Ha, ha, ha, ha! A contender for the shortest joke of the year prize. Though it is two whole words rather than one, and unfortunately an unpleasant fiction.

The most recent victim of bountiful European solidarity is Spain. Rajoy won a landslide victory recently by being reticent on what was in store for the Spaniards. Stringent austerity, tax hikes and slashing of benefits (for a start that is). You know, that tremendously successful plan that has turned Greece into an unbelievable miracle! It is unbelievable actually. How you can wreak so much destruction on a country in such a short a time without physically dropping bombs all over it?

Poor Rajoy has tried in vane to convince the Brussels directorate they were demanding far too much far too quickly. But No! The Brussels Directorate, (fearful of The Frau’s fury) knows best! And Rajoy had better do what he’s told or else! I mean look at Greece. They always do what they’re told there, From Papandreou, to Papademos, to Venizelos, so there’s no reason why Rajoy should not follow their brilliant example. Is there? After all, look at all that has been achieved in Greece. Spain can aspire to the same! Provided it follows the Berlin/Brussels dictate without fail!

Yes. That’s one definition of European Solidarity. Another is what happened in Greece today.

It appears the run up to the election is not going as well as the Berlin/Brussels axis Quislings had hoped. To be sure, like Rajoy, not only are they trying to mislead the electorate about what is in store for them, but they are actually trying to convince it that they have been very successful so far! For all their efforts at arrant deceit, however, they know they are not convincing. So an announcement was circulated in the press today.

The EU was planning a super Marshall Aid plan for the south in an amount of 200 billion Euro. The politicians pounce on this and tell us Ah! But be careful! You have to return us (the Berlin/Brussels axis Quislings that is) to power otherwise we will not be able to avail ourselves of these goodies!

However, before the euphoria could even start, Brussels released a strong denial. No such plan was being considered!

Well we knew that! It was only in the Greek press and nowhere else. A little piece of insignificant misinformation, perhaps, to convince the electorate that European Solidarity was coming into play. Well it wasn’t. And no one but no one expected anything of the kind. Not even the groveling lackeys serving the Troika! 

It’s time we all stopped the fun and games and came to grips with reality.

Francois Hollande has said that if he wins the election he will renegotiate The Frau’s idiotic financial stability pact which wants to outlaw deficits and make this a golden rule! (Like the gold standard, ehem ahah?) Quite unsurprisingly this prospect has gained a lot of support in the EU because it would mean some sense returning to Europe. Perhaps.

Also unsurprisingly, The Frau stamped her angry little foot down. No! She shrieked. No! You cannot get rid of my baby! No the pact will not be renegotiated! It has already been negotiated and agreed to! 25 member states have already signed it. (The two heroes who thumbed their noses at it, quite rightly, were the Czechs and the British). And two countries, Portugal and Greece, have already ratified it! A third, Ireland, will be ratifying it at the end of next month! (Of course that remains to be seen.)

The Frau has a very good point. Though we mustn’t make too much of Portugal and Greece ratifying it. These two countries are being kicked around and bullied and threatened with instant oblivion if they don’t comply. Not that that excuses their governors from signing their countries death warrants, but still. But why on earth did all these other leaders docilely and subserviently sign a fiscal pact they knew would never work?

Why did they not confront her in the meetings and tell her, you can’t just isolate deficits and decree by law that they should be abolished. You can’t legislate the deficit away without placing restrictions on surpluses too. And above all if you have no provision for growth, the economy will die off. As it is doing in Greece today. It simply is a nonsense pact. Why was there no one there with the stature to lead an effective opposition to The Frau’s authoritarian and uneconomic bent?

They all knew it was a pack (or a pact) of nonsense. All of them. Yet there they were, in a picture that will remain their collective shame till the day they die (and beyond because this is History), smiling and passing round the death trap to sign. One after the other, signing on the dotted line, simply because The Frau had decreed it and her sidekick backed her up all the way. So her fury and intransigence are perfectly understandable now. You bloody well all signed up! Stick to it now!

But though she is quite right about that, it doesn’t work that way. Nothing seems to work the way she’d like it. And nothing can be set in stone. Like the brainwave bit of everyone putting the so called ‘golden rule’ into their constitutions. Just as she seems to be unaware how economies work, so she appears to be equally unaware how power politics works. It isn’t always in your favour. No matter how strong you are. Even the strongest has a weak point.

She is going to have to give, even though I do sympathise with her outrage. But my dear, the lily livered obsequious nonentities you can bully so easily are always the ones to betray you at the first chance. You cannot govern for long or successfully by bullying and threatening. You only build up resentment and hate. Which hits back even more viciously when given half the chance.

And besides, I am really sorry to say, but your baby was stillborn. Didn’t you even realise that, when it was The Netherlands, of all countries, to buckle under?

So for all her justified moral outrage, she will have to renegotiate. It’s not enough being the strongest. Even the little pip squeak could upset the apple cart (by chance perhaps, in a botched election perhaps?) and bring the whole edifice crashing down, and that would not be good for anyone. A true consensus and a workable one has to be reached. Which is why she will have to back down. Otherwise the whole EU project is in danger of collapsing completely. With all that that would entail.

And as the Spanish Minister rightly said. When the Titanic sank, the first class passengers drowned too.

After stringent austerity, the great panacea for solving what used to be called the sovereign debt crisis, is structural reform! Okay. And yes. There are a lot of structural problems that need addressing like the bureaucratic system and how the courts of justice work and… But no, no, no! Stop right there! When we say structural reform we mean things like abolishing all the last vestiges of the welfare state!

We mean abolishing all labour rights. In short, we mean turning the world back to those Dickensian values of raw capitalist exploitation where there is no such thing as a restricted number of working hours in a week. Heavens no! What nonsense. Where you work for as long as is needed and get paid no more, however long you may have toiled! Where there’s no such thing as pensions, or severance pay or anything at all that does not enhance maximization of profit!

That is what we mean by structural reforms! A bit like competition and competitiveness. The ONLY cost of production that needs to be slashed to achieve competitiveness is the cost of labour. So there you are. All this IMF/EU pontificating about the need for structural reform is only another euphemism for “stick it to the people!”, “screw the workers!”

However, there is a very great need for structural reform. But not so much within individual economies as with the International bodies. Like the very IMF itself! The World Bank, not to mention such zombie anachronisms as NATO. And also the whole of the Illogical (and somewhat despotic and unworkable) set up of the European Union. Now if anything cries out for structural reform it is that.

Things have changed.Things the vested elites running all these cumbersome and often anachronistic international institutions, would rather ignore so as not to lose their enormous privileges and power. We shall not go into how Keynes’ original plan for recycling surpluses in the world was summarily discarded in favour of an America centrist model (for an excellent exposition of this see Yani Varoufakis The Global Minotaur) but rather take a look at conditions prevailing today.

Nobody, but nobody disagrees that the great implosion of the world economy of 2008 (and continuing) was caused when the horrendous financial bubble burst. And I also don’t believe that anyone disagrees that this bubble which spiraled out of all control was precisely the result of the total deregulation of the financial and banking sector. So I would contend this would be a prime candidate for structural reform. Have you heard anyone from the IMF or elsewhere strongly advocate this? Didn’t think so.

In 1945 the western powers, that is the US primarily but also Europe, were the strong rich countries of the world so they were the ones to set the terms. Terms which despite discarding Keynes’ basic surplus recycling tenet worked very well till the beginning of the 1970’s. (When the vicious Chicago School virus began poisoning the world!)

Today, however, things have changed enormously. The western world is in multiple decline. Economic decline, moral decline, democratic decline, cultural decline. You name it. It’s declining. On the other hand, formerly under developed and poorer nations such as the well known BRICs, Brazil, Russia, India China (and others) have grown in wealth, in influence, in importance.

So another candidate for structural reform is the weighted membership importance of the International Institutions, such as the Security Council of the UN. Is the permanent presence of multiple European countries to the exclusion of far more important countries warranted?

And what about our good friend and saviour, the IMF? When the French Director Dominque Strauss Khan left in disgrace over a tawdry affair (which at worse was rape, but at best pathetic sleaze), he was replaced by another French person. The disgraceful Christine Lagarde, disgraceful for flaunting her Hermes scarves and enjoying all the extravagant privileges of her office, while decreeing that people she knows little of and cares less about, should go hungry and be deprived of all medical care. Because, in a nutshell, that is the current IMF formula.

We are in dire need of structural reform. But not in the way the monetarist neocon jargon would have it, but real structural reforms. Reforms of all international institutions and the European Union itself could undergo with a major overhaul. So what about starting with a proper up grading of the European Parliament, so that it will act like a democratically elected Parliament and appoint the governors of Europe who will then be directly answerable to it.?

Dictatorship by an appointed European Commission answerable to no one, and somewhat too prone to finger wagging at those in pain would do well to be abolished. It would be a very good start. And who knows? It might just lead to sensible planning of economic affairs, for one, For the people, By the people, Of the people.

Haven’t we heard that somewhere before? It does sound good. Like, Allons Enfants de la Patrie, perhaps? Remember that one? Eh?

The Frau’s policy… well, policy? Obsession rather. Solution perhaps. Idee Fixe (to use the French term), of turning Europe into the colonies of a German Empire to be governed under the German Jackboot of permanent austerity and misery, particularly for the lesser, undeserving races of the south, has it’s side effects.

Side effects that have adverse effects on The Frau’s Grand Design or Struggle (I can’t use the German word for that one!). One of which may be that she is achieving precisely what she wants to avoid. A Europe of the Peoples. Horror! Horror! Absolute anathema! And yet, lets take a look at what is going on.

Elections are to be held in France and Greece on the same day. The Dutch government has come a cropper and there are to be elections there too. The Irish have their own referendum at the end of May. And everybody is interested in the outcome of each and every one of these. Whenever before in the history of the EU and Common Market has public opinion ever given a damn about the outcome of elections in another country?

And whenever before has a French Presidential candidate directly addressed the problems of one of the smaller and most insignificant countries of the union? Yet Francois Hollande did just that, pledging to change the terms of the “memorandum” or death trap Greece has signed, by, at least, placing the emphasis on growth rather than destruction. He said Greece could not be condemned to a state of permanent austerity, and of course this goes for the whole of Europe too.

Within the EU, loyalty to country seemed to come first and  foremost, party loyalty always stumbling against this. Yet now we see a consensus and perhaps even a front of parties advocating a completely different policy, one concentrating on growth and jobs rather than stark austerity, forming across state lines.  (See John Palmer’s article in the Guardian today.)

During the dictatorship in Greece there was a joke. The joke was that Papadopoulos, the dictator, had succeeded where all other governors of Greece had failed miserably. That is he had managed to unite the people. Against him.

The Frau and her policy seems to be achieving the same. Uniting the peoples of Europe across state lines. Against her iron fisted destructive policies. But being drunk with power and determined to remain in the saddle she lusts after, it appears she would be prepared to do a deal with the devil to stay there. She has already put out feelers to Hollande and is said to be hoping for another SPD/CDU coalition government, if all else fails for her.

To do that of course she will have to change, or modify her policies. If she does we should not go black in the face with anger, but rejoice. Rejoice because she will have had to bend her brittle stance, to the will of the People. The People of Europe. So when we all go to the polls we should remain acutely aware of this.

The People of Europe appear to be uniting.

So here we are. Back again to the question of the EU’s perception of democracy. When I was young my father used to tell us this story of his father. My grandfather was a military gentleman, an officer in the Navy, but also secretly a journalist on the side. He used to write columns in the newspaper under the pen name “The Stinging Nettle”, and his views were accordingly stringent.

Now my grandfather used to announce to the family that: “In this household all decisions will be taken democratically.” And he would look around at the eager faces before adding: “Provided you all agree with me.” Of course this was the result of a sense of himour in his case.

Unfortunately the EU has shown time and time again, that this is precisely its idea of democracy, without any sense of humour. They take all the decisions and the people are called upon to rubber stamp them. And Devil take them if they don’t!

Here in Greece, only a very short while ago, after the miserable bond swap and the signing of Greece’s IMF/EU dictated death warrant by our so called government, everybody was very up beat, assuring us that we were no longer in danger of being summarily flung out of the Eurozone. Everything had been fixed and now we could look forward to….. Well no, not propserity. Heaven forbid! But more of the same debilitating recession and rising unemployment.

Nevertheless, we were assured that this was the necessary price for staying in the Euro! Which had now been assured. However, yesterday, in the run up to our general election the threat has been pulled out of the bag again. The Governor of the Bank of Greece in presenting his yearly review, took out all the stops and went ballistically political. After painting the blackest of black pictures he gave dire warning, again, that if we don’t continue with this ruinous policy we will be kicked out of the Euro!

So what happened to last fortnight’s assurances? And what has changed? Well, in so far as polls are to be believed, the election will not go well for the Eurodictators. Not that a government servile to them will not be formed. It will.  But it will by a weak and shaky one in an explosive environment. So we better start bullying them and terrorising them again, just to make sure.

Ireland goes to the polls on May 31st to ratify The Frau’s still born baby, the fiscal suicide pact. Now Ireland has seen this in practice before. If they vote NO, they know that they will be required to hold another referendum, then another until, through attrition and weariness they finally vote YES. That is the European Union’s idea of democracy. At least my grand father had a sense of humour!

So to keep on the safe side, the Irish are now being subjected to the same terrorization tactics as we are here in Greece. The following video shows that they at least do have a sense of humour. And as Umberto Ecco showed us in The Name of The Rose, the greatest weapon against this kind of authoritarian despotism is laughter.

Lets all have a giggle with this one.

Okay, now this is just ridiculous. Holland finds itself in a political crisis. Mark Rutte’s government finds itself having to resign. The edifice of this solid state’s government collapses. Why?

Well, because of The Frau and her mindless obsession. Which was taken up with a vengeance by the Dutch Minister of Finances. He was rude and overbearing and wagged his finger at horrible miscreants, Greece in particular who had to apply more and more austerity if it wanted to be bailed out by the rest! (“Bailed out”, of course, being a euphemism for having money to the banks cycled through Greece, oh and of course paid for by insolvent Greece through high interest rates.)

And now, Holland finds itself unwilling (and rightly so) to affect slashing cuts merely in order to achieve a deficit of 3% by the end of the year rather than 4.5%. We’ve heard of fiscal discipline, but this is ridiculous!

Now The Markets are threatening to slash one of Holland’s three As off if it doesn’t take austerity measures to achieve this deficit rate. Why? Has everybody gone totally mad in this world? Or is The Frau’s obsessive idea of fiscal discipline being the answer to everything contagious?

Small digression. Since The Frau grew up in East Germany, she was raised on the notion that there is only one answer to everything. Marx! Of course it wasn’t even Marx really, but The Party’s diktat of what that meant. So here was a system where there was one answer to every question, The Party’s undisputed decision of what Marx meant. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that that is how The Frau is continuing to think. (If she does do that at all.)

Digression over and back to The Markets and Holland. First of all the 3% deficit target is an entirely arbitrary figure laid down by The Frau (and agreed of course by the Dutch government who erroneously thought this was for the bad guys of the club and not themselves.) This figure means nothing and has no relation to anything. Why 3% and not 2%? Or even 5%? Can anyone tell us?

Secondly, the Dutch economy is strong, with low unemployment, exports and, yes LOW deficits. Should the Dutch government proceed with stringent austerity cuts now to achieve the totem 3% what will it achieve? Well, quite simply, it will start ruining its economy which at the moment is functioning very well. The economy will slow down, GDP will shrink, unemployment will rise and so on. In other words, The Markets are threatening to lower Holland’s ratings if it DOESN’T take measures to ruin its economy?

This is rather a disservice to investors I would think. Holland decides to jump on the stringent austerity band wagon and The Markets do not reduce Holland’s rating so buyers flock to Dutch bonds. But this policy inevitably leads to economic stagnation in Holland so bond holders feel, hey, this doesn’t look good! And start selling off to minimise their losses and the interest rate goes up and, before you know it the Dutch start screaming “We will not become another Greece!!!” But they will, of course if they stick to the stringent austerity. And for no reason!

Now if the Dutch say, Hang The Frau’s obsession and hang fiscal discipline the way she wants it and we will keep our economy going as its is and concentrate on growth rather than austerity, then The Markets will pull away one of its A’s. Initially interest rates will go up on Dutch debt as investors become wary of buying Dutch bonds.

However, a little down the line when the Dutch economy is doing well and growing, investors will start wanting to buy safe and solid Dutch bonds more and more! So what the hell are The Markets playing at?

My mother lived through the German occupation of Athens. I remember her stories of how the course of the war was closely followed, hope replacing despair, despair setting in again as one battle was lost then another one won. It was extremely difficult and extremely dangerous to follow the course of the war. The only reliable news could be obtained from the BBC.

The possession of a radio was illegal, however, and punishable by the well known idea of Nazi justice. Yet the family, like many others, did have an illegal radio which they hid in a backroom or the kitchen or wherever else, in their desperation to follow the course of the war. Particularly the war in North Africa, the outcome of which affected Greece more directly.

Rommel was a great General and kept them going. He came to within 30 km of Alexandria which had to be evacuated of allied troops. Each twist of the war aroused new feelings. The siege of Tobruk. Followed with bated breath. Everyone hoping for the decisive battle that would signal the turn of the tide. All ears stuck to the BBC, softly supplying the truth.

It is perhaps difficult to draw parallels with today’s situation, but they do come to mind. Then as now, Athens was being devastated. In a different way. One obvious difference is that this is not an open war with armies. But it is a war. A war of attrition, driving the country into the ground. Another difference is that the occupied populations of Europe had no idea when and how this would end. Whether they would see their loved ones again.

Today we are being told, that by 2020 we will have reached the debt to GDP ratio that sparked the crisis off originally. Provided we continue ruining our economy, that is. Or, now that the 2020 prediction is being quietly swept under the carpet by the Brussels mouthpieces of the Berlin plan, we are being told that our economy will start recovering in 2050. Provided, as always, we stick to the austerity plan. I.e the death trap. And more of such arrant nonsense. Nonsense that all these apparatchiks appear to have no shame in spouting out. Even though they KNOW it’s all a pack of nonsense.

But back to our own battle won. Hollande’s victory in the first poll of the French Presidential election. Like my mother’s generation hiding in the back room listening to the BBC, we hiss ecstatically, Yes! Yes! We’ve got Rommel on the run!! Allied victory is likelier now. Till the next setback.

Hollande has still to win the final decisive election and we are all hoping. It will mean, we hope, pressure on Berlin to change tactics and actually be made to accept that growth does matter. Another chink of hope comes from the political crisis in the Netherlands. Rutte was damning over the pesky little Greeks and so gung ho with The Frau to make these pips (aka pigs) squeak. Superior finger wagging towards these hapless children of a lesser God that had to be taught a lesson! However, now that his own economy is being threatened by the very policies he championed (for others) has hit him with a vengeance, he has been forced to resign. And one can only hope, perhaps regret his arrogance.

But the war still has a very long way to go. And there is a very dark side to this initial victory filling us with hope. The President of the Socialist International, warmly congratulated Hollande on his victory. A victory signifying hope that the vicious right wing monetary policy being imposed by the Right wing parties currently controlling Brussels should start being reversed.

However, the President of the Socialist International is none other than George Papandreou. The former Prime Minister of Greece, directly responsible for implementing the most vicious and the most ruthless and inhuman of economic policies. Policies that have led to the complete collapse of the Greek economy with 22% unemployment and growing, the suicide rate rising exponentially, extortionist taxation, and the greatest possible impediments to growth. Which remains nowhere in sight.

There is hope to be derived from Hollande’s electoral victory. But the President of the Socialist International now celebrating so hypocritically, should perhaps show some shame and resign on the spot for all his achievements. That would be a good sign that perhaps European politics might take a turn for the better.

First round of French elections today. Second round in a fortnight. The same day as the Greek elections. In an excellent article on the French elections in the Guardian today, Lucy Wadham explains that the French have a bleak outlook for the future, traditionally, because “Change for them comes from convulsion and upheaval.” The violence of revolution, rather than continuity and reform (favoured by British thinking and historical chance of course.*)

But this European, perhaps global, crisis triggered off by the bursting of the financial bubble, is not an economic crisis, if ever it was one. It is a crisis of civilization, a deep social and human crisis that erupted with the 2008 crash, and laid bare the underlying inequalities, hypocrisy, and all the failures of what our Western Society has become. A world that carried on the pretence of living in a world governed by the values of the enlightenment and subsequent French Revolution.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.

None of which exists in today’s modern world, though we are living under a blatant lie that they do. This lie was exposed by the financial crisis but it is the real cause of today’s crisis rather than the bankrupt banks which merely laid it bare. Any vestiges of our Liberte has been completely eroded by the terrible bogey man of The Markets, a fictional man-made entity like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that must always get its way, or else it will destroy us!!!

Egalite? Well George Orwell answered that one for us a long time ago in Animal Farm. “All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are Equaller Than Others.” Today the pigs are not the wretched countries of the European Union being victimised and bullied, but the infamous 1%, or even, as Paul Krugman puts it (in Taxing Job Creators), the 0.1%.

As to Fraternite… well, the best example of this is the current European Union. Although supposedly a union, an alliance based on equality, democracy, interdependence and solidarity, current policy towards the weaker states is not only cruel and vicious but utterly destructive and even vindictive. And is being as undemocratically imposed as the worse excesses against people in our history.

The way things are at the moment in Greece: Utter despair and destruction all around while the IMF/EU only want to see pay slashed or preferably abolished altogether, (and joblessness increased?) I would reiterate Lucy Wadham. Change, real radical change, rather than painting over the cracks, can only come from convulsion and upheaval. The elections in Greece, as opposed to those in France, are likely to be the first step towards change through convulsion and upheaval. Perhaps even inevitably so.

But change is coming. Whether it will be through pain and even violence, in the tradition of the French Revolution, or more mildly as in a Burkian sense of reform through common sense, remains to be seen. But as Lord Tennyson put it in the mouth of the dying and defeated King Arthur, in his poem “Morte D’Arthur”

“The older order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the World.”

———————-

*I hear you! Don’t forget Cromwell and the Roundheads! And they beheaded their King long before the French did! Yes. Okay. But Edmund Burke created the British norm on this in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France“. And they have never beheaded a monarch since. Not even the questionable Duke of Windsor.

The IMF/ EU directorate is exhibiting signs of panic over the outcome of elections not only in France but also in Greece. Terrorization has begun in earnest. If France does not vote in Sarkozy, the markets will begin a full scale lethal attack on France! If the two parties forming the government which utterly destroyed Greece are not voted back in, then… well they are trying to tell us we will go completely hungry and destitute!

And the greatest ‘threat’ of all: If the elections in these two countries go wrong (yes, that is the way it is put, if the elections go wrong), then the very future of the Euro is at stake!

And they are completely right. I fully endorse the verdict. If the elections in France and Greece go wrong then indeed it will be the end of the Euro and even Europe perhaps. So we must all start rooting for the ‘right’ outcome of these elections. Which is a new President in France who has the guts to tell The Frau that her plans are not only idiotic but totally self defeating, and to VETO them!

And in Greece the servile, destructive parties of PASOK and New Democracy must be given the proper trouncing they deserve. In any case the people must vote for a great resounding NO! No more of this madness! The pips must stop squeaking and start shrieking.

Otherwise good bye to Europe and the Euro. Because if The Frau finds that she can continue down this totally counter productive policy (that she is under the illusion is economic policy), the the whole continent will collapse under the vicious austerity-recession cycle she is obsessed with. Already even the Netherlands have realised that The Frau’s Financial Stability Pact is nothing but a time bomb she has laid at Europe’s foundations.

The only way to neutralise this lethal time bomb is for the electorates across Europe to collectively put their foot down and say, Enough is enough, Frau Merkel! And start taking the  jackboots painfully kicking us around off her pretty little feet.

And the feeling is, more than the feeling, but the indications are that this process is going to begin in earnest. Even if the No! from Greece is not as decisive and resounding as it was in Oct 1940, even if Hollande does indeed find he has to struggle with an onslaught from the markets.

The Tide is beginning to turn. The elegant Mme Lagarde may need her Hermes scarves to wipe her tears sooner rather than later. In any case, we are beginning to let the sun shine in!!!

Perhaps not quite yet. But they do feel it is a terrible nuisance! First the fear was that those pesky little Greeks might upset the apple cart, for all the shock and awe policies* they are being subjected too. Now the greater fear is France! For heavens’ sake! We thought we had that one nicely wrapped up when our little spinally challenged side kick achieved a rebound in the polls after the violent racial killings.

A flutter of panic over Citizens being allowed to express their preferences in Europe. A German magazine (Focus I believe) warns that the 6th May could auger in the end of the Euro! That date being, as I have pointed out previously, when the second and decisive round of the French Presidential election shall be held and the general election  in Greece.

Jose Manuel Barroso suddenly remembers that he is supposed to be the President of the Commission and not Merkel. In this fit of euphoria at the discovery, he makes a big speech addressed to the Greek electorate, of how the EU is there to help (well we’ve heard of sick jokes but… this is ridiculous!) promising funds (which are already available in the structural funds anyway, so nothing new) and support provided  Greece carries out in full the recessionary inducing plan that has been imposed and accepted by the current government.

As if that were not enough, our appointed Prime Minister who did nothing other than agree to all the IMF/EU imposed terms for the new so called bail out and the botched bond exchange, has suddenly also been galvanized into life. Yes. He thought it might be a good idea to talk to Barroso over these great plans for growth in Greece and appear Prime Ministerial, a man there who will ensure Greek recovery…

Oh, and mind you, I am sure he is quite willing to be Prime Minister again! Especially without having to fight an election and face disapproval! Now that’s the kind of democracy Euroland seems to be promoting. Just appoint some one you know will do your bidding rather than that of the people! And NEVER trust the people to express an opinion on this! Or anything else really for that matter.

But for all this nebulous, belated talk of ‘growth’ do not get too excited over any of this. Not a single provision for growth has been made in the death warrant already officially signed sealed and delivered by ‘our’ government and all vague, insubstantial mention of ‘growth’ is always pegged to this “provided”. Provided you slash wages further down, provided you keep taxing to extinction, provided you keep slashing pensions and let the old die out without any welfare and, ultimately, provided you vote in the very same guys who ruined you because those are the guys we want to run our obsessive plans!

So this is the new German inspired meaning of democracy in Europe. WE The Frau’s Directorate decide what should be done, together with the IMF who are good at this kind of thing (see South America for instance) and then you  the people or the great unwashed will be allowed to hold an election provided you rubber stamp our decisions.

A bit skewered, isn’t it? But that is how it is. We decide you ratify. Or else! Or else what? We’ll ruin you? Well, you already have, so it’s no longer much of a threat any more! Nevertheless, see the video below to see how Greece is being held in a state of shock and paralysed. But there is a way out. Going beyond all the lies we are being fed and realising what it is they are doing to us and why. And for all their efforts, we do seem to be getting a little closer to that.

* Naomi Klein has described this tactic perfectly in her book The Shock Doctrine. The video below gives an excellent idea of what this means and what is currently being done to Greece.