Editorial: Thirteenth of May 2011

The guilty roam free

The credit crisis which has been felt globally for the past few years still has the architects of this catastrophe rolling in the quids without a care in the world.

Many have wondered how this happened and why it was pre-empted as the professionals have continually feigned that it caught them unawares.

The investigations of a US Senate committee have yielded grounds for indictments to be brought against first Goldman Sachs for basically playing both the market and their clients in fanciful financial products whilst divest themselves of their liabilities and cajoling other institutions to buying up what they knew for sure was worthless.

Untying the Gordian knot

The Rolling Stones article lays out the case of The People versus Goldman Sachs in such fine detail with the use of useful vivid analogies that the layman would catch on to what an almighty confidence trick this was.

This was work that the regulators and the Department of Justice should have done but were both derelict in their duties and suborned into a dastardly evil capitalist enterprise that has robbed everyone blind and made the gangsters of banking otherwise known as “Banksters” the masters of the world.

Now that the case has been made and all the footwork done, one would hope the cajones exist in the boxers, briefs, jocks or I dare say panties of those who matter to visit the full force of the law on these people and they should not relent until every dime as been paid including interest.

The world would never forgive us if these banksters get away with the biggest highwayman’s looting of the bullion ever.

Roam to Rome

Schengen, a town in Luxembourg where in 1985 European countries agreed to relax border controls allowing free movement within European borders, it represented a kind of unity amongst Europeans between 22 states.

It has worked a treat for Europeans as a sign of integration and unity without the encumbrance of passport checks, inane questions at customs and every other inconvenience that pertains to traversing borders.

The Arab uprising on the Southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea has been a matter of concern already but the unrest in Libya has brought it to a head.

Apparently, Colonel Gaddafi, the besieged and buffeted leader of Libya is allowing the untrammelled flow of sub-Saharan Africans and others across the sea to Malta and Lampedusa in Italy creating panic on those islands along with the administrative and logistic nightmares of processing these asylum seekers.

Visas made wiser

With no one responding to Italy’s concerns about this influx, the Italians granted temporary visas to these aliens who under the Schengen agreement could cross borders to countries where they might feel more comfortable by reason of joining relations, being able to speak the language or recognising a country as a soft target.

That got France to sit up since a good deal of these aliens speak French and by the time you knew it, Gaddafi’s deftness had sown division amongst NATO allies on the immigration front as they try to enforce the no-fly zone in Libya.

Fresh blood for right-wing vampires

Then every little-minded country with their right-wing populist fear-mongering personality with their villager-visits-city mind-set stepped into the fray stoking angst and horror at the hordes invading their sacred lands of purity and superiority – time to race to the lowest common denominator.

Shut the gates, batten down the hatches, pull up the draw bridges, barricade the doors and let the rabid dogs roam to bite any that dare walk the streets.

Globalisation is going into decline and the nation state rises again just because the Arabs have awoken to the possibility of self-determination. What a strange world we live in.

Acknowledgements

The fantastic report about the Senate committee’s unravelling of Goldman Sachs’ con-job was published online by the Rolling Stones Magazine. Wikipedia has a webpage that explains the Schengen Area and the Schengen Agreement.

The Guardian announces the news of the furore that has erupted about the influx of aliens and the possible radical revision of Schengen.