CYPRUS: CLASH OF OLIGARCHIES AND GEOPOLITICS, PART THREE
March 25, 2013 By
Yesterday I left off in this mini-series of analysis of the Cyprus crisis by pointing out that the quiet player in the whole affair was Germany. And I indicated that this was where, once again, we will indulge in high octane speculation. But first, I want you to consider carefully the following highly intriguing article about the affair from The Daily Bell:
Was the EU Right About Cyprus?
And then consider that Germany’s and the IMF’s (that would be Wall Street, folks) initial call was for a much sharper fleecing of Cypriots:
Germany And IMF’s Initial Deposit Haircut Demand: 40% Of Total
Now, all of this would seem to make Germany but the catspaw for US financial interests, and thus the driving locomotive for holding the EU together. In short, Germany is playing the role, on this view, of the financial bully of Europe, armed with helmet, chair, and whip to keep the felines tame and caged.
But we’d do well to recall some other things about recent German financial and geopolitical action that may indicate that a much more subtle game is being played by that country. The first of these is, of course, Germany calls for the repatriation of its gold reserves – reportedly the second largest in the world after the United States – from the New York Federal Reserve, a move that indicates Germany has about as much confidence in that (very corrupt) institution as does the average American. But we would do well to recall that Germany’s repatriation calls were not restricted to just the U.S. Fed, but the Banque de France and the Bank of England.
Germany, in other words, was also signaling its lack of confidence in the next two largest economies of Europe and, perhaps not coincidentally, in the only known European thermonuclear powers. Such a move, viewed from the EU perspective, is hardly one that betokens long-term German solidarity with the whole EU scheme. As The Daily Bell put it in the very last sentence of the above-referenced article, “In the case of Cyprus, Eurocrats apparently want to destabilize the island as a tax haven. They may end up destabilizing Europe.” But if that be the case, then the calls for massive expropriation – i.e., theft – of Cypriots’ deposits that emanated from Germany may be viewed, I contend, as part of a larger financial policy – and in the longer term, geopolitical policy – that may be designed to do precisely that. (See How German fears of underwriting Russian oligarchs pushed Cyprus to crisis). And that brings us back to Germany and Russia. Consider this statement:
So what do we have?
Consider yet another possibility: that Germany is playing a careful game, one it has to play as the shill for Euro-American interests on the one hand, and as the power broker with Russia in Eastern Europe on the other. In short, Germany might be deliberately being cast by the Anglo-American oligarchs as the “bad boy of Europe” once again, when the real austerity measures are not coming out of Berlin or, for that matter, even Frankfurt-am-Main, but the City of London and New York. (Consider the following Daily Bell article in that light: Real Reason for the Cyprus Debacle?). It’s an old banskter game, one that meant that Imperial Germany had to be “taken out” in the four years’ siege called World War One, then rendered a compliant client state by financial emasculation, and then a dictatorship (that didn’t work out too well for anyone concerned).
Unfortunately for the banksters, the Germans just aren’t that stupid, and are keenly aware not only of the crimes of the National Socialists, but about the bankster shenanigans that put them into power. So the problem of German diplomacy is now what it has always been, play a careful balancing act with the West, while trying to open up to the East. Repatriating its gold from New York, Paris, and London was the real sign of a long term agenda, and that, I believe, is this: the German elites, both banking, corporate, and military-political, have seen the handwriting on the wall and the degree of fraud and corruption in the Anglo-American oligarchy’s management of “the system” for the past century. They know the long term shift of the center of world power is to the East, and they intend to ride that wave. It’s a long, gradual policy of disengagement from the West, while trying to remain cognizant of its position as the preeminent European power. The repatriation was the first signal that Germany was saying “the Rockefailure-Rottenchild Emperor has no clothes.” As a Mr. G.B. put it to me in an email, echoing my own growing suspicions, “This ‘experiment’ is going to get very interesting. I think Germany along with some Russian ‘input’ is manipulating the whole event in order to show that the EU/ECB/IMF is like the emperor with no clothes.”
There’s just one problem, and that’s called NATO, the military aspect of the EU. This international bureacracy has become, in effect, the European military franchise of the globalogna-ists, the internal muscle to make sure its members don’t become too “independent.” Indeed, as Zbgnw Brzznsk (again, that’s my vowelless disdain for Zbigniew Brzezisnki) correctly observed, NATO was as much about “how to deal with the reality of German power” as it was about containing the Soviet Union. (One might amend that comment to include France in the assertion, a fact made more obvious by General De Gaulle’s refusal to play the Anglo-American game. Alas, now we have Sarkozy and Hollande).
Thus, if this reading of the situation is correct, we will expect to see a similar crisis-driven dissolution of NATO (not without opposition of course). It is perhaps interesting to note that German Federal Chancellorin Angela Merkel withdrew German troops from Afghanistan.
I don’t look for German military involvement in Syria or Iran (and I’ll bet the screws will be applied, but quietly, rejected, perhaps in the form of sending only support, not combat troops). The bottom line is, the average German doesn’t want to be the policeman of Europe nor to bail out other countries any more than the average American wants to be the policeman of the world or responsible for the corruption of, say, Mexico. The problem is, at least the German government and elite appears to be listening – even if only with one ear – to the people of Germany and the rest of Europe. In America’s case, the government’s ears are completely blocked by oligarchical wax.
If this point wasn’t plain enough, putting it differently may help: What is holding Europe together right now isn’t Brussels or idiots like Van Rompuy, Christine Lagarde, or the blockheads of London; it’s NATO, and the military fist. As Europeans increasingly question the wisdom of the EU and its technocrats, watch for them to also accompany their questions with a new list of concerns that directly address NATO, its purpose, and existence, itself. And this is good news for Moscow and Beijing. And the heavier the hand that the Eurocrats apply in Europe, the more their grip loosens, and the more they play into the hands of the BRICS nations, allowing Medvedev and Putin to compare them to the Soviet Union and to play the role of guardians, of more velvet-handed authoritarians and protectors of a more moral international order, the ultimate in inappropriate irony.
So what does the long term look like? Can you say BRIGCSA, the expansion of the BRICS, or BRICSA, nations, to include Germany?
As for Cyprus… Russia’s terms aren’t onerous… they just want a naval base (a nice vice grip on Turkey)…
Russians want Naval Port, German Navy could be out with 3 months notice.
…and thus begins the game of empire all over again…
Yesterday I left off in this mini-series of analysis of the Cyprus crisis by pointing out that the quiet player in the whole affair was Germany. And I indicated that this was where, once again, we will indulge in high octane speculation. But first, I want you to consider carefully the following highly intriguing article about the affair from The Daily Bell:
Was the EU Right About Cyprus?
And then consider that Germany’s and the IMF’s (that would be Wall Street, folks) initial call was for a much sharper fleecing of Cypriots:
Germany And IMF’s Initial Deposit Haircut Demand: 40% Of Total
Now, all of this would seem to make Germany but the catspaw for US financial interests, and thus the driving locomotive for holding the EU together. In short, Germany is playing the role, on this view, of the financial bully of Europe, armed with helmet, chair, and whip to keep the felines tame and caged.
But we’d do well to recall some other things about recent German financial and geopolitical action that may indicate that a much more subtle game is being played by that country. The first of these is, of course, Germany calls for the repatriation of its gold reserves – reportedly the second largest in the world after the United States – from the New York Federal Reserve, a move that indicates Germany has about as much confidence in that (very corrupt) institution as does the average American. But we would do well to recall that Germany’s repatriation calls were not restricted to just the U.S. Fed, but the Banque de France and the Bank of England.
Germany, in other words, was also signaling its lack of confidence in the next two largest economies of Europe and, perhaps not coincidentally, in the only known European thermonuclear powers. Such a move, viewed from the EU perspective, is hardly one that betokens long-term German solidarity with the whole EU scheme. As The Daily Bell put it in the very last sentence of the above-referenced article, “In the case of Cyprus, Eurocrats apparently want to destabilize the island as a tax haven. They may end up destabilizing Europe.” But if that be the case, then the calls for massive expropriation – i.e., theft – of Cypriots’ deposits that emanated from Germany may be viewed, I contend, as part of a larger financial policy – and in the longer term, geopolitical policy – that may be designed to do precisely that. (See How German fears of underwriting Russian oligarchs pushed Cyprus to crisis). And that brings us back to Germany and Russia. Consider this statement:
“There are two reasons for this unusual conditionality. First, German politicians and many of their European colleagues suspect Cyprus to be a tax haven and a money-laundering site for Russian oligarchs. Of the 68 billion euros stored in Cypriot bank accounts, around 20 billion ($26 billion) belong to Russian account holders. A report compiled last year by the German secret service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, claims to have found evidence that Cypriot banks or Russian bank branches based in Cyprus are used to launder illegal money.”Recall that the Russian oligarchs pulled their money out of Cypriot banks prior to the theft proposal. It strains reason, however, to assume that the German government or its own elite would not have known or predicted such a move. Indeed, I have often pointed out that Germany is increasingly dependent on Russian energy supplies to fuel its industry and economy. It is therefore geopolitically unlikely that Germany would make any overt moves to anger Russia.
So what do we have?
Consider yet another possibility: that Germany is playing a careful game, one it has to play as the shill for Euro-American interests on the one hand, and as the power broker with Russia in Eastern Europe on the other. In short, Germany might be deliberately being cast by the Anglo-American oligarchs as the “bad boy of Europe” once again, when the real austerity measures are not coming out of Berlin or, for that matter, even Frankfurt-am-Main, but the City of London and New York. (Consider the following Daily Bell article in that light: Real Reason for the Cyprus Debacle?). It’s an old banskter game, one that meant that Imperial Germany had to be “taken out” in the four years’ siege called World War One, then rendered a compliant client state by financial emasculation, and then a dictatorship (that didn’t work out too well for anyone concerned).
Unfortunately for the banksters, the Germans just aren’t that stupid, and are keenly aware not only of the crimes of the National Socialists, but about the bankster shenanigans that put them into power. So the problem of German diplomacy is now what it has always been, play a careful balancing act with the West, while trying to open up to the East. Repatriating its gold from New York, Paris, and London was the real sign of a long term agenda, and that, I believe, is this: the German elites, both banking, corporate, and military-political, have seen the handwriting on the wall and the degree of fraud and corruption in the Anglo-American oligarchy’s management of “the system” for the past century. They know the long term shift of the center of world power is to the East, and they intend to ride that wave. It’s a long, gradual policy of disengagement from the West, while trying to remain cognizant of its position as the preeminent European power. The repatriation was the first signal that Germany was saying “the Rockefailure-Rottenchild Emperor has no clothes.” As a Mr. G.B. put it to me in an email, echoing my own growing suspicions, “This ‘experiment’ is going to get very interesting. I think Germany along with some Russian ‘input’ is manipulating the whole event in order to show that the EU/ECB/IMF is like the emperor with no clothes.”
There’s just one problem, and that’s called NATO, the military aspect of the EU. This international bureacracy has become, in effect, the European military franchise of the globalogna-ists, the internal muscle to make sure its members don’t become too “independent.” Indeed, as Zbgnw Brzznsk (again, that’s my vowelless disdain for Zbigniew Brzezisnki) correctly observed, NATO was as much about “how to deal with the reality of German power” as it was about containing the Soviet Union. (One might amend that comment to include France in the assertion, a fact made more obvious by General De Gaulle’s refusal to play the Anglo-American game. Alas, now we have Sarkozy and Hollande).
Thus, if this reading of the situation is correct, we will expect to see a similar crisis-driven dissolution of NATO (not without opposition of course). It is perhaps interesting to note that German Federal Chancellorin Angela Merkel withdrew German troops from Afghanistan.
I don’t look for German military involvement in Syria or Iran (and I’ll bet the screws will be applied, but quietly, rejected, perhaps in the form of sending only support, not combat troops). The bottom line is, the average German doesn’t want to be the policeman of Europe nor to bail out other countries any more than the average American wants to be the policeman of the world or responsible for the corruption of, say, Mexico. The problem is, at least the German government and elite appears to be listening – even if only with one ear – to the people of Germany and the rest of Europe. In America’s case, the government’s ears are completely blocked by oligarchical wax.
If this point wasn’t plain enough, putting it differently may help: What is holding Europe together right now isn’t Brussels or idiots like Van Rompuy, Christine Lagarde, or the blockheads of London; it’s NATO, and the military fist. As Europeans increasingly question the wisdom of the EU and its technocrats, watch for them to also accompany their questions with a new list of concerns that directly address NATO, its purpose, and existence, itself. And this is good news for Moscow and Beijing. And the heavier the hand that the Eurocrats apply in Europe, the more their grip loosens, and the more they play into the hands of the BRICS nations, allowing Medvedev and Putin to compare them to the Soviet Union and to play the role of guardians, of more velvet-handed authoritarians and protectors of a more moral international order, the ultimate in inappropriate irony.
So what does the long term look like? Can you say BRIGCSA, the expansion of the BRICS, or BRICSA, nations, to include Germany?
As for Cyprus… Russia’s terms aren’t onerous… they just want a naval base (a nice vice grip on Turkey)…
Russians want Naval Port, German Navy could be out with 3 months notice.
…and thus begins the game of empire all over again…
Read more: CYPRUS: CLASH OF OLIGARCHIES AND GEOPOLITICS, PART THREE
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