In Memory of Andrew Bestor, may he rest in peace. His death is still unclear, how he was shot in the head at a shooting range and what complex and shadowy events led up to his demise, in suburban DC, the town he loved so much where he was a legendary and well known and well loved activist for world peace and justice. Yet there is no trace still today of his urn containing his ashes, nor of his signature straw hat he always wore [as far as his friends and/or family were aware of just a few months ago – he was very quickly cremated just after his death by the authorities] nor is there any public record or local news story of his death online or in public records that can be found in the Library of Congress, where he loved to do his research. It is like he simply disappeared!
One of Andy's closest childhood friends wrote, after her exhaustive research into this matter: "There is no grave, there is no claimed body, no police report, no coroner's report." She dug and dug and dug and came up with an empty shovel.Andy Bestor walked as best he could in the
footsteps of William Engdahl and Paul Craig Roberts,
yet to his own beat. He would have LOVED
Engdahl's
latest story in NEO on "the Whole
Greek Mess"!
Something stinks very bad about Greek Finance
Minister Yanis Varoufakis
and the entire Greek mess that has been playing out since the election victory
of the nominally pro-Greek Syriza Party in January. I
am coming to the reluctant conclusion that far from being the champion of the
hapless Greek people, Varoufakis is part of a far
larger and very dirty game.
The
brilliant psychologist Eric Berne, author of the seminal book Games People
Play, would likely call the game of Varoufakis and
the Troika, “Rapo,” as in the rape of the Greek
people and, ultimately of all the EU,
When
the left-right coalition was elected by a Greek population desperate for change
from the several years of austerity, pension cuts, health and education cuts
demanded by the IMF in order to insure that Greek creditors be repaid their
pound of flesh in terms of state debt, I was among many who held out hope that
finally a government that stood for the interests of her people was in office
in Athens.
What
we have witnessed since is what can only be called a clown show, one in which
the laugh is on the Greek people and EU citizens as a whole. The ones laughing,
as often is so, are the mega banks and Troika–ECB, IMF and EU. Behind the
Troika, almost invisible, are the Greek oligarchs who have robbed the state
coffers of hundreds of billions over the years, tucking it away in numbered
Swiss and Lichtenstein secret bank accounts, avoiding paying a single penny tax
to support their nation. And it is looking more and more as though the
“leftist” economist, Varoufakis’s role is that of a
Trojan Horse for the destruction of the entire Eurozone by the bankers and those Greek oligarchs. Next after Greece Italy looks poised to become victim, and that
will put the entire Euro in a crisis that is today unimaginable.
Suspicious friends
A
man is known by the company he keeps, so goes the adage. By this measure Yanis Varoufakis keeps very bad
company for a finance minister who claims to be defending the living standards
of his people. Before becoming Greek Finance Minister in the January coalition
government of Alexis Tsipras, Varoufakis
spent time in the
As
an Australian citizen Varoufakis returned in 2000 to
teach at the
That
of course per se does not disqualify him at all from being an honest and
effective finance minister of his native
He
pretends to be against austerity but his record shows the opposite. Varoufakis was the adviser to Prime Minister George
Papandreou and PASOK when Papandreou made the disastrous draconian austerity
deal with the EU on behalf of
In
Varoufakis’ book on the EU financial crisis titled “A
Modest Proposal,” he invited former French Prime Minister Michael Rocard to write the forward. Rocard
has called for the EU to appoint a European “strongman”–read dictator–and Rocard’s choice is European Parliament president Martin
Schulz, the very same man who warned the new SYRIZA government to abide by the
austerity agreements concluded by the past PASOK and conservative governments. Varoufakis has repeatedly argued that
With
official Greek unemployment over 30% of the workforce and economic losses because
of Troika-imposed budget austerity the government’s tax-revenue shortfall in
January alone was 23% below its €4.5bn target for the month. The government in
Strange acts
Were
Varoufakis the man he pretends to be before his Greek
countrymen, he would have set forth a strategy of Greek exit from the Euro and
a strategy akin to that of
Indeed,
when Greek Prime Minister Tsipras was in
That
would have given
At
this point it indeed looks as if Varoufakis’ role has
been to act as the Western bankers’ Trojan Horse
inside the Greek government, to prepare
As
the former US Assistant Treasury and critic of the US foreign economic policies
of recent years, Paul Craig Roberts recently described
it, “Greece’s creditors, the EU and the European Central Bank…are determined to
establish the principle that they can over-lend to a country and force the
country to pay by selling public assets and cutting pensions and social
services of citizens. The creditor banks then profit by financing the
privatization of public assets to favored customers.The
agenda of the EU and the central bank is to terminate the fiscal independence
of EU member states by turning tax and budget policy over to the EU itself.”
Roberts goes on to state that the Greek “sovereign
debt crisis” is being used to create a precedent that will apply to every EU
member government. The member states will cease to exist as sovereign states.
Sovereignty will rest in the EU. The measures that
How
did
Above
all, there is hate towards the Greek people from their own Greek oligarchs. The
Greek oligarchy—shipping magnates, oil refinery owners, telecoms owners, media
magnates, billionaires many times over—since the early 1990s, has dominated
Greek politics. Greeks call them “diaplekomenoi”–the entangled ones. These elites have
preserved their positions through control of the media and through
old-fashioned favoritism, buying politicians like Yanis
Varoufakis.
The
Greek oligarchs, with their untaxed billions hidden in foreign bank accounts,
are willing to see their own nation destroyed to hold on to their billions.
That’s real hate. Those oligarchs are deeply ashamed of being Greek. That shame
likely goes way way back, perhaps some 700 years, to
the defeat and subjugation of
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk
consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from
###
THE PAINFUL
IRONY OF THE CREATION OF THE EURO!
ROBERT MUNDELL-- The Anglo Fuehrer of the EURO's creation,
was in the 1970s, a chief Reaganomics adviser of the U.S. "supply
side" theory; likewise, he laid the groundwork for the introduction of the
EURO through his pioneering work in USA and Canada monetary dynamics for which
he won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics. During this time he served as a high
paid economic consultant to the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the EC,
the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. Dept. of Treasury, and the government of
His predictions have proved HIGHLY INACCURATE.
Since
the 2008 Global Economic Crash --due to toxic financial derivatives, corrupted
hedge and poison pill funds, and risk insurance on credit default swaps,
distrust has spread throughout the western banking system, immersing Europe in
the cesspool of a sovereign-debt crisis which has led to the creation of the
European Financial Stability Facility, as well as other uncertain efforts aimed
unsuccessfully at stabilizing the EURO. In July 2012, the euro fell below
US$1.21 for the first time in two years, following concerns raised over Greek
debt and