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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Aug-2013
13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

Web Log - August, 2013

13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

Your mortgage documents are fake!

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain
The War of the Spanish Succession keeps coming back
Your mortgage documents are fake!
Egypt backs down on 'dispersal' of pro-Morsi supporters

Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

The Gibraltar enclave, a British territory, 2.62 square miles at the tip of Spain (Spiegel)

The Gibraltar enclave, a British territory, 2.62 square miles at the tip of Spain (Spiegel)

It's for a previously scheduled naval exercise in the Mediterranean, but Britain's dispatch of warships to the coast of Gibraltar couldn't have happened at a more significant time. Gibraltar is located on the tip of Spain, but it's British territory, thanks to the 1714 Treaty at Utrecht that settled the War of the Spanish Succession. Since then, it's been the source of unending tension between Britain and Spain, but tensions really soared last month when Gibraltar created dumped cement blocks into the waters around the enclave, in order to prevent Spanish boats from fishing there. This infuriated Spanish officials, who retaliated by partially blocking the border checkpoint between Spain and Gibraltar, making it almost impossible for people to travel there from Spain, with some officials calling for a return of the "Spanish Armada" to Gibraltar. Britain is now retaliating back by threatening legal action, saying that the border controls are a violation of European Union rules. The Spanish Armada and the British warships are a show of force, but we don't believe that this will turn into a shooting war.

Spain has announced that it's going to team up with Argentina, and take the case to the United Nations, where they'll demand that Gibraltar be returned to Spain, and that the Falkland Islands be returned to Argentina. Gibraltar Chronicle and Spiegel

The War of the Spanish Succession keeps coming back

Most people, I've discovered, have never heard of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), but it's one of the most significant wars of the last millennium. WSS made Scotland a part of Britain, but as we wrote last year (see "16-Oct-12 World View -- England and Scotland agree to a referendum on Scottish independence"), that agreement may now be unraveling.

You can enumerate just a few "world wars" that affected all of western Europe in the last few centuries. There was the Spanish Armada war against Britain that climaxed with Spain's defeat in 1588, and then the Thirty Years War that climaxed in 1648 with the Treaty at Westphalia (called the "Peace of Exhaustion"), settling the boundaries between European countries.

The War of the Spanish Succession broke out 52 years after the treaty at Westphalia was signed. It was triggered when the King of Spain died childless in 1700, and because of numerous marriage alliances, it finally turned out that Spain was bequeathed to the grandson of the King of France, who then became King of Spain, and so Spain became allied with France, where previously it had been allied with Germany. This led to the WSS "world war," with the two sides led by England and France. England miraculously and unexpectedly defeated the French army in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. France's final defeat came in August 1709, at the battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle in Europe for the entire eighteenth century.

Once again, the boundaries of the European countries were set by agreement, this time by the Treaty at Utrecht in 1714, and one of the spoils of war was Britain's acquisition of Gibraltar from Spain. The treaty held until the next "world war," Napoleon's conquest of Europe following the French Revolution, almost a century later. But the agreements coming out of the War of the Spanish Succession that made both Scotland and Gibraltar part of Britain are both still being disputed today.

Your mortgage documents are fake!

Thanks to information from a newly unsealed lawsuit, it turns out that many people reading this articles have mortgages with banks that can't prove ownership of your property. We haven't written about "robo-signing" for a couple of years, but it now turns out that the reason that robo-signing was used was because the banks wanting to foreclose properties could not prove they had the right to foreclose, and so they used robo-signing to forge fraudulent documents, and then lied to the courts and government about them.

Tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. Homeowners trying to sell their properties find that their properties are impossible to sell.

Banks who committed this fraud include: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.

As usual, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to investigate and prosecute these crimes, because these banks are all big donors to Administration campaigns and programs, with the result that no one has gone to jail for trillions of dollars of criminal fraud that caused the financial crisis. The level of criminality going on in Washington is incredible, and nobody gives a shit. That's why I keep referring to Hannah Arendt and Nazi Germany, where respectable people were actually gangsters, and gangsters were treated as respectable people. Salon

Egypt backs down on 'dispersal' of pro-Morsi supporters

How do you 'disperse' tens of thousands of protesters in a sit-in?

How do you 'disperse' tens of thousands of protesters in a sit-in?

Egypt's interim government backed down on plans to "disperse" tens of thousands of protesters in a sit-in in two large squares in Cairo. The protesters are demanding that ousted president Mohamed Morsi, who has been held in detention at a secret location since July 3, be released and restored to the presidency, and that his Muslim Brotherhood government be restored to power. No reason was given for backing down, but various conjectures have been put forth: the U.S. pressured them to stand down; or it's a strategy to confuse the protesters; or the "dispersal" will occur later when the element of surprise is available; or some people hope that negotiations are still possible; or some people fear that the violence will end up killing hundreds of people. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Foreign Policy

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (13-Aug-2013) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Aug-2013 13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

The War of the Spanish Succession keeps coming back

Your mortgage documents are fake!

Egypt backs down on 'dispersal' of pro-Morsi supporters

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Aug-2013
13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain