Bloodthirsty Liberal

Europe, Europe, Europe… maybe you need another continental conflict to settle your differences:

Leftist leader Alexis Tsipras gave up his attempt to form a new government on Wednesday, pushing Greece closer to its second election in a few weeks, after voter rejection of an EU/IMF bailout plunged the country into crisis.

Last Sunday’s election, in which voters vented rage against mainstream parties over debt cutting measures imposed in exchange for the bailout, has caused deep political deadlock and brought European threats to eject Greece from the euro.

Radical Left Coalition leader Tsipras, given the second mandate to try to form a government since the election, gave up after both mainstream parties, conservative New Democracy and Socialist PASOK, refused to join an anti-bailout coalition.

The biggest party, New Democracy, had already failed to form a workable coalition and the baton will now pass to PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos.

The neo-Nazis are open to courting last I heard. Why won’t anyone talk to them?

Oh, that’s why:

Just weeks ago, the idea that Greece would leave the euro zone was almost unthinkable. Now, with Greece’s newly empowered political parties refusing to abide by the terms of the country’s international loan agreement and Europe’s leaders talking tough, that outcome is looking increasingly likely.

Germany’s devotion to the euro and the European Union runs extremely deep and cuts across the political spectrum. But the frustration with Greece here is undeniable. There is a growing conviction that it is up to Greece to follow through on its commitments, that Europe is done negotiating.

“Germans are now predominantly of the opinion that they would be better off if Greece left the euro zone,” said Carsten Hefeker, a professor of economics and an expert on the euro at the University of Siegen. “If the country really is continuing on the path they are taking now, it would be hard to justify keeping them in. How do you deal with a country that says we don’t want to keep any of the commitments we have made?”

No question why this man is gloating:

And I thought the European elections meant a return to socialism.

Silly BTL:

Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn warned rivals and reformers Sunday that “the time for fear has come” after exit polls showed them securing their entry in parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years.

“The time for fear has come for those who betrayed this homeland,” Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos told a news conference at an Athens hotel, flanked by menacing shaven-headed young men.

“We are coming,” the 55-year-old said as supporters threw firecrackers outside.

According to updated exit polls, the once-marginal party will end up winning over six percent of the vote and sending 19 deputies to the 300-seat parliament on a wave of immigration and crime fears, as well as anti-austerity anger.

Exulting in the apparent breakthrough, Michaloliakos quoted Julius Caesar: “Veni, Vidi, Vici” — I came, I saw, I conquered.

Michaloliakos said his party would fight against “world usurers” and the “slavery” of an EU-IMF loan agreement which he likened to a “dictatorship”.

“Greece is only the beginning,” he shouted at reporters….

Oh Europe, again? Today Santorini, tomorrow Mykonos and Lesbos! Maybe you should turn into Eurabia after all. You might behave yourself under a Caliphate.

Who do you think the Golden Shower party means by “world usurers”, by the way? One has one’s suspicions, doesn’t one?

Something about the current state of Europe sounds vaguely familiar

For all of my adult life, support for the European Union has been seen as the mark of a civilised, reasonable and above all compassionate politician. It has guaranteed him or her access to leader columns, TV studios, lavish expense accounts and overseas trips.

The reason for this special treatment is that the British establishment has tended to view the EU as perhaps a little incompetent and corrupt, but certainly benign and generally a force for good in a troubled world. This attitude is becoming harder and harder to sustain, as this partnership of nations is suddenly starting to look very nasty indeed: a brutal oppressor that is scornful of democracy, national identity and the livelihoods of ordinary people.

The turning point may have come this week with the latest intervention by Brussels: bureaucrats are threatening to bankrupt an entire country unless opposition parties promise to support the EU-backed austerity plan.

Let’s put the Greek problem in its proper perspective. Britain’s Great Depression in the Thirties has become part of our national myth. It was the era of soup kitchens, mass unemployment and the Jarrow March, immortalised in George Orwell’s wonderful novels and still remembered in Labour Party rhetoric.

Yet the fall in national output during the Depression – from peak to trough – was never more than 10 per cent. In Greece, gross domestic product is already down about 13 per cent since 2008, and according to experts is likely to fall a further 7 per cent by the end of this year. In other words, by this Christmas, Greece’s depression will have been twice as deep as the infamous economic catastrophe that struck Britain 80 years ago.

…

The reality is that Margaret Thatcher was an infinitely more compassionate and pragmatic figure than Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio’s boss Olli Rehn and his appalling associates. She would never have destroyed an entire nation on the back of an economic dogma.

One of the basic truths of politics is that the Left is far more oblivious to human suffering than the Right. The Left always speaks the language of compassion, but rarely means it. It favours ends over means. The crushing of Greece, and the bankruptcy of her citizens, is of little consequence if it serves the greater good of monetary union.

A little help? Can anyone remember a time (or more) when Europe has subjected people to misery on behalf of a dogma? No? I guess it’s just me…

PS: I don’t even blame Germany (this time). Germany runs her economy as fits her: responsibly and efficiently. But that, sadly, does not fit the Greeks.

Hence:

Thus far only one British political leader, Ukip’s Nigel Farrage, has had the clarity of purpose to state the obvious – that Greece must be allowed to default and devalue. Leaving all other considerations to one side, humanity alone should press David Cameron into splitting with Brussels and belatedly coming to the rescue of Greece.

By you know who:

They’re so sophisticated. And they have so much leisure time!

Estudias o trabajas?” When young Spaniards gather around the bars and patios, that’s their traditional icebreaker line: “You study or work?” In the past year, it’s become almost mandatory to answer, with a self-effacing smirk: “Nini.”

It is half a joke, for nini is a way of saying “neither-nor,” and NINI is the Spanish government acronym for “Not in education or employment” – that is, lost to the economy.

But it’s not really a joke, because now almost everyone is NINI. The under-30 unemployment rate in Spain has just hit 44 per cent, twice the adult rate. Italy also has passed the 40 per cent mark, and Greece has gone even further. If you count all the people who’ve given up looking, it means the number of people between 20 and 30 who have any form of employment in these countries is something like one in five.

Cogitate on that for a minute. In Spain, 44% of people under thirty are unemployed. Similar reality in Italy and Greece. Can you even imagine??? As they say in parts of the Midwest: Can you feature that?

I often feel a bit sorry for young adults in America. Half of them are working 60+ hours per week because employers are intentionally hiring too few people, and the other half are in yoga classes. But they still have some opportunity to grow and they come from a culture which encourages entrepreneurship. The typical European looks to the government for everything. If their system fails, I’m not sure they have the skills to re-create a thriving society.

- Aggie

When he described a “global Jewish-Zionist conspiracy”, he didn’t necessarily mean it as a bad thing:

Following the harsh criticism leveled all over the world over the inclusion of the extreme right wing party LAOS in Greece’s provisional government, the party’s leader, Georgios Karatzaferis, is trying to retract some anti-Semitic comments he has made over the years.

Karatzaferis told Greek television this week that “the Jewish Holocaust, which was carried out by Hitler, and the Armenian genocide, which was carried out by Kemal Ataturk, were the biggest crimes of the past century.”

Karatzaferis, 64, who has regularly addressed the “global Jewish-Zionist conspiracy” to humiliate Greece and control the world’s economy and compared Israel to the Nazi regime, said this week that he has “often supported cooperation with Israel” despite believing that Israel has sometimes used “excessive violence.”

Easy for him to say now. This is how he talked in the past:

The politician’s current rhetoric appears to be in direct contrast to a long line of anti-Semitic statements he has made in the past. During a televised debate with Israel’s ambassador to Greece, Karatzaferis said: “Lets talk about all these tales of Auschwitz and Dachau”; in 2002 during a parliament session he asked the then Greek prime minister: “Is it true that your daughter secretly married a Jew?”; and during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Karatzaferis said that the IDF was acting “with savage brutality only seen in Hitler’s time towards helpless people.”

And the ultimate insult:

The extreme right-wing party’s inclusion in the provisional government, which is expected to remain in power until general elections are held in the spring, drew harsh criticism, particularly from Jewish organizations in Germany, which is at the forefront of the efforts to help Greece recover from its economic crisis. The Jewish groups protested Berlin’s willingness to negotiate with a coalition that includes LAOS.

Germany is a major shareholder in Greece, Inc., and Germany is repaid for its charity with a neo-Nazi party in the Greek coalition government. Unbelievable.

What a great opening paragraph:

Once upon a time, we were taught that visitors came humbly to Europe to wonder at the magnificence of the white man’s civilisation. Now, the caricature is reversed. This week, three leading non-Europeans, one black, one brown and one yellow-skinned, arrived in Cannes. The President of the United States, the Prime Minister of India and the Premier of China certainly looked puzzled by what they found, but whatever they were lost in, it was not admiration.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph. He tip-toes a li-i-i-tle close to the edge with “yellow-skinned”, but it’s just a descriptive term. Anyway, you get a better view of events the closer you get to the edge.

The second para’s pretty good, too:

In the dim, distant days of last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy must have felt happy that he would be the host of the G20 summit just as he was gearing up for his re-election campaign. In his view, and that, briefly, of the markets, he had (with a little help from eurozone colleagues) pulled off a plan to save the euro, recapitalise the banks and sort out Greece. He might be a small chap, but he had at last got his hands on the “big bazooka” which David Cameron said was needed, and was firing it like Rambo.

It’s up to you to read the rest, but here’s another one, more haunting and disturbing than funny:

Since September 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this column has had the mantra Everything Is Different Now. It is a banal thing to say – a version of the desperate journalist’s sign-off “One thing is certain: things will never be the same again”. But, as is the point of clichés, its strength comes through repetition. Everything is different and goes on being so. The credit crunch was not like a terrible hurricane which devastates an area and then blows away. It is more like an immune deficiency which remains uncured, and keeps breaking out in different bits of the body. It began with “sub-prime” Americans who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments. It moved to banks. For some time now, it has been attacking countries. Its side effects include the MPs’ expenses scandal, the contraction of the BBC and the crisis of the Murdoch empire.

More immune deficiency than hurricane: an odd metaphor, but an apt one.

My new best friends are back:

And here’s a bonus clip explaining Quantitative Easing at no extra charge!

and again

World stocks hit a fresh 15-month low on Tuesday and the dollar rose to a nine-month peak as fears over a major banking crisis in Europe mounted along with expectations Greece could soon default, accelerating a global economic slowdown.

Sovereign debt insurance costs for the region’s economic powerhouse Germany hit a record high after euro zone finance ministers said they were reviewing the scale of private sector involvement in a second bailout package for Greece, a move that threatens to hasten a default.

At their meeting in Luxembourg, the ministers also agreed Greece could wait until mid-November for the next installment from the existing aid program, putting further pressure on Athens to get to grips with its debt problems.

While many in the market expect Greece to default at some point, the impact on an already fragile banking sector was still not fully priced in.

Further pressure on Athens, eh? That’ll do the trick!

- Aggie

What’s French for SS Minnow?

A French yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists sailed for the Gaza Strip on Monday after other ships in a flotilla that had planned to challenge Israel’s blockade were prevented from leaving Greece, organizers said.

The 17-passenger “Dignite-Al Karama”, having declared an Egyptian port as its official destination, left Greek waters on Sunday and was on course to reach the Palestinian enclave by Tuesday, according to a statement issued by French campaigners aligned with the umbrella Free Gaza Movement.

“It is now the voice of the whole Freedom Flotilla, as all its (other) ships were forbidden to sail by the Greek government thereby fulfilling a clear demand by the Israeli government,” the statement said.

Passenger Dror Feiler said the yacht planned to dock in Gaza at around noon on Tuesday. “We don’t want to sail at night,” he told Reuters via satellite telephone.

Is that how the British evacuated Dunkirk? Or the allies landed on D-Day? Nous ne voulons pas voyager en bateau a nuit.

One thing confused me:

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement said the Dignite-Al Karame had declared Alexandria, Egypt, as its destination “in order to get out of Greece”.

“But you can change destinations in the middle of the Mediterranean, any time you want to,” she said. “It’s legal to do that.”

Why didn’t the others try that? “Yeah, we’re going to Alexandria, that’s right. And Cheops. Not Gaza, mate. Giza.”

But I bet Israel is not fooled.