Notes from the bottom of the cesspool:

Neal Ascherson critiques the various embassy documents released last week. He compliments US foreign service pros and twits UK and other foreign nations’ immaturity. Sez Neal @ the Guardian UK

” … the WikiLeaks eruption has smothered the world with the secret thoughts of the state department’s ambassadors. Tomorrow’s Observer, focusing on China, reveals fascinating data about Chinese “muscle-flexing, triumphalism and assertiveness” (as the US ambassador put it). But with the cables comes a snapshot of the state department itself. It’s a unique window on America’s search – with diminishing confidence – for a coherent, inspiring account of what the US is trying to achieve in the world.

These diplomats who didn’t want us to know their thoughts are not mere cogs in an imperial machine. Many emerge as wise, courageous, patient, likeable men and women– especially the women, who lead so many US embassies. Their view of their host countries is not rosy. You begin to absorb their vision, in which America is the only adult in a world of grasping, corrupt, unreliable teenagers who cannot be abandoned to their own weakness.

The test of an ambassador is telling truth to those who wield the power – having the guts to tell the department that its plan is a delusion. Here is Anne Patterson in Islamabad, discussing Pakistan’s support for “terrorist and extremist groups” and telling Washington “there is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups”. She states bleakly: “The relationship is one of co-dependency, we grudgingly admit – Pakistan knows the US cannot afford to walk away; the US knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.”

America diminishes because what it is spamming to the rest of the world is waste … or … ‘pre- waste’.

What a choice? Meanwhile, the real wasting process cleverly disguised as the ‘E- as in con- man’ economy is actually physically diminishing the United States! This is ‘burn the candle @ both ends’ policy, the policy of self- inflicted bankruptcy.

The spam itself is hollow at the center, the triumph of Warholian ‘Is- ism’. The American cultural zeitgeist is a ghastly plastic void stamped ‘Made In China’, an invisible finance fist gilded with a sunshine rock-star/outlaw vision that bears no resemblance to any discernible reality to be found anywhere on Planet Earth. Which is the point: emptiness is indefensible but impossible to defend against. America exports its traffic jams, its pollution, its inflation, its massively greedy finance companies and psychopathic ‘contractors’, its wars, its neuroses and its addictions. What’s there not to like?

When you are at the receiving end of fantasy, you take what you can get! Right? Too bad it’s all poison and everyone knows it. Even the Establishment, which is why it takes gadfly Assange so seriously.

Will the Irish vote down its government budget, tomorrow? If it does it is ‘Round 3’ of the European credit crisis.

DING!

Willful misrepresentation by the EU/IMF and ineptitude on the part of Fianna Fail has prevented Eire from obtaining a much better deal on its so- called bailout. The insipid Irish government does not understand the amount of leverage it has. If the budget is rejected the entire Eurozone credit structure and euro itself is in jeopardy, which is the point.

That a rejection would increase Irish leverage is something legislators are certainly turning over in their minds as they tabulate the numbers needed to pass/fail.

The so- called ‘Irish Bailout’ is actually the bailout of German and UK banks and bond- speculating hedge funds by theoretical Irish taxpayers and actual Irish pensioners. If the Irish government and its putative ‘rescuers’ were honest to the Irish- and European publics about who was bailing out whom the issue would never have gotten as far as it has.

EU has to know that the taxpayers are theoretical because any that can will flee the country, leaving behind the elderly and ill who cannot leave along with those inoculated against Euro- taxation. The EU must also know that while Irish grandchildren cannot refuse the loan they certainly will refuse to pay.

It was the EU and its orchestrated run on Irish banks — which should have been allowed to fail in 2008 — that precipitated the forced bailout on the Irish. On this ground alone the Irish parliament should reject the budget. The bailout is the product of artifice; it is fraudulent inducement.

There is no need to sacrifice the future of Ireland’s children so that German, French and UK risk- takers are made whole. It past time to start unwinding finance’s rigged gambling casino.

If the Irish refuse to play ball with the EU/IMF the choice is for the various bondholders and Irish bank creditors to accept losses and for the credit intermediaries the EU and IMF to reduce service charges. The alternative is for the entire European credit apparatus to unravel, taking the US and East Asian structures with it. This shouldn’t be a choice. If Irish intransigence is standing between a continuing European credit ‘status quo’ and collapse it would be best for the European Union to be more accommodating to the Irish, even as it would signal being more accommodating to other Eurozone creditors.

That would mean a Eurobond @ a rate low enough to allow Ireland and other peripheral states to service debt without self- defeating deflationary spirals. It also means haircuts for the precious bond- holders, which would bring Angela Merkel’s original proposal to restructure creditor portfolios back into the spotlight. It would mean ending the privilege that lenders to banks and other finance entities enjoy at the expense of the productive parts of the European economy. It would be the beginning of the end of finance’s extra- legal taxing power.

The serial bailouts are painkillers administered to a patient with broken legs. The cure is to fix the legs and the pain will take care of itself. The large problem is the EU is a franchise of American- style waste- based, ‘car- Uber Alles’ Andy Warhol faddishness. The Europeans are consumed with being as trendy and ‘hip’ as the television liars insist they must be at all times. This means a Europe of, “grasping, corrupt, unreliable teenagers”, where nobody works @ anything productive except for Polish and other ‘slavs’. It means everyone gambles madly @ stocks and bonds and that the real center of the EU economy is flushing valuable and diminishing capital of all kinds down the toilet.

A shocking suggestion would be for Ireland to cut its energy consumption by 25% over the next couple of years. This would cut the country’s drain or outflow of funds to Middle- Eastern, etc. energy suppliers. Both conservation and stiffing finance gamblers would be exercises of sovereignty and would lead the other European sovereigns by example. Somebody has to do it, why not Ireland?

The lenders are pinned and helpless. They cannot survive without borrowers continuing to service existing debt and take on new loans. This is why they are frantic for the Irish government to rubber- stamp this bailout. No bailout means the funds needed by the speculators themselves are gone. They will fail, then hedgers holding Credit Default Swaps will in turn fail, spreading the fallout across the length and breadth of the credit system which will itself fail. Bond speculators are holding the Irish hostage so as to insure their needed flow of funds. Turnabout is fair play!

The Irish government can describe the ‘bailout’ to the Irish citizens and to the rest of the world as what it is. It can give the choice — as it should — to the voters. Ireland can hold the EU credit system hostage in turn. It would take about five minutes for the EU and the IMF to offer Ireland a more practical deal. Once the EU mentions renegotiation the Irish would know they have won.

Not just Ireland but the entire Eurozone needs to rethink its finance- first approach to economic development. Restructuring is the primary step. Finance’s defacto taxing power needs to be put on the chopping block. Give working people the tools to thrive without them becoming debt- slave ‘consumers’ or cogs in the world- wide industrial machine. Measures well- being with something other than numbers on a chart (Gross Domestic Product). The relative happiness of Europe’s millionaires needs to be put into a longer- term perspective. Europe also needs to escape the USA- style waste- based economic model of driving in circles for no good reason. It needs to rethink the entire issue of personal auto transport.

The EU needs to contrive a means for the peripherals to devalue within the euro or the peripherals must exit the euro to devalue on their own. Europe needs to escape the monetary union propaganda and become realistic about what a common currency can and cannot do. If a fiscal union is needed along with a common treasury, this must be done. Waiting until conditions ‘improve’ before making reforms means the economy, which is dependent upon the reforms, will never get the chance to improve.

This is why Ireland along with the rest of Europe needs to cut its energy consumption and reduce the overseas flow of funds to Middle East energy suppliers. Economic success comes from working toward an economy that does not support the massive twin burdens of non- productive finance along with free- loading energy oligarchs. This is the reality which holds all of the modern world hostage.

Does the rump Irish establishment have the fortitude to grasp what lies within reach?

The Dáil Éireann will probably pass the budget and kick that hapless can down what looks to be a very short road. It will allow the energy imbalances to increase. The inevitable crash- to- come be that much more devastating. Oh, well …

Countries surrender their sovereignty willingly, it is almost impossible for outsiders to simply seize it without blood. Here, Eire’s sovereignty is the intended victim of finance’s lies and a compromised government. The Irish citizens should make every effort to insure that the government look out for its interests rather than those of the banks’.

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