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Re: EUEUEUEUEU declares prunes to have no laxative effect; drinking water can't stop dehydration

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU declares prunes to have no laxative effect; drinking water can't stop dehydration

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU declares prunes to have no laxative effect; drinking water can't stop dehydration

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EUEUEUEUEU destroys Cyprus' sovereignty

Posted by Olog-hai on Wed Dec 12 03:01:30 2012, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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12/10/2012
De Facto Loss of Sovereignty

Cyprus Makes Big Concessions for Bailout

By Christian Reiermann and Markus Dettmer

Cyprus wants help from the European Union's bailout fund. But the price for the billions in emergency aid money is high. The country will effectively lose its sovereignty.

Dimitris Christofias had a serious look on his face as he turned to the cameras and spoke of what a "gut-wrenching" decision it was, but added that it was also a "necessary evil." The Cypriot president was not giving his people good news.

His staff realized how bad it would be when Christofias, in his televised address last Tuesday, reminded viewers of his country's darkest hour, the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974.

Although Cyprus is not about to suffer the same fate, it is already clear that in return for billions of euros for the debt-ridden country from the European bailout fund, the "troika," made up of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will essentialy take control of the Mediterranean island.

The Cypriot government and representatives of the troika negotiated for almost five months over the terms of a bailout package, worth at least €17.5 billion ($22.8 billion). The negotiations produced the draft version of a 30-page Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), in which the troika dictates to Cyprus what steps it will have to take in the coming years, down to the smallest detail.

Under the deal, civil servants and politicians, including cabinet ministers, will have to fly in economy class when traveling within Europe in the future. Exceptions apply to the president of the country and the president of the parliament. Spending on foreign trips will be trimmed. The privilege senior bureaucrats have to buy cars duty-free will be eliminated. And the salaries of civil servants and lawmakers will be frozen until 2016.

Blaming the Banks

When representatives of the troika get down to the nitty-gritty of imposing rules, no detail is too small for them. For instance, they have prescribed new hours of operation for government offices. In the future, public offices will open punctually at 8 a.m. Starting Sept. 1, 2013, public servants and other government employees will work within a regulated flextime program. According to the MoU draft document, this will be "37½ hours per week, 7½ hours per day."

The euro rescuers also addressed government revenues. The tax on fine-cut tobacco will go up drastically from €60 to €150 per kilogram, while the beer tax will increase to €6 per degree of alcohol and hectoliter. The troika also believes that a tax increase of 7 cents per liter is appropriate for diesel fuel and gasoline.

Citizens will be especially hard-hit by the planned 2-percent increase in the value-added tax, bringing it up to 19 percent. The troika is also calling for cuts in the healthcare sector, as well as reduced pensions.

Christofias left no doubt as to who he blames for the disaster, saying: "It's true that the decisions of bank executives and the miserable control by the Cypriot central bank have cost Cyprus billions of euros." The amount of the aid package corresponds almost to the country's entire economic output in a year. According to the troika's plan, by 2016 Cyprus's national budget will be cleaned up enough that the country can hopefully make do without new debt.

Creditors to Take Losses First

Cypriot banks are also expected to make a contribution. Crisis-ridden institutions will no longer be supported solely by injections of cash from the European bailout fund. This time, the banks' creditors are also expected to pay up. "With the goal of minimizing the cost to taxpayers, bank shareholders and junior debt holders will take losses before state-aid measures are granted," the MoU draft reads. This means that creditors of Cypriot banks won't just be able to withdraw their money. Instead, their claims will be converted into bank shares.

In taking this step, the troika is avoiding a potential embarrassment. Substantial sums of Russian capital are deposited into Cypriot banks, and some of it is probably of dubious origin. It would be difficult to explain to the European public why its taxes are being used to rescue wealthy oligarchs. Now, people who had previously invested their wealth into yachts, cars and football clubs will be forcibly turned into bank owners.

At the same time, Cyprus will have to rebuild its financial sector in the coming years, along with drastically improving regulations and intensifying the fight against money laundering and tax evasion.

But on Tuesday, the president wasn't willing to end his address without giving his fellow Cypriots at least some words of comfort and hope. After the Turkish invasion, he said, the country was rebuilt. And today, he added, Cyprus can hope for a new "economic miracle."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU destroys Cyprus' sovereignty

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

Posted by Olog-hai on Tue Jan 8 14:59:22 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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01/08/2013
'Il Duce' Calendars and Beer Mugs

Mussolini Cult Alive and Well in Italy

By Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Rome

Every year, thousands of people in Italy hang a fresh calendar of images depicting Benito Mussolini on their wall, just one of many indications that the cult of "Il Duce" is alive and well in the country. Many still consider the fascist dictator to have been an honorable man, and it is a weakness that politicians such as Silvio Berlusconi have been able to exploit.

Decked out in army fatigues, his hand raised in fascist salute, he emblazons newsstands, lies ready in bookshops and is splashed across countless websites: Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and founder of fascism known simply as "Il Duce", enjoys massive popularity in Italy as a calendar pin-up. One month he's in a steel helmet, his chin jutting sharply forward, the next he's clutching a Roman short sword, the famous chin still at attention. His valiant, steel-helmeted soldiers also march on annually, in color or black and white, accompanied by fascist symbols like the swastika.

Foreign tourists, especially Germans, are shocked when they see these openly flaunted calendars. Yet even in 2013, the former Italian dictator has a loyal fan base at home. And they're not just buying calendars.

The full extent of the Mussolini cult — a phenomenon many foreigners find difficult to understand — can be seen in Predappio, a small town in the Emilia-Romagna region with barely 7,000 inhabitants. As a tourist destination, Predappio is not really worth the trip. But it was here on July 29, 1883 that Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, the son of a blacksmith and a village school teacher, began a life that would lead to his coronation as "Il Duce," the architect of fascism who was the precursor and in many respects a model for Adolf Hitler.

Back then, the dreary village was still called Dovia. But its most famous son used it as a model settlement for fascist city planning, rebuilding the town and renaming it Predappio. Later, after he had been captured in 1945 by Italian partisans, executed and hung upside down on public display at a Milan gas station, the former dictator was buried with his father, mother, wife, daughter, sister and brother in Predappio.

'The Only God'

Today, young men with shaved heads in long black capes regularly pose for photos at the Mussolini family tomb. The condolence book is filled with sentences like "You are the only God," and some visitors stretch their right arms forward in the so-called "Roman salute," not dissimilar to the Nazi salute.

Every year hundreds of thousands of visitors come to Predappio, filling its bars, restaurants, and especially the "Il Duce" devotional shops that line the main road. There you can buy letter-openers, ashtrays, coins, shirts, pants, coffee cans, wine, beer mugs and lighters brandishing slogans are like "Believe, Obey, Fight" or "Damned be he who gives up." Of course, all bear images of Mussolini, replete with famous chin and fascist salute. There are flags with swastikas and SS insignia and 38-centimeter-tall bronze busts of "Il Duce" that go for €45.

There's even a bust of Hitler, markedly smaller of course at 16 centimeters, for the bargain price of €15. Objects like these attract some German neo-Nazis, who seize the opportunity, as well as the bottle — in this case filled with beer and bearing Adolf 's image under the heading "The Comrade" for the price of €3.

Italians, for the most part, shun the Nazi nostalgia items, which disturb the country's mainstream historical narrative. The most successful of the Mussolini souvenir sellers in Predappio, Pierluigi Pompignoli, puts it this way: "Hitler was a criminal, but Mussolini was a man of honor."

Collectively Repressing the Past

This is not to say that large numbers of Italians would welcome the return of fascism. Most, including the "Il Duce" fans that travel to Predappio or buy Mussolini calendars, do not vote for far-right parties. They check the box for Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party (PdL), for the Christian Democrats or center-left parties. The mayor of Predappio, for instance, has for many years come from the ranks of the left.

Many Italians do glorify Mussolini: under his leadership post offices were opened in every Italian city, he had the swamps of the Maremma in southeastern Tuscany dried out and paved over with roads. And of course, as is often mentioned, the trains ran on time when Mussolini was in power.

The glorification of "Il Duce" is one thing above all else: a lot of talk. The general Italian public knows relatively little about this chapter of Italian history, trading mostly in myths and half-truths. In contrast to Germany, where the postwar denazification period was followed by a decades-long process of historical reckoning that continues to play a significant role in public discourse, true confrontation with fascism never happened here. Soon after the war the Italian fascists found themselves accepted by society once again. They were useful voices in global and national struggles between capitalism and communism. Even Mussolini, in his early years, had been financed and supported by French and British intelligence agencies.

Rather than working through their past, the Italians have collectively repressed it. Mustard gas attacks on Ethiopian civilians? Never heard of or forgotten. Assaults on Albania and Greece? Unknown. What else could explain the rise of "the myth of the good Italian soldier," analyzed several years ago by Lutz Klinkhammer of the German Historical Institute in Rome.

Mussolini's racial laws of 1938, Italy's involvement in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco and Hitler, deportations, executions of hostages; many aspects of Italy's fascist history tend to be minimized. While German culpability for the worst of World War II is obviously incomparably greater, Italian transgressions are often viewed in the country as having been rather harmless. Like exiling dissenting intellectuals to remote villages, for instance. As then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi put it in 2003, they were merely sent on a "vacation in internal exile."

A Healthier Country, Thanks to the Right

Berlusconi successfully perpetuated the collective repression of the postwar period. When he entered the political arena in the early 1990s, he needed the leftover fascists in order to pull in majorities. So he made them socially acceptable, formed a coalition with them and brought them into his cabinet.

Mirko Tremaglia, a former minister for Italians living abroad, boasted about having fought for the Republic of Salò (1943-1945), a puppet state of Nazi Germany that eventually merged with Mussolini's Republican Fascist Party. When he was minister for communications, current PdL leader Maurizio Gasparri proclaimed it his goal to promote "cultural talent on the right" in order to end the dominance of the left in schools and on Italy's public broadcaster RAI. At Gasparri's behest, the catalogue for RAI's exhibition "Rome 1948-1959" was accompanied by phrases such as: "It is thanks to the culture of the right that Italy remains today a healthier country than the democracies that are going in the direction of nihilism."

But Berlusconi & Co. have not managed to turn Italy into a right-wing country. The post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale party is hopelessly fragmented and virtually meaningless politically. Even the smallest parties on the right-wing margins are in short supply. What the Berlusconi years did leave in their wake, however, is a momentous trivialization of fascism.

It's this trivialization that has given extreme right-wing fringe groups the courage to show themselves openly — and often violently. When self-proclaimed fascists beat up visiting British football fans while shouting "Jews" — as happened before the November Europa League match in Rome between Lazio and Tottenham Hotspur — or when neo-fascists show up at schools to protest education cuts wielding smoke bombs and yelling, "Long live 'Il Duce'", then that too is a legacy of Berlusconi's reign.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Italy's Mussolini cult still very active

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Germany's Rheinmetall develops laser weapon that can shoot down drones

Posted by Olog-hai on Mon Jan 14 12:42:51 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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8 January 2013 Last updated at 06:25 ET

Rheinmetall demos laser that can shoot down drones

A laser weapons system that can shoot down two drones at a distance of over a mile has been demonstrated by Rheinmetall Defense.

The German defense firm used the high-energy laser equipment to shoot fast-moving drones at a distance.

The system, which uses two laser weapons, was also used to cut through a steel girder a kilometer away.

The company plans to make the laser weapons system mobile and to integrate automatic cannon.

The 50-kW laser weapons system used radar and optical systems to detect and track two incoming drones, the company said. The nose-diving drones were flying at 50 meters per second (112 mph), and were shot down when they reached a programmed fire sector.

Weather trials

The weapons system locked on to the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by using radar for a rough approximation of the location of the targets, then fine-tuned the tracking using an optical system.

The high-energy laser system was used to cut through a 15-mm-thick steel girder, and to shoot out of the air a steel ball designed to mimic a mortar round.

The company has tested the laser system in a variety of weather conditions, including snow, sunlight, and rain.

Rheinmetall plans to test its laser weapons mounted on different vehicles and to integrate a 35-mm revolver cannon into it.

A number of governments and defense firms are in the process of developing weapons that use or incorporate lasers. For example, Raytheon unveiled a 50-kW anti-aircraft laser at the Farnborough Airshow in 2010, and in June 2012 the US Army released details of a weapon that can fire a laser-guided lightning bolt at a target.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany's Rheinmetall develops laser weapon that can shoot down drones

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany's Rheinmetall develops laser weapon that can shoot down drones

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EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

Posted by Olog-hai on Sat Jan 26 11:58:28 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Leveson: EU wants power to sack journalists

By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels
10:26AM GMT 22 Jan 2013

A European Union report has urged tight press regulation and demanded that Brussels officials are given control of national media supervisors with new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists.

The “high level” recommendations that will be used to draft future EU legislation also attack David Cameron for failing to automatically implement proposals by the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry for a state regulation of British press.

A “high level” EU panel, that includes Latvia’s former president and a former German justice minister, was ordered by Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president, last year to report on “media freedom and pluralism”. It has concluded that it is time to introduce new rules to rein in the press.

“All EU countries should have independent media councils,” the report concluded.

“Media councils should have real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.”

As well as setting up state regulators with draconian powers, the panel also recommended that the European Commission be placed in overall control in order to ensure that the new watchdogs do not breach EU laws.

“The national media councils should follow a set of European-wide standards and be monitored by the Commission to ensure that they comply with European values,” the report said.

The EU report praises Lord Justice Leveson’s controversial proposals and attacks politicians, including the Prime Minister, that have questioned state regulation of newspapers.

“The gross abuses revealed in the Leveson enquiry have led its author to propose much more stringent institutional supervision, where the media would be much more closely monitored,” the report said.

“That Judge Leveson’s recommendations should have been rejected out of hand by some politicians in high office, is not very reassuring.”

Mrs. Kroes last night hailed the report’s “concrete ideas for action” as providing “exactly what I was looking for”.

“Ensuring the independence of regulators across the member states and their cooperation will be high on my agenda,” she said.

“The recommendations in this report are an important basis for the tough and principled discussion we urgently need in the EU.”

The report’s recommendations have sparked anger in Britain, a country that is often criticized by European officials for its media coverage of EU issues.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: “We have no intention of allowing Europe to regulate the British press. We have been clear that, as set out in the Leveson report, we expect the British press industry to implement tough, independent, self-regulation.”

Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, attacked the report for making an “extraordinary, and deeply disturbing proposal”.

“Having EU officials overseeing our free press — and monitoring newspapers to ensure they comply with ‘European values’ — would be quite simply intolerable,” he said.

“This is the sort of mindset that I would expect to find in Iran, not the West. This kooky idea tells us little about the future of press regulation. It does suggest that the European project is ultimately incompatible with the notion of a free society.”

Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, compared the proposals to “Orwell's 1984”. “This is a flagrant attack on press freedom. To hear that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels want the power to fine and suspend journalists is just outrageous,” he said.

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU wants the power to *fire journalists*, regulate press

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EUEUEUEUEU plagued with violent extremism (highest level since WWII)

Posted by Olog-hai on Mon Jan 28 12:21:26 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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1/28/2013, Shevat 17, 5773

Violent Extremism in Europe at Highest Level Since WWII

Violent extremism is at its highest level in Europe since World War II and is becoming the continent's top security threat, the European Union's executive body said Monday.

In a speech on the eve of talks on how to detect and prevent extremism, the EU's commissioner for home affairs Cecilia Malmström urged the EU "to stand up … and protect our values that are now being challenged in many countries in Europe," AFP reported.

"We see a growth of extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, hatred and nationalism," she said.

"Not since World War II have extreme and populist forces had so much influence on the national parliaments as they have today. In some countries even neo-Nazis have been elected," she added.

Should the trend continue, next year's European elections "might further strengthen these forces", threatening the entire European project, Malmström said.

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU plagued with violent extremism (highest level since WWII)

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU plagued with violent extremism (highest level since WWII)

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Tens of thousands of "Golden Dawn" neo-Nazis march in Athens, Greece

Posted by Olog-hai on Mon Feb 4 15:30:14 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU forces Greece into "great depression", posted by Olog-hai on Sun Jul 22 18:51:17 2012.

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Chilling Video: Thousands of Neo-Nazis March Through Athens

Tens of thousands of neo-Nazis rallied in support of Greece's Golden Dawn party, in its largest demonstration of support.

By Rachel Hirshfeld
First Publish: 2/4/2013, 11:10 AM

Tens of thousands of neo-Nazis rallied in Athens in support of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party, in the movement's largest demonstration of support since its rise to power in last June’s general election.

Men dressed in military uniforms, holding torches, donning swastikas and chanting anti-immigrant slogans, marched through central Athens in what was reportedly a memorial event paying tribute to the party’s “fallen soldiers,” The International Business Times reported.

"This is a day of remembrance. It's a day to remember that Golden Dawn is here to stay. And so long as it does, there will be hope for the country," Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris told supporters.

Hundreds of riot police and security officials were deployed to the scene of the march, which took place near the prime minister's office and the Turkish embassy in Athens, according to The Times.

The party, which has become notorious for its blatant anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric and has been responsible for perpetrating attacks on Jews and foreigners, has begun spreading its anti-immigration message in schools and youth clubs, as well as through online social media networks, according to recent reports in the international press.

Golden Dawn emerged victorious in the country’s general election last June, gaining 7 percent of the vote and 18 seats in parliament in what was seen as a barely fathomable increase from its 0.2 percent show of support in the previous election in 2009.

“As Greece's economic fortunes have plummeted, so Golden Dawn's fortunes have soared,” The Times explains.

The party’s surge in popularity has become increasingly worrisome for Jews and foreigners, who do not have to stretch their imaginations in order to draw parallels to Europe in the late 1930s.

"For a nation that suffered dearly under the Nazis, neo-Nazi gatherings like these should be banned," said Sofia Laniti, a 47-year-old saleswoman, who witnessed the march.

Vassiliki Georgiadou, a professor at Panteion University and an expert in far-right nationalism, who has studied Golden Dawn for years, told The Times that, "They discard the label of Nazism and instead play up the nationalist card.”

“They use ancient Greek history as a camouflage to hide their true identity: that they're fans of Hitler, anti-Semitism," Georgiadou added.

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EUEUEUEUEU attacking Israeli settlement products *again*; claims Israeli territory isn't Israeli

Posted by Olog-hai on Mon Feb 11 19:42:14 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU attacking Israeli settlement products, posted by Olog-hai on Tue May 15 14:13:23 2012.

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Patience Runs Out: EU To Crack Down on Israeli Settlement Products

By Christoph Schult in Brussels
February 11, 2013 – 02:43 PM

Israeli settlers living in the Palestinian terroritories often deceptively give their products a "Made in Israel" label. The European Union wants to move soon to end the practice and appears to be set on a collision course with the country.

The wine section on the basement floor of the Galeria Kaufhof department store in downtown Cologne has a good assortment of wines from around the world. Above the bottles, the shelves bear little tags showing the prices and flags of the countries of origin.

One cubicle has a tag showing a blue Star of David on a white background. At first glance, one might be led to believe that the wine comes from Israel. It even says "Wine of Israel" on the label. However, it requires a good bit of geographical and historical expertise to figure out the true origin of this €14.99 ($20) bottle of wine. The label says it is a 2008 "Gamla" Cabernet Sauvignon, "Produced & Bottled by Golan Heights Winery." The address provided is "12900 Katzrin, Israel."

But that address isn't in Israel. Katzrin is a settlement in the Golan Heights. Until the Six Day War of 1967, the rock plateau stretching some 60 kilometers (37 miles) belonged to Syria. The Israeli army has occupied both it and the Palestinian West Bank ever since.

The international community has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over these areas, and the Geneva Convention outlaws the establishment of settlements within occupied territories. Nevertheless, successive Israeli governments have allowed colonies to be built up within them and, today, some 650,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently confirmed what little concern the Israeli government has for respecting international law on this issue. "The days of bulldozers flattening settlements to the ground are over," he told the daily tabloid Maariv.

Israel held parliamentary elections on Jan. 22 and is now in the process of forming a new coalition government to be led by Netanyahu. Although the coalition will include the liberal parties in the political center, politicians representing settlers will also have a strong voice in the new government. This configuration is diminishing the hopes of politicians in Berlin, Brussels and Washington who were eager to revive the comatose Middle East peace process.

Confrontation Course

This has prompted the European Union officials to move forward with planning that will put them on a confrontation course with Israel. The main issue is settlement policies. At a meeting in December, the foreign ministers of the EU's 27 member states reiterated "their commitment to ensure continued, full and effective implementation of existing European Union legislation and bilateral arrangements applicable to settlement products." In other words, they intend to prohibit the sale of goods produced in the occupied territories — or at least as long as they are falsely labeled.

Sanctions against products from the settlements would be a major blow to the Israeli economy. Each year, the settlers export some €220 million worth of goods to Europe, whereas the comparable figure for the Palestinians is a mere €15 million. Israel has accordingly reacted very negatively to the plans in Brussels. In a response to the plans, the Israeli Embassy in Berlin argued that there are territorial disputes all over the world. "If this kind of labeling regulation is not universal, and seeks to single out one place exclusively, namely Israel," it said, "then this measure will be inherently iniquitous and discriminatory by nature, and it should be treated as such."

Such charges have not been intimidating to officials in Brussels. Employees of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU diplomatic service ushered in by the Treaty of Lisbon, recently sifted through the entire corpus of EU legislation in order to determine which directives and regulations could be cited in efforts to ban settler-made products. The list of applicable legislation, which Spiegel has obtained, shows that the lion's share of potentially banned products involves foodstuffs.

Difficulties in Verifying Origins

For example, European Council Regulation 1234/2007 sets rules "on specific provisions for certain agricultural products," including wine. Among the product information that must be declared is origin. But, in practice, the law is constantly violated.

Council Regulation 479/2008 stipulates who is responsible for monitoring that wine is properly labeled. Article 62 says: "The competent authorities of the Member States shall take measures to ensure that a product referred to in Article 59(1)" — including wine and related grapevine products — "not labeled in conformity with this Chapter is not placed on, or is withdrawn from, the market."

The red wine from the Golan Heights sold in the Galeria Kaufhof is imported to Germany by Champagner und Wein Distributionsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, a company based in the northern German state of in Schleswig-Holstein. But the state's ministry responsible for agriculture doesn't see any reason to take action. A ministry spokeswoman says that since Israel's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor has already provided a document confirming the origin of the wine, there is no deception in the matter.

The EU member states also rely on the information supplied by Israeli exporters when it comes to fruit and vegetables. It is difficult to verify precisely where an orange or olive has been harvested. Right now, one of the main things EU officials are looking into are dates that are grown by Israeli settlers in the occupied Jordan Valley.

Products from Israeli cosmetics firm Ahava are also the subject of dispute. The company produces creams and shower gels that contain minerals from the Dead Sea. The products' packaging includes the details, "Dead Sea Laboratories. Israel." In truth, the products are manufactured at the edge of the Dead Sea in the occupied West Bank.

The company refused to answer detailed legal questions. "Ahava works in coordination with the German authorities, the European Commission and under the law," the company stated, tersely. But the apparent calm was feigned. Ahava immediately informed the Israeli Embassy in Berlin about Spiegel's reporting.

The German importer of Ahava products is based in Wiesbaden, so any control of its products is the responsibility of the city, which is the state capital of Hesse. In a written response to a query from SPIEGEL, the city's consumer protection department wrote that because the company's headquarters is officially located within the recognized borders of the state of Israel, "nothing misleading can be detected."

Countries Turn Blind Eye to Imports

But officials at the EU in Brussels have a different view. Under EU Regulation 2005/29, a trader is considered to be conducting misleading actions when it presents material information "in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner." The European Commission considers such practices to be "misleading omissions". Officials in Brussels have come to the conclusion that controllers in many EU member states are simply turning a blind eye to products originating from Israeli settlements.

A SPIEGEL review of all 27 EU national governments confirmed this suspicion. The simple question of whether or not products from settlements in the West Bank or the Golan Heights "come from Israel" generated highly varied answers. Britain, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Cyprus all answered the question with a clear "no". These countries consider products with the labels "Product of Israel" or "Made in Israel" to be misleading. A spokesperson with the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs wrote that, "Items imported into the UK from Israeli settlements, such as those in the West Bank, can't lawfully be labelled as products of Israel."

Other EU countries expressed uncertainty. Given the country's difficult history, officials in Germany are taking pains to avoid anything that might evoke any kind of historical associations with the Nazis' campaigns to prevent people from buying products from Jews. German government officials are urging the European Commission to provide "guidance assistance on the implementation of EU law in relation to a consistency with EU law and correct labeling."

A number of EU countries see no problem whatsoever with the labeling. They point out that sales are legal as soon as customs officials have approved the products. However, the only thing that customs officials check is whether or not the products fall under the EU-Israel Association Agreement. If they do, then importers are not required to pay an import tariff.

The Galeria Kaufhof department store chain also sees no reason to act. The company argues it is the sole responsibility of suppliers to ensure proper labeling. The company also spoke to the Israeli Embassy in Berlin before answering a question from this SPIEGEL reporter. "Suppliers and the embassy were able to give us credible assurances that their actions are legal," a company spokesman wrote.

He also added that "Galeria Kaufhof, like the majority of the people, wish the Middle East peace."

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Re: EUEUEUEUEU attacking Israeli settlement products *again*; claims Israeli territory isn't Israeli

Posted by RockParkMan on Mon Feb 11 19:50:38 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU attacking Israeli settlement products *again*; claims Israeli territory isn't Israeli, posted by Olog-hai on Mon Feb 11 19:42:14 2013.

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EUEUEUEUEU–Obama trade agreement sells out USA to EU

Posted by Olog-hai on Fri Feb 15 10:55:43 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Obama's Free Trade With Europe Fraught With Red Flags

Posted 02/14/2013 06:27 PM ET

In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced talks with Europe for the most ambitious trade partnership ever attempted. So how come it doesn't include the words "free trade"?

"Tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union — because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs," President Obama said in his State of the Union address.

It's hard to think of any greater tonic for two stricken economies than free trade with one other. The U.S. and Europe, the world's two largest economic blocs, account for 45% of global GDP and nearly 40% of all trade, and have been kicking the idea around for decades.

After extensive coaxing of the White House from Germany's pro-market Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.K.'s conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are expected to begin on June 18 at the next G-8 meeting in Britain.

But a look at details from both sides of the Atlantic show this disturbing sign: Neither side has free trade as we know it in mind.

For starters, the words "free trade" are curiously missing from its title, something pointed out by a Washington Post reporter in the U.S. trade representative's news conference that followed the president's speech.

"I think we are framing the agreement as one that is more representative of what we are doing, because it is so much broader than trade," said USTR Ambassador Ron Kirk, without much more detail.

But it's important that such detail be there. The Obama administration is notoriously beholden to Big Labor special interests that oppose all free trade pacts in favor of "managed trade" and "fairness" geared toward protecting union inefficiency from foreign competition.

Kirk elaborated that the pact would be more than just getting rid of tariffs. It will address investment issues such as "regulatory coherence" and nontariff barriers to market entry — a disingenuous answer if there ever was one, given that all free trade treaties address those issues.

Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Froman, who was curiously in on that call — as if Kirk needed monitoring — revealed more of what the Obama administration had in mind. "TTIP is really about both figuring out better ways of integrating our own economies, but also working together to establish global rules … vis à vis the broader multilateral trading system."

European Union bureaucrats sounded even more ambitious for that than the trade itself.

"These negotiations will set a standard, not only for our future bilateral trade and investment, including regulatory issues, but for the development of global trade rules," declared European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a news conference Wednesday.

The regularization of rules sounds nice until one realizes it could as easily mean free trade for every nation in equal competition as it could mean protected industries on both sides of the Atlantic, entrenching large non-competitive industries from upstart competition, a formula for stagnation. It's the opposite of free trade.

And that's just one red flag with this announcement.

The fact that the administration wants to rush these talks through before the end of 2014 is not a good sign that any deal will be well-crafted and designed to maximize benefits.

The fact that Kirk is not sticking around for these negotiations but quitting — without a successor — even though his resignation has been known for more than a year, isn't a good sign either.

Free trade holds huge promise for America and Europe. Estimates say it could add as much as 1% to gross domestic product on both sides of the Atlantic.

But that won't come about if it isn't free trade. Is this a real free trade pact, or just the appearance of one? If it is, Obama should say so.

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EUEUEUEUEU eases sanctions on Zimbabwe over empty promise on constitutional referendum

Posted by Olog-hai on Mon Feb 18 12:23:14 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Feb 18, 2013 10:56 AM EST

EU eases sanctions on Zimbabwe

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is easing sanctions against Zimbabwe in light of an agreement by the country's political parties on a draft constitution and the announcement of a referendum on it.

Foreign ministers from the 27 EU countries meeting Monday in Brussels said that, "recognizing the significance of these advances," the EU was immediately suspending the travel ban it had imposed on six members of the government. It also removed sanctions from 21 other people and one company.

The names of those involved are not normally known until they are published in the EU's official journal.

The foreign ministers call on all political parties to "maintain the momentum allowing for the holding of democratic elections later this year."

President Robert Mugabe announced March 16 as the date for the constitutional referendum.

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Germany wants control of European Central Bank

Posted by Olog-hai on Sat Mar 16 21:12:47 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Does Germany Want to Control the ECB?

Published: Wednesday, 13 Mar 2013 | 6:35 AM ET
By: Holly Ellyatt | Assistant News Editor, CNBC.com

As calls grow in Germany for the country to have more control over the European Central Bank (ECB), Jens Weidmann, the head of Germany's Bundesbank and an ECB governing council member, played down calls for Germany to have more voting power over other eurozone countries.

"That's not the true question that I'm asking myself. Of course, we have a specific position in the euro system that I think is very useful. But that position is there and we try to convince [others] through the power of our arguments and not through the voting power in the [ECB's] governing council," Weidmann told CNBC on Tuesday.

On Monday, members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government said that Germany should have bigger voting rights on the European Central Bank's governing council because Germany contributes the most to the ECB's funds.

There are 23 members on the ECB's governing council, comprising the heads of central banks from each of the 17 eurozone countries and six board members from the ECB.

Each member has one vote on central bank policy but the German Bundesbank contributes the most of any euro zone central bank, making up almost 19 percent of the ECB's funds, thus bearing more of the risk for eurozone bailouts, Merkel's allies argued.

Junior coalition party leader, Rainer Bruederle, said the voting system should be reformed before other states join the eurozone. "It cannot be the case that Malta has the same voting power as Germany, for example," he said.

Weidmann empathized with the discussions over voting rights, stating that it stemmed from "from the fact that we kind of slowly blur the border between monetary policy and fiscal policy."

"Since we redistribute the risks between taxpayers of the euro area, people ask themselves is the voting power of the Bundesbank representing 27 percent of the taxpayers that carry that risk (the German population as a percentage of the entire eurozone population). Is the voting power appropriate?"

However, he added that he didn't think a solution lay in "adjusting the voting power".

"The answer is that we should quickly revert to our core business, which is monetary policy," Weidmann said.

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Olog-hai on Sat Mar 16 21:31:45 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Could Germany spark another war? I fear it's all too possible

By Dominic Sandbrook
PUBLISHED: 18:56 EST, 12 March 2013 | UPDATED: 03:53 EST, 13 March 2013

The world is at a crossroads in history. Vast, untameable economic forces are remaking the landscape of international affairs.

In Britain, a dithering Prime Minister is buffeted by crisis after crisis. Abroad, from the heart of Europe to the fringes of Asia, economic powers are rising. And there is talk of a new German empire, bigger and more powerful than ever.

It sounds like something ripped from today’s newspapers. But this was the state of the planet in 1913, 100 years ago.

At first glance, the Britain of 1913 appears impossibly different from the Britain of today. Our imperial dominion stretched across the globe, while our bankers and manufacturers were widely regarded as the best in the world.

And in a society rigidly divided by class, the Tories were in the wilderness, Labour was merely a minority third party and the Liberals — led by Herbert Asquith — were entering their eighth successive year of government.

Chilling

Beneath the surface, however, the problems that confronted our forebears back then were uncannily similar to those facing us today, particularly in the changing balance of power in Europe.

This week, the fault lines that run ever deeper across the Continent were the subject of an extraordinary speech by a long-time president of the European Council, who insisted there are indeed chilling parallels between 2013 and the eve of World War I a century ago.

Jean Claude Juncker said that resentment against Germany is running high because its imposition of austerity — in a bid to shore up the euro — has exposed long-running tensions between nations.

“The demons haven’t been banished; they are merely sleeping,” he warned, adding that “anyone who believes the eternal issue of war and peace in Europe has been permanently laid to rest could be making a monumental error”.

Perhaps a decade ago he would have been dismissed as a scaremonger. But today, the political mood is shifting across Europe more dramatically than for many years. As the legendary American investor George Soros said last year, if the German Chancellor Angela Merkel continued in her economic demands on the rest of Europe, “the result will be a Europe in which Germany is seen as an imperial power that will not be loved or admired by the rest, but hated and resisted, because it will be perceived as an oppressive power.”

The Left-leaning magazine the New Statesman simply labeled Merkel ‘the most dangerous German leader since Hitler’. The language may seem inflammatory, but ever more citizens in the Mediterranean countries of the eurozone in particular argue that for the third time in less than 100 years, Germany is trying to take control of Europe.

Of course, the Germans would say they’re simply trying to maintain economic stability in nations which for years spent far beyond their means.

But if they continue to impose brutal economic strictures on Europe’s peoples, the consequences in terms of social alienation, international disputes and the rise of political extremism could be dramatic.

Already we have seen bloody protests against the German economic yoke in Athens, Rome and Madrid.

It is a situation tailor-made for ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties such as Golden Dawn in Greece, which is acting with increasing violence and impunity against foreigners with every passing week.

At the heart of the crisis is the great euro project, an economic regime created in hubris — but now threatened with ruinous collapse.

Divide

In the past year, the close relationship Merkel enjoyed with the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy of France has been banished by the socialist François Hollande, who came to office on the promise of massive new state spending to reinvigorate the economy. Thus, a deep ideological divide now exists between the two nations.

The agonies of Greece, where effigies of Angela Merkel dressed as a Nazi were burned, have been well documented, but Portugal has been cruelly hit, too. After a €78 billion bailout in 2011, its people have seen welfare spending cut and taxes raised. Even several public holidays have been abolished.

In Spain, meanwhile, cities have seen rioting as unemployment has soared to 25 percent and anti-German sentiment has grown.

Last year, hundreds gathered to protest in central Madrid after the German Chancellor had left the capital, waving banners and saying “Merkel go home” and “No to a German Europe”. One Spanish economist who took part in the protest said: “The German financial mafia is taking Spaniards hostage . . . Merkel belongs to a political class that serves German oligarchies.”

The same sense of outrage is driving a massive protest movement in Italy, where the right-wing newspaper Il Giornale published a front page picture of Merkel under the headline “Fourth Reich”.

In the recent general election, the technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti — who sought to impose Brussels’ austerity measures — polled just 9 percent of the vote.

Instead, the headlines were seized by the anti-establishment party led by stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, who could yet prove to be kingmaker in a coalition government.

Thanks to this seemingly endless political crisis, Germany is increasingly being seen not as Europe’s economic savior but its oppressor.

Of course, back in 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s German Empire had more nakedly militaristic ambitions. Frustrated that his newly unified country had missed out on colonizing Africa and Asia, he had embarked on a vastly expensive arms race with Britain, symbolized by the production of vast naval dreadnoughts.

Even at the time, many people warned that war was coming. As early as 1906, the Daily Mail — then just ten years old — had serialized a bestselling book by William Le Queux, who predicted that the inevitable war with Germany might lead to a Teutonic invasion of southern England.

Far-sighted observers of the global situation could see that behind all the domestic arguments about female suffrage, the popularity of gramophones and bicycles and all the celebrity gossip about high-society hostesses, the world was entering a new and extremely dangerous phase.

On the edge of Europe, the Ottoman Empire was breaking up, destabilizing the alliances that had hitherto kept the Continent at peace.

In the First Balkan War of 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro had defeated the Ottomans and were busily carving up the Balkans for themselves.

In June 1913, the victors fell out over the spoils, with the Bulgarians fighting the rest for the disputed territory of Macedonia. And even now, a century on, that conflict is a reminder of the potential of ethnic passions and national resentments to unleash devastating violence on the peoples of Europe.

Superficially, of course, our own situation looks very different. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has even declared that the very existence of the euro is a guarantee the Continent will never again descend into bloodshed. Only by such means, she said, could we be sure to enjoy “another half century of peace in Europe”.

Yet the truth is that lashing together the economies of nations as disparate as Portugal, Greece, France, Italy and Germany has served only to inflame old enmities.

Bloodiest

And if keeping the euro project alive means condemning the more impoverished nations to years of penury, with the Mediterranean economies in ruins, neo-Nazis marching on the streets of Athens and resentment building against Berlin and Brussels, it would take a brave man to predict that violence will never return to the cities of Europe.

So could war again haunt the cities of the Continent?

Alas, it is never easy to draw simple lessons from history. In 1913, few people in Britain realized that the bloodiest war in human history was just around the corner. Like most of us, they had known nothing but peace and prosperity, and assumed the golden age would continue for ever.

Abroad, too, few could imagine the storm that was coming. Without realizing it, Europe had been dancing on the edge of a precipice.

We, too, have been living the high life, enjoying comforts our predecessors could never have imagined. And if the story of 1913 does offer a lesson, it is that, even in these financially-straitened times, we should count our blessings.

We often imagine that things can only get better. But as the events of a century ago so tragically and devastatingly proved, they can, in fact, get an awful lot worse.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany wants control of European Central Bank

Posted by Rockparkman on Sat Mar 16 22:06:13 2013, in response to (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany wants control of European Central Bank, posted by Olog-hai on Sat Mar 16 21:12:47 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany wants control of European Central Bank

Posted by Spider-Pig on Sat Mar 16 22:19:56 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany wants control of European Central Bank, posted by Rockparkman on Sat Mar 16 22:06:13 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Dan Lawrence on Sun Mar 17 11:42:38 2013, in response to (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Olog-hai on Sat Mar 16 21:31:45 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Britain could spark another war . . .

Posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 14:02:53 2013, in response to (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Olog-hai on Sat Mar 16 21:31:45 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:26:29 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Britain could spark another war . . ., posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 14:02:53 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:27:50 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Dan Lawrence on Sun Mar 17 11:42:38 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Britain could spark another war . . .

Posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 14:30:30 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:26:29 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:57:03 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Britain could spark another war . . ., posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 14:30:30 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Rockparkman on Sun Mar 17 16:59:14 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:57:03 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Train Dude on Sun Mar 17 17:10:40 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Rockparkman on Sun Mar 17 16:59:14 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 17:12:04 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Train Dude on Sun Mar 17 17:10:40 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Train Dude on Sun Mar 17 17:16:55 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by RockParkMan on Sun Mar 17 17:12:04 2013.

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Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . .

Posted by Dan Lawrence on Sun Mar 17 19:53:31 2013, in response to Re: (EUEUEUEUEU) Germany could spark another war . . ., posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 17 14:27:50 2013.

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Germany calls the shots in EUEUEUEUEU

Posted by Olog-hai on Thu Mar 21 15:09:07 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Germany Calls the Shots

By RISTO E.J. PENTTILA
Published: March 21, 2013

THE crisis in Cyprus has taken a nasty turn, but it will not wreck the euro. Chancellor Angela Merkel will simply not allow it to happen. For Germany, the euro is the goose that lays golden eggs. It has allowed Germany to accumulate more than €1 trillion in trade surplus with other EU countries in a little more than a decade. Germany will not let the golden goose die.

The European sovereign debt crisis has fundamentally changed Europe’s geopolitical map. Instead of Europe being divided into West and East as it was during the Cold War, the Continent has become divided into a relatively prosperous North and a chaotic South. Instead of Europe being led by France and Germany with Britain playing a balancing act, leadership has fallen squarely on Germany’s shoulders. It is no longer about a more European Germany. It is about more German Europe.

Germany is calling the shots when it comes to the future governance of the eurozone. It is also calling the shots with regard to the Cypriot problem. If Cyprus can be guided out of the eurozone without endangering the credibility of the euro, Merkel will gladly make an example of the small island nation. If she thinks that a Cypriot exit will damage the euro’s reputation, she will not let it happen. The euro is simply too valuable for Germany to be risked.

Two economists, Jorge Braga de Macedo and Urho Lempinen, have shown that between 1999 and 2011 Germany accrued a cumulative trade surplus with the rest of the European Union of more than €1 trillion. Since the eurozone makes up about 75 percent of the European Union, the German trade surplus with the rest of the eurozone was about €750 billion during this time period. This was by far the biggest trade surplus within the eurozone. (Holland’s figures are even more impressive but they are explained by transit through its huge ports.)

There are two conclusions to be drawn. First, Germany is more dependent on the European market than it is on the rest of the world. Second, Germany can compete with other members of the eurozone better than it can compete with the rest of the world. One reason for this is the fixed exchange rate within the eurozone. As long as Germany can keep its own costs down, it is able to export to the rest of Europe more easily than to the rest of the world. This is about good housekeeping but it is also about geopolitics.

Geopolitics is not a concept that is often associated with the European Union. But it is a concept that is irrevocably linked with Germany’s history and its future. In the first part of the 20^th century, the country’s big geopolitical idea was “Lebensraum,” or living space. The idea fueled German expansionism in the 1930s and led in part to the outbreak of World War II. After the war, the leading idea was Germany’s Western orientation. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer understood that West Germany could rebuild its economy and society only as long as it was committed to two Western institutions, NATO and the European Economic Community.

The next grand geopolitical idea was German reunification within the framework of the European Union. Chancellor Helmut Kohl realized that Germany could become united only as long as it pledged allegiance to an ever more integrated European Union.

Today it is a different Europe: Germany may be first among equals, but it is still committed to the European Union.

Cyprus is playing a geopolitical game of its own. It will be interesting to see whether it repeats the same choreography that Iceland followed during its financial crisis, when the country was in danger of being shut out by Western institutions. After announcing that it was in talks with Russia, the International Monetary Fund decided in 2008 to offer Iceland assistance. Cyprus, by turning to Moscow, is forcing the European Union to think hard about increased Russian influence within the Union’s borders.

Merkel has staked her political future on the idea that Germany’s interests are best served by the present constellation of the eurozone. If she is right, she will be considered one of the great postwar German leaders, together with Adenauer and Helmut Kohl. If she is wrong, all of Europe will suffer. She will not let a small island nation ruin her geopolitical vision for Germany and Europe.

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(EUEUEUEUEU) Israel angered by Germany's decision to cut off Jewish ghetto laborers' pensions

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 24 02:28:12 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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Pensions for Jewish Ghetto Laborers: Israel Angered By German Government

By Christoph Schult
March 22, 2013 05:42 PM

On Thursday, the ruling parties in Germany's parliament blocked a measure to resolve the amount German pension funds must pay to former laborers in Nazi-era ghettos. Israeli officials are incensed and have promised to increase pressure.

Emmanuel Nachshon, a former Israeli ambassador and current envoy to Berlin, followed the debate in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, with astonishment. The issue of unpaid pensions for former laborers in Nazi-era ghettos had been under discussion for a year. At a hearing in December, pension experts had almost unanimously voiced the need for action. And Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen, whose ministry oversees the issue, had presented suggested solutions. But even after all that, the parliamentary groups of the parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative coalition government refused to budge on Thursday evening.

"Do you really intend to rob these people of a few thousand euros?" asked Ulla Jelpke, a member of the far-left Left Party. This refusal, she continued, means that the victims will feel ridiculed yet again. Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn, with the environmental Green Party, said that doing nothing was "a disgrace and really sad for us as a parliament."

The debate stems from a 2002 Bundestag law that promised to quickly make it possible for Jews who once worked in ghettos to draw a modest pension from Germany. Initially, state pension fund providers rejected roughly 90 percent of applications for this pension. Officials often disputed that the former ghetto residents had worked "voluntarily" and received some form of "remuneration" for their work, which were two conditions stipulated by the German Pensions for Work in Ghettos law (ZRBG).

In 2009, Germany's Federal Social Court put an end to this exceedingly strict interpretation of the law. But the relief of ghetto survivors was short-lived. Instead of granting the plaintiff's full pension retroactive to 1997, as the law stipulated, the court ruled that he would only be granted a pension retroactively for the last four years. The German pension fund had invoked a passage in German social law stating that remuneration for an erroneous ruling is only paid retroactively for a maximum of four years. However, this contradicted the intention of the law that had passed with the support of all Bundestag parties, which called for making payments retroactive to 1997.

In early February, the signals coming out of the Labor Ministry were still good. Sources had told SPIEGEL that the ministry was planning to pay pensions retroactively to 1997 to all eligible survivors. A hearing had been held, and the only outstanding issue was reportedly how this would be accomplished — by amending the law or providing lump-sum compensation.

But the plan was blocked by Merkel's coalition, made up of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). "I really wish we could have rectified this piece of injustice," said CDU parliamentarian Peter Weiss, arguing that it was unfortunately just too technically complicated to amend the law and recalculate the pensions. However, he added, they would be happy to discuss the issue further with Israeli government officials.

Angry Response from Israel

The Israeli Embassy has already set up meetings with Chancellery officials twice to discuss the issue. But both of them were cancelled on short notice.

The Israelis have had enough of repeatedly being brushed off on this matter. Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yakov Hadas-Handelsman expressed his immense disappointment after Thursday's Bundestag vote, telling SPIEGEL that the matter involved "legitimate demands of former Jewish ghetto laborers." The elderly survivors, he continued, "expect that there will be a moral and legal solution before it is too late," and the Israeli government will do all it can to see that justice is served on this issue.

Indeed, Israeli's government is already contemplating ways to increase pressure on Germany's government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly raise the issue with Chancellor Merkel during their next telephone conversation. More than anything, he wants Merkel to explain why members of the ruling parties had rejected the solutions supposedly proposed by Labor Minister von der Leyen, herself a prominent member of Merkel's CDU.

There is also growing anger within the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Lawmakers there want to summon Andreas Michaelis, the German ambassador in Tel Aviv, to appear before them and provide an explanation for all the back and forth on the matter. "It just can't be that the German government gives out several billion to rescue Greece and other crisis-struck countries but is stingy with ghetto pensions," says Elazar Stern, a member of the liberal Hatnua ("The Movement") party headed by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

When he thinks about the battle to solve the pension issue, Stern also has his own parents in mind. His 80-year-old mother survived the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps, and his father, a survivor of the Mauthausen concentration camp, just celebrated his 90th birthday. Since it could only be a matter of days or weeks before they pass away, Stern plans to urge the media to put pressure on Merkel's government now that the Bundestag has refused to act. "Starting now," Stern says, "we will publicly calculate each week how many survivors die without living to see a resolution."

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EUEUEUEUEU Commission grabbing total control of eurozone member state economies

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Mar 24 02:38:55 2013, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.

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EU commission prepares ground for far-reaching economic powers

21.03.13 @ 17:46
By Honor Mahony

BRUSSELS — The European Commission has started preparing the ground for legislation that would prevent member states from undertaking major tax, labor or financial reforms without running it by the commission and other governments first.

In an ideas paper published Wednesday (20 March), the commission said this ex-ante coordination should concern "major national economic reform plans and should take place at an early stage before the measures are adopted."

The suggested scope of covered policies would implicate virtually all national government legislation — including competitiveness and employment laws, reforms that cover product and services markets, as well as those affecting tax systems and network industries.

Financial stability and fiscal sustainability are also suggested benchmarks for whether legislation should first be discussed in Brussels before being implemented at home.

The proposals — to eventually take shape as a draft legislation later this year — are part of a general attempt to induce the interdependent 17-country eurozone to behave more as one political and economic entity.

The current eurozone crisis has driven home how connected euro countries are.

Small, about-to-be-bailout-out Cyprus, with a vastly inflated banking sector, is considered a "systemic risk" to the rest of the eurozone.

Fears that markets would drive Italy in the same direction saw EU leaders in 2011 persuade former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to step down in favor of reform-minded technocrat leader Mario Monti.

And member states already snipe at one another for what they consider unfair practices among their neighbors.

Ireland and Cyprus are frequently criticized for their low corporate taxes, while the Belgian government recently indicated it would complain to the European Commission about Germany's low wages.

The law could also hand far more power to the European Commission, which already has greatly increased oversight on national budgets since the start of the crisis in 2008.

One of the questions it is asking to be considered ahead of drawing up the legislation is whether it can have the power to make spontaneous requests for policy information from governments and whether it make changes to the proposed measures.

The commission is also working on a proposal for "contractual arrangements," whereby governments would enter into a contract with the EU executive to undertake specific economic reforms.

The idea was originally raised by the Netherlands, keen for a mechanism to rein in fiscally miscreant states.

Key details will be whether it is only economically ailing euro states that will undertake these contracts and whether it will be voluntary for them to sign.

As a sweetener, the commission is suggesting that member states signing up to the contracts will have financial help under "strict conditions" to make the reforms. But it remains unclear where this money would come from.

EU leaders are to discuss these ideas in detail at their June summit.

But the legislative proposals, when they come, are bound to once more raise questions about how to balance democratic concerns with the need to ensure economic harmony in the eurozone.

So far, EU policy makers have struggled to find a way to compensate for national lawmakers having much less say over domestic budgets.

This issue is set to become much more acute when national taxation and labor policies — key and emotive policy areas — become the business of other member states and Brussels.

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