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The US drone assassinations

The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars. Manhunting in the Hindu Kush Key points: ... the Haymaker campaign was in many respects a failure. The vast majority of those killed in airstrikes were not the direct targets. Nor did the campaign succeed in significantly degrading al Qaeda’s operations in the region. The documents show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign, nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans’ direct targets. By February 2013, Haymaker airstrikes had resulted in no more than 35 “jackpots,” a term used to signal the neutralization of a specific targeted individual, while more than 200 people were declared EKIA — “enemy killed in action.” “ If there is

Greek debt should be reduced by about 200 billion according to Deutsche Bank?

Deutsche Bank considers the possibility of a haircut of Greece’s public debt by the end of the year ‘inevitable’, according to a report in German tabloid Bild. The newspaper cites a classified Deutsche Bank internal circulation document which allegedly states that the Greek debt must be reduced by about 200 billion euros. This turns out to about 700 euros for each citizen in the Eurozone, states Bild. The report further notes that by the end of 2015 Greece’s public debt will be 340 billion euros, 200 percent of GDP, far more than what European regulations allow. This, in turn, means that no economist truly believes Greece will be able to repay its debts. The tabloid however adds that should a haircut of the Greek debt be deemed necessary, the decision to carry it out will be less of a financial one and more of a political one, and it will be made after negotiations between Athens and creditors. Source: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/10/27/

The pantomime of Democracy: Portugal’s coup against anti-austerity

by Binoy Kampmark “ Meanwhile in Portugal we are witnessing the makings of a genuine coup with the unwillingness of the establishment there to accept the outcome of an election and the support won by parties who oppose EU austerity. ” Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin, Oct 24, 2015 This is the truest form of Euro authoritarianism, short of full prisons and torture chambers. (These may, in time, come.) If you are not seized by the idea, the fetishism of a currency; if you gather up your forces to mount an offence against austerity, twinned as it with monetary union, then you must be, in the eyes of these policing forces, against the European project. This obscene inversion has found form in Portugal, yet another country that has taken the road towards anti-democratic practice when it comes to the battle between the outcome of staged elections and the heralded inviolability of a broken euro system. It has the chill of history – political groupings with

Greece: Tsipras is eliminating any trace of his rivals

by Yorgos Mitralias So now here we are: the new Tsipras government has just resolved two of its major problems: that of the public debt and the one represented by the ex-president of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou. How has it managed to bring off this feat? Simple! By erasing from the official site of the Greek Parliament – for all time – everything that could recall Zoe Konstantopoulou and her initiatives during her brief presidency, including the Commission for the Truth of the Public Debt. Faced with this impressive back-turn by the Greek government which takes us back to the glories of Stalinism’s triumphant years in the ’30s but also of Macarthyism at its most intrusive in the early ’50s, we are entitled to ask: Does all this mean that Greece’s public debt has disappeared? And has Zoe K. accepted her defeat then, and decided to stop telling the truth and to silence her criticism of the vitriol thrown at her? The answer is No. Greece’s as

Portugal: A coup by any other name, made in Brussels

It is a bad day for those innocents on the Left who think that the European Union can be transformed from within, turned into an instrument of the peoples’ will and a motor for social progress, public ownership, popular sovereignty or even pluralist democracy. For the first time since the monetary union was created parties that oppose the EU regime of privatisation, labour market deregulation and the fiscal straitjacket have been prevented from taking office even though they enjoy a parliamentary majority. On the grounds of “national interest” Anibal Cavaco Silva, president of Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to allow the appointment a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament on an anti austerity mandate imposed by the EU-IMF Troika. The Socialists, Communists and left Bloc together won 50.7% of the votes and control the Assembly. The biggest party grouping, led by Pedro Passos