Cyprus Day 1: Fear and Loathing in Nicosia
21stCenturyWire
March 29, 2013
“We’re treating this like a crime scene”
Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
NICOSIA – In approximately three weeks time, the island of Cyprus will begin receiving its annual cash injection – from holiday tourism. That’s what’s known as a ‘good injection’.
After only a day here, it’s become very clear that the people of Cyprus are concerned, some even scared – about a financial contagion and shock treatment which threatens their future prosperity.
Soon, they will get another ‘bad’ injection, which we are told will be deadly. So we are treating this like a crime scene. The next injection will be administered by ‘Dr Troika’. Just utter his name in public here and you will see wrinkles in people’s faces.
Dr Troika’s injection is the equivalent, in economic terms, to an experimental vaccine – designed to treat a financial contagion which originated in Greece, and Wall Street before that. It is certain to provoke an auto-immune reaction.
The people of Cyprus did not ask for this, yet, they are being forced to take it by the mad economic doctors in Brussels, Berlin and the IMF. It’s the sort of bad medicine that the banking syndicates and corrupt officials have been administering for a while now, in order to take down governments and economies all over the globe with devastating effect.
I arrived in Cyprus on Wed night, and was joined by UK-based writer and talk show host Jason Liosatos from Global Peace Radio at 5am Thursday morning, as we headed in to the capital city of Nicosia to document what many were expecting to be a run on the island’s banks at 12pm after 15 days of closed doors to hundreds of thousands of residents whose savings has been locked inside the banks during the extended “bank holiday”. This particular ‘holiday’ will go down in history as one of the worse on record.
The lines began forming around 11am, but to everyone’s surprise – except the Cypriots’ of course, the lines were not as long as many expected, and not as long as the corporate mainstream media expected either, most of whom were hoping for a fight in front of both the old town’s Bank of Cyprus (good bank) and Laiki Banks (bad bank) branches.
The majority of those queuing were older people, but these included many of the top depositors whose life saving have been clipped by the Troika.
Listen to Audio interview here:
Fear_and_Loathing in Nicosia – Day One
We asked around and quickly learned why the Cypriots did not all rush the bank on Thurs at high noon. Many residents told us that there was a community feeling that islanders did not want to stress the Bank of Cyprus by storming its branches. Strict capital controls have been put into place to slow the cash hemorrhaging this week, with most residents restricted to 300 euros per day, for four days, followed by an official assessment of the situation.
There’s a lot of talk of Cyprus’s potential riches from untapped gas and oil, and many residents believe the bankers have taken down the economy here in order to exchange the island’s future riches for a series of expensive (if not utterly debilitating) ECB and IMF loans. But that’s still a ways off, and more pressing matters are salary cuts, pension cuts, a flight of wealth off of the island, and of course – that fact that people’s money is being literally stolen from their accounts.
When elites go to war, and fight their financial battles, it seems that the only victims are the average mom and pop. After meeting 5 or six local residents and business owners, it came abundantly clear that even the street sweepers knew that a criminal banking syndicate had held a gun to their heads and then stolen their money in broad daylight.
PHOTO: We sit down with the neighborhood guys who really know what’s going on with Cyprus bank collapse, and do foreign exchange over coffee.
A retired resident, Mr Andreas, explained also, “We Cypriots have dignity. I have only 3 euros in my pocket for the last week – enough only to buy a cup of coffee, but I will not line up today and beg the Troika for my daily withdraw of 300 euros.”
He adds, “Our friends in Europe have treated us like gangsters and criminals. Our government leaders have made mistakes, yes. But why are we being forced to pay? It’s blackmail. This is stealing from the people, that’s all.”
Not surprisingly, there were no Russian Oligarchs waiting to get inside any of the island’s branches on Thursday, many of them apparently withdrew their money from still open Russian branches of Laiki and Cyprus banks – at the same time that the banks in Cyprus were shut.
Mr Kiriakos, a local bar owner lamented over a beer with us before closing shop, explaining the reality of this latest banker-led heist in Cyprus. “I’ve been working all my life – 30 years, so I can send my daughters to university and give them a better life than I had, and they can just come and take that money? They are running a big casino, when they win they put the money in their pockets, but if they lose they take the money out of our pockets.”
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SEE ALSO:
Cyprus Day 2: As the Dust Settles, Talk of Reciprocity and Whispers of Retribution
Cyprus Day 3: The Sword of Damocles Still Hangs Over the Island
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Watch the UK Column Live TV program on Tues at 1pm GMT, and visit the UK Column website for more reports from Cyprus.
Also, you can listen to daily reports this week from Cyprus at The Pete Santilli Show, M-F 12pm PST/7pm GMT.
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Cyprus, Troika agree to 20% tax on deposits over 100,000 euros at Bank of Cyprus
Russia Today
March 23, 2013
Bank workers shout slogans during a protest outside Cyprus presidential palace in Nicosia on March 23, 2013. (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)
Cyprus and the Troika have agreed to a 20 per cent tax on deposits over 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and 4 per cent on deposits held at other banks.
A senior Cypriot official told Reuters that a plan to tap nationalized pension funds would not be a part of a plan to raise billions of euros in return for a bailout from the European Union. Cyprus said earlier on Saturday that it was looking at seizing a quarter of the value of big deposits at its largest bank in order to raise such funds.
“Unfortunately, the events of recent days have led to a situation where there are no longer any optimal solutions available. Today, there are only hard choices left,” European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement.
Cyprus is scrambling to come up with €5.8 billion by Monday, or face being kicked out of the Eurozone. The cash is a prerequisite for a further €10 billion in bailout funds.
Lawmakers’ rejection of a previous proposal to tax all bank deposits prompted the European Central Bank to threaten to cut off emergency funding to Cypriot banks unless a deal was reached by March 25. Banks have been shut all week, and are due to reopen on March 26.
Cypriots bank workers take part in a protest outside the presidential palace in Nicosia on March 23, 2013. (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)
Earlier on Saturday, at least 1,000 bank workers in Cyprus hit the streets of the country’s capital of Nicosia. The demonstrators marched against the latest bailout measures taken by the country’s central bank.
“You destroy our work and steal our pensions,” demonstrators chanted as they marched to the Cypriot Parliament. One protester held a banner which read, “Hands off pension funds.”
All ages were present at the demonstration, with many parents pushing their children down the street in strollers.
“I’ve been working for 20 years and I’ve paid all the taxes of all my pension contributions and every Euro. Now I run the risk of losing my job and my pension, and I will have no money to support my children,” Cyprus Popular Bank employee Angela Panayotou said, as quoted by Ria Novosti.
Panayotou, who brought her five children along to the rally, says she believes plans to split the Cyprus Popular Bank in two to be a political move.
“We are convinced that the bank is viable, and it there’s no need to close it,” she said.
The Cypriot parliament has adopted a new bailout plan which is comprised of nine laws about the recovery of the country’s financial system. One of the laws gives the Cypriot Central Bank special authorities due to concerns the financial system may collapse.
Bank workers shout slogans during a protest outside Cyprus presidential palace in Nicosia on March 23, 2013. (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)
Hundreds of bank workers fearing for their jobs staged a march towards the presidency and the parliament which is to debate to save the island from bankrauptcy. (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)
Default Rolls In? Cyprus gets no Russian cash, ‘EU no help’ [video]
Russia Today
March 22, 2013
Chancellor Angela Merkel is now warning Cyprus, quote ‘not to test the boundaries of the Troika’s patience’. That is after one avenue of rescue, a deal with Russia, all but evaporates. Nicosia and Moscow failed to agree on a rescue plan, after intense negotiations in the Russian capital.
The Cypriot government is due to present the EU and IMF with a new plan, dubbed Plan B, to secure a bailout. Andreas Tiedtke, a Free Voters Nuremberg candidate for the Bavarian Parliament, gives a German perspective on the crisis.
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Cyprus [video]
Ryan Dawson
March 21, 2013
Cyprus now the EU can tax people’s deposits to pay for government gambling
Cyprus bailout crisis shakes markets [video included]
by Josephine Moulds
guardian.co.uk
March 18, 2013
Link to video: Cyprus’s president tries to calm fears over EU bailout
The euro dived and shares suffered sharp losses after a controversial bailout package for Cyprus threatened to trigger fresh turmoil in the eurozone.
Eurozone finance ministers demanded on Sunday that Cypriots pay up to 10% of their bank deposits in exchange for a €10bn (£8.5bn) bailout, prompting panic across the island as people rushed to cash machines to withdraw their savings.
That caused traders to dump shares across Europe, on fears it sets a dangerous precedent that could trigger bank runs in other eurozone countries.
Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, the world’s largest bond investor, said: “In Europe, [the Cyprus bailout] could well undermine the recent tranquil behaviour of depositors and creditors in other vulnerable European economies – in particular Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.”
[hat tip: Little Sis Media]
AERIAL SPRAYING Mobilization around the Cyprus Bases
From Giannis Ioannou
A protest demonstration at the British Akrotiri base against the aerial spraying is being organized by the Ecological Environmental Movement of Cyprus (Cyprus Green Party) for 4th July, as the British bases in Cyprus are alleged to be part of the HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), system aimed at controlling the climate of the planet. .
In recent times there has been a proliferation of information related to the activities of the British and the Americans through the bases in Cyprus, which are very likely affecting the climate on our island.
The Ecological Environmental Movement has in the past invited the Cypriot government to take action “to stop the use of the skies of Cyprus for suspicious American military experiments”. An announcement by the Movement states that “reports links American KC-10 and KC-135 aircraft with the HAARP programme and with chemtrails, that is to say spraying of the sky with aluminium and barium oxides.” The subject has occupied the European Parliament, many parliaments of European countries and researchers throughout the world.
HAARP, the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme, is a weapons system using electromagnetic energy which has been under development by the United States since 1987. The initial picture of programme that was encouraged was that it is a scientific programme aimed at selective modification of the ionosphere to improve telecommunications. But it soon became known that the American Pentagon was seeking to exploit the ionosphere for its own purposes. Even the official HAARP web page acknowledges that the system is also used for defence purposes.
The bases deny involvement
The Cypriot Parliament has recently involved itself in the subject. The parliamentarian Angelos Votsis brought it up for discussion on the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment. The parliamentarian said: “according to scientific specialists, when it is perfected, if it has not already been perfected, the system will be able to influence climatic conditions, suspend the functioning of, and destroy, every electrical device in a selected area, destroy telecommunications, intervene in the development of extreme weather phenomena, such as hurricanes but also lightning strikes of tremendous intensity and even influence human mental processes through the transmission of low-frequency waves similar to those already present in humans.”
The administration of the British bases was summoned to a session of the Parliament in order to state the official position on this information, but through a letter the reply was that they will not respond to the summons because they “have no involvement with the HAARP programme and have not been involved in any aerial spraying”.
The community president of Akrotiri Georgios Christou for his part said to “Simerini” (Today) newspaper that nothing that would arouse suspicions of aerial spraying during the flight of aircraft has been noticed by the residents of the area.
Preparations For A War – Voice Over
108morris108
April 19, 2012
A Subscriber sent in some military observations – from the Gulf to Europe – the menace of military build-up is everywhere.
PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR
The US, Israel and Greece launched an air naval exercise in the Mediterranean Thursday, March 29. Codenamed “Noble Dina,” within Crete and including the waters off of Turkey, Cyprus, and Israeli Navy bases in Haifa and Ashdod. American, Israeli and Greek fleets are being supported by the British Royal Navy flotilla cruising around the Straits of Gibraltar. Rumours have it that the exercise is led by the US Sixth Fleet . As soon as it is over, possibly at the end of April, this aircraft carrier and strike group will head through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, raising the number of US aircraft carriers facing Iran to three. Israel contributed missile ships, submarines, fighter jets and assault helicopters to the drill.
As this drill is launched Russia has started to surround Syria with it’s warships to prevent any attack on Syria . Also in the recent US-backed “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul Saudi Arabia and Qatar confirmed they will financially assist the rebels. Russia has viewed it as a further step towards Arab meddling in the region.
Meanwhile 200 American and Arab Gulf fighter-bombers thundered overhead Sunday, April 8 at the outset of the biggest air force exercise ever conducted in the Gulf region. An operation for reopening the strategic Straits of Hormuz if it is closed by Iran which is busy building a naval base there. 100 of the warplanes took off from the USS Enterprise and USS Abraham Lincoln, training was also with Saudi, UAE, Kuwaiti and Bahraini air forces. The drill was conducted mainly around the US Fifth Fleet High Command base in Bahrain and around the Gulf.
Russia is building a radar station in the Armenian mountains to counter the US radar set up at the Turkish Kurecik air base. This system sends a warning to the US not to strike Iran. The Turkish station will trade data on incoming Iranian missiles with the US station in the Israeli Negev, the Russian station in Armenia will share input with Tehran. The Russian army has deployed S-400 surface-to-air missiles into Kaliningrad, the Baltic enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania as a response to US plans for an anti-Iran missile shield system in Europe and the Middle East. Looks like the future is going to be not peaceful and will get worse.
PN 