The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery

The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery Shows That No Bank Account, No Retirement Fund And No Stock Portfolio Is Safe
Michael, on March 18th, 2013
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-great-cyprus-bank-robbery-shows-that-no-bank-account-no-retirement-fund-and-no-stock-portfolio-is-safe

The global elite have now proven that when the chips are down they are going to go after any big pile of money that they think they can get their hands on.  That means that no bank account, no retirement fund and no stock portfolio on earth is safe.  Up until now, most people assumed that private bank accounts were untouchable and that deposit insurance actually meant something.  Now we see that there is no pile of money that is considered "off limits" by the global elite and deposit insurance means absolutely nothing.  The number one thing that any financial system depends on is faith.  If people do not have faith in the safety and stability of a financial system, it will not work.  Well, the people that rule the world have just taken a sledgehammer to the trust that we all had in the global financial system.  They have broken the unwritten social contract that global banking depends on.  So now we will see a run on the banks, and this will not just be limited to a few countries in southern Europe.  Rather, this will be worldwide in scope.  Yoda may have put it this way: "Begun, the global bank run has."  All over the world, frightened people are going to start pulling money out of the banks.  A lot of that money will go into gold, silver and other hard assets.  And as money starts coming out of the banks, this could cause many of the large banks that have been teetering on the edge of disaster to finally collapse.

Many of you may not believe that they would ever come after bank accounts, retirement funds or stock portfolios in the United States.

Many of you may be entirely convinced that the Great Cyprus Bank Robbery could never happen in America.

Well, where do you think this whole plan was dreamed up?

It was the IMF that reportedly pushed the hardest for the wealth tax in Cyprus, and the IMF is headquartered right in the heart of Washington D.C.

Almost every nation on the planet has to deal with the IMF.  It is an organization that is dominated by the United States and that is always involved when there is an international debt crisis.

If the IMF thinks that it is a great idea to steal from bank accounts to solve a financial crisis in Cyprus, why wouldn't they impose a similar solution in other countries in the future?

And if bank accounts are no longer safe, are there any truly safe places to put your money?

You can trust the politicians when they tell you that an unannounced "wealth tax" will never happen where you live if you want, but that is the exact same lie that the politicians in Cyprus were telling their people until the day that it happened.  The following is from an article in the Cyprus Mail...

And after all, President Anastasiades had emphatically declared in his inauguration speech that “absolutely no reference to a haircut on public debt or deposits will be tolerated,” adding that “such an issue isn’t even up for discussion.” Finance Minister Michalis Sarris made similarly reassuring statements, arguing that it would be lunacy for the EU to impose such a measure because it would threaten the euro system.


At this point, politicians in Cyprus have been given two very unappealing options.  Either they vote yes on the wealth tax and destroy all faith in the banking system of Cyprus, or they vote no and they are forced out of the eurozone.  In either case, we will probably see the financial system of Cyprus collapse and their economy plunge deep into depression.

At this point, the vote has been delayed until Tuesday.  Apparently some additional "arm twisting" was required to get the needed votes.

And there have been proposals to change the terms of the wealth tax.  Reportedly, some politicians want to impose a maximum rate of up to 15 percent on bank accounts of over 500,000 euros so that the rate on smaller accounts can be decreased.

It has also been announced that the earliest that banks in Cyprus will reopen will be Thursday.

But what is happening in Cyprus is small potatoes compared to how this will affect the rest of the world.  The entire planet is watching this unfold, and as a recent article by Lucas Jackson described, faith in the global financial system is being greatly shaken...

It would be hard to over-emphasize how significant the Cyprus situation is.  The EU demonstrated under no uncertain circumstances that they will destroy the rule of law to maintain their own power.  It was a recognition of tyranny that many of us have always assumed was the case but yesterday became reality.

The damage done here is not related to the size of the haircut - currently discussed between 3 and 13% - but rather that the legal language which each and every investor on the planet must rely on in order to maintain confidence in the system has been subordinated to the needs of the powerful elite.  To the power elite making the major decisions in DC, London, Berlin, France, Brussels, et. al., laws are like ice cream, easily melted.

Which begs the question, who is next?  Will it be Portugal?  Greece? Spain?  Italy?  France???

Will they impose a “one-time” tax on your bank account?  Your house?  Your stocks and bonds?  Retirement accounts?


The global elite have declared open season on all large piles of money, and now many people all over the world will consider taking money out of the bank to be the rational thing to do.  This will especially be true in countries in southern Europe since they would probably be the next to have wealth confiscated.

This is so abundantly clear that even Paul Krugman of the New York Times understands this...

It’s as if the Europeans are holding up a neon sign, written in Greek and Italian, saying “time to stage a run on your banks!”

Tomorrow and the days immediately following should be very interesting.


The global elite have truly "crossed the Rubicon" by going after private bank accounts.  It is almost as if they purposely chose the most damaging solution possible to the financial crisis in Cyprus.

Many in the financial world are absolutely stunned by all of this.  For example, David Zervos is describing this move as a "nuclear war on savings and wealth"...

All of us should really take a moment to consider what the governments of Europe have done. To be clear, they initiated a surprise assault on the precautionary savings of their own people. Such a move should send shock waves across the entire population of the developed world. This was not a Bernanke style slow moving financial repression against risk free savings that is meant to stir up animal spirits and force risk taking. This is a nuclear war on savings and wealth - something that will likely crush animal spirits. This is a policy move you expect from a dictatorial regime in sub-Saharan Africa, not in an EMU member state. If the European governments can clandestinely expropriate 7 to 10 percent of their hard working citizen's precautionary savings after the close of business on a Friday night, what else are they capable of doing? Why even hold money in a bank account? Are they trying to start a bank run?


So what motivated the global elite to do this?

According to CNBC, one of the motivations was to go after the Russians that had been using the banking system of Cyprus to launder money...

Indeed, the IMF is reported to have been keen on the levy as a way to stem the flood of Russian money into the island over the last few years which has prompted concerns over money laundering.


Russian money accounts for about 25 percent of all money in the banking system of Cyprus, and obviously the Russians are quite upset by what the IMF and the EU have decided to do.  Even Vladimir Putin is loudly denouncing this move...

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the tax “unfair, unprofessional and dangerous,” according to a statement posted on the Kremlin website. Russian companies and individuals have $31 billion of deposits in Cyprus, according to Moody’s.


And you haven't heard a lot about this in the western media, but the Russians have actually stepped forward and have offered to help Cyprus out of this jam.  For example, there are reports that Russian investors are interested in buying the two banks that were the primary cause of this bailout...

Officials have also said Russian investors are interested in buying a majority stake in Cyprus Popular Bank and increasing their holdings in Bank of Cyprus - the two biggest banks on the Mediterranean island.


And according to Sky News, Gazprom has offered Cyprus a very large sum of money for the right to explore their offshore gas reserves that have not been developed yet...

The uncertainty comes as Russia's finance minister said his country would consider restructuring its loans to Cyprus.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has also reportedly offered financial assistance to Cyprus in exchange for access to the island's gas reserves.


So far the government of Cyprus has rejected the help of the Russians, but could they change their mind at some point?  Apparently the Russians are offering enough money to completely fund the bank bailout...

According Greek Reporter, Gazprom made an offer over the weekend to the Cypriot government to fund the bank restructuring planned under the Cypriot bailout (which is set to cost up to €10bn) in exchange for exclusive exploration rights for Cypriot territorial waters. How reliable this story is remains to be seen, but it does hint at the geopolitical tension which we have been warning about.

Gazprom is known to be very close to the Russian government and despite Russian President Vladimir Putin overtly slamming the deposit tax - calling it "unfair, unprofessional and dangerous" -  it is unlikely that they would let this opportunity pass untouched. Fortunately, the Cypriot government is said to have rejected the deal off the bat, but if displeasure towards the eurozone and the EU grows, the Russian option may become increasingly appealing.


It will be very interesting to see what happens.

Meanwhile, some European officials are already suggesting that other nations in southern Europe should have a "wealth tax" imposed upon them.  The following comes from an article by Paul Joseph Watson...

Joerg Kraemer, chief economist of the German Commerzbank, has called for private savings accounts in Italy to be similarly plundered. “A tax rate of 15 percent on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100 percent of gross domestic product,” he told Handelsblatt.


A "tax" of 15 percent on all financial assets?

Could you imagine if you woke up one morning and the government had decided to suddenly steal 15 percent of all the money that you had in bank accounts, retirement funds and stock portfolios?

If I had a bank account in Italy I would be very nervous right about now.

Under normal circumstances these kinds of things don't happen, but governments will use an "emergency" to justify all kinds of things.  I recently came across an article that included a great quote by Herbert Hoover that put this beautifully...

"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of ‘emergency’. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And ‘emergency’ became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains."


This is what the elite love to do.

They love to create order out of chaos.

And this is just the beginning.  The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery was just a beta test for what is coming next.

As the global financial system crumbles, the global elite are going to target our bank accounts, our retirement funds and our stock portfolios.  You might want to start thinking about how you will protect yourself.

Those Revolting Europeans

PAUL KRUGMAN
May 6, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html

The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it’s about time.

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thing.

Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace. He is “rather dangerous,” declared The Economist, which observed that he “genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society.” Quelle horreur!

What is true is that Mr. Hollande’s victory means the end of “Merkozy,” the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a “dangerous” development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn’t and doesn’t; it’s time to move on. Europe’s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent’s best and brightest.

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe’s policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover.

But it hasn’t. And although you’d never know it from much of the press coverage, Irish borrowing costs remain much higher than those of Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. So what are the alternatives?

One answer — an answer that makes more sense than almost anyone in Europe is willing to admit — would be to break up the euro, Europe’s common currency. Europe wouldn’t be in this fix if Greece still had its drachma, Spain its peseta, Ireland its punt, and so on, because Greece and Spain would have what they now lack: a quick way to restore cost-competitiveness and boost exports, namely devaluation.

As a counterpoint to Ireland’s sad story, consider the case of Iceland, which was ground zero for the financial crisis but was able to respond by devaluing its currency, the krona (and also had the courage to let its banks fail and default on their debts). Sure enough, Iceland is experiencing the recovery Ireland was supposed to have, but hasn’t.

Yet breaking up the euro would be highly disruptive, and would also represent a huge defeat for the “European project,” the long-run effort to promote peace and democracy through closer integration. Is there another way? Yes, there is — and the Germans have shown how that way can work. Unfortunately, they don’t understand the lessons of their own experience.

Talk to German opinion leaders about the euro crisis, and they like to point out that their own economy was in the doldrums in the early years of the last decade but managed to recover. What they don’t like to acknowledge is that this recovery was driven by the emergence of a huge German trade surplus vis-à-vis other European countries — in particular, vis-à-vis the nations now in crisis — which were booming, and experiencing above-normal inflation, thanks to low interest rates. Europe’s crisis countries might be able to emulate Germany’s success if they faced a comparably favorable environment — that is, if this time it was the rest of Europe, especially Germany, that was experiencing a bit of an inflationary boom.

So Germany’s experience isn’t, as the Germans imagine, an argument for unilateral austerity in Southern Europe; it’s an argument for much more expansionary policies elsewhere, and in particular for the European Central Bank to drop its obsession with inflation and focus on growth.

The Germans, needless to say, don’t like this conclusion, nor does the leadership of the central bank. They will cling to their fantasies of prosperity through pain, and will insist that continuing with their failed strategy is the only responsible thing to do. But it seems that they will no longer have unquestioning support from the Élysée Palace. And that, believe it or not, means that both the euro and the European project now have a better chance of surviving than they did a few days ago.

Economic Doomsday Quote of the Week

"The world is watching Europe, waiting upon a solution. It’s not just the euro that’s at stake. If the euro fails, so too does the 27-nation European Union. Bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely crash, and Europe’s economies would follow. Nations in the euro-zone would see their economic output decline, though temporarily, by as much as 50%, according to UBS forecasters. That economic meltdown would then spread to the U.S. and Asia, who would find themselves caught up in the credit freeze while their exports to Europe would collapse."
Source:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Euro-Finance-Ministers-wscheats-3060132077.html

Thanks to NaturalNews.com for the tipoff

Arrivederci Berlusconi

From TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com:
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. In just a matter of days, two of Europe's most venerable leaders have been toppled. George Papandreou was the third member of the Papandreou dynasty to be prime minister of Greece. Silvio Berlusconi had dominated Italian politics for nearly two decades. But now they are both heading out the door and the international media have been reporting on their resignations with the kind of enthusiasm that is normally reserved for sporting events. "Down goes Papandreou! Down goes Berlusconi!" If you didn't know better, you would almost be tempted to think that some of the recent news reports were describing a boxing match. But this is what happens when debt problems spiral out of control. It is the leaders who take the fall. So will the resignations of Papandreou and Berlusconi help anything? Of course not. Europe is still headed for a financial collapse of epic proportions...

Full Article:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/arrivederci-berlusconi

Tobacco: The 17th Century Drug War

Charles C. Mann is the author of a new book that has been called a "historical Freakonomics": 1493 – How Europe's Discovery of the Americas Revolutionized Trade, Ecology and Life on Earth. Here's a piece by him from the London Independent:
Nicotiana tabacum, as botanists call it, was the first global commodity craze. Fun, exotic, hallucinogenic and addictive, it was – is – a near-perfect consumer product. England fell under its spell in the 1580s, when the survivors of the nation's first, unsuccessful colonies – the Roanoke ventures of Sir Walter Raleigh – landed in Brighton with strange, fiery clay tubes at their lips. Obviously conscious of the impact of their appearance, they descended on the docks, smoking languidly, like so many Elizabethan versions of James Dean and Humphrey Bogart. By 1607, when Jamestown was founded, London's streets were jammed with more than 7,000 tobacco "houses" – café-like places where the city's growing throng of nicotine junkies could buy and consume tobacco.

None of this was exceptional. Between 1580 and 1610, Nicotiana tabacum, a species originally from the Amazon, became a fixture in every inhabited part of the earth. Almost immediately it attracted governmental ire. Bans on tobacco, some enforced by the death penalty, were enacted by France, Russia, Sweden, the Ottoman and Mughal empires, and the Japanese shogunate. The smoking weed quickly became so ubiquitous in Manchuria, according to historian Timothy Brook, that in 1635 the Khan, Hong Taiji, discovered that his soldiers "were selling their weapons to buy tobacco". Enraged, he prohibited smoking.

No anti-tobacco crusader is better known than King James I, whose Counterblaste to Tobacco, issued in 1604, proclaimed that smoking was "lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, [and] dangerous to the lungs". James sought to ban tobacco outright, but was rebuffed by a hostile Parliament. Pope Urban VIII was more successful. Infuriated by reports that priests were celebrating mass with lighted cigars, the Pope promptly – and successfully – prohibited smoking in the pulpit.

Demand continued unabated. Even as James thundered against tobacco's destructive effect on society, the weed itself was sometimes sold for its weight in silver in London. In the English colony of Bermuda, farmers routinely purchased brides for bags of tobacco (typically, the weight was about 100lb). Across the globe, gangs of young smokers in Edo (Tokyo) were so outraged by the high price of a smoke that they routinely ransacked tobacco warehouses. Customs officials in Istanbul, unable to afford a pipeful, routinely shook down visitors for smoking supplies.

Coupled with high demand, tobacco criminalisation drove up its price, which led to an explosion of tobacco bootleggery that continues to the present day. Pirates grew and sold tobacco throughout the Caribbean, especially in Venezuela. Outraging the Spanish crown, Spanish and Indian smallholders in remote colonial areas converted their wheat and maize plots to tobacco, then sold the harvest to Dutch and English pirates. So powerful did the gangs become that the Spanish ambassador to England complained that English demand was causing the collapse of law and order in tobacco country. (This is not confined to the past: cigarette smuggling remains a major industry in pirate havens from southern Italy to South-east China, but is also common in less rambunctious areas; police in suburban Maryland rolled up an alleged tobacco ring in the eastern US just last month.) Even as moralists like James thundered that tobacco was destroying the family, royal tax officials were eyeing its legalisation. Few programs generate revenue more reliably than a tax on an addictive substance.

In economic terms, addicts' cravings are inelastic – they are relatively insensitive to cost. If they keep getting their hit, they will happily pay the higher prices associated with government-imposed taxes, fees and levies. Within a year of his Counterblaste, the English government had instituted its first tobacco tax.

Prohibitionists might note a disturbing parallel. Everywhere in the world, the lure of tobacco money eventually overwhelmed efforts to prevent addiction. The son of Hong Taiji, the Manchu Khan who banned tobacco, finished seizing China and in 1644 became the first emperor of the Qing dynasty. He, too, fought against tobacco. But Hong Taiji's grandson, the Kangxi emperor, started smoking at the age of seven – and watched new tobacco taxes become major financial contributors to the Qing state.

One by one, other states slowly followed the Manchu lead, legalising and taxing tobacco. Marijuana is following the same path, slowly becoming tax fodder in nation after nation. Here Mughal India was perhaps the first society to reverse course (the East India Company later added opium taxes to the mix). Decades later, countries such as the Netherlands followed the Mughal path. Even in the notoriously anti-drug US, places such as California and Massachusetts, hard hit by recession, are considering marijuana's use as a taxable commodity.

Yet history should not give too much encouragement to the forces behind unfettered legalisation, either. If tobacco and other drugs are a guide, legalisation is followed, eventually, by social disapproval. Everywhere that tobacco has become a fully accepted commodity its use has – eventually, after decades – declined. The tobacco-besotted colonial US, the nation that held the world's most permissive views on tobacco during the 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately became the land where bewildered European and Asian smokers would be ejected from restaurants, cafés and bars. Even as recently as the 1980s, Britons mocked the "puritanical" anti-tobacco crusades in the US. They have fallen into line. So have the Italians, Turks and even the Chinese.

Drugs that become uncool fall into disuse, as tobacco is falling into disuse today. If history is any guide, our grandchildren's grandchildren will regard today's struggles over marijuana, cocaine and opium as bewildering fossils of an unsavvy past...

The long shadow line: History and the war on drugs
Charles C Mann
Monday, 10 October 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/the-long-shadow-line-history-and-the-war-on-drugs-2368050.html

How Austerity Is Ushering in a Global Recession

Robert Reich
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
http://robertreich.org/post/9014405465

Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out today show even Europe’s strongest core economies – Germany, France, and the Netherlands – slowing to a crawl.

We’re on the cusp of a global recession.

Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine.

We all know about the weaknesses in Europe’s “periphery” – Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. But the drop in Europe’s core is dizzying.

Germany grew at an annualized rate of just half a percent last quarter, down from 5.5 percent in the first quarter of the year. France didn’t grow at all.

What’s going on in Europe’s core? Partly it’s a loss of confidence due to debt crises in the periphery. But that’s hardly all.

Europe depends on exports – especially to Asia, India, Latin America, and the United States. But exports to China and other emerging markets have been dropping. China, worried about inflation, has pulled in the reins on its sizzling economy. Brazil has been pulling back as well.

And as the United States economy sputters, exports to America have been slowing.

But chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.

The United States has been moving in the same bizarre direction. Cutbacks by state and local governments have all but negated the federal government’s original stimulus, and no one in Washington is talking seriously about a second. The pitiful showdown over increasing the debt limit has produced the opposite: a Rube-Goldberg-like process for capping spending rather than increasing it, and a public that’s being sold the Republican lie that less government spending means more jobs.

Yes, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are deeply in debt. But policy makers on both sides seem to have forgotten that economic growth is the most important tonic.

Public debt has meaning only in relation to a nation’s GDP. When more people are working, more companies are profiting, and economies are expanding, revenues pour into national treasuries.

When economies stop growing or contract, the opposite occurs. Economies can fall into vicious cycles of slower growth, lower tax revenues, spending cuts, and even slower growth.

That’s what we’re seeing now.

What’s worse, nations are so intertwined that when every major economy is slowing the cumulative effect is larger.

With anemic growth in America and Europe, the Japanese economy comatose, and emerging markets (including China) pulling in their reins, the vicious cycle could become worldwide. If global demand for goods and services continues to fall behind the potential supply we’ll see unemployment rise further and growth slow even more — especially in Europe and the U.S.

Central banks may try to reverse this course. Ben Bernanke and company at the Fed have committed themselves to near-zero interest rates for the next two years (not exactly a rousing endorsement of America’s economic prospects in the near term). Given the sharp slowdown in Germany, the European Central Bank might now feel some pressure to lower interest rates there – or at least delay the next increase.

But when growth is slowing so dramatically and unemployment is already high, monetary policy can’t possibly do it alone.

Without an expansionary fiscal policy, low interest rates have little effect. Companies won’t borrow in order to expand and hire more workers unless they have reasonable certainty they’ll have customers for what they produce. And consumers won’t borrow money to spend on goods and services unless they’re reasonably confident they’ll have jobs.

Fiscal austerity is the wrong medicine at the wrong time.

Forecast: Spain's protests to 'go global'

May 27, 2011
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/05/27/Forecast-Spains-protests-to-go-global/UPI-81871306528540

KINGSTON, N.Y. (UPI) -- Growing unrest in Spain will spread throughout Europe this summer and "go global" by winter, a U.S. trends forecaster said in an interview posted Friday.

"Young people have wised up. They know the score," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente told King World News. "Those are the people that are ahead of all of these revolutions."

Inspired by the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests taking place in the Middle East and North Africa, tens of thousands of young Spaniards, expressing distress over 45 percent youth unemployment and severe government-imposed austerity measures, have taken over central squares in 60 cities -- including Madrid's busy Puerta del Sol -- seeking to overhaul Spain's socioeconomic and political systems, which they allege favor special interests, especially financial institutions.

Like the so-called Arab Spring, the growing Spanish movements are spread via social media networks and led in the streets by the young.

And "they're not leaving the streets," Celente told King World News, because "when you lose everything and have nothing left to lose, you lose it."

"These revolutions are going to spread through the summer in Europe, and by the winter it's going to go global," he said.

A French youth-led group plans a large demonstration in Paris this weekend in solidarity with Spain's protesters, known as "los indignados," or "the outraged." The French protest would follow Friday's close of the Group of Eight summit of world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, in the French seaside resort town of Deauville.

Another Spanish-style uprising could emerge in neighboring Portugal next week, ahead of a June 5 snap election, The New York Times said.

Celente said Europe's Internet-savvy youth are "getting everyone out to join them because they know now that if they don't fight against the machine, the machine is going to grind them up."

Democracy for EU Prez?

Prez election in Europe are getting interesting too:
The European Parliament took a first step on Tuesday towards half a billion Europeans directly electing the EU president, with a vote to introduce a second ballot from which the leader would emerge.

The parliament's constitutional affairs committee wants voters to pick 25 super MEPs from an EU-wide list of candidates

Come its next elections in 2014, the parliament's constitutional affairs committee wants voters across the 27 European Union states to pick 751 constituency MEPs in essentially national contests, but now also 25 super MEPs from an EU-wide list of candidates.

The bill's sponsor, Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, told AFP on Tuesday that his plans are based in no small part on experience in Scotland, where a second, regional list effectively decides the identity of its head of government...

First step towards 'directly elected EU president'
19 Apr 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8461420/First-step-towards-directly-elected-EU-president.html

Why French unions don't want to wait until 62 to retire

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0923/Why-French-unions-don-t-want-to-wait-until-62-to-retire

Why French unions don't want to wait until 62 to retire
French unions rallied again in protest of President Sarkozy's proposal to increase the minimum retirement age to 62.
Anita Elash, Contributor / September 23, 2010

French workers took to the streets today for the second time this month in a massive and colorful protest against the government’s plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62.

In Paris, tens of thousands of demonstrators of all ages wound their way through the city center singing protest hymns and waving banners that bore slogans such as “Prisoners of work” and “Time to retire Sarkozy, racist,” in a reference to the controversy over Roma expulsions. There were similar marches in towns and cities across France, and in major centers the strikes created havoc for travelers. About 50 percent of national and regional trains and flights at French airports were cancelled.

Organizers considered the protest crucial in their fight against the pension reform, but it was unclear who won this round. Unions said the turnout was even higher than demonstrations earlier in the month, when between 1 million and 3 million people protested, but police estimates put it much lower and a statement from the Elysée presidential palace said that showed the French are ready to put the debate behind them.

But many workers say they’re prepared to stay the course, in spite of perceptions that they are simply too lazy to accept what would still be the lowest retirement age in Europe.

Two years too many, workers say

Jean-Pierre Lesouef, an electronics manager at the transportation giant Thalys, says he has already worked for 37 years and is too tired to work into his 60s.

“I’ve had enough,” he says. “When you’re at my age and you’ve worked as long as I have, you see if you want to work another two years.”

Some experts say complaints like Mr. Lesouef’s go a long way toward explaining why the proposal to add an extra two years to French working life has caused so much upset.

Why French workers might not be the happiest

Annual studies for the European Commission looking at attitudes toward work show the French, along with the Italians and the Spanish, are among the unhappiest workers on the continent.

Henri Sterdyniak, an economist at the Paris-based Centre for Economic Research, blames a hierarchical work structure within French companies that rarely allows room for professional development or promotions. Performance reviews are rare and negotiations on working conditions or career paths practically are scarce.

“The French model dictates that if you have a certain diploma you will have a certain career, and if you don’t you will never climb the ladder,” he says. “The worker at the bottom feels like he is constantly squeezed and never consulted. By the end of his career he is exhausted and uninterested, so it’s no wonder he wants to leave.”

Worker satisfaction has also dropped since the 37-hour workweek was introduced, because most people are forced to do the same tasks but in less time, Mr. Sterdyniak says.

What about pension benefits?

Workers like Daniel Quittot, an air conditioning technician, say they’re concerned they will be forced out of their jobs and unable to find new work well before they turn 62. “I’m afraid that if the retirement age goes up, I’ll have two extra years on unemployment and in the end I won’t have worked long enough to collect my full pension,” he says.

Sterdyniak says Mr. Quittot has legitimate fears. Surveys show that unemployment among French workers over 55 rose dramatically when the retirement age was reduced to 60 from 65 in 1983 and is now among the highest in Europe. Although many want to work up to 60, French employers are on average forced out of their jobs at 58.

“There is a real problem of age discrimination right now in France,” says Sterdyniak. “Unless that changes with the pension reform, we are going to create a whole new problem of unemployment.”

Will German Austerity Help or Hurt the Global Recovery?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1995113,00.html

Will German Austerity Help or Hurt the Global Recovery?
By Tristana Moore / Berlin Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2010

Announcing a tough austerity plan when your government's popularity has hit rock bottom is a high-risk strategy, but Germany's Chancellor seems ready to ride out the storm of protest. Even as trade unions warned of a summer of unrest, Angela Merkel put on a brave face when she announced the biggest round of spending cuts since World War II on Monday afternoon. "These are serious times, these are difficult times. We can't afford everything that we want if we also want to look after our future," Merkel told reporters in Berlin after her coalition government hammered out a framework deal to bring down Germany's swollen public debt.

The austerity plan is ambitious — the aim is to save up to $95 billion by 2014 through a combination of deep spending cuts and revenue-raising measures. The savings include controversial cuts to welfare payments for the long-term unemployed and reductions in parental allowance for families. Merkel tried to head off critics by pointing out that the plan was fair because it included cuts to industry and the public sector. Under the plan, 10,000 civil servants working for federal ministries would lose their jobs; 40,000 jobs would be cut in the armed forces; there would be a new "ecological levy" on air travel; a tax would be imposed on the nuclear power industry; and, from 2012 on, there would be a tax on financial transactions. Even prestige building projects have been put on ice: the German government has postponed plans to build a replica of Berlin's former Prussian palace.

"We've lived beyond our means over the past few years," Guido Westerwelle, Vice Chancellor and leader of Merkel's coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), bluntly told a news conference on Monday. As a concession to the FDP, which campaigned on a tax-cutting platform in last September's election, Merkel said there would be no hike in income tax and no increase in sales tax, while spending on education and research would be protected. "The last few months have shown — in connection with the crisis in Greece and the euro zone — how crucial solid finances are, and they are the precondition for being able to live in stability and prosperity," said Merkel.

Some economists welcomed the fact that the government steered clear of tax hikes; others said the round of spending cuts was too severe and could stall Germany's fragile economic recovery. "The government should have postponed the cuts until the economy is really back on its feet again," Gustav Horn, director of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Düsseldorf, told TIME. He said the austerity plan was "piecemeal," made up of "real cuts in the social security system but halfhearted cuts to business," and pointed out that the financial-market-transaction tax was conditional on other countries' adopting it. "Chancellor Merkel could have introduced a tax on the wealthy and tougher measures against the banking sector — that would have made a difference," said Horn. Germany's focus on deficit reduction could end up affecting the global recovery. There is also concern that German cutbacks may hobble the feeble global recovery. At a meeting of G-20 finance ministers in South Korea on June 5, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for "stronger domestic demand growth" in European countries like Germany and in Japan. As his European counterparts urged speedy implementation of austerity programs, Geithner reportedly counseled reform "in the medium-term."

Still, as Europe's biggest economy, Germany is hoping to set an example of budget discipline for other countries so they in turn will also tighten their belts. Greece, Portugal and Spain have already announced crippling austerity plans — while Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of "decades of pain" to rein in the U.K.'s massive budget deficit. Although Germany's public finances are in better shape than those of other countries in the European Union, Berlin's budget deficit reached 3.1% of GDP in 2009, and it's expected to exceed 5% of GDP later this year, which would be in breach of the 3% deficit limit set by the E.U.'s rules.

On top of that, Germany has a constitutional limit on borrowing — a "debt brake" — which obliges the government to scale back borrowing over the next few years. "We have a result which will enable us to meet the limit on borrowing in this legislative session," said Wolfgang Schaeuble on the sidelines of the meeting of euro-zone finance ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, claiming there was a "very reasonable [social] balance."

Merkel may have to pay a heavy political price in her backyard. Trade unions, welfare groups and opposition parties slammed the austerity plan as "socially unjust" and threatened to fight the measures when they go through Parliament. "The jobless will bear the brunt of virtually half of these spending cuts," said the head of the Social Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel. The Left Party accused Merkel's government of making the jobless, pensioners and families pay for the "reckless gambling" of bankers. "This is an attack on social peace and democracy," said Gregor Gysi, head of the Left Party's parliamentary group, urging Germans to take to the streets.

Already, union leaders are planning a nationwide day of protest with a series of demonstrations in major German cities on June 12. "The government is punishing the weakest in society," Frank Bsirske, head of Germany's public-sector union Verdi, told reporters on Monday, warning that the savings would lead to a spike in unemployment. The German press was also baying for blood, with tabloid paper the Berliner Kurier branding the austerity plan as a "list of horrors" and claiming that every German would have to fork out $1,200 to pay for the cutbacks. The government has "ruined the summer" screamed the left-leaning paper Die Tageszeitung on its front page. Even the conservative daily Die Welt was skeptical that the measures would be able to restore public finances in the long-term. "The poorest of the poor seem to be worst off in the austerity drive, and this will give plenty of ammunition to opposition parties — they'll fight these measures tooth and nail," Uwe Jun, professor of political science at the University of Trier, told TIME. And with members of the social wing of Merkel's conservative party criticizing the austerity drive, Jun predicts "yet more splits in the coalition government."

Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126306293
Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure
Ulle Noodapera is a pharmacist at Town Hall Pharmacy, which first opened for business in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1422. It's famous for selling aphrodisiacs — but even more famous for a piece of almond candy that allegedly cures those who are lovestruck.
David Greene
April 28, 2010

At an international summit, leaders often have time to get out and explore. But the NATO foreign ministers who met in the former Soviet state of Estonia last week were running behind schedule because of the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe. They were happy to have made it at all.

"The only regret I have is that I had to spend all my time in meetings, instead of enjoying Tallinn once again," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to Estonia's small capital on the Baltic Sea.

I escaped the meetings long enough to look around — and I'm happy the foreign ministers didn't.

Surely, they would have stopped at a major attraction in the town's cobblestone square — the Raeapteek, or Town Hall Pharmacy.
The Town Hall Pharmacy in Estonia's capital may be Europe's oldest continuously operating pharmacy.
My guide, local historian Juri Kuuskemaa, told me the place opened in 1422 and may well be Europe's longest continuously operating pharmacy. Legend has it that in the 18th century, a former owner, Dr. Johann Burchart V, nearly saved a Russian czar.

"When Peter the Great, Russian emperor, was dying and nobody could help him, he called Johann V," Kuuskemaa said.

But things didn't work out. The czar died before Burchart arrived.

The pharmacy is also legendary for its herbs, wine and medicines — and its love drugs.

"You can go to pharmacy and buy special materials, so-called aphrodisiacom, and when you give to her or her, it is fate. Both could do nothing against it. And lady would love you to the end of their lives," Kuuskemaa explained.

But that's not all. "When you have two or three wives, for example, and you see one is happy but two are unhappy, you can buy here special materials to give to these two unhappies and they forget you, and they could find happiness with another man, not with you," Kuuskemaa said. "So it stops the love. It is an anti-aphrodisiacom, yeah. So love could be regulated with drugs."

On display inside, readily available, was the pharmacy's famous anti-aphrodisiac. Each individually wrapped piece of candy is packed with the secret ingredient: almond powder. People struck by love use it to cure themselves.

"How long we have sold it? ... I think 500 years," said pharmacist Ulle Noodapera.

But Noodapera said visitors will also just come in and taste it — despite the risk. That's why I was worried about the foreign ministers dropping by.

Noodapera says she didn't see any of the world leaders partake of the anti-love confection.

Which is a good thing. The last place you'd want to kill the love is at a meeting of the NATO military alliance. Kuuskemaa agreed.

"Love has more power as rockets in the world and it is the main power of the world and for humanity, and this power really can protect us," he says. "Love. Not rockets."

E.U. weighs Olympic boycott over Tibet

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p04s01-woeu.html

from the March 27, 2008 edition
E.U. weighs Olympic boycott over Tibet
The European Union meets Friday to discuss ties to China after the unrest in Tibet.
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Paris

If the government of China hopes the world will go for its line on Tibet and the nefarious Dalai Lama and his purported "clique" – Europe isn't buying it.

The response to the Tibetan crisis in London, Paris, and Berlin, rather, is a call for "dialogue" between China and the exiled Tibetan leader, and"restraint" by Beijing.

A boycott of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games is being discussed as a leverage point in Austria, Belgium, Britain, and France – to be determined by how China handles the frustrations of its Tibetan minority.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has "left open the option" of boycotting the ceremony, Germany has blocked talks with China on economic development, and Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, says that Tibet demonstrations will be authorized as the Olympic torch is carried through London on April 6.

Prince Charles, a friend of the Dalai Lama, had already decided in January not to attend the opening ceremony, he said, in a letter to a human rights group.

Europeans have long had a fascination with and sympathy for the Himalayan region and its Buddhist spiritual traditions – and the Dalai Lama is a frequent visitor to the Continent.

This Friday, Europe's foreign ministers meet in Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, to adopt a common position on relations with Beijing and "the suffering of Tibet," as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner describes it.

The question in Slovenia is how to balance appreciation for the progress China has made with concern about the heavy handed tactics of an unelected government that has long eschewed any dialogue with those disagreeing with it. Most European states also have significant business interests in China.

While no European Union state is preparing to boycott the 2008 Games – "Let's not be more Tibetan than the Dalai Lama," who did not advocate boycott, says Mr. Kouchner – there is a general revulsion at the scenes out of Tibet, and at what is seen as an overheated Chinese propaganda effort to demonize the Dalai Lama and hold him responsible for violence.

In a clear rebuke to the Chinese position on Dalai Lama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to meet the spiritual leader in May, and the Dalai Lama was invited to speak at a conference in Nantes, France, during the games in August.

As the British Foreign Office issued a human rights report critical of China this week, Mr. Miliband said, "There needs to be mutual respect between all communities and sustained dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities."

On May 22, the Dalai Lama will give a speech at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

On Wednesday Robert Menard, general secretary of Reporters Sans Frontières in Paris, the journalistic watchdog group, stated that Mr. Sarkozy should boycott the opening if China does not release 30 political prisoners who are on the lists of nearly every human rights group, and if foreign correspondents are continued to be banned from working in Tibet.

Mr. Menard's group raced to unfurl a Tibetan flag at the opening ceremony of the games in Athens this week while a Chinese official was speaking – an act widely criticized in the journalistic community, which has depended on RSF to report on press violations.

Prior to the China-Tibet dissatisfaction in Europe, many protest groups here demanded that China stop its support of the Sudanese government, widely regarded as a main culprit in the starvation and chaos in Darfur. The phrase "Genocide Olympics" has been used in Europe among human rights groups to describe the twinning of the Games with China's policy toward Sudan.

Troubles in Brzezinski’s paradise?

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2910.shtml

Troubles in Brzezinski’s paradise?
By Umberto Pascali
Online Journal Guest Writer
Feb 4, 2008

“France's defence minister, Herve Morin, did not budge when Gates asked Paris for more troops.”[Feb. 1, Guardian Unlimited]

“[German defence minister Franz Josef] Jung responded in an equally strong manner, refusing to send the 3,200 troops to the south of Afghanistan that Gates requested to replace US troops” [Feb. 1, Guardian Unlimited]

Europeans refuse to join the new war deployment in Afghanistan that is the first step toward a planned global Operation Barbarossa against Russia.

To jump start such a countdown to war was the raison d’être for the frantic efforts by Zbigniew Brzezinski to impose his hand-picked candidate, Barack Obama, as the next US president. If the final assault against Russia is to have a realistic chance to succeed, the economic, military, propagandistic resources of Europe (especially France, Germany, Italy and Spain) must be put under Anglo-American control and totally integrated with the Anglo American war machine. Figurehead Obama is supposed to supply the ideological rhetoric and hysteria that could get the US public and the Europeans (plus large areas of the Third World), who are both sickened and disgusted by the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the train of total war

What it is to be expected now is a period of increasing pressures on Europe to give up, whether they manage to save of their sovereignty and integrate in the war machine. The situation resembles, mutatis mutandis, the period of the violent debate over the question of the euro missiles. At that time, Europe gave up. Now, however, the situation could be different. The Anglo-Americans do not have the influence and power they once could boast. Russia is led by realistic and skilled persons who know their surrender or defeat would mean Russia's partition and final looting. Russia and China are tied in an alliance based on the common understanding of the existential danger they face. And also, the Europeans could have learned something from the past 20 years.

If the economic and military potential of Europe is not available for the new global Operation Barbarossa, Brzezinski’s plan will fail. Brzezinski's attempt to again use the “Muslim card” (using Muslims populations and terrorists groups as cannon fodder for an upheaval directed against both Russia and China) or to use India will not be enough. Imminent events will make clear whether the Europeans will let themselves be intimidated and propagandistically stampeded into a war. It would not be surprising if new scandals, tiny veiled blackmails, “terrorist” provocations, artificially created internal clashes, and other “dirty tricks” will take over the front page of the media.

A series of events will constitute a litmus test for the chance of success of the Brzezinski plan:

The NATO meeting in Vilnius on February 7-8,

The concomitant detonation of the Kosovo Crisis,

The reactions to the pressures (that will continue) on the European governments,

The status of the Presidential campaign in the US. Will anybody point the spotlight at Brzezinski and his plan?

Later on, the April Summit of Nato in Bucharest.

The Manifesto calling for preemptive nuclear war was presented during the first half of January to both the Pentagon in Washington and to NATO's secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. As was reported recently by the media, five former NATO military leaders signed the unprecedented document: General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO's ex-supreme commander in Europe; General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of NATO's military committee; General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff; Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff; and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK.

Notes:

Germany Rejects U.S. Request for More Afghan Troops, Feb. 1, Bloomberg

US 'sternly requests' more German troops for Afghanistan, Feb. 1, Guardian Unlimited

5 Myths About Sick Old Europe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100501041.html

5 Myths About Sick Old Europe
By Steven Hill
Sunday, October 7, 2007; B03

In the global economy, today's winners can become tomorrow's losers in a twinkling, and vice versa. Not so long ago, American pundits and economic analysts were snidely touting U.S. economic superiority to the "sick old man" of Europe. What a difference a few months can make. Today, with the stock market jittery over Iraq, the mortgage crisis, huge budget and trade deficits, and declining growth in productivity, investors are wringing their hands about the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, analysts point to the roaring economies of China and India as the only bright spots on the global horizon.

But what about Europe? You may be surprised to learn how our estranged transatlantic partner has been faring during these roller-coaster times -- and how successfully it has been knocking down the Europessimist myths about it.

1. The sclerotic European economy is incapable of leading the world.

Who're you calling sclerotic? The European Union's $16 trillion economy has been quietly surging for some time and has emerged as the largest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the global economy. That's more than the U.S. economy (27 percent) or Japan's (9 percent). Despite all the hype, China is still an economic dwarf, accounting for less than 6 percent of the world's economy. India is smaller still.

The European economy was never as bad as the Europessimists made it out to be. From 2000 to 2005, when the much-heralded U.S. economic recovery was being fueled by easy credit and a speculative housing market, the 15 core nations of the European Union had per capita economic growth rates equal to that of the United States. In late 2006, they surpassed us. Europe added jobs at a faster rate, had a much lower budget deficit than the United States and is now posting higher productivity gains and a $3 billion trade surplus.

2. Nobody wants to invest in European companies and economies because lack of competitiveness makes them a poor bet.

Wrong again. Between 2000 and 2005, foreign direct investment in the E.U. 15 was almost half the global total, and investment returns in Europe outperformed those in the United States. "Old Europe is an investment magnet because it is the most lucrative market in the world in which to operate," says Dan O'Brien of the Economist. In fact, corporate America is a huge investor in Europe; U.S. companies' affiliates in the E.U. 15 showed profits of $85 billion in 2005, far more than in any other region of the world and 26 times more than the $3.3 billion they made in China.

And forget that old canard about economic competitiveness. According to the World Economic Forum's measure of national competitiveness, European countries took the top four spots, seven of the top 10 spots and 12 of the top 20 spots in 2006-07. The United States ranked sixth. India ranked 43rd and mainland China 54th.

3. Europe is the land of double-digit unemployment.

Not anymore. Half of the E.U. 15 nations have experienced effective full employment during this decade, and unemployment rates have been the same as or lower than the rate in the United States. Unemployment for the entire European Union, including the still-emerging nations of Central and Eastern Europe, stands at a historic low of 6.7 percent. Even France, at 8 percent, is at its lowest rate in 25 years.

That's still higher than U.S. unemployment, which is 4.6 percent, but let's not forget that many of the jobs created here pay low wages and include no benefits. In Europe, the jobless still have access to health care, generous replacement wages, job-retraining programs, housing subsidies and other benefits. In the United States, by contrast, the unemployed can end up destitute and marginalized.

4. The European "welfare state" hamstrings businesses and hurts the economy.

Beware of stereotypes based on ideological assumptions. As Europe's economy has surged, it has maintained fairness and equality. Unlike in the United States, with its rampant inequality and lack of universal access to affordable health care and higher education, Europeans have harnessed their economic engine to create wealth that is broadly distributed.

Europeans still enjoy universal cradle-to-grave social benefits in many areas. They get quality health care, paid parental leave, affordable childcare, paid sick leave, free or nearly free higher education, generous retirement pensions and quality mass transit. They have an average of five weeks of paid vacation (compared with two for Americans) and a shorter work week. In some European countries, workers put in one full day less per week than Americans do, yet enjoy the same standard of living.

Europe is more of a "workfare state" than a welfare state. As one British political analyst said to me recently: "Europe doesn't so much have a welfare society as a comprehensive system of institutions geared toward keeping everyone healthy and working." Properly understood, Europe's economy and social system are two halves of a well-designed "social capitalism" -- an ingenious framework in which the economy finances the social system to support families and employees in an age of globalized capitalism that threatens to turn us all into internationally disposable workers. Europeans' social system contributes to their prosperity, rather than detracting from it, and even the continent's conservative political leaders agree that it is the best way.

5. Europe is likely to be held hostage to its dependence on Russia and the Middle East for most of its energy needs.

Crystal-ball gazing on this front is risky. Europe may rely on energy from Russia and the Middle East for some time, but it is also leading the world in reducing its energy dependence and in taking action to counteract global climate change. In March, the heads of all 27 E.U. nations agreed to make renewable energy sources 20 percent of the union's energy mix by 2020 and to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent.

In pursuit of these goals, the continent's landscape is slowly being transformed by high-tech windmills, massive solar arrays, tidal power stations, hydrogen fuel cells and energy-saving "green" buildings. Europe has gone high- and low-tech: It's developing not only mass public transit and fuel-efficient vehicles but also thousands of kilometers of bicycle and pedestrian paths to be used by people of all ages. Europe's ecological "footprint," the amount of the Earth's capacity that a population consumes, is about half that of the United States.

So much for the sick old man.

hill@newamerica.net

Steven Hill, director of the New America Foundation's political reform program, is writing a book comparing Europe and the United States.

Europe set to lift ban on GM crops

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2011074.ece

From Times Online
July 1, 2007
Europe set to lift ban on GM crops

The European commission is about to give the go-ahead to the first commercially grown genetically modified crops since a public outcry nine years ago halted their cultivation, writes Jonathan Leake.

The commission has begun the final approval stages for at least four applications by biotech companies to let farmers grow GM potatoes and maize in British and European fields.

The first crop is expected to be given the go-ahead by the end of this month. “We hope that it will have been approved . . . so that it will be ready for planting next year,” said a spokesman for BASF, the German company that created the potato.

Such a move could reignite the pan-European backlash against GM crops of the late 1990s, which forced the European Union to impose an effective moratorium on the crops in 1998.

Since then no crops have been approved for cultivation, although permission has been given to import some varieties for animal feed.

However, it has now emerged that dossiers on another three crops, all modified forms of maize, are being prepared by the commission, which will recommend they be approved for cultivation.

They could be given the green light in time for next year’s planting season. Applications for other crops, including rapeseed, are in the pipeline.

The acceleration of the process for approving GM crops follows mounting pressure from the American government. It has accused the EU of blocking free trade and threatened to take Europe to the World Trade Organisation.

A commission spokesman said: “All the crops being recommended for approval have been scientifically assessed by the European Food Safety Authority. If the science supports the application we have no grounds for rejecting it.”

The GM potato produced by BASF has novel mixtures of starch and would be grown purely for industrial uses such as making paper, not human consumption.

Most of the other GM crops under consideration by the commission are, however, designed for food or animal feed and are not very different to those that sparked the original consumer backlash.