German industrial production posts another rise

BERLIN (AP) — Government data show that German industrial production grew for the fourth consecutive month in February, underlining expectations of a pickup in Europe's biggest economy.

The Economy Ministry said Monday that production rose 0.4 percent compared with the previous month and it expects figures for the full first quarter to be "appreciably above" Germany's performance in last year's fourth quarter. In year-on-year terms, production was up 4.8 percent in February.

Germany's order pipeline also is in good shape. Data released last week showed that industrial orders were up 0.6 percent on the month in February.

The government's panel of independent economic advisers last month raised its 2014 growth forecast for Germany to 1.9 percent from 1.6 percent. Last year, the economy grew by only 0.4 percent.

Careless Money: US State Dept's $6bn black hole .

Missing MH370 ‘purposely’ flew around Indonesia airspace to avoid radar detection, Malaysia official says

If the New York Stock Exchange is a “High-Frequency Brothel” then the SEC is its Pimp

By Pam Martens: April 7, 2014

New York Stock Exchange

The fallout from the new book, “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis continues. Yesterday, Jonathon Trugman wrote in the New York Post that “These traders who use the HOV lane to get ahead of investors could not do their trades without the full knowledge and complicity of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.”
Trubman went on to compare the two best known stock exchanges in the U.S. to houses of ill repute, writing: “What is clearly unfair and unethical — and, frankly, ought to be outlawed — is how the exchanges have essentially taken on the role of running a high-priced, high-frequency brothel…”
While it’s true that the New York Post might possibly overuse sexual analogies (on August 10, 2011 it ran a front page cover comparing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a “hooker’s drawers”), in this instance Trugman is spot on.
Not only are the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq allowing high frequency traders to co-locate their computers next to the main computers of the exchanges to gain a speed advantage over other customers at a monthly cost that only the very rich can afford to pay but they’re now tacking on infrastructure charges that price everyone out of efficient use of the exchanges except the very top tier of trading firms.
Lewis writes in “Flash Boys” that “both Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange announced that they had widened the pipe that carried information between the HFT [high frequency trading] computers and each exchange’s matching engine. The price for the new pipe was $40,000 a month, up from the $25,000 a month the HFT firms had been paying for the old, smaller pipe.”
By late 2011, according to Lewis, “more than two-thirds of Nasdaq’s revenues derived, one way or another, from high-frequency trading firms.”
And we’ll take Trugman’s analogy one step further: the cops on the beat who have had their palms greased to turn a blind eye to the brothels are drinking their coffee and gobbling their donuts at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lewis writes in “Flash Boys” that the Royal Bank of Canada conducted a study in which they “found that more than two hundred SEC staffers since 2007 had left government jobs to work for high-frequency trading firms or the firms that lobbied Washington on their behalf.”
Lewis says that some of these same staffers had played key roles in deciding whether to regulate high frequency trading, specifically citing Elizabeth King, who quit the SEC to work for Getco, one of the largest high frequency traders. Says Lewis: “The SEC, like the public stock exchanges, had a kind of equity stake in the future revenues of high-frequency traders.”
There is good reason for the growing outrage. Not only is one of Wall Street’s former top lawyers, Mary Jo White, heading up the SEC but the Federal agency is flagrantly ignoring the law that created the SEC and its statutory mandate to maintain a non-discriminatory playing field at the stock exchanges.
Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the SEC was created to rein in Wall Street’s fleecing of the American public and the excesses that led to the 1929 crash. Under the legislation, the SEC is specifically charged with policing the stock exchanges. Section 6 of the Act mandates that the SEC must ensure that exchanges maintain “the equitable allocation of reasonable…fees, and other charges among its members and issuers and other persons using its facilities.” The same section requires “just and equitable principles of trade,” the removal of impediments to a “free and open market” and specifically states that an exchange shall not “permit unfair discrimination between customers.”
The SEC already has existing law to prosecute these flagrant abuses. It has simply chosen to look the other way at high frequency trading scams. And, despite, what Vanguard founder Jack Bogle says, the little guy is getting seriously harmed by these practices. Not only is the average American’s public pension fund and mutual funds in their 401(k) getting ripped off, but small-time stock investors have suffered egregiously from intraday crashes and “glitches” caused by high speed trading. Even the age-old, simple technique called a “stop-loss order” used by small investors across America to protect their profits in a stock can no longer be trusted in this high frequency-ruled world of Wall Street.
On May 6, 2010, the stock market briefly plunged 998 points with hundreds of stocks momentarily losing 60 per cent or more of their value, then reversing course and recouping most losses. The event became known as the “Flash Crash.” The Chair of the SEC at that time, Mary Schapiro, told the Economic Club of New York that “A staggering total of more than $2 billion in individual investor stop loss orders is estimated to have been triggered during the half hour between 2:30 and 3 p.m. on May 6. As a hypothetical illustration, if each of those orders were executed at a very conservative estimate of 10 per cent less than the closing price, then those individual investors suffered losses of more than $200 million compared to the closing price on that day.”
The flash crash report from regulators that was issued in September 2010 was itself a cover-up of a broken stock exchange system. The report said that “Detailed analysis of trade and order data revealed that one large internalizer (as a seller) and one large market maker (as a buyer) were party to over 50 per cent of the share volume of broken trades, and for more than half of this volume they were counterparties to each other (i.e., 25 per cent of the broken trade share volume was between this particular seller and buyer).” But the report failed to identify these culprits.
Wall Street On Parade filed a Freedom of Information Act request at the time with the SEC for the names of these firms. The SEC refused to provide that information.
The reference in Schapiro’s statement to an “internalizer” highlights another flagrant abuse of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC is sitting idly by allowing the Too-Big-To-Fail banks run unregulated stock exchanges called “Dark Pools” inside their securities divisions. According to Lewis, “Collectively, the banks had managed to move 38 percent of the entire U.S. stock market now traded inside their dark pools…”
Dark pools are sucking transparency out of the stock market and seriously calling into question the credibility of stock prices. Dark pools match buy and sell orders in the dark and delay making the trade known to the public and stock exchanges until after the trade is transacted in secrecy. Some of the largest dark pools are Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder; Morgan Stanley’s MS Pool, and Citigroup’s Citi Match.
Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 “the term ‘exchange’ means any organization, association, or group of persons, whether incorporated or unincorporated, which constitutes, maintains, or provides a market place or facilities for bringing together purchasers and sellers of securities…” Section 5 also clarifies that it is “unlawful” for any broker, dealer “to effect any transaction in a security” unless it is registered as an exchange or has received an exemption “by reason of limited volume….”
There is nothing small potatoes about dark pools controlling 38 percent of the U.S. stock market. What has very likely happened here is that by moving so much stock trading away from the regulated exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, the big banks’ dark pools have forced the traditional exchanges to succumb to unseemly revenue sources to survive.
Exactly 82 years ago this week, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee hauled Richard Whitney, President of the New York Stock Exchange, before a hearing to begin a forensic two-year investigation of the Wall Street stock brothels that had collapsed under their own corruption, crashed the U.S. economy and ushered in the Great Depression. This time around, we’ve had no such forensic examination of stock exchange practices since the Wall Street crash of 2008.
For the entire past week, newspapers and television have blasted the news around the globe that U.S. stock markets are rigged. By writing in the New York Times Magazine, appearing on 60 Minutes, Meet the Press, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and giving out dozens of newspaper interviews, Michael Lewis has done what the SEC and Congress have failed miserably in achieving. He has reached critical mass in delivering a public mandate for change. It’s now time for serious, comprehensive Congressional hearings to begin. Hiding from the truth will not restore trust in our markets.

The Deindustrialization of America

The trade deficit is one of the biggest reasons for the decline of the U.S. economy…

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-deindustrialization-of-america/#y70ZzDwD5Q4w48OI.99

UK companies succumb to tech bubble fears

Internet retailers and computing giants see shares fall as fears over growth stocks infect the City

The dotcom bubble burst in 2000 Photo: BARCROFT MEDIA

 

 

Fears that a second dotcom bubble is about to burst triggered a global sell-off of technology shares on Monday, with the values of internet companies on both sides of the Atlantic falling.

Online retailers and technology hardware makers lost billions off their stock market values as fears of overblown expectations in America spread to Britain and Asia. Wall Street traders, who have pushed internet companies’ shares up to highs not seen since the peak of the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century, have fretted that their growth prospects do not justify their exuberant valuations.

On Monday, stocks in Facebook and Twitter followed falls seen by British technology and internet companies. Shares in Asos, the Aim-listed internet fashion retailer, lost as much as 9.3pc while the grocery delivery business Ocado, the Cambridge-based microchip designer ARM Holdings, and the online estate agent Rightmove all saw substanial declines. Ocado fell 6.7pc, Rightmove 3.1pc, and ARM Holdings 2.4pc.

The losses weighed on the wider market, with the FTSE 100 off 1.1pc, its biggest one-day fall for a month, and the FTSE 250 down 1pc.

Fears have been brewing amid feverish demand for technology flotations in recent months, with values often reliant on predictions of seismic growth rather than underlying business fundamentals. AO.com, the online white goods retailer, ended its first day with a market capitalisation more than 200 times its annual profits, while the internet takeaway business Just Eat and fashion website Boohoo.com have also attracted lofty prices.

In New York, the social network Twitter has seen valuations of as much as $40bn despite not predicting a profit until 2016. Shares in Facebook, the internet video company Netflix and the electric car manufacturer Tesla also soared last year. However, the four companies have lost between 15pc and 25pc of their values in the last month amid fears their growth predictions are overblown.
“In the technology sector, we have seen the valuation gap between high-growth and low-growth stocks widening over the last three or four years,” said Pierre Ferragu, an analyst at Bernstein. “This gap has been at all time highs and that sort of correction was due at some point.”
Earlier this year, New York’s technology-heavy Nasdaq index rose to its highest level since the dotcom bubble burst in mid-2000. At the time, hundreds of companies’ valuations plunged and others went bankrupt as the funding they had relied on dried up.
Poor sets of corporate results in recent months have put the brakes on growth predictions, said Ian Williams, a strategist at Peel Hunt.
“If you look at the bottom-up news it’s been pretty ropey really. Almost every month there’s been two or three of the main companies delivering negative earnings news and contract delays. It’s quite surprising that it’s held up as well as it has done,” he said.

5 Terrible Things I Learned as a Corporate Whistleblower

On November 30, 2009, Linda Almonte was escorted out of her office by security. (We know -- no big deal, it happens to you every time you slip needles into the NERF darts. Stupid nanny state.) The difference here is that Almonte did nothing wrong: She was an executive with JP Morgan Chase, and her only mistake was doing her job and blowing the whistle on her lawbreaking boss. For the last five years, her life has been a morass of lawsuits and private detectives. Here's what we learned:
The following article is based on a Cracked interview with Linda Almonte.

#5. You Can "Accidentally" Become a Whistleblower

Brand X Pictures/Stockbyte/Getty Images

I didn't start off in banking. I worked as a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt for GE, which has less to do with my martial arts prowess than the fact that deals I worked on had an error rate of less than 3.4 per million transactions (sorry, bank ninjas are a bit more boring than regular ninjas). In the early 2000s, a lot of major banks started recruiting GE's Six Sigma Certified employees because they liked what we'd done for GE. I was hired by Washington Mutual first, but eventually JP Morgan Chase brought me to manage a multibillion-dollar area of the credit card division.

Stan Honda / AFP / Getty
Now would be a good time to queue up "The Imperial March."

The trouble started when I picked out a problem. This was not a little problem, either: It was a blatantly illegal $250 million deal. I thought I was protecting the bank. A lot of my success over the years had been due to spotting this kind of thing and stopping it. In the past, that's how I'd climbed the ladder, and I didn't see why it would be different this time.
I was very wrong.

Adam Gault/Photodisc/Getty Images
Above: several hundred things that are apparently more important than the law.

When I pointed out that the deal was super illegal, their response was for me to just sign off on it and let it go through so they could post the earnings that year. If it caused a problem the following year, so be it. They had bonuses to earn now, and any potential prison terms were the future's problem -- and the future would probably have a way to deal with them (lasers or something, knowing how the future rolls).
So I did what I was supposed to do and pulled the sale from the market, because "lie about $250 million today" seemed like crime on a comic book-villain scale. They responded by firing my ass at top speed. A lot of what you see on TV right now about the collections industry as a whole being investigated by the FTC, OCC, SEC, CFPB, AGs, and DOJ started with the wrongful termination suit I filed in Texas against JP Morgan Chase.

Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com
And the government's elaborate wrist-slapping apparatus whirred into motion.

#4. Even if They're in the Wrong, They'll Still Hold You Accountable for Everything

Burke/Triolo Productions/Stockbyte/Getty

JP Morgan wanted to sell a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of debt to a debt buyer. I looked into it just a little and realized that most of these people had settled their debts, or their cases were dismissed by courts, or balances were outdated or inflated, and so on. This doesn't mean we'd have been screwing over the collections agencies, though. They didn't care if the debt info we gave them was out of date or incorrect, because the bank is in the clear either way: When they sell your personal information, they put "as is" at the top of the contract like it's the windshield of a crappy used car.

Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
This isn't called "robbery" for reasons that are hard to explain.

They were even happy to buy the accounts of people who had already been sued based on older paid debts or incorrectly inflated balances. Since most of these people were never informed they'd been sued in the first place, they'd keep on paying for months or years before realizing what had happened. So there's another thing for you to think about at night instead of sleeping: You may have lost a secret lawsuit and nobody told you. That, and cancer -- you probably have cancer. Come on, you know that mole isn't normal.

Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
"All right, nobody call the accused. He sounds like a busy guy."

The way it all shook out was that JP Morgan and friends agreed to pay $25 billion back in 2012 for all the bullshit in the mortgage settlement. State courts have sued them for billions more. The spotlight shown on their bad behavior also forced Chase to dismiss billions of dollars in phony debt as quickly as possible. This seems awesome from a "general sense of justice" point of view, but costing giant heartless corporations more money than the GDP of Paraguay means ...

#3. They Will Hunt You to the Ends of the Earth

Goodshoot/Goodshoot/Getty Images

In the first few weeks after the shitstorm broke, I was on the front page of the New York Times. In October of 2010, my house was transformed into a 60 Minutes set. It was a whirlwind of media that still hasn't stopped. The family really enjoyed our time working with 60 Minutes. We enjoyed the ensuing constant life-ruining surveillance substantially less.

Ryan McVay/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Whistleblowing is all the bad parts of fame, with none of the gold-plated jet skis.

At one point we wound up renting a house in Florida with an abandoned home right across the street (pretty normal in Florida, considering the number of foreclosures, alligator riots, and bath-salt zombies). The day after we moved in, some guy came to rent the empty house. He never moved any furniture, but suddenly a small forest of new antennas sprouted on the roof of the house. Isn't it good to know that, while your bank can't put you on the phone with a human being in under an hour, they can have PIs watching your house in less than a day?
Our house was broken into three times, once with me home. I guess they assumed that since all the cars were gone no one was there. I was in the garage doing laundry, then I walked into the kitchen and the guy from the empty house across the street was there. He looked around for a bit, then bent over and picked up my toy poodle and claimed he found her outside under his car. On the scale of lame improvised excuses for getting caught breaking into somebody's house, that's somewhere between yelling "Surprise! It's your birthday!" and "I'm you from the future."

Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"It turns out you were the banks all along!"

You get used to that kind of heavy surveillance, but you shouldn't. My elementary school-age daughter was leaving school one day and a teacher overheard her saying to one of her friends, "Oh God, I hope that van doesn't follow me home today." Being a responsible human adult, that teacher flipped out. I was in New York for a meeting and got a call -- but she was no longer concerned about the van. No, my daughter had very matter-of-factly explained that it was just Chase tailing her home and it was no big deal. The teacher found that terrifying: No 11-year-old's reaction to a freaking black van tailing her should be blase acceptance.
My mother had terminal cancer at the time all this started, and she wanted a big family gathering at Disney World. This was right before she entered hospice, so it was sort of our last hurrah together, and we couldn't go from ride to ride without PIs taking pictures of us. That's some seriously excessive, privacy-violating surveillance -- even for a Disney park.

Michael Blann/Photodisc/Getty Images
At least Disney's surveillance stops at the park.

It really bothered my mom, so finally I confronted them: "You are going to leave. You will NOT follow me around anymore while I am on vacation with my mother and family. You go back to Baker Botts and Chase and tell them I'm gonna make it REAL freaking easy for them to stalk me. From now on, everywhere I go, whatever I do, I'll post it on Facebook with my GPS location and a photo publicly online." I even snapped them a picture of my visitor badge when I stopped by the SEC to hand over all the information for our case. I kept my promise and still do to this day. Sure, you're probably going to be automatically enrolled in that program with the next Facebook update, whether you like it or not, but I was doing it before it was cool.

#2. You'll Never Work Again

Pixland/Pixland/Getty Images

I'm still unemployed now, five years later. I was even barred from receiving unemployment in Texas. I lost my house, my apartment -- right now I live off my dad's Social Security and VA disability. No place in the world is going to hire someone who got her former boss sued by the government and has cost them billions and climbing. That's right up there with "steals lunches from the employee fridge" on the list of deadly office sins. And even if they were willing to hire me, I'm continually testifying in front of that alphabet soup of agencies and attorneys general I mentioned earlier.

The Washington Post / Getty Images
Testifying is apparently so stressful that JP Morgan's CEO needs $20 million a year to cope with it.

"Sorry, I may have to miss work half the month, and I can't really tell you why right now" doesn't make a great impression on prospective employers: Their natural first assumptions are "spy" or "serious opium addict." In the space of a few years, I went from living in the nicest part of San Antonio and working as an executive with a good salary to living with my dad on food stamps. All because I told the truth and refused to commit hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud in one day. Whistleblowing means being "forever unemployable," while the people you blew the whistle on get promotions and massive bonuses. Google my name, and you're immediately aware of my legal history. Even the absolute laziest background check is going to find that out. Pretty much the best I can hope for is that Google will ask them if they meant "Del Monte" and maybe I'll be mistaken for a fruit cup magnate.
It ... hasn't happened yet.

#1. The Legal Battles Will Take Decades

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

I was the first person I know of to file as a whistleblower under the SEC's new Whistleblower Program under Dodd-Frank. So if the government ever does the right thing and prosecutes these people, I'll get 10 to 30 percent of the SEC fines. That sounds awesome, but we've been at this for five years now, and my lawyer says we have a minimum of five to seven years longer just testifying and subpoenaing between AG actions and upcoming class actions. A child was born at the start of this case, and it will live long enough to grow ungrateful and angsty before we ever see a dollar.

Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"The court will now adjourn until we can think up a new reason to adjourn."

My story isn't necessarily common. Sometimes it works out: The best possible outcome for someone like me is that of Bradley Birkenfeld. He blew the whistle on a massive income tax scam in 2005 and finally received his award in 2012. That was three years after his bank paid their fine. On the plus side, he made $104 million for his trouble. On the downside, it took seven years, and he spent two and half of those in prison for it. Rarely is "go directly to jail" the best case scenario.
The funniest thing is that I never went in search of an attorney to sue Chase, or anyone else. After it all went down, I would have moved on and started working at another bank, doing what I do best: not committing a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of fraud every day. They left me no choice but to file suit by taking pretty much everything else away. You don't think of banks and other corporations as being susceptible to petty human motivations like revenge.
But that's only because you don't know them well enough.

US COLLAPSE Critical Alert! Dollar Crash has Begun!

Britain Gains Renminbi Trading Deal
The Bank of England and the People’s Bank of China reached an agreement on Wednesday to allow the clearing and settlement of renminbi trades in London
China has just entered into a very large currency swap agreement with the eurozone that is considered a huge step toward establishing the yuan as a major world currency.
China’s gold demand tops 1,000 tonnes for first time

Sources:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/2…
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/ar…
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-…

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/us-collapse-critical-alert-dollar-crash-has-begun/#7JLZaMqtD2GyPKlI.99

Gold Price Manipulation – Jay Taylor Interview

In this episode, Andrew Duncan speaks with Jay Taylor about gold price manipulation, how China and silver might be linked, and alternative investments to gold.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/gold-price-manipulation-jay-taylor-interview/#bRpBp4MrsgP7Iq38.99

US/NATO imperialism is a threat to civilization - FM Živadin Jovanović

Photo: RIA Novosti

Today Europe is living with the consequences of unprecedented US/NATO aggression against the former Yugoslavia 15 years ago. The invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia, the first war in Europe since WWII, resolved nothing in the Balkans but created many new problems. The former Foreign Minister of Yugosalvia ŽivadinJovanović discussed these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia and stated that countries are increasingly becoming ready to fight back against the United States and its colonial attitudes and that it is time for all the forces of peace in the world to join together and stop US/NATO imperialist policies which are the single biggest threat to modern civilization.

Today Europe is living with the consequences of unprecedented US/NATO aggression against the former Yugoslavia 15 years ago. The invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia, the first war in Europe since WWII, resolved nothing in the Balkans but created many new problems. Most importantly it was precedent setting event and a blueprint for the following US/NATO aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Mali and other locations which have been the victims of US/NATO led endless war and aggression. These crimes against humanity have not been only military in nature but also clandestine, such as what we are seeing in Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela today. The West has had only objective: the domination of the world by the US/NATO and its surrogates.

PART 1

This is John Robles, I'm speaking with ŽivadinJovanović. He is the former Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia and the Chairman of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. This is part two of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com

Robles: Can I ask you now two questions? What is your opinion on the actions of the Russian government and in particular the Russian president Vladimir Putin? Do you think this historic moment is a turning point in the state of geopolitics in the world today?

Jovanović: Yes, indeed I believe so. If 1999 NATO/US led aggression against Yugoslavia was a turning point toward globalization of interventionism, toward militarization of European and international relations. It was a turning point in strategy of global domination of the West, then I think Ukrainian case and the Crimean referendum to reunite with Russia is another kind of turning point.

This I consider to be turning point towards multi-polar world relations, toward resisting the policy of domination of the West. It is to my belief a historically important turning point opening the hope for democratization of world relations opening the space for real respect of universal principals of international law and universal principal of international relations.

I would believe that this is a turning point toward a higher respect of universal organizations such as United Nations and toward respecting of the basic principles of UN Charter. And I think it is turning point toward abandoning the policy of double standards and disregard of the legitimate interests of other countries.

It is simply the beginning I think for the relieving Europe and the world of the threats of domination from one side only.

Robles: You mentioned sanctions, the rights of other countries, a few minutes ago you mentioned Al Qaeda. They were created by the US, the US is using them as their non-state army whenever they need them as their mercenary force. Al Qaeda is listed and they are sanctioned by the UN as being a terrorist organization. What is your opinion on other countries now sanctioning the US, for example: for Guantanamo, for aggressive war, for meddling into the affairs of Ukraine, for meddling into the affairs of Serbia, for redesigning the borders in Europe after WWII? I mean all of those things are illegal. What about sanctions on the US? Do you think there will be some time when countries might be calling for sanctions?

Jovanović: It is obvious that the US disrespects international law, that they disrespect international principles of international organizations. They take all those like tools to suit the interests of the US. The US is a big power but it is disregarding the interests of Europe, disregarding the interests of Russia and other big and responsible countries.

I think for the beginning we should discourage and put some limitations to expansionist policy and disregard of other countries’ interests on the part of the US.

It would be necessary to unite the countries and nations struggling for democratization of international relations, struggling against interventionism and against expansionist imperialist policy of NATO, EU, and the US. And certainly I think this should be requiring serious efforts on the part of wide international community, especially the countries like Russia, China, India, like countries of BRICS and so on.

I think Russia should do well to call upon BRICS countries and Shanghai Association countries to consider new situation brought about by expansionist policy of the US, NATO and EU. This is touching the interests of Russia right now, but from a principled point of view it is a policy questioning interests of the world community, it is the question whether we should enter an era of democratic international relations or we should be silent and accept a policy of expansion and a policy of domination.

Robles: Last two questions and then we are going to have to finish up. Can you give us your forecast on where you see the situation in Ukraine going? What do you think is going to happen withUkraine? Can you tell us about, you have a very important conference coming up on March, 24th, it is the Fifteenth Year Anniversary of the initial bombing of Yugoslavia that had begun I think most of this lawlessness and aggressive war? Tell us, please, about the conference that is coming up.

Jovanović: We all hope that a political solution will be found for the crisis in Ukraine. To have political solution I think NATO should abandon idea of forcing Ukraine to become a member of NATO. Ukraine should be treated as a country to make its own decisions and to be let alone from the Western interference, from the Western pressures and so on.

I believe that it is primarily in the interests of Europe including the EU to find out a modus vivendi with Russia and to accept substantial dialogue between Brussels and Moscow.

It is my strong belief that long term interests of Europe require stability of Brussels/Moscow relationship and it really requires more independent and pro-independent position and behavior of Europe. In this regard I would underline importance of dialogue between Moscow and Berlin which is certainly, as far as Germany is concerned, a leading EU country. And no doubt that among all European countries Germany has the greatest interest for stable relations with Russia. I think that it is possible.

Otherwise if Germany and EU pursue the policy of acting on behalf of the US interests I think it will be very bad not only for Ukraine but for Europe in general. And it would further lead to a profound long term European crisis.

I think there should be a lot of wisdom applied to avoid disintegration of Ukraine. It is one of perspectives, but that could be, I think, avoided by rational and principled policy without any threats or blackmails addressed to Moscow.

Moscow I don’t believe will bound to blackmailing from the West. It is certainly another type of power now than in 1999. Now about Ukraine, I would be a realist, it is very serious, it cannot be predicted with all certainty but certainly there is a possibility to find a political solution in the interests of stability of European continent. Nobody needs further destabilization and creation of situation of further arms race or disturbing development and profounding the socioeconomic crisis which is reigning in major parts of Europe.

As far as our conference is concerned, we have already mentioned, these days exactly from 21st to 25th of March the Belgrade Forum with a number of other independent nonpartisan associations organizes a big international gathering in Belgrade under the theme: ‘Global Peace Instead of Global Confrontation and Global Imperialism’. And it is devoted to Fifteenth Anniversary of NATO aggression, it is in memory of thousands of our citizens who were killed, in memory of hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons from Kosovo and from other parts of former Yugoslavia.

We shall try that this event should not be only of memorial character, we should try to answer from now on what should be the task of peace loving forces in Europe and in the world? In this regard I think we all first of all should struggle for the truth about Yugoslav crisis, struggle further for the true presentation of NATO aggression in 1999 which was the first European war after the WWII. We should try to spread the notion and information that this was the war not against Yugoslavia or Serbia and Montenegro only, it was really the war against Europe and strangely enough the war against Europe participated by Europe.

It was also one turning point when Europe was recognizing not to have its own strategy and independence. I think there were European countries which joined the US not thinking any further what will be further development, what will be further consequences. There were other countries which entered the war against Yugoslavia for their revanchist aims, revanchist philosophy and there were simply smaller countries which didn’t have any kind of independence, which only had to listen what was the call from the US and to obey.

Anyway today we can see what kind of problems this NATO aggression 15 years ago has brought to Europe. Nothing has been resolved in the Balkans but many problems have been opened in Europe and in the world. A precedent was made, a blueprint for NATO interventions in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Mali, and everywhere else.

And it is not really only to speak about military interventions because although they are the most tragic event but it is also to speak about interventions of clandestine nature, interventions like in Syria, like in Venezuela now, like in Ukraine now and so on.

And we can really see that all those interventions had one objective and still have one objective – domination of leading Western powers, first of all of the US in the world. And this is the danger really because those who should be victims of domination do not accept such a position, they are ready to fight.

And from this fact that the West doesn’t change colonial attitudes, imperial attitudes as strategy and the rest of the world not accepting to be victim of such an imperial policy I think this may lead to either confrontation and that is why all the forces of peace should join hands and stop this imperial policy endangering nowadays civilization.

We will have friends from all over the world, from about 60 countries in Europe and from other continents will be our guests and will be speakers at the conference. We will have a difficulty to accommodate all the people who will voice in favor of peace, who will support multi-polarization and democratization of the world relations.

You were listening to part 2 of an interview with ŽivadinJovanovic, the former Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia. He is also the Chairman of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and we wish you the best.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_05/US-NATO-imperialism-is-a-threat-to-civilization-FM-ivadin-Jovanovi-7424/