Did somebody mention so-called "CT"? Like this you mean?

Disturbingly in this context,

Center-left Bavarian newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"This drastic infringement of property rights was possible due to the unique constellation in Cyprus: Cyprus is the third-smallest country of the European Union, so its political weight isn't very relevant. Cyprus set up a dubious business model that attracted dubious people; they're now being punished, so the burden isn't necessarily hitting the wrong people. The expropriation satisfied the sense of justice of most Germans, and not just them."

"Thirdly, a remarkably poor set of Cypriot politicians refused to see reason for much too long, and in the last week displayed an unpleasant gambling mentality. Anyone who manages in just four days to alienate the entire euro zone, discredit the Euro Group chief, tries to involve Russia in a circumventing maneuver and welds together the German government and opposition in an election year has failed to understand a few basic rules on transparency and policymaking in Europe."

"In this unique combination, Cyprus will remain a unique case. But Europe has changed a lot as a result of this rescue drama. The readiness to show solidarity is eroding by the minute. The euro zone has long since stopped being a brotherhood for increasing prosperity and mutual stability. It has transformed itself into a school of gladiators in which everyone fights for his own advantage and his survival."

/... http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/opinion-german-euro-leadership-stubborn-and-egotistical-a-890848.html

Hmm. Let's see.

The first paragraph says that the drastic infringement of property rights in Cyprus was possible because Cyprus's political weight isn't very relevant. Isn't very relevant to whom? It is certainly of primary relevance to Cypriot voters. There is a very patrician attitude on display here. Then we are presented with a logical fallacy: Just because some (but possibly not all) dubious characters participating in Cyprus's dubious financial system (not to mention, heaven forbid, some other places' financial systems one could mention) are being "punished", it is not posssible to infer that the "burden" isn't necessarily hitting some perfectly legitimate, entirely transparent, non-dubious savers as well. The "expropriation", however, satisfied the sense of justice of most Germans, we are told. Uh huh. So what? The protagonists here are Cyprus and the European Union, are they not? Stated thus, we perceive German arrogance.

The second paragraph refers to a need to "understand a few basic rules on transparency and policymaking in Europe", without specifying them beyond a reference to "seeing reason" (see above). See ref. 1 below.

Finally, in the third paragraph, we are told that &quot Europe's) readiness to show solidarity is eroding by the minute." What is clear is that there is a lack of willingness amongst elites in Germany and those under their influence, fanned on by the anglo media, to respect principles of transparancy, democratic sovereignty and solidarity in the European Union where this is perceived to be detrimental to elite (sold to the 'marks' as 'national') interests.


Ref 1: Policy-Making and Diversity in Europe: Escape from Deadlock
By Adrienne Héritier, Adrienne Windhoff-Héritier
[center]




[/center]
/... http://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=13BYDd8v-DUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR6&dq=transparency+and+policymaking+in+Europe&ots=D_givVm_2o&sig=jiStEoahg5J85wy6zbrthKSDihs#v=onepage&q=transparency%20and%20policymaking%20in%20Europe&f=false

"infrastructure and sustainable development"

These are intelligent targets, or could be, if they'd only add the vital aim of also maximising what the social & policy scientists & technicians are calling "wellbeing" - see eg. http://www.bath.ac.uk/study/pg/programmes/msc-well-pub-pol-int-dev - and emphasise that "sustainable" really must mean sustainable in the context of an already seriously fucked-up natural environment now entering a chaotic transition phase.

(WSJ:) Bailout Strains European Ties

... Monday's agreement capped a 10-day psychological drama. Cyprus's president struck an initial deal that would have seen the country raise its share of the bailout funds by requiring all account-holders in Cypriot banks to pay a tax on their deposits, only to see the plan struck down by parliament. Cyprus went hat-in-hand to Moscow for help, to no avail. Cyprus also raised eyebrows in euro-zone central banks by allowing several hundred million euros to be wired out of the country in the past week, despite an official freeze on outflows on all but a few exempt categories, such as funds for humanitarian purposes.

On Thursday morning, the European Central Bank threatened to cut off liquidity to Cypriot banks—condemning them to instant bankruptcy—if no deal was reached by Monday... In the end, this deal ended up looking like a more severe version of an early proposal floated by Germany and the International Monetary Fund to close the country's two biggest banks—a plan that had been rejected by Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades 10 days earlier... On Friday morning, Ms. Merkel's patience was running out. She angrily briefed lawmakers from her ruling center-right coalition and told them Cyprus was trying to face Europe down, according to people present. Cypriot leaders haven't understood yet that their "business model" of outsize offshore banking has failed, she said. Europe had to stick to its principles, she added: Aid is only for countries that were prepared to reform, she said...

[center] [/center]
... Tensions were running high Sunday in Brussels as key officials—including IMF chief Christine Lagarde, ECB head Mario Draghi, EU President Herman Van Rompuy and other top EU officials—met Mr. Anastasiades over a lunch of lamb and baby potatoes. Mr. Anastasiades complained that his country was being treated more harshly than any of the euro zone's other bailout victims. He backtracked on an earlier agreement to wind down Cyprus Popular Bank. According to a senior Cypriot official, Mr. Anastasiades was appalled by the way he was spoken to at the lunch. The president threatened to resign. Mr. Dijsselbloem told him he didn't care about the president's political future, only the future of the euro zone, the senior official said...

[center] [/center]
... Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble grew particularly irascible, officials said. At one point, Ms. Lagarde went to calm him down. She also tried to raise spirits in Mr. Van Rompuy's fifth-floor suite, where top EU officials were meeting with Mr. Anastasiades. The IMF chief handed out M&Ms, as officials say she often does at late-night European negotiations... As the evening dragged on, Mr. Schäuble and French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici consulted their respective leaders by phone. Then they conveyed a Franco-German message to the Cypriot leader: Mr. Anastasiades should give up hope that a summit of euro-zone leaders would lead to an easier deal. Even if a summit were to be called, the deal facing Cyprus would be the same one as now.

Shortly before midnight, the Cypriot president came back with a new proposal, which officials said backtracked on the closure of Cyprus Popular. At that point, the EU leaders calmly told Mr. Anastasiades "to pack up and leave" if he wasn't ready to cooperate, one official present at the meeting said. The president signed off on the broad deal—one more costly than the one its parliamentarians rejected last week. "There is no doubt in the government that the first deal was far better," said a senior Cypriot official. "We bluffed and we lost. The whole thing was a fiasco."

[center] [/center]
/Source (text)... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323605404578382943506534114.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

/See also (images)... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9953844/Cyprus-bailout-live.html , http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/26/eurozone-crisis-cyprus-banks

Google Glass: Orwellian surveillance with fluffier branding

[center][/center]
... Imagine if Google or Facebook decided to install their own CCTV cameras everywhere, gathering data about our movements, recording our lives and joining up every camera in the land in one giant control room. It’s Orwellian surveillance with fluffier branding. And this isn’t just video surveillance – Glass uses audio recording too. For added impact, if you’re not content with Google analysing the data, the person can share it to social media as they see fit too.

Yet that is the reality of Google Glass. Everything you see, Google sees. You don’t own the data, you don’t control the data and you definitely don’t know what happens to the data. Put another way – what would you say if instead of it being Google Glass, it was Government Glass? A revolutionary way of improving public services, some may say. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think it’d have much success.

More importantly, who gave you permission to collect data on the person sitting opposite you on the Tube? How about collecting information on your children’s friends? There is a gaping hole in the middle of the Google Glass world and it is one where privacy is not only seen as an annoying restriction on Google’s profit, but as something that simply does not even come into the equation. Google has empowered you to ignore the privacy of other people. Bravo.

It’s already led to reactions in the US. ‘Stop the Cyborgs’ might sound like the rallying cry of the next Terminator film, but this is the start of a campaign to ensure places of work, cafes, bars and public spaces are no-go areas for Google Glass. They’ve already produced stickers to put up informing people that they should take off their Glass...

/... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9939933/Google-Glass-Orwellian-surveillance-with-fluffier-branding.html

Cyprus Promises Gas Bonds To Depositors

Cypriots who will have up to 9.9 percent of their bank accounts seized to pay for part of the cost of the country’s bailout from international lenders will get in return bonds from natural gas earnings off the island’s coast as collateral, newly-elected President Nicos Anastasiades promised in a televised address, trying to defuse growing anger ahead of a critical vote by the Parliament whether to back the scheme...

... “In recognition of its obligations, the state will offer to those who will keep their deposits in Cyprus bonds equal to half of their contribution now, linked to the future public revenues from natural gas,” he said, adding that all this is meant to relieve future generations from the consequences of this generation’s mistakes...

/... http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/03/17/cyprus-promises-gas-bonds-to-depositors/

NICOSIA, March 14 (Reuters) - Cyprus, urgently needing revenues from its newly found natural gas reserves, hopes to begin exports by 2018 and will target sales at fellow European Union members, its energy minister said.

George Lakkotrypis also said gas could be sold in advance or used to help the government, which is now negotiating a multibillion-dollar bailout, to issue new debt on international markets in future.

U.S. company Noble Energy and the Cypriot government announced in 2011 that they had discovered gas deposits of around 7-8 trillion cubic feet (200 billion cubic metres), 40 percent of the EU's annual demand.

Aphrodite, as the gas field is known, has more gas than Cyprus could use in over a century, so the government hopes to boost its revenues through exports to the European Union.

"It is important to us not just economically but also geostrategically," Lakkotrypis told Reuters in an interview, referring to potential exploration partners...

/... http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/cyprus-natgas-exports-idUKL6N0C6AG520130314

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) February 11, 2013 — A US firm has ceded 30 percent of its rights to a gas field off Cyprus’ south coast to Israel’s Delek and its subsidiary Avner Oil Exploration.

Cypriot Commerce Minister Neoklis Sylikiotis said Monday’s agreement came after the government approved it last week.

No sums were disclosed. The field holds an estimated 5-8 trillion cubic feet (140-230 billion cubic meters) of gas.

Noble and Delek together hold a majority stake in an Israeli offshore gas field that’s more than twice the size of the Cypriot one...

/... http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-firm-gains-rights-to-cypriot-gas-field/

[center]
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_15/03/2013_488163 [/center]

EU Opens Way for Easier Budgets After Austerity Backlash

European finance ministers opened the way for looser budget policies after a backlash against austerity thrust Italy into political limbo and shattered months of relative stability in European markets.

Italy’s deadlocked election, France’s refusal to make deeper budget cuts and protests against the shrinking of the welfare state across southern Europe escalated the rebellion against the German-led prescription for fighting the debt crisis.

Economic strains “may also justify in a certain number of cases reviewing deadlines for the correction of excessive deficits,” European Union Economic and Monetary Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters late yesterday after a meeting of euro- area finance ministers in Brussels...

... “The cure is not working, and there is no hope that it will -- that is, without being worse than the disease,” Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist, said in a posting on Project Syndicate (see below). “Germany has consistently rejected every policy that would provide a long- term solution. The Germans, it seems, will do everything except what is needed.” ...

/... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-04/eu-opens-way-for-easier-budgets-after-italian-austerity-backlash.html

Europe's protest parties on the march

The suddenness with which Grillo has emerged and taken one in four of Italian votes may have shocked the traditional governing elite across the EU, but it shows little sign of knowing how to respond or adjusting to the message being sent by voters who have sent incumbents tumbling one after the other from Greece to Finland over the past three years...

... The message to the Italians from the German government this week was "you may have kicked out our politicians, but you must not kick out their policies". That was echoed by the European commission in Brussels, while the German opposition social democrat leader, Peer Steinbrück, ventured to suggest that the Italians had voted for "clowns" .

On Thursday the outgoing Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, comprehensively trounced in the election, attended a European commission conference in Brussels where he enjoyed a standing ovation almost as if he had been the victor. The mismatch between the popular and elite verdicts was striking.

Monti said that in his 15 months in office he deliberately never told Italians that his programme of austerity, structural reforms, and tax rises was being implemented because of EU orders. Then he added: "Although of course it was true that the European Union was asking for them."

Given his failure, there may now be a slight shift to soften the edges of German-prescribed austerity while EU leaders also harp on, but do nothing, about repairing the vast gap opening up between the more integrationist policies they are pursuing and democratic accountability and legitimacy to underpin them...

/... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/europe-protest-parties-march

(Stiglitz): The outcome of the Italian elections should send a clear message to Europe’s leaders: the austerity policies that they have pursued are being rejected by voters.

The European project, as idealistic as it was, was always a top-down endeavor. But it is another matter altogether to encourage technocrats to run countries, seemingly circumventing democratic processes, and foist upon them policies that lead to widespread public misery.

While Europe’s leaders shy away from the word, the reality is that much of the European Union is in depression. The loss of output in Italy since the beginning of the crisis is as great as it was in the 1930’s. Greece’s youth unemployment rate now exceeds 60%, and Spain’s is above 50%. With the destruction of human capital, Europe’s social fabric is tearing, and its future is being thrown into jeopardy.

The economy’s doctors say that the patient must stay the course. Political leaders who suggest otherwise are labeled as populists. The reality, though, is that the cure is not working, and there is no hope that it will – that is, without being worse than the disease. Indeed, it will take a decade or more to recover the losses incurred in this austerity process.

In short, it is neither populism nor shortsightedness that has led citizens to reject the policies that have been imposed on them. It is an understanding that these policies are deeply misguided...

/... Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/listening-to-european-voters--rejection-of-austerity-by-joseph-e--stiglitz#YS8dU9MT2jDKYxDM.99