Tag: EU

Umberto Eco on the death of the dream of Europe

I like and admire Umberto Eco for many reasons, but I firmly believe that the great humanist is absolutely on the wrong side of history with regards to the great post-WWII neo-fascist enterprise of the European Union.  And so, it is very satisfying indeed to read of the increasing despair of the bien-pensant intellectuals, and to hear the cri-de-coeur of an elite that is increasingly conscious of its failure concerning an endeavor where, for one brief shining moment around the turn of the millenium, it believed it had succeeded.

These are hard times for those who
believe in the European Union: from Cameron, who calls his compatriots
to decide if they still want it (or if they never had the will), from
Berlusconi who one day declares himself a Europeist but the next,
if he doesn’t make a visceral connection to the old Fascists, says
returning to the lira would be better, to the Lega Nord and its
hyperprovincialism. In summary, one can say that – at a distance
of more than fifty years – the bones of the founding fathers of
Europe United are turning in their graves.
Nevertheless everyone should know that
in the course of the Second World War 41 million Europeans died, (I
say only Europeans, not including the Americans and the Asians), massacred one after the other, and afterwards, saving the tragic
Balkan episode, Europe has known 68 years of peace.  If one
recounts to the young, (who maybe would appreciate it more if they spent a year working in another country on the continent with the Erasmus program, and perhaps at the end of this experience would find a twin spirit with those who speak another language than their own), that the French might today defend the Maginot
line to resist the Germans, that the Italians would want to expand
their borders to incorporate Greece, that Belgium could be invaded, that English
airplanes could bombard Milan, these youth would believe we were
inventing a science fiction novel. It is only the adults who
understand that instead of crossing borders without passports, their
fathers and their grandfathers vacationed with rifles in hand.
But is it really true that the idea of
Europe is unsuccessful in attracting the Europeans? Bernard-Henri
Lévy recently released a passionate manifesto in defense of a
European identity. “Europe or Chaos” begins with a disturbing
threat. “Europe is not in crisis, it is dying. Not Europe as in
the territory, naturally. But Europe, the Idea. The Europe that is
a dream and a project.” The manifesto was signed by António Lobo
Antunes, Vassilis Alexakis, Juan Luis Cebrián, Fernando Savater,
Peter Schneider, Hans Christoph Buch, Julia Kristeva, Claudio Magris,
Gÿorgy Konrád and Salman Rushdie (who is not European but has found
in Europe his primary refuge from the start of his persecution. I
also signed it with some other co-signers, a few days ago, when I was
at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris for a little debate. One of
the themes that quickly emerged, one that I found amply consequential, is
that there exists a consciousness of a European identity. It
occurred to me to cite the pages of Remembrance of Things Past by
Proust when, in Paris during the time of the bombardment by the
German Zeppelins, the intellectuals continue to speak and to write of
Goethe or of Schiller as an integrated part of their culture.
But this sense of a European
identity, certainly very strong among the elite
intellectuals, is it also among the common people? It occurred to me
to reflect on the fact that even today, in every European country, they
celebrate (in school and in their public festivals), real heroes, who
are all men who have valorously slain other Europeans, from the part of
that Arminius who exterminated the legions of Varo, to Joan of Arc,
the Cid, (because the Muslims against whom he fought were of the
European centuries), to various Italian and Hungarian heroes of the
Risogimento, who fell against the Austrian enemy. Is there no European hero of whom we can speak? Did none ever exist? What about Byron and Santorre di Santarosa, who advanced and fought for the cause of Greek liberty,
to say nothing of the not-insignificant numbers of little Schindlers,
who saved the lives of thousands of Jews without concern for what
nation they belonged to. What about the non-martial heroes, such as De
Gasperi, Monnet, Schuman, Adenuauer, Spinelli? And could not
searching into the recesses of history expose others, of whom we could speak
to the children, (and to the adults)? Is it truly possible that we cannot
find a European Asterix of whom we can speak about the Europe of
tomorrow?
The fall of the fraud-imposed European Union will be difficult and painful for many, just as the collapse of its force-imposed American counterpart will cause considerable chaos and suffering.  But in both cases, the pain will be a relatively small price to pay, because the alternative is the material imposition of Orwell’s metaphorical boot-on-the-human-face forever. 
The answer to his question is no.  There can never be a European Asterix.  Asterix is a hero to millions of Europeans because he represents the independent human spirit resisting the force of Empire.  And as such, the new Asterixes of the future will be those who courageously resisted the bureaucratic stormtroopers of the failing Union, not those who marched in their ranks.  The EU is in the imperial tradition of Augustus, Napoleon, and Hitler, and as such, it can never command the loyalty of an Asterix.
The intellectual elite always loves Empire.  They are its parasites, its remoras.  And how they hate that it is so often those men who stand against them and their will to rule that are loved and lionized by generation after generation of the common people.

EU-imposed social change

This is what happens when a nation gives up its national sovereignty to authoritarians determined to destroy the social fabric:

David Cameron suffered a humiliating reverse last night when more than half his MPs rejected his 11th-hour appeals for support for same-sex marriage. On an extraordinary day in the Commons, 134 Tory MPs took advantage of a free vote to oppose the plans. Only 126 backed the legislation, with 35 abstaining.

But with the help of the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs Mr Cameron saw the measure passed easily, by a margin of 400 to 175. The first gay marriages are likely to be conducted within 12 months.

Cameron is nothing but a water-carrier for the European Union.  Like the Republicans in the Senate, his role as a “conservative” is to conserve the changes that are imposed by the progressives, in this case, the dictates of the unelected European Commission.  As with the other member states of the EU, the UK is no longer a democracy, not even a quasi-democracy, but a pseudo-democracy that is nominally governed from London but is actually ruled by Brussels.

The gay marriage debate has very little to do with literal homogamy, as the paltry number of “married” gays in the various states where it is legal tends to demonstrate.  It is symbolic, a legal demonstration of the fact that what was once Christendom is now post-Christian, and a rejection of traditional Western civilization.  It’s not a step forward, but rather, a step back into ancient pagan darkness.  It is ironic that those who decry Islam as a return to the 7th century are actually complaining that the Muslims don’t go far enough; “progressives” want to take the world back more than two millennia.

I invite those who claim this act will “strengthen marriage” to consider the empirical data.  Name a nation where legally legitimizing gay “marriage” was followed by a statistically significant increase in the marriage rate.

No, don’ go

I find it interesting that despite all of the bluster from the pro-EU forces in Britain, which insist that Britain desperately needs the EU and would be little more than the Falkland Islands floating in the Atlantic without it, it is the EU that is betraying precisely who needs whom:

Britain could become a ‘second-class’ member of the European Union under plans floated in Brussels yesterday.  An influential group of European federalists, who want to see Brussels given even greater powers, is suggesting the UK is relegated to ‘associate member’ status.  The move would see Britain remain part of the single market but freed from much of the social legislation and bureaucracy associated with full EU membership….

The Union of European Federalists is expected to set out its plan for Britain in a draft EU treaty in the spring.  British Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff, who heads the group, said the proposal would create a new category of membership to ensure Britain did not leave altogether. 

It’s not about trade, in the end, it’s about control.  The EU no more steals the sovereignty of its member states for economic purposes than Nazi Germany invaded Belgium for the chocolate.  It is much the same with the United States.  For all that the left-liberal parasites claim, on the basis of tax revenues, that the big government states are producing a disproportionate share of the national wealth and they would be better off without the small government states, they will quite literally kill large quantities of people to prevent them from leaving the Union.

Whereas the average small government individual would quite happily pay to see New York, California, and the New England states exit it.  This, and not the pseudo-statistical bluster, makes it entirely clear who is parasitic on whom.

Il cavaliere ritornera’!

I think we can all admit that Italian politics are more entertaining when Silvio is involved:

Former Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Saturday he would run to become the
country’s leader for a fifth time, confirming his return to politics
after months of indecision.

I will be throwing a Bunga Bunga party tonight to celebrate la buona notizia.  And on a more serious note, this tends to indicate that Italy will be leaning towards exiting the Eurozone.

I’d call that a two-for-one

By voting for independence, Scotland will automatically leave the EU:

Scotland ‘would have to apply to EU and lose UK’s opt-out after separation’ Scotland would have to apply to the EU and lose the UK’s opt-out from the euro if voters back separation in the forthcoming referendum, the European Commission is claimed to have confirmed. In what would be a significant blow to Alex Salmond, the commission is said to
have drafted a letter to a Lords committee rejecting his claim that Scotland
would automatically inherit the UK’s membership.

Of course, the European Commission is lying, as it usually does.  I guarantee you that if Scotland voted to leave the UK, the EU will claim after the fact that it is still an EU member.  These guys know they didn’t get on the fascist gravy train by forcing fewer people pay their economic protection money.

The only reason they are discouraging the Scottish vote for independence from the UK is because without the Scots, the English and Welsh Euroskeptics will have a majority.

Speaking of Scotland, you can get an interesting perspective on secession and Scottish history from my interview with Thom Hartmann yesterday.  I’ll be posting a transcript sent in by SL soon.

Lest you think we exaggerate

As Daniel Hannan points out, all that is missing is the swastika.

Take a close look at this promotional poster. Notice anything? Alongside
the symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Jainism and so on is one of the
wickedest emblems humanity has conceived: the hammer and sickle.

I found to be potentially significant in the semiotic sense that this imperial rump of the former Christendom not only has the hammer-and-sickle at the top, but symbolically places Christianity below Communism and Islam, while also featuring a large Star of David.  The primary question the poster raises, however, is what importance the Dallas Cowboys could possibly have for the EUSSR?

Europe is SERIOUSLY bankrupt

This award by the Nobel committee strikes me as the equivalent of desperately rooting through the couch, searching for change to pay the repo man:

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, providing a feel-good moment for the economically distressed bloc at a time when its post-national vision is losing traction at home and abroad.  The accolade comes as the financial crisis threatens the EU’s signal achievement, the euro, and the rise of powers such as China, India and Brazil challenges the European model of rules-based cooperation with nation-states handing sovereign rights to a central authority.

“This is in a way a message to Europe that we should do everything we can to secure what has been achieved and move forward,” Thorbjoern Jagland, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters in Oslo after awarding the 8 million- krona ($1.2 million) prize. “We have to keep in mind what has been achieved on this continent and not let the continent go into disintegration again. We know what it means: the emergence of extremism and nationalism once again.”

The Peace Prize has always been about mindless optimism.  But it used to concern itself with actual deeds and accomplishments.  Now, with the recent awards to President Barack “Seven Wars” Obama and the Euzis of the European Union, it looks more like the triumph of deranged wishful thinking than anything else.  And it does tend to confirm the opinion of long-time EU skeptics who always believed the purpose of the Union was to leash the German military rather than build a common market.

I found this to be the most cogent take on the absurdity: 

“Giving the EU a peace prize is at best premature, like knighting Sir
Fred Goodwin in the middle of the mad boom. We have no idea how the
experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end. Hopefully
the answer is very peacefully, but when Greek protesters are wearing
Nazi uniforms, and Spanish youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent,
a look at history suggests there is always the possibility of a bumpy
landing.

Daftest of all is the notion that the EU itself has kept the peace.
It was the Allies led by the Americans, the Russians and the British who
defeated and disarmed the Germans in 1945. The German people then
underwent the most extraordinary reckoning, transforming their country
into an essentially pacifist society. The EU had very little to do with
it. Throughout that period it was Nato, led by the Americans and
British, which kept the peace in Western Europe.”

Fear of lack of failure

Daniel Hannan points out what the Eurocrats really fear:

Eurocrats are especially concerned that Greece might leave the euro – but not for the reason you might think. Their worry is not that Greece will sink into a state of Levantine poverty: that has already happened. No, their true fear is that, after a few wretched months, Greece would bounce back, using its newly competitive currency to price its way into the markets and export its way to growth. If that were to happen, other countries on the periphery of the eurozone, also struggling with an over-valued exchange rate, might try something similar. The whole euro project would unravel faster than you could say ‘Jacques Delors’.

Eurocrats often liken the EU to a bicycle that has to keep moving forward or topple over. A ravenous shark that has to keep swimming or die might be a better simile, but never mind: the point holds. Any rolling back of the single most important integrationist project would call the whole enterprise into question.

This is why it is unlikely that Greece will actually leave the Euro or the ECB and IMF will follow through on their threats to cut off their loans to the Greek banks in the short term. Tsipras has already publicly stated that Greece has enough money to keep its workers and retirees afloat if it stops paying its creditors, so if the loans don’t come through, they’ll simply default. Since the entire purpose of the various bailouts and rescue plans was to save Greece’s European creditors, not Greece, the EU doesn’t actually have any real leverage despite all of its posturing. While this has been obvious from the start, none of the Greek politicians were willing to say anything about it in public because the two major parties are both bank-owned. Tsipras and Syriza are not, or at least, not yet, so the game of chicken continues.

The EU was always an illusion of power and progress, so the fiction will have to be maintained until the very end of the Euro and the EU alike. The Greeks have seen through it, the question is when the rest of Europe will do so. So, as Hannan points out, the one thing the EU absolutely cannot afford to happen is for Greece to default on its sovereign debt, leave both the Euro and the EU, and begin an economic recovery. And that is why Jean-Claude Trichet, the former head of the ECB, is proposing the forcible takeover of the Greek government. He suggests giving the EU the power to declare a sovereign state bankrupt and take over its fiscal policy, further illustrating how the EU is little more than the Third Reich with banks instead of tanks.

Pulling out all the stops

The ECB and the EU are desperately trying to figure out how to jettison Greece without causing the entire Fourth Reich project to collapse:

Because it is one thing to predict the inevitable when one doesn’t have a PhD in Economics, it is something totally different when it comes from the likes of Goldman Sachs (Huw Pill and Themistokis Fiotakis to be precise). In this case, that something is what happens at T+1, T being the inevitable (there’s that word again) point where payments from the ECB to sustain the zombified Greek patient, all of which go to ECB funded entities anyway, stop. The biggest concern is that, as we suggested first thing this morning, the ECB is now engaged in a fatal game of chicken, whereby it is forcing Greeks to vote “Pro Bailout” (something that just dawned on the FT), in exchange for continued funding, because unlike last year when the threat of a referendum resulted in the termination of G-Pap, now there is no leader who can be sacrificed, and Europe has no real leverage over the people who have lost so much already, aside from threatening a full out bank system collapse. However, this could very well backfire as more and more Greeks pull their money out, not wanting to find out who blinks first as it would be their money that could be locked up in perpetuity, in essence making the ECB threat into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And as Goldman says, “If confidence is lost and a run on banks occurs, the implications are hard to assess.” Well, as ZH warned yesterday, this is already starting. Again from the FT: “Athens-based bankers said withdrawals exceeded €1.2bn on Monday and Tuesday – 0.75 per cent of deposits – as President Karolos Papoulias failed in two final meetings with conservative, socialist and leftwing leaders to form a national unity government.” Or double what was suggested yesterday…

Don’t assume that this straw will definitely be the one to break the camel’s back. I expect them to pull a few more rabbits out of a few more hats before the entire edifice collapses. But regardless of whether they’re able to keep Greece, Italy, and Spain in the fold for another year or two, the long-term trend is clear.

The cracks widen

The French half of Merkozy is now out and the Greek technocrats get demolished:

Greek voters dealt a blow to eurozone hopes that Athens will stick to its austerity commitments as parties opposing more cuts, including neo-Nazis, won almost 60-percent support in an election Sunday. According to updated exit polls, the two main parties suffered heavy losses, with the conservative New Democracy and the left-wing Pasok getting just 32.0 to 34.5 percent between them, down from 77.4 percent at the last polls in 2009.

This should end the can-kicking in Europe, but we’ll see. It’s pretty clear whom the global elite fears most, as the Golden Dawn did two points better than its projected 5 percent despite being falsely painted as Neo-Nazis. The charge is particularly ridiculous as Greece was occupied by the Nazis during World War II, and if anyone can be reasonably described as Neo-Nazi, it is the unelected dictators in the ruling European Commission. Things could get very interesting if the Dutch and Irish elections maintain the theme of rejecting the EU and IMF architects of the European financial system.