Brazil joins South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel at ICJ

Al-Jazeera

Brazil now joins Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Turkiye and others who have signed on to the case. 

Brazil has formally joined the case launched by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that alleges Israel is committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

The Hague court confirmed in a statement on Friday that Brazil invoked Article 63 of the ICJ statute, filing a declaration of intervention in the case.

The article gives any United Nations member state the right to intervene in a case when the interpretation of a treaty to which it is a party is in question. Brazil used the article to formally recognize that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention of 1948.

South Africa and Israel are now invited to “furnish written observations on the declaration of intervention”, the World Court said.

The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in July it intended to join the case, citing “impunity” that undermined international law as it denounced Israeli aggression in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Brazil now joins Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Turkiye and others who have intervened in favor of South Africa to join the case against Israel over the genocidal war, which has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023.

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Journalist Killed By 'New IRA' During Riots In Northern Ireland

Zero Hedge

Twenty-one years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a resurgent 'New IRA', which has taken responsibility for a car bombing and a series of parcel bombs discovered at landmarks in London and Glasgow, was blamed on Thursday for the killing of a journalist during riots in the city of Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city. 

Reporter Lyra McKee, 29, was shot and killed during rioting that broke out in the Creggan neighborhood of the city Thursday night. Unrest erupted after police tried to raid the homes of several suspected militants in search of weapons and ammunition, fearing violence over the Easter weekend. Mark Hamilton, PSNI assistant chief constable, said 50 petrol bombs were thrown and two cars hijacked during the rioting, while McKee's death was the only fatality. She was killed after being caught in the crossfire between dissidents and police sent to quell the riots.

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Brexit and Bad Faith

Craig Murray 

My long article on the Chagos Islands sat unfinished yesterday, despite my passion for the subject, as I was horribly fascinated by the Gothic twists and turns of the Brexit debates in the House of Commons. I seldom write on the subject, but some observations seem now called for.

The Westminster system of handling business is designed purely to handle binary questions disputed between two major parties. Where those parties are both themselves hopelessly riven by internal conflict, and the issues not simply reduced to a manageable number of binary choices, Erskine May just cannot cope.

Parliament thus ended up yesterday with a vote in which the majority of MPs who voted against May’s Withdrawal Agreement view its Irish Backstop provision as almost the only decent thing in it – an opinion with which I tend to concur. They however were egging on the antediluvian DUP/ERG faction to join them, on the basis of an argument that the Irish Backstop is terrible and could be permanent, neither of which anyone sensible really believes.

It says something about the insanity of UK politics that the debate quite seriously hinged around discussions of what happens if the EU acts in bad faith and used the “backstop” deliberately to trap the UK permanently in the Customs Union. The notion that the EU is acting in “bad faith” is frankly ludicrous. No trading partner has ever accused the EU, which has the most transparent negotiating process on trade deals of any country or trading bloc, of acting in bad faith. In its own interest, yes. In bad faith – ie lying and tricking – no. 

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Ireland’s Senate approves bill to boycott Israel goods

Middle East Monitor

 

The Irish Senate has voted to approve a bill that would see the country boycott goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, paving the way for the country to become the first EU nation to enforce a boycott.

The bill passed yesterday with 25 lawmakers voting in its favour, with 20 against it and 14 others abstaining. The legislation would bar “the import and sales of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories”, but still needs to pass in both houses of parliament before becoming law.

At Israel’s urging, the Irish government requested in January that the vote be postponed, and sought to soften the language of the bill, but was unable to come to a compromise. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Irish Ambassador Alison Kelly in response, arguing that a bill to boycott settlement produce could easily expand into support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Yesterday’s bill passed primarily due to votes from opposition and independent legislators. It had originally been proposed by independent Senator Frances Black who spoke before the vote and brought Palestinian farmers to be present in the Seanad for the occasion. 

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Human traffickers are using lax Irish borders to smuggle migrants into Britain

Carly Read
Express

Migrants are forking out huge sums for new EU passports that allow them to dodge Cross-channel security in Calais and Dover in a farce dubbed by one smuggler as "a guaranteed way to get into the UK".

The immigrants are flown from Paris to Dublin where they travel by car to the Northern Irish border, a BBC investigation revealed.

They then take the ferry from Belfast to Glasgow and then the final leg of the journey to England where they begin a plush new life afresh.
The brazen plot has been nicknamed the 'Irish route' because after a swift passport check in Dublin, it is the last time documents are shown before getting into Britain.

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Ireland: Dublin City Council votes for Israel boycott

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada

Dublin City Council passed a motion Monday night endorsing the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

And on Tuesday, Israel claimed to have barred Dublin's mayor from entering territory it controls, but a short time later the mayor appeared to be tweeting from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

"Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine, the state of Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights and has refused to comply with international law," the motion states.

It adds that: "Israel continues to illegally occupy and colonize Palestinian land, discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, imposes an inhumane blockade and siege of Gaza and denies Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes." Israeli embassy interference The motion commits the Irish capital to discontinue contracts with Hewlett-Packard (HP), an information technology firm that has long been complicit in Israel's military occupation in Palestine, and with its spin-off DXC.

Although the official vote tally had not yet been published at the council's website, John Lyons, the People Before Profit councilor who sponsored the motion, told The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday that the measure passed by 30-8 with five abstentions.

Fatin Al Tamimi, chair of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, stated: "Speaking as a Palestinian and a Dubliner I'm so proud that the local government of my adoptive city has voted to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people's struggle for freedom, justice and equality."

Al Tamimi thanked the council for adopting the motion in spite of interference by the Israeli embassy. "It is concerning that, once again, officials of the Israeli embassy sought to attempt to interfere in Irish democracy by writing to the Lord Mayor demanding he block the motion from even being discussed," Al Tamimi said.
 
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Crimes of Britain: A deadly history of collusion with terrorists

Gerard McNamara
Crimes of Britain

When Britain's collusion with death squads across the 'Middle East' and Africa is mentioned it falls on deaf ears. The only time you'll hear of Britain's open collaboration with these forces are when they are branded 'moderates' or 'rebels' by the British media.

Firstly, what do I mean by death squads? I use this term to refer to a wide range of forces, namely Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, Islamic State, the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), UDA/UFF (Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters), RHD (Red Hand Commandos), LVF (Loyalist Volunteer Force) and the British Army's very own units such as the Military Reaction Force, Special Reconnaissance Unit and the Force Research Unit.

Loyalist death squads in Ireland were an extension of the British state. They worked hand in hand with British intelligence, British military and the colonial police (RUC). In 2012, the De Silva Report revealed that 85% of the intelligence the UDA received had been supplied by the British security forces. The UDA was not proscribed as a terrorist organization until 1992 - the decade when the British were waging a campaign of pacification on the Provisional Republican movement.
Loyalist terror gangs were responsible for scores of terror attacks in partnership with said British forces. The 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which claimed the lives of 34 people carried out by the UVF in cahoots with British intelligence.

Britain keeps the files on this act of terror firmly under lock and key. The Miami Showband massacre in 1975, saw the British Army team up with the UVF to murder three members of a cabaret band. Human rights lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson were assassinated by loyalist death squads working with British military and intelligence. There are endless examples of British collusion with loyalist death squads over a forty year period.  

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Does Brexit make a United Ireland inevitable?

RT

The proposition of a United Ireland has become not just acceptable in political discussion but, according to some, pragmatic since the seismic shift in the political terrain caused by last year’s Brexit referendum. 

Britain’s lurch into populism and the prospect of a new Scottish independence referendum has thrust reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the surface of political discourse, however unwelcome it may be to some.

“Brexit came out of nowhere, it was not in the British political script at all… What it effectively did was highlight that all of the rational arguments are now in favor of Irish reunification,” Kevin Meagher, an author and former special adviser in Northern Ireland tells RT.

While Brexit may have come as a shock to many, Meagher argues that the writing has been on the wall for years and that now, a United Ireland is the only logical outcome which serves the interests of all parties involved.

A referendum on Northern Ireland’s status, often referred to as a border poll, looms large as UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s hand reaches for the Brexit trigger.  

“If you have a border poll and there is a majority in favor of Irish Unity, that is not really the point at which you want to begin this conversation,” Meagher says.

“Before we actually come to that, we can start to intellectually understand how the Irish state may become more federal, with a large amount of devolution, there may be a strengthened constitutional right to different identity.

“That’s the conversation that should start to happen now.”

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United Ireland? - Northern Irish want out after Brexit

Sputnik

Renewed calls for Irish unity are receiving mass public approval as the UK is in danger of losing more than one province in the wake of their decision to abandon Europe.

The residents of Northern Ireland are lining the streets of Belfast to receive Irish passports and Catholic nationalists once relegated to the backbench of public opinion are now proudly calling for a united Ireland in the wake of the ill-fated Brexit vote that may see a complete unravelling of the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland, like neighboring Scotland, voted to stay in the European Union with 56 percent in favor despite Britain as a whole voting in favor of leaving the political-economic bloc.

The chasm in national vision between the various parts of the United Kingdom are beginning to push even Protestant unionists who have long stood against Irish reunification to call for an exit from Britain's reach.

"I was always a 'small u' unionist. But I could not in all good conscience say I could vote for Northern Ireland to remain a member of the United Kingdom," said Christopher Woodhouse, a 25-year-old from Belfast. "I am softening to the idea of Irish unity, purely on economic issues. I am a European." 

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Anglo Irish Bank officials jailed for offences related to financial crash

The Guardian
 

The bank’s failure played a major part in forcing the government to seek help from the EU and IMF.

Three officials from the bank that almost bankrupted Ireland have become the first bankers to be jailed for offences related to the Republic’s financial crash.

The failure of Anglo Irish Bank, which became synonymous with the casino-style lending practices that drove Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” boom and subsequent bust, cost the state €30bn (£21bn), part of what forced the government to seek a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The trio worked at the now defunct bank and were found guilty on Friday afternoon at Dublin’s circuit criminal court of hiding accounts related to bank boss Sean Fitzpatrick and of conspiring to defraud the tax authorities.

On Friday the court sentenced former chief operations officer Tiarnan O’Mahoney, 56, to three years in prison and former company secretary Bernard Daly, 67, to two years. Aoife Maguire, a former assistant manager, was given 18 months.

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Irish Senator Drops Some Powerful Truth About the Tragedy in Gaza

Ireland Investigates Alleged Discovery of 800 Babies in Sewer Tank

NBC News

Reports that nearly 800 dead babies were discovered in the septic tank of a home run by nuns [have] sparked calls for accountability from government and Catholic Church officials. Some 796 children were secretly buried in the sewage tank of the home in Tuam, County Galway, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth in an attempt to preserve the country's devout Catholic image.

The home was run by nuns from the Bon Secours Sisters congregation between 1925 and 1961. People who lived near the home said they have known about the unmarked mass grave for decades, but a fresh investigation was sparked this week after research by local historian Catherine Corless ... showed that of the hundreds of children who died at the home, only one was buried at a cemetery.

She also said that health board records from the 1940s said conditions at the home were dire, with children suffering malnutrition and neglect and dying at a rate four times higher than in the rest of Ireland. The claims came to light after Corless obtained death records for the home and cross checked them with local cemetery records. According to Eoin O'Sullivan, associate professor at Trinity College Dublin, "Tuam was a former workhouse and conditions were pretty bleak," said O'Sullivan, co-author of the 2001 book Suffer the Little Children: The inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools.

"Ireland's first mother and baby home, at Bessborough, in Cork, had an even worse infant mortality rate of around 82 percent: In the year ending March 31, 1944, 124 children were born or admitted there, and 102 died."

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Ireland's rural protests over wind energy

Comment: Wind Power remains the icon for renewable energies. It's just a tragedy that it is uneconomic, has dangerous health effects and a corporate green-washing exercise to make as much money as possible. And I passionately support green issues and the search for genuine alternative forms of sustainable energy. But I know when environmentalism has been co-opted for corporatism and wind farms are, I'm afraid a prime example. 

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BBC News

Ireland is short of money but not wind, which now forms a central plank of its energy policy.

But plans to develop wind power and export it to Britain are sparking a rural revolt, with local protest groups uniting through social media. Some claim Ireland will become a wind farm for Britain. 

Turbines up to 180m (590ft) tall - half the height of the Empire State Building - are cropping up as part of a drive to meet EU green energy targets and generate 40% of Ireland's electricity from wind. Revenue, too, will flow by exporting power to Britain under inter-governmental plans.

More than 100 opposition groups have sprung up against new wind farms - all in rural areas - claiming the turbines will ruin the landscape, with noise and shadows blighting homes nearby. 

Some have joined forces with groups opposing planned new electricity pylons to upgrade the national power grid.  Wind energy companies say they follow strict Irish planning guidelines, now under review due to new larger turbines and local opposition. 

'Ruined landscape'
 
A country pub in County Laois is packed on a Monday night for a meeting of the Laois Energy Awareness Group. Ray Conroy helped set it up, he says, after energy companies suddenly appeared, doing deals with some locals for turbine sites. 

"The first we knew was when our local authorities and government announces 'wey hey - wind farms are coming, and it's a boom for everyone'. It's nonsense," he says. 

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Undercover soldiers 'killed unarmed civilians in Belfast'

Comment: Long suspected now admitted.

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BBC News

Soldiers from an undercover unit used by the British army in Northern Ireland killed unarmed civilians, former members have told BBC One's Panorama.

Speaking publicly for the first time, the ex-members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), which was disbanded in 1973, said they had been tasked with "hunting down" IRA members in Belfast.
The former soldiers said they believed the unit had saved many lives.

The Ministry of Defence said it had referred the disclosures to police.

'Surveillance from gutters'
 
The details have emerged a day after Northern Ireland's attorney general, John Larkin, suggested ending any prosecutions over Troubles-related killings that took place before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The proposal has been criticised by groups representing relatives of victims.

The soldiers appeared on Panorama on condition their identities were disguised

Panorama has been told the MRF consisted of about 40 men handpicked from across the British army.

Before it was disbanded 40 years ago, after 18 months, plain-clothes soldiers carried out round-the-clock patrols of west Belfast - the heartland of the IRA - in unmarked cars.

Three former members of the unit, who agreed to be interviewed on condition their identities were disguised, said they had posed as Belfast City Council road sweepers, dustmen and even "meths drinkers", carrying out surveillance from street gutters.

But surveillance was just one part of their work.

One of the soldiers said they had also fired on suspected IRA members. 

He described their mission as "to draw out the IRA and to minimise their activities... if they needed shooting, they'd be shot".

[...] Panorama has identified 10 unarmed civilians shot, according to witnesses, by the MRF:

• Brothers John and Gerry Conway, on the way to their fruit stall in Belfast city centre on 15 April 1972
• Aiden McAloon and Eugene Devlin, in a taxi taking them home from a disco on 12 May 1972
• Joe Smith, Hugh Kenny, Patrick Murray and Tommy Shaw, on Glen Road on 22 June 1972
•  Daniel Rooney and Brendan Brennan, on the Falls Road on 27 September 1972

Interview: Max Keiser on Ireland, bankers and why the euro will collapse

 Max Keiser: Ireland needs regime change Image: Kilkenomics

The Journal

FORMER STOCK TRADER Max Keiser has arrived in Ireland, bringing his outspoken brand of economic forecasting to bear on our financial situation.

Keiser shot to fame several years ago with a series of accurate predictions about the economic crash. He foresaw the role sub-prime mortgages would have in the meltdown, as well as the the collapse of US lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the biggest casualties of the crisis.

The broadcaster is speaking at the Kilkenomics festival in Kilkenny this weekend. Ahead of his appearance he gave TheJournal.ie his take on Ireland’s plight, including:

• Why Nama is a terrorist organisation
• How rogue bankers should be brought to justice
• Why Ireland needs regime change
• Why the euro will eventually collapse
• How RTÉ is a tool of the bankers

Here’s what he had to say on Nama:

Ireland has been victimised by financial terrorism. They are being pretty much held hostage. Hopefully they can extricate themselves – but a lot of times in these situations you get what’s called Stockholm syndrome, where the hostage falls in love with their captor, which in this case would be Nama. So there’s a lot of love for Nama, even though it’s essentially a terrorist organisation.

On the right way to bring rogue bankers to justice:

Seán FitzPatrick needs to be brought to justice. It is a travesty. He has committed acts of financial terrorism. In the US, the Patriot Act was brought in after 9/11 [to combat terrorism]. We have to expand the Patriot Act, and other financial statutes around the world, to cover financial terrorism. To cover Seán FitzPatrick, because clearly he qualifies. Ireland should recognise that they’ve been victimised by a terrorist attack, and need to respond accordingly.

On the reality of last week’s deal between EU leaders:

The figure that Greece had 50 per cent of their debts written off is a bogus headline. No debts have been written off.  The debts across the Eurozone have been expanded by a trillion euro. They’ve created this EFSF fund, which according to the European president can be expanded using derivatives. So they’re just doing more accounting fraud. More shuffling of deckchairs on the Titanic. To call it a write-off is a misnomer, it’s propaganda.

On why Ireland needs ‘regime change’:

The IMF is extracting wealth from the Irish people, through weapons of mass financial destruction, as Warren Buffett calls them. If the government are not going to represent the interests of the people who elected them, then the people have to assume that they need to be replaced. A regime change is necessary.

So I would say to the Irish people, see what people did in Cairo, see what people did in Tunisia. They were intolerant of financial terrorism, they sought a regime change, and they got it. That’s what this Occupy movement round the world is all about – because people understand that only regime change is going to get them independence from banking terrorists.

On RTÉ and how Ireland needs to wise up:

Ireland should be smart about this. Not walk around with their head in the clouds believing anything that comes out of the mouth of the captured press in Ireland, like RTÉ. Which is a complete functionary of the banking establishment and has no independent view whatsoever.

On the imminent collapse of the euro:

The future of the global economy is a return to the gold standard. All of the banks, once they exhaust the markets’ capacity to absorb their fake money and this nightmarish, academically supported theoretical quagmire of nothing, we’re going to go back to the gold standard.

Forty-seven years is the average lifespan of a fiat currency [one not backed up by precious metals]. All fiat currencies are going to collapse, including the euro. So if people want to protect themselves against the inevitable collapse, they need to buy gold and silver aggressively.

On Iceland as a template:

Iceland had the balls to stand up to the bankers. And the country went through an economic downturn; now they’re coming out of it, but their sovereignty is intact. You suffer for two or three years, but you keep your independence. The alternative is you suffer slowly for 20 years, you end up in exactly the same place in terms of the economic downturn, but you’ve lost your independence.

So use Iceland as a template, if you want to be free and you want to be independent. If you want to be a debt slave, then follow a different path. It’s up to the Irish people. But they should understand that the choice is between debt slavery to foreign interests, and independence and freedom.

Irish Protesters Rage Against The Banks - Black & White Photo Essay

dailybail

See slide show

Loyalist terror in N.Ireland backed by UK

 

 Press TV

 

 Newly released documents show the UK government and its army covered up state-sponsored right wing terrorism for more than 35 years in Northern Ireland. 

The documents revealed that British army units of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) supported and financed right-wing Loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast, the Socialist Worker reported.

The Pat Finucane Centre and Detail website have unearthed secret government papers showing how loyalist paramilitaries heavily infiltrated the UDR's Belfast battalion in the late 1970s. At least 70 soldiers on one base were linked to a loyalist terror group, according to the report.

The “10” UDR battalion was based in Belfast, with its D and G companies at Girdwood barracks in the north of the city, the report said.

In July 1977, the report added, a routine audit uncovered a major fraud aimed at siphoning off tens of thousands of pounds for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) paramilitaries.

Investigators estimated that the fraud amounted to between £30,000 and £47,000-the equivalent of up to £200,000 in 2011.

One female clerk told investigators that an unnamed UDR soldier had ordered her to hand over £300 each month to the UVF-or her daughter would be targeted.

Equipment stolen from another UDR unit on the same base was being used to equip the UVF. Some soldiers were also “borrowing” army weapons to carry out criminal activities.

“There appears to have been theft of stores over a considerable period. There are indications that equipment stolen has been passed to the UVF”, stated one secret report.

“The general impression gained is that, 'D' and 'G' [companies] are the supply and financial support elements for local paramilitary organisations”, according to investigators.

“As a result of a current, but minor, investigation it was revealed that certain SNCOs (senior non commissioned officers) had been involved or were involved in paramilitary activities”, says another memo.

“A review was carried out of security investigation/ incidents involving the unit during the past six months and this, coupled with additional source information produced a list of about seventy members of the unit with paramilitary traces. This figure has since grown”, the memo added.

The investigation revealed that paramilitaries were allowed to socialise in the unit's mess inside the army base. 

Rothschild Bank AND Goldman Sachs Are Both On The LIST Of Bondholders Getting U.S. Taxpayer Billions In Irish Bailout

Fool's Crow via dailybail.com

The Irish Government has recently passed the harshest budget in the history of the State with further austerity promised for the next three years and perhaps for decades. Prime Minister Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan have steered Ireland from the booming prosperity of a Celtic Tiger to a ruined shell of a country where unemployment, poverty, emigration, and despair are proceeding to destroy a once proud, industrious people.

Cowen and Lenihan also bear the ignominy of having brought in the International Monetary Fund who, along with EU banksters, are now dictating Irish fiscal policy. The IMF has long had a vulturish reputation for plundering weaker countries by stripping the flesh of its victims down to the bare bones. This repulsive scavenger is well known for promoting austerity and misery, grabbing national assets for its bankster and corporate friends, and leaving the skeleton of a country’s economy in its wake. The first piece of offal to be plucked from the Irish carcass by this opportunistic carrion eater was the nation’s €20 billion pension fund, the life savings of working people.

As a result of Ireland’s dramatic reversal of fortune the names of Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan are now being reviled as the villains who inflicted horrendous financial disaster upon the Irish people and forced the enslavement of future generations to a criminal cadre of International Banksters.

Rome 'told priests to keep quiet about abuse'

Independent

Ireland's government summoned the Vatican's ambassador yesterday for a rare face-to-face meeting to respond to a report showing that Rome secretly discouraged Irish bishops from reporting paedophile priests to police.

The Foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, met Pope Benedict XVI's diplomat in Dublin a day after Irish investigators found that the Vatican in 1997 encouraged bishops to reject the Irish church's tough new child-protection rules.

The Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, who didn't attend the meeting, said that the Vatican's role in placing the church's own canon law above Irish criminal law was "absolutely disgraceful".

He vowed to pass legislation that would make it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse from the police – even information that a priest obtains in the confession booth.

Europe considers Greek default, leaders to meet

Reuters

European Union leaders are poised to hold an emergency summit after finance ministers acknowledged for the first time that some form of Greek default may be needed to cut Athens' debts and to stop contagion spreading to Italy and Spain.

"There will be an extra summit this Friday," a senior euro zone diplomat told Reuters, suggesting policymakers have been seized with a new sense of urgency after markets started targeting Italian assets.

Worsening political tensions between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti have caused markets to focus on Italy's shaky banks and chances its budget deal could stumble, and to look afresh at Spain, the euro zone's fourth largest economy.

Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citi and a former UK central banker, said there now was a clear danger of the debt crisis spreading beyond Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the three nations bailed out so far.

"We're talking a game changer here, a systemic crisis," he said. "This is existential for the euro area and the EU." [...]