Out of his self-locked closet at last, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is showing genuine signs of really wanting to tell it like it is. In a Le Monde article yesterday, no punches were pulled….as this extract shows:

‘The lack of agreement so far is not due to an alleged inexorable, intransigent and incomprehensible attitude from Greece but rather the persistence of certain institutional actors in continuing to submit absurd proposals showing no awareness of the recent democratic choice of the Greek people….this suggests a complete abolition of democracy in Europe. It means ultimately the authority to create a technocratic monster, leading to a Europe totally alien to its founding values….For those countries that refuse to bow to the new power the solution is simple: Harsh punishment. Mandatory austerity, even more restrictions on the movement of capital, disciplinary sanctions, fines, and even parallel currency. A new European power will be built at the expense of member States, and the first victim is to be Greece. If, however, anyone imagines that this decision concerns only Greece, they’re making a massive error. I would suggest such people reread Hemingway’s masterpiece: “For whom the bell tolls”’.

https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/coming-economic-crisis-western-consumers-give-vote-of-no-confidence-eastern-manufacturers-give-evidence-of-lower-exports-russian-rouble-shows-resilience-greek-leader-offers-strong-resistance/

We have just had a truth and reconcilation with native people, day, here in Canada. 4000 children were lost through abuse including murder and sodomy. This is a government enquiry.
It is on the record.

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=truth%20and%20reconciliation%20commission

http://usawatchdog.com/monetary-heroin-will-crash-the-dollar-peter-schiff/

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2012/08/27/going-for-gold

he forgets that even Keynes – who was an opponent of the gold standard – did not actually blame the gold standard for the Great Depression, but rather he blamed the exchange rate the government has set on gold. Sometimes I have the impression that no one has red Keynes for the last few decades and all that is discussed is some sort of straw man version of Keynes – just look at how Paul Krugman and Steve Keen have opposite views and they both declare themselves as Keynesians…

“Post WW2 the gold standard had been reset in 1944 at Bretton Woods and the gold price was set at $35 US.” – no, if my memory serves me correctly, the $35 price for gold has been set not at Bretton Woods, but 11 years earlier by President Roosevelt when he confiscated people’s savings. He bought gold from poor souls for $20.67 and then he said: boohoo, now gold is worth €35, thank you most kindly.

So when people talk about Roosevelt’s highways and employment programs and debt forgiveness they forget that this was partly financed by confiscating savings and partly by avoiding bankruptcy due to WWII
As you probably know, Germany could attack Poland ONLY BECAUSE

1. the Soviets cooperated with them – here I disagree with RT crosstalk and Max Keiser propaganda when they say that Russia is defending herself from NATO expansion because they have bad experience from WWII – but the WWII could start ONLY because Russia helped to build the German army and attacked Poland and

2. Roosevelt did not pass to Poland the information about the Ribbentrop-Molotov secret annex so Hitler assumed Poland knew about it when he was declaring war.

As to fractional reserve, I would need a separate entry to clarify my stance on it, so I’ll drop it for the moment.

As to gold, I wonder what you think about debasing it. Historically, it was not as much important whether you had fiat money or gold but rather who controlled the currency. For example, the Roman Empire had gold and silver but it had collapsed because of the “fiatization” of gold (a term I have just made up ;-).

Of course, you can always check whether gold coins are 999 gold or, say, 10% gold. But so what? – who controls currency also controls police and legal tenders – and means of control are now like millions of times better than in the Roman Empire…

I am curious about your opinion on bitcoin. The more I think about the more I am inclined to suspect bitcoin is a Ponzi-scheme.

For example, Max Keiser says there will never be more than 21m of bitcoins. So how come it can become a reserve currency???!!!!
Furthermore, Mr. Keiser said on Alex Jones show that he is a bitcoin millionaire. So that means he has at least 1m out of those 21m coins. Asked whether he invented bitcoin, Max denied and named someone who invented it whereupon Mr. Jones said about that name “but that’s you” and Keiser did not deny…

So the chances are that whoever bought bitcoin at the wrong time would be like those schmucks who invested in houses for €500,000 in Longford with no electricity or playgrounds times 50…

Once again, thanks for all your links you posting, but particularly documentaries – I am so tired of that PBS/BBC narrative where every crisis is attributed to a group of people and not the system.

Maybe you might be interested in reading a short article on the geopolitical situation in Poland with my comment below – it’s from 3 years ago, but nothing has changed except that there is now more debt and public spending (and even though the Polish Central Bank is forbidden to finance budget deficits, its governor had been asked to do it illegally by the minister in a phone conversation which had been leaked to media, probably by Russian secret service).

http://www.economist.com/node/18620924

http://www.economist.com/node/18620924/comments#comments

Spivey is not a credible source, to put it mildly. As I said earlier, even Essex has its village idiots. I wouldn’t say it to his face. Have you seen those tattoos? How on earth can you take him seriously?

Your linked article only really tells us that a large number of allegations have been made about sexual abusers and these have been indulged by credible police, politicians and media. This is what happens in witch hunts. Apparently 1,400 men are under suspicion. It does not mention other genders (Facebook apparently recognizes 58 varieties so far discovered) perhaps because these are by definition beyond suspicion. This is all in the wake of Jimmy Savile’s death and it is clear that the excitement has not died down and is not likely to for a long time. In the circumstances I would be very cautious indeed about these claims. Liars and fantasists are commonplace. I know several people where half of what they say is untrue. The difficulty is you don’t know which half (and they are often not sure themselves).

Once again, you need named witnesses to step forward and stand over their claims. It will turn out in the Westminster case that nobody saw anything after all, because there wasn’t anything to see. Of course, the irresponsible fools and liars who begin these rumours will retreat into the shadows and forget about it, until a new one comes along.

The article warns about the dangers of abuse on the internet. I don’t doubt it. I resisted going online at home until January last year.

My main point was about organized paedophile rings at the Highest Level, protected by the Establishment, and involving Powerful People (not to forget the obligatory Senior Police Officers). This is fantasy and rhetoric (they feed off each other) and it is both dangerous and very stupid indeed.

This interests me because it is an obvious injustice in itself and also because it throws light on our intellectual failings. This is largely why we are in the predicament we find ourselves in.

Finally, as regards the police, note that North Wales Police were behind the Bryn Estyn case (see the late Richard Webster’s website) and the more recent Chad Evans case. Look at Evans’s own site – it is a real eye-opener. Having been convicted of rape in very strange circumstances, Evans was prevented from resuming work as a professional footballer because of petitions and pressure from the on-line lynch mob. (He can’t play abroad as that would break his parole conditions – you really couldn’t make it up.) But that’s fine because he is a footballer.

As a clear example of police stupidity, incompetence and sheer populist gormlessness this one is still hard to beat (Plebgate):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCS-e00Rmnw

http://kingworldnews.com/current-system-is-doomed-as-mainstream-media-distracts-public-and-the-war-in-gold-silver-rages/

Setting the exchange rate is simply a form of price fixing or currency control. It never works as the market place sets the value. Such value is often at odds with the the fixed rate and so distortions occur.

Post WW2 the gold standard had been reset in 1944 at Bretton Woods and the gold price was set at $35 US. No other coutry set the price of gold but they set their currncy to the US dollar thereby indirectly using the remnat of the gold standard. This allowed the US to print huge amounts of dollars based upon the 20,000 tons of gold allegedly held by the US. The rest of the world bought US dollars to use in international trade.

As the US spent more than it earned every year the other countries accumulated a US dollar suplus in trade. They used these dollars to redeem the gold at the $35 US an ounce. The US stash og gold depleted to 8200 tonnes where it sits today if one believes the officials.

This would not have happened if the price of gold had not been fixed. The currencies of all countries were inflated because of the increase in the amount of US dollars (as the US funded its deficit and ever growing debt). This in simple terms devalued all currencies against the valus of all goods and commodities. Gold at $35 US became radically cheap and totally undervalued.

At that point Nixon said no more and refused to redeem any more gold in exchange for US dollars.

Gold was now (1971) totally demonetised , officially, and the printing of paper currencies now had and still has no limit. Hence QE to infinity and the destruction of all major currencies.

The setting of the price of gold was still practiced but in the face of the open market pressures. As the central bankers destoy the valus of currencies (as visualised by inflation and the increasing costs of living) it becomes imperative that this be disguised as much as possible.

Two ways this is done. Firstly by lieing about the statistics. This is done by constant adjustments to the cost of living metrics and elinination of other items from the core inflation calculations. This includeds the cost of food and energy.

The second way is to manipulate the price of gold downward as dispite all efforts gold is still money. Central bankers know this and so paper promises to buy and sell gold are issued that exceed the actual amount of physical bullion availavle by factors of 2, 5 10 or 20 times. Thus the COMEX now is a fraud of paper derivitives wher huge volumes of “paper gold” are sold in fractions of minutes to drive the price down.

The law of diminishing effects means that greater and greater amounts of paper gold are required to keep the price down. This is a daily happening and the volatility is beginning to show. The real value of gold will and is showing itself.

The destruction of the currencies will be seem in the resetting of the real value of the worlds real money.
China, Russia and other nations prepare for this. Eurpean nationa are taking steps to repatriate their gold holdings.

There is no requirement to have a price set, but the value of gold should be allowed to operate in a free market and reflect its true value. Gold is the measure for all other currencies and not the other way around.

The day that gold is allowed to perform its true function as a store of value and a medium of exchange will be the day that the economy of the world will healed and returned to a properly functional market place.

Until this occurs we will continue to be subjected to machinations and manipulations of the market that will be for the benefit of the elites or so called 1%

It is past time that honesty be returned to the market place and the communities by the closing of the central banking fiat currencies and and replacing with the use of the honest money based on gold.

This is a huge undertaking as it requires a release from the general corrution of thought and reason of people in their acceptance of the current monetary system as normal.

Our economists and educators must lead the way and advocate for a just and moral system to replace the current lies and deceit.

I’ll come back to the question of DNA (considering that all of it goes through PRISM anyway I think the safest strategy is to be on the square with our views :-) but first I would like to clarify something: I am aware that the lion’s share of the latest Polish political infighting would not be interesting for the readers of this blog (or even me), so what I am trying to do is to offer some political insights only if I think that changes on the Polish political stage may be relevant to the Irish political landscape (indirectly, via changes in the balance of power in Europe). And to be honest, privately I am of a rather high opinion of Indo, relatively speaking (sometimes they are the only Irish paper where there is any ideological debate going on: in other Irish papers everything has already been decided).

However, I think that one of the articles published in the Indo on Mr. Andrzej Duda in which they quoted Mr. Michnik saying that the result of the election “could pose a threat to democracy” and it would swaddle the country “in all prejudices and obsessions” was so unprofessional from a journalistic point of view and so irresponsible in terms of international relations that I thought I had to do something about it, so I sent the copy to a friend of mine from college who was involved in Mr. Duda’s campaign in Krakow for their office to have a closer look at it (since Mr. Michnik seem to have been actually talking to an English paper and Indo copied it, this is where the matter will probably end – even though Poland and Ireland are two countries with probably the most strict defamation laws in Europe: an opinion shared by the Chief of Justice Susan Denham in private conversation during the conference on freedom of information I attended last year – I notified her in details about Mr. Michnik’s attempts to stifle political debate in Poland using defamation laws and asked her if there is anything she could do to liberalise that area of law in Ireland).

Actually I forgot to mention in my previous comment to your article on DoneDeal that Mr. Duda’s campaign was a good example of how the internet replaces traditional trading: in this case the information trading as Duda’s support was underestimated by 12pc because the current government did not account for the fact that it is no longer sufficient to monopolise TV stations if the young voters in Poland take all their information from the internet and in the internet you can call the bluff of all propaganda (an even bigger winner of this new way of information trading was not Duda, but a punk-rock star Mr. Pawel Kukiz who received over 20pc support without even have a political party: Mr. Kukiz’s program is a mixture of trade unionism, nationalism and Mr. Nigel Farage’s free-market views – if that makes sense – it does not to me :-).

All in all the conclusion from my insights is that if I am reading the Polish politics correctly Poland will change her government in October from a pro-German into anti-German, which would play into UKiP’s hands which are now Mr. Cameron’s hands too (it’s also in keeping with your articles on the rise of the English nationalism – I expect the future Law and Justice and Kukiz coalition to facilitate that rise for they will support Mr. Cameron is his anti-Brussels rhetoric – Mr. Kaczynski’s strategy was always to play the role of the US Trojan Horse in the EU – plans while at the same time being more tough on him in other issues, such as Poland contributing to the British rebate which may piss off Mr. Cameron’s electorate); as a matter of fact, the most pro-German TV station in Poland has just changed the ownership from German to a pro-Republican American owner and immediately they had to restrain their attacks on Mr. Duda: if there is one mistake that Ireland should learn from Poland is not to let 90pc of country’s newspapers to be bought by German capital (in Poland it is a German capital; the rest is the US capital and only two weekly magazines in Poland – and no daily newspapers – are Polish owned): keep most of the Irish press in the Irish hands (and force politicians to grant the Irish abroad the rights to vote – David, you talk so much about the outsiders, you should start obtaining signatures for that project and demand from politicians to declare themselves where they stand on that issue; it’s simple – only 1 out of 10 Poles in Ireland voted for the current Polish President because they had to leave because of the likes him: he signed 13 bills raising 21 taxes and he deepened the divisions between the outsiders and insiders like never before (public sector salary in Poland is now 3 times the salary in retail and you can only get a job in public sector in Poland if you are related to a politician); so likewise, the Irish citizens abroad would not vote for the current or FF government)!

I think that you did right when you did not go along the Democracy Now project: I think that it’s too early for the pro-free market movement in Ireland which could play any significant role: all the anti-system opposition is even more left than the government. In my opinion Ireland has to go through a stage of Sinn Féin and the socialists (where do all those outside-the-Dáil lefties get money from? Is it still Russia, like in the past?) getting to power first – only when they start screwing up the economy the pendulum will swing right because people will wake up and see that nationalisation, benchmarking and trade unionism cannot grow this country out of debt and they will be more inclined to vote for politicians who promise structural reforms, free-market competition and re-shaking of the crony capitalism: this will be the time for people like you or me to enter the Irish politics. But we need to start from the campaign to grant the Irish citizens living abroad the right to vote (and I do not take the argument I often come across from the Irish (sic erat scriptum!) that the Irish abroad do not pay taxes so they should not vote: this principle may be actually quite sound, but what about the TD’s or union bosses who live entirely from your taxes? – why should they be entitled to vote? In pre-WWII Poland, before it degenerated into the sorry state that it is now, local councillors had to do their job for free for the same reason we do not have prenuptial agreements in the Irish Family – and they still do it on a voluntary basis in some towns in the US).

Our campaign might be successful if we make sure that every TD who refuses to sign for such proposal will be stigmatised in social media, on street posters and during political debates. The success of such campaign may make you a very popular person, David, as you may target both the socialist, liberal and conservative electorate.

Coming back to an article in Indo:

http://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-independent/20150526/282089160365158/TextView

People say that Fox, CNN or Sky News are biased – well they are, but even in Sky you usually have a split screen with a “yes” and “nay” advocates. At the end of the day it is the Irish reader who loses the most from such uncritical journalism when all they would know about the future Polish President (who oversees foreign policy and can veto any new legislation, so he is an important figure) comes from two people – one (Mr. Michnik) who, after his laudable role in “Solidarnosc” (Michnik’s record in the 80s, unlike the legendary Lech Walesa’s record, was impeccable), did everything he could to prevent sending to jail in the 90s a man who was responsible for murdering 100 people including 13 miners who went on strike and had been shot (gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, whom Mr. Michnik famously called “The Man of Honour” and who actually let Stasi operate in Poland, which is completely bizarre to most historians: now BND has files on all Polish politicians and used it once to blackmail one of them), and the former communist minister Mr. Cimoszewicz, involved in insider trading as their second source (both are good examples of what too much money can do to your head).

My motivation of loading the readers with so many details on Mr. Michnik was not the fact that the topic of the article was Poland (I would be the first person to reveal what’s wrong with Polish politics, but only when it is verifiable) – I was equally outraged during the Irish presidential campaign when I run through voting records of all Irish candidates and found out that one of them had voted as an MEP to make his expenses secret and the second runs a dodgy lobbying company in the EU parliament which does nothing good for Ireland, I can assure you of that – I said back then I would go public with it and I did: the whole country could see me outlining the details during one of the presidential debates and I still have the recording (the candidates withdrew shortly after).

Now, as to DNA… First of all, without assuming anything, I would like to state that my sarcasm at “Gazeta Wyborcza” comment “Jerusalem is ours” has nothing to do with the Jewish question. Mr. Michnik does not represent the Jewish or (narrowing it down) even the Israeli voice in Poland – what he represents is rather that kind of political approach which is blindly pro-EU, pro-Israeli left, pro-social experiments such as euthanasia, pro-German and French, anti-UK (btw, Law and Justice would be much more pro-Ireland than Civic Platform as they see themselves in the UK/US/Ireland bloc against the Germans, although in 2005 their former Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised the Poles “the second Ireland” which after the Anglo-Irish scandal became a butt of a joke in Poland: “Tusk said we would be a second Ireland and we are”) – even though Michnik’s friend is in charge of the Leeds University, that’s how influential he is! – and at some stage also pro-Putin: his paper defended a contract with Gazprom as a result of which Poland pays the highest gas price in Europe (now he is anti-Putin).

What I find dangerous for setting the standards of how politics should be run not only in Poland, but also in the EU (Mr. Michnik is influential also in the EU, particularly in France and Germany) is his leniency towards corruption and repeated demands to acquit murderers of 100 victims of the Martial Law in Poland: in the 90s his newspaper would launch vicious attacks on anyone who said that people with blood on their hands should not be active in Polish politics and the same paper would only investigate corruption cases of his political opponents, such as Law and Justice (there had been a few, but not even near as many and serious as in the ruling Civic Platform – the most recent one was a deal with the governor of the Polish Central banks that was meant to influence the last regional election, which perhaps does not sound very serious except that VAT on children’s clothing and books had to be raised from 7pc tp 23pc to finance it; in fact Kaczynski brothers had arguably the best record on corruption from all Polish governments: it is their naïve obsequiousness to the US that I would rather hold against them, for which Poland got nothing except for dead soldiers in Iraq, where Poland had its occupation zone between the US and the UK occupation zones – I mean Jasus, had Poland done it for oil it would have been a crime but it would still be better than doing it only because we like the Americans and Kaczynski likes them even more because he thinks they can stop Merkel from germanising Europe).

As a matter of fact, one can say that both Mr. Michnik and his opponent Mr. Kaczynski have a very good press in Israel (the late President Lech Kaczynski had even introduced the Jewish Hanukah celebrations to his Presidential Palace) – but Mr. Michnik on the Israeli left and President Lech Kaczynski on the Israeli right – all of that is easy to verify). This is in keeping with the fact that until the 60s the three factions in Knesset would debate respectively: the Right in Hebrew, the Liberals in Polish and the Left in Russian. What’s more, few would know that one can say that Poland has – I know this sounds a bit megalomaniac, but wait till I tell you – to an extent created the state Israel as before WWII the Polish authorities trained underground cells that participated in organizing migration to Palestine (I guess this statement will make me many enemies as in Poland you could not publish anything anti-Israeli and here you cannot published anything pro-Israeli without being ostracised – Ireland has the most anti-Israeli President in Europe – but I am neither pro nor anti-Israeli: I criticise Israel if I think I should (apartheid and their annoying lobby in the US) and I praise it when I think I should (6pc of GDP spending on the army – this ensured the transfer of the latest technologies which gave rise to modern economy in Israel and helped to alleviate the problem of unemployment: someone would say Ireland cannot afford 6pc of GDP on the army, but hang on: how much do we spend on public servants and banksters?): the Polish authorities brought about courses in which Irgun officers were trained in advanced military issues and as pilots; all of them officers spoke Polish (further details in: “Marriage of convenience, New Zionist Organization and Polish Government 1936-1939” by Dr. Laurence Weinbaum).

I was going to touch on Michnik’s economic illiteracy and how this brought about Poland being done by the likes of Soros and the IMF (100bn dollars had been transferred out of Poland and found its way to the pockets of international gamblers – and the likes of Michnik helped to broker this “deal”; in fact Mr. J. Sachs from the IMF said in an interview that the deal was done in Mr Michnik’s Trotskyite friend Mr. Jacek Kuron, with Mr. Michnik present), but as a matter of fact I was so relieved that I did not have to hear any more about him (until that article in the Irish Independent)…
By the way, I think David that in your excellent “Going For Gold” article when you discuss gold and the Great Depression you forget that even Keynes – not the first name that comes to our minds when we think of gold standard advocates – thought that gold standard did not work in the UK because the government set the exchange rate wrong after WWI (so back to Hayek’s idea of free banking maybe?); the second thing I would like to point out is that although I am vehemently anti-Keyenesian when it comes to money printing, I am of the opinion that Keynes was right on two things and two things only: animal spirits and exports.

Germany is a good example that it is better to have an export surplus imbalance than import, provided you CARVE OUT A MARKET FOR YOUR MANUFACTURING BASE using a network of currencies, political unions and sometimes military force.

Whether such market is sustainable in the long-term is another cup of tea:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/02/real-problem-with-giips-current-account.html#more-1015

Sometimes, when you are not satisfied with food production limits and CO2 emissions restrictions imposed on weaker countries in order to eradicate your competition you can resort to direct bribing, as in case of Polish politicians (one of pro-German Civic Platform Polish Foreign Ministers, the late Mr. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, was so used to receiving money from Germany every 3 months that when he became a minister and did not get a German award, he complained about it in an interview: soon the German city of Karlsruhe awarded him money :-) :-) :-) which they enigmatically and perhaps sarcastically named “Spark in the Reason” award: I think this is a more breathtaking audacity from a politician than even Teflon Bertie’s horse on which he had won his money or SF cries to hold our TD’s to account when they still did not account for Maira Cahill or petty thefts like the ink money:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/not-an-inkling-26827992.html

).

And on that bombshell…

I will await to see if the gold is actually in NY and how long it takes for Texas to get delivery. They should have a word with the Germans on how to expedite matters.

The chickens are coming home to roost in their droves!