Efraim Zuroff — One man's journey to the heartland of fascism

Hostility to minorities and attempts to rewrite Holocaust history in Baltics - but no one cares, except Russia

i24 News (Tel Aviv) — Opinion
One man's journey to the heartland of fascism
Efraim Zuroff | chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office

Having Committed to Adopting the Euro Currency, Lithuania's Constitutional Court Simply Declares That "anti-european" Efforts Are Unconstitutional

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




Read the announcement here.

REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA 

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT 

PRESS RELEASE   

On 2014, 24 January 

Amendment of 125 Article of the Constitution is incompatible with Constitution

[By the way, amendments to the Constitution which alter the Constitutional decision to join the EEU [and adopt the euro] are [so far] deemed unconstitutional - unless  paired with termination of EEU membership.]

Information about the LCC is given in English here, but it is not up to date.

So "anti-euro" dissent is unconstitutional, and therefore preempted? Do they even recognize how nonsensical that is? What's next? Thinking is unconstitutional? How about feeling?

Heck, maybe even receiving net wages-minus-taxes for labor will soon be unConstitutional too? Only euro-denominated capital will be allowed to keep a profit?  Where? In Sherwood Forest, guarded by a "reformed" Robin "Control-Fraud" Hood?

Someday, only silent serfdom will be legal?

Most readers will have to rely upon translation services to read the Lithuanian document. I'm told by sources in Lithuania that Google-translate leaves a LOT to be desired - at least when translating from Lithuanian to English.

For now, I'm trusting the interpretation received from Vytautas Vakrina in Vilnius - who agrees that the existing Lithuanian Constitutional Court decision constitutes an oxymoron. They're essentially saying that the original wording of some Constitutional clauses precluded Lithuanian citizens from changing said clauses.

Vytautas says: 

"The main [opinion of the Courts] is [the] impossibility to dispute any Lithuanian euro-obligations without leaving the European Union first."

Good luck with that argument!

Sounds like the key intent of the original Constitutional wording was guaranteed income for lawyers? Especially Lithuanian lawyers who had bet heavily on Lithuania adopting the euro, and enacting crippling austerity and depression?

Why should said Lithuanian Lawyers care? They're off to their quid pro quo jobs at the European Parliament, or at the European Central Bank.

Who says that Control Fraud doesn't exist? It does, and it works, wherever a foolish population and it's fiat are being separated.

ps: Rumor is that writing of key sections of the Lithuanian Constitution was outsourced to a mysterious woman named TINA, who resides in Brussels.

Olli Rehn Hates Lithuania, And Wants To Make Them Suffer

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Lithuania must show sustainable public finances to adopt euro: EC

"Lithuania still needs to show that its public sector deficit, one of the euro adoption criteria, did not exceed the threshold of 3 percent of GDP in 2013."

Lithuania's Finance Minister is Rimantas Sadzius.

Is Sadzius Lithuanian for "sadist?"

"Lithuania's fiscal discipline law requires the government to cut the deficit by 1 percentage point each year until it achieves a balanced budget, now expected in 2016."

You can't make this up. They're going to grow by reducing liquidity until a organically growing nation can "grow" by maintaining zero net change in liquidity? How, with a straight face, can they tell citizens that needed transactions cannot occur, because the country has run out of numerals to denominate the transactions with?

Neuter the fiat, Batman! That's what it means to "balance" their entirely nominal budget. They're saying that there can be no more Public Initiative than the previous year. Good luck with that. No wonder the main form of Public Initiative has become citizens expressing rebel initiative, and simply leaving the country!

Let me guess. All math classes will be required to use no more numerals every year, than they did in previous years? Anyone caught calculating beyond those limits will be ... what, thrown into a fiat purgatory?

"Its national currency, the litas, has been pegged to euro at a fixed rate since 2002."

Whatever. All the damage has already been done. They're just waiting for the official, cultural death certificate. Ollie Rehn is the cultural coroner? Cause of cultural death, "Death by fiscal starvation." Apparently, that's not technically illegal in NeoLiberall LaLa Land.

We're right back to Erble Logicians trying to run an Erble Economy. Good luck with that.

Weep for Lithuania - They're About To Be Owned!

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Their favorite politician doesn't see the truck coming around the same track - for the 11th year running! Worse, one of her employers is driving it!

Lithuanian President "Dalia Grybauskaite": [We Love the euro-zone, and cant Wait to Sell Out Our Country Altogether!]

Wow! Which "we" is she referring to? Her interview is simply chock full of over simplifications and outright misrepresentations.

With politicians like that, who needs Innocent Frauds, or even outright traitors?

Banksters don't even have to steal the country's resources and labor, or buy them on the cheap. Lithuania is actively giving their freedoms away - so long as the thiefs are not Russians. This is a sad end to 1000 years of history.

First they fought. Then they were finally forced - at the point of a sword - to cede their souls to the Catholic Church. Then they were subsequently conquered by Danes, Germans, Swedes and Russians, in various sequences. Then they finally regained their freedom .... and their "leaders" are now are desperately looking for someone else to give it to - ASAP? What's the hurry? Can the kickback for madame President and her cronies really be worth it? How do  you say "Control Fraud" in Lithuanian? Valdymo Sukčiavimu? (Hope that translates.)

Not surprisingly, the trajectory of this particular politician, is entirely predictable.

She was reportedly European Commissioner for Financial Programming and the Budget from 2004 to 2009, and is in line to take an even higher EEU position after her first term as Lithuanian president. [Surely no one could have predicted THAT! :( Is her code name "Agent Smith?"]

At least there is some remaining resistance within Lithuania.* Will it be too little or too late for an electorate still digesting the threat of Vladimer Putin? Will the youth of Lithuania fight for what is theirs ... or calculate that it's easier to just emigrate, as they've been doing in record numbers? Seems a shame to let banksters export citizens like commandeered bread, exactly when the country is starving itself of talent and forgoing it's own options, just to pad the pockets of a few elites.

* Sane people worldwide who want to urge Lithuanians to NOT cede sovereignty to the ECB are free to add their names to this ongoing list. Surely many emigres might want to wade in?

Vytautas Vakrina Launches an "MMT Search Engine"

Commentary by Roger Erickson

See the budding MMT Search Engine

If your MMT blog is not listed, see what's missing to make it "searchable" by a web crawler, and then send your suggestions re newly emerging MMT blogs directly to Vytautas, who lives in Vilnius, apparently as the sole MMT scholar in all of Lithuania - population 3 million.

Any MMT people traveling to Lithuania, please be sure to look up Vytautas, and help him educate his fellow citizens about expanding policy space for their country, and about increasing policy agility.

Du går Litauen!

Lithuanians Already Declaring a Failed State

Commentary by Roger Erickson
   (hat tip Vytautas Vakrina)

Failed state

(The following is verbatim, via Google Translation, from the original Lithuanian.)

There are days when I do not want to wake up in the morning, and not because it's cold, that did not come spring, but because they wake up to the reality, which is not yet formally called Lithuania, go out into the street to watch their countrymen in the eye and smile is just a shame.

It felt nasty after January 13th storming of the night later - last year on May 17 in the morning and now. On the 14th morning kukčiojau curled in bed, but not with shame, but just from the physical maudulio and despair that the invader again robbed us again occupied and that our hope of independence seemed to be postponed for many years, maybe forever. After the coup, the recognition of the Soviet military withdrawal and a lot lighter illusions that the crane of Bronze Lenin Square Lukiskes she pulled forever. Eventually the mist began to dissipate illusions when your daily life started to see more and more sovietizmo characters. I loved to joke that Lukiskes Square had to leave the pedestal of Lenin with legs torn off, to remind, that he never left. Remained loyal army of prosecutors, judges, KGBists and their descendants, functionaries, persidažiusių communists and fighters sušokusių to manage systemic forever inbox parties remained crippled serfs, sycophants caste primintom uodegom and disappointing that we naively believed them.

This is what is happening in the State is no longer any quiet creeping coup, and the surest state of collapse, and this is not some paranoid hyperbole. When redialing a legal no man's government removed her shoes in the nation's elected parliament, and the parliament is trying to clean his shoes in the nation, playing that nothing extraordinary happens, I want a wolf howl Tombovo voice. The sad fact is that only a mask and remains, because the public no longer has any power tool before operating on behalf of a cynical mob. Polls family shows that are not in the highest state authority or position, still less opposition. The newly elected Seimas curved Slave began to join the "loyalty oath" group, whose founders, it seems, did not the system, and they despise the people, fighting with law enforcement arbitrariness and SSI - Vitaly Influence Paul Urbšys. Decent people who made them hopeful, but voting in the Parliament for the Neringa Venckienė the indemnity withdrawal, they buried all hope and confidence that "loyalty oath" group. In fact, N. Venckienė here had nothing to do at all. It has some of whom might like or dislike. The vote was not at all on N. Venckienė, while the Attorney General mockery of parliamentary and constitutional framework, which explicitly stated that it is not the SSD and not the Attorney General Darius clean is the highest Lithuanian government. The fifth article of the Constitution without reservation said, "in Lithuania, the Seimas, the President of the Republic and the Government, and the Judiciary."

In an interview P. portal Bernardinai.lt Urbšys said:

"This family appeared parliamentary group for the loyalty oath, which involved 10 parliamentarians from several parliamentary groups, but, I believe, in the future it will become more and really influential because I feel that not only the people beyond the borders of Parliament, but the majority of MPs unhappy in what is now turned into the most important political institutions. True, I would like to point out that when we talk about oath to the state, can not be confined to members of Parliament. President, Prime Minister, ministers and representatives of other institutions take an oath to the state. So, people who are bound by an oath, there are quite a lot and I have no doubt if they have much more seriously begin to understand every word of his oath, if honor, decency, they would become the backbone of the daily work, I am convinced that the country is very much started to change. However, I realize that here we have a long and difficult road."

I have to remind the oath:

I, (name),
I swear to be faithful to the Republic of Lithuania;
I swear to respect and observe the Constitution and laws & protect the integrity of its lands;
I swear to do everything possible to strengthen Lithuanian independence, integrity, serve the motherland, democracy, & Lithuanian people's well-being.
   So help me God!

Allowed to take the oath and without the last sentence.

That is, the Anti-Corruption Commission President Vitaly Gail and St. Paul Deputy Urbs. Sadly, too heavy for the exam.