Wednesday 4 November 2015
Capstone
Monday 5 October 2015
Things Aristotle was Completely Wrong About : Atlantis
Holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;-thus did they guide all mortal creatures.
Now different gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order... "
And when he had called them together, he spake as follows - ..." *
And they practised all the pursuits which we yesterday described as those of our imaginary guardians. Concerning the country the Egyptian priests said what is not only probable but manifestly true, that the boundaries were in those days fixed by the Isthmus, and that in the direction of the continent they extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes; the boundary line came down in the direction of the sea, having the district of Oropus on the right, and with the river Asopus as the limit on the left. The land was the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days to support a vast army, raised from the surrounding people. Even the remnant of Attica which now exists may compare with any region in the world for the variety and excellence of its fruits and the suitableness of its pastures to every sort of animal, which proves what I am saying; but in those days the country was fair as now and yielded far more abundant produce. How shall I establish my words? and what part of it can be truly called a remnant of the land that then was? The whole country is only a long promontory extending far into the sea away from the rest of the continent, while the surrounding basin of the sea is everywhere deep in the neighbourhood of the shore.
Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am speaking; and during all this time and through so many changes, there has never been any considerable accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of sight. The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left.
But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle. Moreover, the land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and treasuring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this proves the truth of what I am saying.
Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans, and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the garden of a single house. On the north side they had dwellings in common and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which they needed for their common life, besides temples, but there was no adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for any purpose; they took a middle course between meanness and ostentation, and built modest houses in which they and their children's children grew old, and they handed them down to others who were like themselves, always the same. But in summer-time they left their gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side of the hill was made use of by them for the same purpose.
Where the Acropolis now is there was a fountain, which was choked by the earthquake, and has left only the few small streams which still exist in the vicinity, but in those days the fountain gave an abundant supply of water for all and of suitable temperature in summer and in winter. This is how they dwelt, being the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes, who were their willing followers. And they took care to preserve the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as were required for warlike purposes, then as now-that is to say, about twenty thousand. Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas; they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most illustrious. And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries. For friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in common.
To his twin brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus.
Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon.
To the elder of the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who followed him.
Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes.
All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.
And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water.
Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition.
He replied: - In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man," and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you.
Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.
For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities.
Friday 18 September 2015
The Coming War in Vojvodina
The phoney « refugee crisis »
- The left-hand part of this photo has been widely published by the Atlantist Press. The victim, a Syrian Kurd child, Aylan Kurdi, is supposed to have been washed up by the sea. However, his corpse is perpendicular to the waves instead of being parallel. On the right-hand part, the presence of an official Turkish photographer reinforces the suggestion of a staged event. In the background we can see people bathing.
A wave of brutal emotion suddenly submerged the populations of the NATO countries. People suddenly realised the drama of the refugees in the Mediterranean - a tragedy that has been going on for years to their complete indifference.
This change of attitude is due to the publication of a photograph showing a drowned child washed up on a Turkish beach. It doesn’t matter that this photo is staged - the sea washes up bodies parallel to the waves, never perpendicular. It doesn’t matter that in less than two days, it was instantly reproduced on the front pages of almost all the newspapers in the NATO zone You have already been advised that the Western Press is free and pluralist.
Continuing in the same vein, television channels multiplied reports on the exodus of thousands of Syrians who were crossing the Balkans on foot. Particular attention was given to the crossing of Hungary, which first of all built a completely pointless barbed-wire fence, then made a number of contradictory decisions which allowed the filming of crowds walking along the railway lines and mobbing their way onto trains.
« Reacting » to the emotion that they had provoked in their citizens, the « surprised and upset » European leaders struggled to find a way to bring help to these refugees. Antonio Guterres, ex-President of the Socialist International, and present UN High Commissioner for Refugees, invited himself to the debate, advocating « the obligatory participation of all the member states of the European Union. According to preliminary estimations, European countries will probably have to expand their relocation opportunities to 200,000 places », he declared.
What is the real problem, who is managing it, and what is their goal ?
The Mediterranean refugees
Since the « Arab Spring », in 2011, the number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean and enter the European Union has augmented considerably. It has more than doubled, and rose to 626,000 in 2014.
- Flow of refugees towards the European Union (in hundreds of thousands)
- Source : Eurostat
However, contrary to a common misconception, this is not a new and unmanageable wave. In 1992, when the Union numbered only 15 of its current 28 states, it received even more than that - 672,000 refugees for 380 million inhabitants. So there remains a considerable margin before the refugees begin to destabilise the European economy and its 508 million present inabitants.
More than two thirds of the migrants are men. According to their declarations, more than half of them are between 18 and 34 years old. So, generally speaking, this is not a family issue.
- Proportion of male migrants who entered the Union in 2014.
- Source : Eurostat
Contrary to the information presently being published by the media, less than a third of these are refugees from war zones : 20 % are Syrians, 7 % are Afghans, and 3 % are Iraqis.
The other two thirds do not come from countries at war – they are for the most part economic migrants.
In other words, the migration phenomenon is only marginally linked to the « Arab Spring » and war. These are poor people who leave their countries to try their luck in the rich countries, by virtue of the post-colonial order and globalisation. This phenomenon, after having slowed from 1992 to 2006, has started again, and is progessively growing. It only currently represents 0,12 % per year of the European population, and so – if correctly handled – should present no short-term danger for the European Union.
- The President of the German Industrial Federation, Ulrich Grillo, hopes for 800,000 extra foreign workers in Germany. Since European agreements forbid this, and since public opinion is hostile to the idea, he is playing his part in the staged « refugee crisis » in order to force the evolution of the law.
Do the migrants pose a problem ?
This flow of refugees is a worry for the European populations, but is warmly encouraged by German business leaders. In December 2014, the German « boss’s boss », Ulrich Grillo, hypocritically masking his interests behind a trickle of fine sentiment, declared to the DPA : « This counry has been open to immigration for a long time, and it must remain so ». « As a prosperous country, and also out of Christian love for our neighbours, our country should be able to welcome more refugees ». And again : «I want to be clear – I am in no way close to the neo-Nazis and racists who are meeting in Dresden and elsewhere ». More seriously : « Because of our demographic evolution, we are consolidating our growth and prosperity through immigration » [1].
This speech uses the same arguments as those used by the French business leaders in the 1970’s. Even more so today, the European populations are relatively well-educated and qualified, while the great majority of migrants are not, and can easily assume certain types of work. Progressively, the arrival of a non-qualified work-force who would accept conditions inferior to those of Europeans was causing tension on the job market. French bosses then began to push for family regrouping. The law of 1976, its interpretation by the Conseil d’État in 1977, and the jurisprudence by the European Court for Human Rights, deeply destabilised society. Since the adoption of the same dispositions, the same phenomenon can now be observed in Germany, with the inclusion, in 2007, of family regrouping in the immigration laws.
Contrary to a widely-held belief, the economic migrants do not cause an identity problem in Europe, but are missed in their home country. On the other hand, they are causing social problems in Germany, where the working class is already the victim of ferocious exploitation, because of the policies introduced notably by Ulrich Grillo. Everywhere else, it is not the economic migrants who are causing the problem, but the family regrouping.
Who is fabricating the current image of the « refugee crisis » ?
Since the beginning of the year, the passage from Turkey to Hungary, which used to cost 10,000 dollars, has dropped to 2,000 dollars per person. It’s true that certain human smugglers are slavers, but many of them are simply trying to make themselves useful to people in distress. In any case, who pays the difference ?
Furthermore, at the start of the war against Syria, Qatar printed and distributed false Syrian passports to jihadists from al-Qaïda so that they could convince Atlantist journalists that they were « rebels », and not foreign mercenaries. False Syrian passports are today distributed by certain smugglers to non-Syrian migrants. The migrants who accept them rightly believe that these false papers will facilitate their welcome in the Union. Indeed, since the member states of the European Union have closed their embassies in Syria - except for the Czech Republic and Romania – they have no way of checking the validity of these passports.
Six months ago, I was astonished by the blindness of the EU leaders, who failed to understand that the intention of the United States was to weaken their countries, including by means of the « refugee crisis » [2]. Last month, the magazine Info Direkt confirmed that, according to the Austrian Intelligence services, the passage of Syrian refugees to Europe was organised by the United States [3]. This charge still has to be verified, but already constitutes a solid hypothesis.
Moreover, all these events and manipulations would be without gravity if the member states of the EU would put an end to family reunification. In that case, the only real problem would not be the arrival of the migrants, but the fate of those who die on their journey across the Mediterranean. And that is the single reality that no European leader wants to consider.
What is NATO preparing ?
So far, NATO, or in other words the international armed branch of the United States, has not reacted. But according to its most recent missions, the Atlantic Alliance is reserving for itself the possibility of military intervention if the migrations should become important.
Since we know that only NATO is capable of publishing false information on the front page of all the newspapers of its member states, it is very probable that it has organised the present campaign. Besides which, the fact that all migrants are represented as refugees fleeing the war zones, and the insistance about the supposed Syrian origin of these migrants, allows us to suppose that NATO is preparing a public action linked to the war which it is secretly waging against Syria.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban: Washington’s New Enemy Image
Hungary and its populist nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban have come into the cross-hairs of Washington’s political elites. His sin? Not buckling under to the often destructive diktats of the Brussels EU Commission; attempting to define a Hungarian national identity. But his cardinal sin is his deepening relationship with Russia and his defiance of Washington in signing an agreement with Gazprom for bringing the Russian South Stream gas pipeline into the EU via Hungary.
Orban has himself undergone a political journey since he was elected as Hungary’s second-youngest Prime Ministers in 1998. Back then he oversaw the entry of Hungary along with Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO over Russia’s protest, and into the EU. As Prime Minister during far more prosperous economic times in the EU, Orban cut taxes, abolished university tuition for qualified students, expanded maternity benefits, and attracted German industry with low-cost Hungarian labor. One of his American “advisers” then was James Denton, linked with the Color Revolution Washington NGO, Freedom House. Orban seemed the darling of Washington’s neo-cons. In 2001 he was given the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute’s Freedom Award.
But in 2010 after six years in the opposition, Orban returned, this time with a resounding majority for his Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union Party, Fidesz for short. In fact Fidesz won a 68% supermajority in Parliament, giving it the necessary votes to alter the Constitution and pass new laws, which it did. Ironically, in a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the United States Obama Administration and the European Parliament for placing too much power in the hands of Fidesz. Orban was accused by Daniel Cohn-Bendit of the European Greens of making Hungary on the model of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He was definitely not playing by the approved Brussels Rulebook for politically submissive EU politicians. Fidesz began to be demonized in EU media as the Hungarian version of United Russia and Orban as the Hungarian Putin. That was in 2012.
Now its getting alarming for the Atlanticists and their EU followers. Orban has defied EU demands to stop construction of Russia’s important South Stream gas pipeline.
Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline would guarantee EU gas together with German-Russian Nord Stream that could bypass the war in Ukraine something Washington bitterly opposes for obvious reasons
Last January Orban’s government announced a € 10 billion deal with the Russian state nuclear energy company to refurbish Hungary’s only nuclear power plant at Paks, originally built during the Soviet era with Russian technology.
That caused some attention in Washington. Similarly when Orban criticized the United States this past summer for failing to ultimately resolve the global financial crisis its banks and its lax regulation caused, and praised China, Turkey and Russia as better models. He declared in words not too different from what I have often used that Western democracies, “will probably be incapable of maintaining their global competitiveness in the upcoming decades and will instead be scaled down unless they are capable of changing themselves significantly.” In addition, Orban’s government managed to free Hungary from decades of devastating IMF bondage. In August 2013, the Hungarian Economic Ministry announced that it had, thanks to a “disciplined budget policy,” repaid the remaining €2.2 billion owed to the IMF. No more onerous IMF-forced state privatizations or conditionalities. The head of the Hungarian Central Bank then demanded the IMF close its offices in Budapest. In addition, echoing Iceland, the State Attorney General brought charges against the country’s three previous prime ministers because of the criminal amount of debt into which they plunged the nation. That’s a precedent that surely causes cold sweat in some capitals of the EU or Washington and Wall Street.
But the real alarm bells rang when Orban and his Fidesz party approved a go-ahead, together with neighboring Austria, of the South Stream Russian pipeline, ignoring EU claims it violated EU rules. Orben proclaimed at a meeting with Germany’s Horst Seehofer in Munich on November 6, “”Es lebe die österreichisch-ungarische Energiemonarchie” („The Austro-Hungarian Energy Monarchy Lives.“)
The US elites sounded the alarm immediately. The ultra-establishment New York Times ran a lead editorial, “Hungary’s Dangerous Slide.” They declared, “The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is sliding toward authoritarianism and defying the fundamental values of the European Union — and getting away with it.”
The Times revealed the real cause of Washington and Wall Street alarm: “Hungary’s most recent expression of contempt for the European Union is its passage of a law on Monday that clears the way for Russia’s South Stream natural gas pipeline to traverse Hungary. The new law is in clear violation of the European Parliament’s call in September for member states to cancel South Stream, and of the economic sanctions against Russia imposed by the European Union and the United States after Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Instead of issuing tepid expressions of concern over antidemocratic policies, the European Union should be moving to sanction Hungary. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, should exercise his power to force Mr. Navracsics to resign.” Tibor Navracsics, has just been named the new European Commissioner of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, a post in Brussels that has arguably little to do with gas pipelines.
Next we can expect the National Endowment for Democracy and the usual US Government-backed NGO’s to find an excuse to launch mass opposition protests against Fidesz and Orban for his unforgivable crime of trying to make Hungary’s energy independent of the US-created insanity in Ukraine.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
Tsipras front confronts EU brutal austerity
Washington DC, February 17, 2014 – Can an effective European-wide political front be quickly improvised in opposition to the brutal austerity policies dictated since 2008 by the infamous Troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund?
This is the question which will be answered between now and May 22-25 in response to an effort led by Alexis Tsipras, who is also the candidate for prime minister of Greece put forward by the Syriza left party. Late last year, Tsipras was officially nominated as a candidate for the presidency of the Brussels European Commission by the European Left Party in the context of the upcoming elections for the European Parliament. During February, Tsipras has taken his campaign to the Netherlands, France, and Italy, with further appearances planned in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ireland, Great Britain, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain.
Thanks to this campaign by Tsipras, there is now new hope, after years of fragmentation and impotence, of assembling a coherent European-wide programmatic alternative to the three headed Cerberus of European austerity, deflation, and anti-worker measures.
As he steps onto the European stage, Tsipras’ authority is bolstered by the unique success of Syriza under his leadership in recent years. As of now, he is well on his way to becoming prime minister of Greece. In late November 2013, Syriza passed several percentage points ahead of the ruling New Democracy party of the current Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had was installed in Athens by the Troika as its austerity enforcer. So far, this lead has held up.
Tsipras has pointed out that the success of Syriza in the 2012 Greek parliamentary elections led to the partial collapse of the discredited social democratic PASOK party of the Papandreou family, and he is predicting that the New Democracy, which has presided over an increase of Greek unemployment to the record depression-level high of 28%, will collapse in the next election -- which could come at any time between now and 2016. If New Democracy is in trouble, this parallels the recent split of the Berlusconi party in Italy, and factional warfare among US Republicans.
Tsipras starts with an uncompromising rejection of neoliberal austerity measures of the type which have so obviously made the Greek crisis much worse. He takes a strong stand against the Troika and its so-called Memorandum, referring to the letters of intent submitted by the Greek government to the International Monetary Fund, detailing the various budget cuts, mass firings of public workers, and reductions of public services which Greece is supposed to carry out in order to secure the position of the zombie bankers. Needless to say, the political parties which have most reliably tried to enforce the IMF dictates are those of the so-called Socialist International (or Second International).
An International Conference to Reduce Debt, Launch a New Deal
Across all of Europe, but especially in the southern tier and among nations who have undergone bailouts by the troika -- including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus -- national debt represents a crushing and unmanageable burden. The bailouts have not helped the national economies, but have been designed solely to save the zombie bankers from insolvency.
Tsipras’ answer is the convening of an international debt conference along the lines of the London debt conference of 1953, which dealt with the residual debt of Germany left over from World War I reparations under the Young Plan, and other payments. Germany’s creditors agreed to cancel about 50% of the country’s outstanding international financial debts, while rescheduling payments for the remainder over 30 years. Some payments were postponed until such time as the country might be reunified, which did not happen for almost 40 years. This result helped foster the successful of the West German economy in the years after 1953.
An international debt conference of this type held today could have highly beneficial effects on the world economy. Even some financiers are prepared to concede that haircuts and debt write-downs of debt are inevitable. In addition to reducing the debt burden on many European countries, the conference could be used to promote international bans on the most toxic derivatives, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. It could also become a vehicle for at least the partial de-privatization of the European Central Bank, by forcing this institution to open a credit stimulus window offering trillions of euros in financing for job creation in infrastructure, education, and science. African countries, Eastern European countries, and indeed a wide range of states from around the world might be interested in attending.
Tsipras also calls for a post-writedown New Deal of development investments to revive the stricken economies and allow them to stay viable into the future. (We note that if private bankers should refuse to make these investments, then institutions like the European Central Bank will have to be pressed into service.) Tsipras makes clear that if European bankers and the politicians they control, such as Merkel, refuse to cooperate in common-sense reforms, Greece and other countries would reluctantly have to resort to unilateral debt cancellations.
Unilateral Debt Moratorium Only If Creditors Get “Violent”
In a recent interview with the Greek leader we read: “Tsipras said German Chancellor Angela Merkel would come to realize that an organized debt write-off was a more sustainable solution for Germany than continuing to pour loans into countries that could never repay them because austerity policies were causing endless recession. Asked whether a Syriza-led government would unilaterally default if other powers refused to negotiate a debt write-off, Tsipras said he would prefer to avoid unilateral action, but Athens might have to declare a moratorium on interest payments. ‘One weapon we could use if our partners are very, very violent (tough) is to stop repaying interest in order to finance the Greek economy. But this is not our intention,’ he said, speaking in English.” Paul Taylor, “Greek leftist seeks negotiated debt write-off,” Reuters, February 4, 2014)
In an op-ed published in Le Monde of Paris, Tsipras mocked German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the “Sleepwalker of Europe,” urging her to realize that her characteristic methods of deflation and ultra austerity are failing everywhere, and actually represent a threat to Germany’s economic future as well. Tsipras is thus not a priori against the euro, and this sets him apart from the right-wing populists. In Rome he stressed that Europe is the battlefield where the class struggle of our time is being fought out, whether individual leftists like it or not. The European nations are interdependent, and the need for solidarity among them is greater now than at any time since World War II. The Tsipras list, he indicated, will defend Europe against conservatives, neoliberals, and pro-austerity social Democrats. It will not be the Europe of austerity, but a humanist and humanitarian Europe, concerned about the lives of immigrants.
In France, Tsipras will receive the backing of the Parti de gauche, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who took about 11% of the votes in the first round of the last French presidential election. In Germany, Tsipras should be supported by Die Linke, which got almost 9% in last year’s general election. In Italy, there are no left wing parties in the 8 to 10% range, so Tsipras will have to rely on an ad hoc list including such figures as Guido Viale, a former leader of the anarcho-Maoist Lotta Continua, and Barbara Spinelli, the daughter of a leading Eurogarch and European federalist. Dubious figures like the anarchosyndicalist Toni Negri, formerly of Potere Operaio, are also circling in hope of increasing their own gate receipts through the prestige of Tsipras.
In introducing Tsipras in Rome, Viale stressed green and ecological themes, which Tsipras would be well advised to soft-pedal. Tsipras has shown great dexterity in purging Syriza of discredited leaders responsible for past defeats. Over time, he may be able to apply the same talents to the mixed bag of figures who are now joining his effort. In any case, European voters need to look beyond individual personalities or even individual national parties to recognize the urgent historical necessity of what Tsipras is doing, and support him wholeheartedly.
It is notable that Tsipras does not waste much time reciting the usual impotent litany of radical environmentalists and ecologists, whose concerns are often viewed as diversions for the affluent by desperate working families fighting for survival in this depression. Environmental concerns are quickly mentioned, but they get short shrift. That rhetoric will be largely relegated to the right wing European Greens. In this way, Tsipras can avoid the Malthusian blind alley of “green jobs” based on primitive windmill and solar cell technology which has done so much to cripple the left wing of the US Democratic Party. Tsipras must also take care to steer clear of the anti-infrastructure demagogy pedaled by the Italian Beppe Grillo and various anti-development or atrophy economists.
The Tsipras candidacy represents an important contribution to the potential success of the mass strike wave of 2014-2015 in Western Europe and North America which is now getting underway. It is a key step towards the creation of a European-wide anti-banker movement to seize control of the European Central Bank and to mobilize the credit-creating power of that institution for a vast infrastructure and science program capable of creating the 40 million new productive jobs Europe needs to exit from the current economic depression.
The Competition: Eurogarchs and Eurocrats on Parade
The outgoing president of the European Commission whom Tsipras wants to replace is the Portuguese José Manuel Barroso, a Bilderberg stalwart who traces his political lineage back to the fascist Salazar dictatorship which ruled in Lisbon for half a century up until 1975. Tsipras will be running for EU Commission chief against an array of the Eurogarchs and Eurocrats who have fought any vestiges of European social and economic justice left over from the Treaty of Rome, in line with their toxic neoliberal and pro-financier ideology favoring a Europe of the banks and cartels.
A leading adversary for Tsipras will be the current European Parliament president Martin Shultz of the social democratic block, a current which is in the midst of a hard pro-austerity and anti-worker right turn. The flagship German SPD has just entered a grand coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the austerity Valkyries. In France, the socialist President François Hollande has totally repudiated his anti-austerity promises, and is launching new attacks on the standard of living of French working people, even as he promises to cut taxes on banks and corporations, to say nothing of planning a new Middle East war with Obama. In Italy, the vaguely socialist Democratic Party (which contains the remnants of the old PCI) has just the propelled the pro-austerity Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, into power – a politician notorious for his opposition to unions and his plan to make Italy a hire and fire labor market on the worst American model.
Also in the running for the post of EU commission president for the Malthusian European Green Party of Germany will be Ska Keller, a former punk-rock devotee and opponent of coal mines in Brandenburg, and José Bove, the veteran anti-globalization activist who now likes to present himself in typical Rousseauvian fashion as a peasant. Only about 22,000 voters took part in the European Green internet primary, suggesting dwindling support for this right-tending formation. Working families looking for help will not find it here.
The explicitly pro-banker Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) has nominated former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of the Bilderberg group, who narrowly edged out current EU Commission Vice President and economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn of Finland, also of Bilderberg, who has aggressively represented the interests of European zombie bankers in Brussels. Rehn will likely now be a candidate to become the EU’s foreign affairs boss the post currently held by the unfortunate Lady Ashton.
The biggest caucus in the European Parliament is currently the European Popular Party, which is dominated by austerity ghoul Merkel, whose favored candidate is Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a tiny nation dominated by its offshore banking center. The candidate will be chosen on March 6-7 in Dublin. Austerity enforcers like Greece’s Samaras, Mariano Rajoy of Spain, Victor Orban of Hungary, and Donald Tusk of Poland are members of this grouping.
US-UK Media Tout Right-Wing Racist and Anti-Euro Parties
So far, the Anglo-American news media have focused their attention on the supposed momentum being built up by racist, xenophobic, and anti-European parties. There is indeed a European tradition of using the European Parliament elections for protest votes. In the hopes of wrecking the euro as a rival to the dollar and the pound, the Anglo-Americans have been touting the potential of a xenophobic block (or “brownshirt international”) around Marine Le Pen of the French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders, who have come together on a platform of wrecking the European Union from within. Le Pen is indeed likely to benefit from voters horrified by the failure of French President Hollande, but forming a parliamentary group at the European level requires 25 members from at least seven countries.
According to University of Georgia professor Cas Mudde, “eleven far right parties will (re-)gain entry into the next European Parliament: the Austrian FPÖ (long led by the late Jörg Haider), the Belgian VB, the Bulgarian Attack, the Danish People’s Party (DFP), the Dutch PVV (Wilders), the French FN, Greek Golden Dawn (CA), the Hungarian Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), the Italian Northern League (LN), the Latvian National Alliance (NA), and the Sweden Democrats (SD)” plus perhaps the Slovak People’s Party-New Slovakia (LSNS), for a total of between 40 and 50 seats. (Washington Post, February 11, 2014) Attack, Jobbik and Golden Dawn are more or less explicitly fascist. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), while thoroughly xenophobic and reactionary, is likely to remain in splendid isolation.
Also standing alone so far is the anti-immigrant Five Star movement of Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo, who is attempting to resurrect his sagging fortunes with a breakthrough in the European elections. According to Marine Le Pen, Grillo sought contact with her with a view toward some kind of an alliance, but these talks broke down. These are the groupings which Tsipras has in mind when he condemns right-wing populist leaders who, like the Ron Paul libertarians in the United States, claim to be opposed to the banker-dominated system, but who in reality function as the “reserve army” of the financiers’ system. In Italy, Tsipras is likely to take votes from Grillo.
Unlike these politicians, who are eager to serve London and Washington by developing a strident anti-euro demagogy, Tsipras recommends a struggle against the bankers on the existing European battlefield, rather than first retreating into the national isolation of small states where post-euro resistance against J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs would be even more difficult.
The European Left won about 4.5% of the votes in the last European Parliament election in 2009. This was approximately the strength of the Synaspismós party (the forerunner of Syriza) when Tsipras became its leader. Within a few years, Tsipras’ 4.5% had become 27% on the way to becoming the largest Greek party. We will soon see whether this exploit can be repeated at the European level.