25/7/13

[identity profile] liveco.livejournal.com
I was just reading now on LA times (McManus: Europe's continental drift), and a phrase really captured my attention; The author, while describing how bad the situation is in Europe (especially the southern countries) goes as far as saying:

"Southern Europe is experiencing its worst drop in living standards since World War II"

To anyone who has been following the economy news for the last 5 years, this wouldn't come as a surprise, yet, as curious as i am always, I read further and then did my own research about the countries in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. I checked three indicator, GDP growth in year 2012, unemployment in the Eurozone Countries and Public Debt as a % of the GDP.

GDP Growth in year 2012
Greece: -6.4%
Spain: -1.4%
Italy: -2.4 %
Portugal: -3.2 %

Unemployment Percentage in march 2013
Greece: 27%
Spain: 27.1%
Italy: 12.6%
Portugal: 17.7%

Public Debt as a % of the GDP
Greece: 161%
Spain: 85.3%
Italy: 126%
Portugal: 120%

The numbers say it all, the economies of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal are shrinking, the unemployment is very high (numbers reach 50% in youth unemployment alone) and the public debt is high especially in Greece.

The crisis is turning into a humanitarian issue especially in Greece and Spain; it is becoming more difficult to make a living and maintain even the basics of survival.

Is there a way out of this economic crisis?
[identity profile] ddstory.livejournal.com
When a couple of weeks ago it transpired that the US were regularly tapping billions of phone calls, emails and text messages overseas, including in countries that were supposed to be American allies, the European media exploded with tons of angry articles. There were protests on the streets, calling for an end of this practice. In stark contrast though, German chancellor Merkel preferred to remain as silent as a stump on the question, and for a long time she remained so.

But here she is, during her traditional summer TV interview, Frau Angela opened up on the subject for the first time. She unambiguously urged the US to "respect the German laws in all the actions of their secret services on German territory". Mrs Chancellor used words of unprecedented sharpness in her address to Washington, reminding America that the two countries were partners in a shared defense alliance, and they should be able to rely upon each other.

But her call for the secret services to respect the laws of other countries rings rather false these days, because by now everyone must have learned that the very job description of a spy dictates that they should be covertly breaking the laws of the countries they are spying on. Including the German spies.

Read more )
[identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/tea-party-tennessee-textbooks-slavery_n_1224157.html

It's predictable that the Freedom Party, purely about balancing the budget and promoting freedom decides that the best way to promote freedom is to rehabilitate the parasitical idle, effete, rapist evil institution of slavery. There is no possible means for this to be acceptable in modern society. There is no sunny side to an institution soaked in bloodshed, which had no concept whatsoever of consent. There is no possible means to rehabilitate an institution that treated human beings from cradle to grave as not human beings, but the legal and moral equivalent of VCRs. And there is no reason in any variant of Heaven or Hell for Southern white people to romanticize and whitewash the institution that broke the South, that ruined it, that kept it a miserable dirt-poor wretched hive of racist bitter clingers who nostalgized a catastrophic lost war. Slavery retarded the South's growth, it ensured that Southern whites *accepted* that the most fundamental building bloc of society is that some humans are not human, and to treat them with whips that make their back a sinister artistic pattern on top of that.

There is no reason whatsoever in 2013 for this to be acceptable. The only thing that it proves is that the conservatarian definition of 'liberty' in the United States, at least, has plenty of room to approve of slavery, and racially based slavery at that. Even in the 2010s, 150 years after that institution drowned in the blood it called up to preserve itself.

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