by Stefan Steinberg and Barry Grey

In a revealing admission concerning the relationship between capitalist governments and international financial interests, the Financial Times on Tuesday wrote of “Europe’s dirty secret.”

The newspaper editorialized against the plan of the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund to loan Ireland tens of billions of euros in order to guarantee in full the investments of international bankers and bondholders in the country’s failing banking system.

by Mike Whitney

Ireland could be the next Lehman Brothers. That’s what has the markets worried. If Irish leaders refuse to accept a bailout from the EU’s new European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), then bondholders will be forced to take haircuts on their investments which will leave banks in Germany and France short of capital. Bonds yields will rise sharply slowing activity in the credit markets. An Irish default will trigger hundreds of billions of dollars in credit default swaps (CDS), which will push weaker counterparties into bankruptcy and domino through the financial system. Contagion will spread to Portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy widening bond yields and forcing governments to increase their borrowing at the ECB. Business activity will sputter, unemployment will rise, and growth will shrink. It will be a second financial meltdown.

by Paul Craig Roberts

For more than a decade, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has been sounding the alarm about the neoconservative power grab that is destroying everything in its path, ensuring that there will soon be no justice, no civil liberties, no accountability — no Constitution. In early March 2008, Roberts wrote that regardless of the outcome of future elections, the power the Republicans accumulated in the executive branch, making it for all practical purposes a dictatorship, will remain. That warning is even more critical today and is presented below.

It is the ECB that should be printing money not the US Fed…

by Ambrose Evant-Pritchard

It is the European Central Bank that should be printing money on a mass scale to purchase government debt, not the US Federal Reserve.

It was a grave error for Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to invoke the spectre of sovereign defaults and bondholder ‘haircuts’ at this delicate juncture.

Unless the ECB takes fast and dramatic action, it risks destroying the currency it is paid to manage, and allowing a political catastrophe to unfold in Europe.

by Paul Craig Roberts

Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).

The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American media used the occasion of her release to get on Burma’s case for the absence of the rule of law. I’m all for the brave lady, but if truth be known, “freedom and democracy” America needs her far worse than does Burma.

by Luke Hiken and Marti Hiken

How do we deal with the demise of the two-party electoral system in the U.S.? With U.S./corporate wars occurring throughout the world, deficit and defense spending, a faltering economic system, increasing environmental catastrophes, and the shipping of jobs overseas, the task seems monumental. But, it isn’t. Changes can come. Changes will come. The question is: How do we take advantage of the changes taking place and how do we influence them for the good of all the people?

First, what are we facing?

by Mike Whitney

There was a bank run in Ireland on Wednesday. LCH Clearnet, a London based clearinghouse, surprised the markets by announcing it would increase margin requirements on Irish debt by 15 percent. That’s all it took to send investors fleeing for the exits.

Yields on Irish bonds spiked sharply as banks tried to close positions or raise the capital needed to meet the new requirements. The Irish 10-year bond soared to 8.9 percent by day’s end, more than 6 percentage points higher than “risk free” German sovereign debt. The ECB will have to intervene. Ireland is on its way to default. This is what a 21st century bank run looks like. Terms suddenly change in the repo market, where banks get their funding, and the whole system begins to teeter.

Murdering US citizens is a “political question” not subject to judicial review…
by Paul Craig Roberts

The United States Department of Justice (sic) routinely charges and convicts innocents with bogus and concocted crimes that are not even on the statutes book. The distinguished defense attorney and civil libertarian, Harvey A. Silverglate, published a book last year, “Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” which conclusively proves that today in “freedom and democracy” America we have punishment without crime.

by Jonathan Cook

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is in the United States this week, but few observers expect an immediate or significant breakthrough in the stalled peace talks with the Palestinian leadership.

In public, Mr Netanyahu maintains he is committed to the pledge he made last year, shortly after he formed his right-wing government, to work towards the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state.

But so far he has proved either unwilling or unable to renew even a partial freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank — a key condition set by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, for reviving the negotiations.

by Victor Yenikeev

-[M]any military and political experts in Russia come to the conclusion that by building such a system the United States seeks to offset the missile potential of Russia by deploying missile defense bases along the entire length of the Russian territory. Washington is aiming for a global missile defense shield, elements of which are already being built in the Far East, in the Indian Ocean and in the northern seas.

Turkey’s decision to allow the United States and NATO to deploy elements of the European missile defense system on its territory has triggered a negative response across the region and in the rest of the world.