Cheney alert: Nuclear war likely, Obama violated 75-year bipartisan consensus on U.S. as ‘freedom’s defender’

U.S. President Barack Obama’s capitulation to Iran in recent nuclear negotiations will likely result in “the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney wrote in an op-ed.

“Among the many dangerous deficiencies in his nuclear deal with Iran is the irreversible damage it will do to the international nonproliferation regime contained in the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),” the Cheneys wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Restoring American Exceptionalism”.

Greece capitulates at EU summit

At the cost of national sovereignty and against the will of the Greek people, who just last week voted no in a referendum, the land where democracy was born capitulates and falls under dictatorship.

In politics, when two parties (or more) with starkly contrasting ideologies (i.e. Republicans and Democrats) agree on a deal, 99.9% of the time it’s the citizens who pay the price.

Don’t expect the Marxist Tsipras government to stay in power long.

 

A Greek exit from the eurozone has been avoided after a weekend of tough talks, but the political cost of arriving at a deal is likely to be felt for years to come.

After 18 hours of negotiations, culimnating six months of wider talks, euro leaders emerged bleary-eyed on Monday morning (13 July) to announce a deal that will, eventually, see Greece get a new bailout if it takes painful reforms and if it agrees to intense scrutiny at every step of the way.

The immediate result was summed up by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

“There will be no Grexit”, he said.

Greece debt crisis: Athens accepts harsh austerity as bailout deal nears

Greek cabinet reportedly backs a package of reforms and spending cuts worth €13bn to secure third bailout and modest debt writeoff

The Greek government capitulated on Thursday to demands from its creditors for severe austerity measures in return for a modest debt write-off, raising hopes that a rescue deal could be signed at an emergency meeting of EU leaders on Sunday.

Athens is understood to have put forward a package of reforms and public spending cuts worth €13bn (£9.3bn) to secure a third bailout from creditors that could raise $50bn and allow it to stay inside the currency union.

Germany’s Role in Europe and the European Debt Crisis

Germany has decided to make an example of the Greeks. The German public largely has bought into Berlin’s narrative of Greek duplicity and German innocence. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has needed to frame the discussion this way, and she has succeeded. The degree to which the German public is aware of the complexities or the consequences of a generalized austerity for Germany is less clear. Merkel must now satisfy a German public that questions bailouts and sees Greece as simply irresponsible. Capitulation from Greece is necessary for her as a matter of domestic politics.

The German move into questions of sovereignty has raised the stakes in the debt crisis dramatically. Even if the Germans simply back off this demand, the Greek public has been reminded that Greek democracy is effectively at stake. While Greece may have borrowed irresponsibly, if the price of that behavior is yielding sovereignty to an unelected commissioner, that price not only would challenge Greek principles, it would bring Europe to a new crisis.

Continue reading article: Germany’s Role in Europe and the European Debt Crisis (Stratfor)