallace, and accept theirs, Harry S. Truman. On the floor of the convention Wallace was wildly popular (like Bernie) and Truman was supported by approximately 4%-6% of the delegates, but that was who the party elites wanted just as they want Hillary today.

The civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s only allowed the Neoliberals in the party to use those issues to rise to sufficient power to start dismantling The New Deal which their (the economic liberals, now called Neoliberals) defeat in 1932 allowed FDR to institute. Don’t forget it was the Clintons who “Changed Welfare as We Know It!” Which should have made both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Goldwater leap for joy.

Hillary as a Goldwater Girl.

However, the only way to force the DNC to actually shift left is from the outside. The will shift left when and only when the people have a credible political party on the left to choose from. Then, once that movement is co-opted the DNC (as it always has done) will begin the slow, steady inexorable drift back to the economics of Neoliberalism. This is inevitable with any party in power in the US as long as the economy is organized as a Liberal Economy (aka, Buyer-Beware-Laissez-Faire-Capitalism). Thus even if we, through Bernie Sanders (or anyone else who would become the next advent of FDR) manage to produce another People Friendly Party without changing the economic superstructure upon which that party is based it will sooner or later become just another wing of the single NATIONAL CORPORATE PARTY.

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue the economic slide away from the “Good Ol’ Days” everyone wants to return to. Consider the following chart. And consider the “slide” that includes both the Clinton and Obama administrations. No, they did not JUST INHERIT someone else’s mess. This entire process was facilitated by a Democratic congress during the Reagan/Bush years and the repeal of the so-called Glass/Steagall Act which prevented investment banks from “playing the market” with people’s savings and it allowed the big Investment Banks to claim FDIC protection without which the Bailout of Wall Street by the Tax Payers of America would have been much, much more difficult. And the appearance of the following graph would likely have a different look. This was done by a Clinton. If you want more of the same then vote for the former member of the Board of Directors of Walmart, Mrs. Hillary Clinton.

Roger W Mills II