Eight out of 90 European banks have failed stress tests on whether they could withstand another financial crisis. None were in Italy - which it hopes might help the country fend off spiraling debt costs, along with the 70-billion-Euro cuts which parliament passed on Friday. But, as RT's Sara Firth reports, there's only so much that can be done before the people take power into their own hands.
Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on selling Greece's sovereignty and Spain's El Gordo. In the second half of the show, Max talks to economist Michael Hudson about the IMF assassins sent in to destroy the Greek economy.
The European economy edged towards a fresh crisis yesterday, as Spain's leaders were forced to admit that credit had dried up for some of the country's banks.
With Greece forced to seek a second bail-out to avoid bankruptcy, Open Europe has today published a briefing cataloguing how the eurozone crisis could drive the European Central Bank itself into insolvency, with taxpayers likely to pick up a big chunk of the bill.
Spanish police in anti-riot gear fired rubber bullets and swung truncheons to disperse peaceful protesters in the Plaza de Cataluna square in Barcelona.
Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe – Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble
There are fresh demonstrations in Madrid against severe budget cuts as the country tries to reduce its massive debt. Spain has been tipped as the next Eurozone economy at risk of needing a bailout, but some say it could be too big to save. RT talks to Jim Corr, a political activist and musician from the Irish band the Corrs.
Spanish and Italian bonds fell on concern divisions among European officials will hamper efforts by finance ministers meeting in Brussels to stem the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.
A media report says that an Afghan soldier killed two US-led soldiers in a shoot-out when they tried to remove an Afghan woman's veil by force.
Informed sources told the Pashtun language Benava website on Thursday that the deadly incident took place after soldiers were disrespectful to the women and insulted Afghans' cultural and Islamic values.
US-led troops reportedly opened fire at demonstrators, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 20 other civilians.
Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign.
The French vineyard is the same field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay while the group accomplished its mission yesterday.
Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar announced recently that he planned to promote a new initiative which would defend Israel's right to exist, as "if Israel goes down, we all go down," the former premier wrote in London newspaper The Times on Thursday.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised fresh concerns about Spain's economy, saying "far-reaching" reforms are needed to ensure its recovery.
MADRID, May 24 (Reuters) - Spain must make far reaching, comprehensive reforms, including to the labour market, while its economic recovery remains fragile, The International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
Investors are braced for fresh turbulence in European bank shares after Spain's authorities stepped in to rescue Cajasur, one of the country's largest regional lenders.
Among the mega-forces moving the tectonic plates and imperiling the nation-states of the world from above and below are these:
First, ethno-nationalism, which threatens nations with secession and break-up. We see it in the Uighurs of China, the Naga of India, the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan, the Kurds of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, the Chechens of the Russian Caucasus and the Walloons of Belgium.
Second, transnationalism. This is the project of global elites who seek to reduce nations to ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats whose loyalty is neither to the land nor people whence they came.
Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, Greece and Spain can sue Canada for damages from global financial crisis
Spain has followed Ireland and Greece in imposing 1930s-era wage cuts to slash the budget deficit, complying with EU demands for further austerity in exchange for the €720bn `shock and awe’ rescue for eurzone debtors.
It is fitting that Greece is at the heart of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis because the financial calamity which began three years ago is unfolding with all the grim predictability of a classical tragedy.
The Telegraph, 1 May 2010
3-30-2010 Algerian authorities have arrested an Israeli Mossad agent carrying a fake Spanish passport in the city of Hassi Messaoud near an Egyptian office providing service for oil companies, Algerian Ennahar El Djadid newspaper reported on Tuesday.
By GEES
Everything began when Israel’s embassy in Madrid, Spain started receiving letters written by 9-year old children and filled with anti-Semitic content. In their lines, the minors accused Israelis of military crimes and torture. The children’s letters included phrases such as “Jews kill for money,” “Leave the country to the Palestinians,” or “Go somewhere else where they accept you.” Israel presented a formal complaint to Spain’s ambassador in Tel Aviv since the letters had as senders different schools belonging to the Spanish public education network. Although the letters came from an array of schools throughout Spain, the ones written by elementary school children at El Castell School (in Almoines, Valencia) were the ones distilling a much deeper hatred for Israel. The school’s principal indicated that he knew nothing about this initiative.
The world's five biggest AAA-rated states are all at risk of soaring debt costs and will have to implement austerity plans that threaten "social cohesion", according to a report on sovereign debt by Moody's.
Down on the Euro Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others, finds Eric Walberg
Two million people took to the streets of Athens last week in the country's second general strike this month, protesting the austerity measures proposed by their socialist government. All of Greece came to a 24-hour standstill and the airport was closed as a result of the action. The only public transport was the commuter train so that protesters could reach the demonstration.
Madrid has warned that, if continued at the current rate, the Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian lands would bring about the annexation of the entire occupied territories.
3-10-2010
According to a report out last week, there is huge off-balance-sheet debt guaranteed by Greece and the other PIIGS, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain.
The first international session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine with a focus on the Palestinian right to self determination and the global responsibility of ending Israeli crimes against Palestinians has come to an end in Spain's eastern city of Barcelona.
Israel lodged a formal complaint with Spain yesterday, charging certain individuals in Spanish schools of promoting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel ideas among young children. The letter comes after Israel's ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, recently received dozens of anti-Semitic postcards from Spanish elementary school students.