Why Europe Keeps Failing........ merged with "EU Seizes Cypriot Bank Accounts"

[Edward Campbell]

Ian Bremmer, of the Eurasia Group, chimes in on Greece in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from his Linkedin page:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-greek-bailout-fail-ian-bremmer

Why the Greek Bailout Will Fail

Ian Bremmer, President at Eurasia Group

Jul 17, 2015

Exhausted by the epic struggle over Greece’s future in the Eurozone? Bad news. That was no epic. That was chapter one, and chapter two starts sooner than you think.

Within weeks, Greece, Germany, the finance ministers of other Eurozone countries, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund will be at this again, and Grexit remains a very real threat. Why is this crisis still building? There are three reasons.

One, everyone (maybe even the Greeks) now recognizes that Grexit is thinkable. In fact, with each successive round of this fight, the prospect of Grexit has gotten less scary in the rest of Europe. The risk that Greece’s problems will infect Spain, Portugal, Italy and others has fallen. And with the IMF now saying publicly that the current bailout plan will not help Greece pay back its many creditors, the number of Europeans willing to close the book on Athens is on the rise.

Two, after Greeks voted “no” to the conditions offered by creditors on July 5, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras seemed to hold a stronger negotiating hand. But when the rest of Europe continued to drive a hard bargain, Tsipras said “yes” to virtually the same offer. Many Greeks still like him, but they’ll now have a much harder time believing his promises to gain them new concessions. He probably won’t remain long in his job. Even if he does, his position is much weaker. And the creditors know it.

Three, the Germans have the loudest voice among Greece’s creditors because Germany has Europe’s deepest pockets and is holding the most Greek debt. Greeks hate the current deal, but Germans don’t like it either. They don’t believe Greece’s government can be trusted to keep its promises, and they don’t believe Greece’s economy will ever be strong enough to pay the country’s debts in full. Yet, it’s politically toxic in Germany to suggest that some of Greece’s debt should be forgiven. Patience is nearly exhausted in Berlin as well as in Athens, and the next crisis may persuade political leaders to simply let Greece go.

In short, Greece and its creditors agreed this week to kick the can a little further down the road. But the realization is now dawning that without a much more creative solution—one struck between people who neither like nor trust one another, they’re kicking that can toward a cliff.

I know I'm repeating myself, but the only sane way ahead is to push Greece into default and out of the Eurozone. Greece will never, because it never can, repay its debt. Europe is just throwing good money after bad ...

Gresham warned us about this sort of thing almost 500 years ago. If he was writing to Angela Merkel today, he would I suspect, say the very same thing he said to Queen Elizabeth I in 1558: "all your fine gold was convayed out of this your realm." Some, too much, of Germany's "fine gold," in the form of strong Euros, is being "convayed" to Greece, and it will never come back.

 

[a_majoor]

More on the Greek response to the crisis from Zerohedge. If this is true, it looks like the Greeks were prepared to jump ship on their own, but lost their nerve or received some sort of incentive at the last minute. This also suggests that there is still an opening for the Greeks to exit once the full process of the new austerity regime takes effect (with the Greek public not being keen to follow the prescriptions at all).

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-26/reports-secret-drachma-plots-leave-tsipras-facing-fresh-crisis

Reports Of Secret Drachma Plots Leave Tsipras Facing Fresh Crisis
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/26/2015 16:20 -0400

On Friday, we brought you the shocking story of the rebellion that never was in Greece.

According to FT, Former Greek Energy Minister and maverick among mavericks Panayotis Lafazanis convened a "secret" meeting at the Oscar Hotel in Athens on July 14 at which he attempted to convince Syriza hardliners (including, in FT’s words, "supporters of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez [and some] old-fashioned communists") to storm the Greek mint, seize the country’s currency reserves, and, if necessary, arrest central bank governor Yannis Stournaras.

Obviously, the plan was never implemented, but if the story is even partly true it betrays the degree to which Greece teetered on the edge of social upheaval and even civil war in the days that followed PM Alexis Tsipras’ decision to concede to creditors’ demands and abandon not only Syriza’s election mandate but the very referendum outcome he had himself campaigned for just days prior.

Now that Tsipras has succeeded in compelling Greek lawmakers to cede the country’s sovereignty to Brussels in exchange for the right to use the euro, tales of unrealized redenomination plots have come out of the woodwork so to speak, and now, in addition to the scheme described above and rumors that a return to the drachma was nearly financed by a loan from the Kremlin, we get a glimpse at yet another plan hatched behind the scenes, this time courtesy of a recorded conference call between Yanis Varoufakis and "members of international hedge funds."

Here’s the story from Kathimerini:

Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed that he was authorized by Alexis Tsipras last December to look into a parallel payment system that would operate using wiretapped tax registration numbers (AFMs) and could eventually work as a parallel banking system, Kathimerini has learned.

In a teleconference call with members of international hedge funds that was allegedly coordinated by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Varoufakis claimed to have been given the okay by Tsipras last December – a month before general elections that brought SYRIZA to power – to plan a payment system that could operate in euros but which could be changed into drachmas "overnight" if necessary, Kathimerini understands.

Varoufakis worked with a small team to prepare the plan, which would have required a staff of 1,000 to implement but did not get the final go-ahead from Tsipras to proceed, he said.

The call took place on July 16, more than a week after Varoufakis left his post as finance minister.

The plan would involve hijacking the AFMs of taxpayers and corporations by hacking into General Secretariat of Public Revenues website, Varoufakis told his interlocutors. This would allow the creation of a parallel system that could operate if banks were forced to close and which would allow payments to be made between third parties and the state and could eventually lead to the creation of a parallel banking system, he said.

As the general secretariat is a system that is monitored by Greece’s creditors and is therefore difficult to access, Varoufakis said he assigned a childhood friend of his, an information technology expert who became a professor at Columbia University, to hack into the system. A week after Varouakis took over the ministry, he said the friend telephoned him and said he had “control” of the hardware but not the software "which belongs to the troika."

Apparently, Varoufakis planned to take control of the computers first, then hack into the ministry’s software, steal the code, and design the parallel payments system. Here are excerpts from the call, again from Kathimerini, quoting Varoufakis:

"The prime minister before he became PM, before we won the election in January, had given me the green light to come up with a Plan B. And I assembled a very able team, a small team as it had to be because that had to be kept completely under wraps for obvious reasons. And we had been working since the end of December or beginning of January on creating one.

"What we planned to do was the following. There is the website of the tax office like there is in Britain and everywhere else, where citizens, taxpayers go into the website they use their tax file number and they transfer through web banking monies from the bank account to their tax file number so as to make payments on VAT, income tax and so on and so forth.

“We were planning to create, surreptitiously, reserve accounts attached to every tax file number, without telling anyone, just to have this system in a function under wraps. And, at the touch of a button, to allow us to give PIN numbers to tax file number holders, to taxpayers.

"That would have created a parallel banking system while the banks were shut as a result of the ECBs aggressive action to deny us some breathing space.

"This was very well developed and I think it would have made a very big difference because very soon we could have extended it, using apps on smartphones and it could become a functioning parallel system and of course this would be euro denominated but at the drop of a hat it could be converted to a new drachma.

"But let me tell you - and this is quite a fascinating story - what difficulties I faced. The General Secretary of Public Revenues within my ministry is controlled fully and directly by the troika. It was not under control of my ministry, of me as minister, it was controlled by Brussels.

Ok, so problem number one: The general secretary of information systems on the other hand was controlled by me, as minister. I appointed a good friend of mine, a childhood friend of mine who had become professor of IT at Columbia University in the States and so on.  I put him in because I trusted him to develop this.
 
"At some point, a week or so after we moved into the ministry, he calls me up and says to me: 'You know what? I control the machines, I control the hardware but I do not control the software. The software belongs to the troika controlled General Secretary of Public Revenues. What do I do?'

"So we decided to hack into my ministry’s own software program in order to be able break it up to just copy just to copy the code of the tax systems website onto a large computer in his office so that he can work out how to design and implement this parallel payment system.

"And we were ready to get the green light from the PM when the banks closed in order to move into the General Secretariat of Public Revenues, which is not controlled by us but is controlled by Brussels, and to plug this laptop in and to energize the system.
In short, Varoufakis claims Tsipras had pre-approved the creation of secret accounts for every tax filer (which, knowing Greece, might have left Varoufakis short on accounts for quite a few citizens). Greeks would be made aware of the accounts' existence in the event the banking system ceased to function altogether, and Athens would effectively facilitate payments through the new system in defiance of the EMU. Clearly, this would not have been well received by Brussels - especially the bit about hacking their software - but ultimately, because the new system would be entirely controlled by Varoufakis' finance ministry, it could be converted to the drachma immediately.

Kathimerini goes on the quote Varoufakis as saying that German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble intended to use Grexit as leverage to force France into supporting a system that ceded fiscal decision making to Brussels (which would of course mean giving Berlin more say over EMU countries' finances):

"Schaeuble has a plan. The way he described it to me is very simple. He believes that the eurozone is not sustainable as it is. He believes there has to be some fiscal transfers, some degree of political union. He believes that for that political union to work without federation, without the legitimacy that a properly elected federal parliament can render, can bestow upon an executive, it will have to be done in a very disciplinary way. And he said explicitly to me that a Grexit is going to equip him with sufficient bargaining, sufficient terrorising power in order to impose upon the French that which Paris has been resisting. And what is that? A degree of transfer of budget making powers from Paris to Brussels."

The new revelations raise serious concerns for Alexis Tsipras. The deep divisions within Syriza are by now well publicized, but reports of covert plans to establish parallel banking systems using tax filers' IDs and the idea that elements within the ruling party plotted to seize billions in currency reserves and take control of the central bank have left some lawmakers demanding answers. Here's Reuters:

The center-right New Democracy party and the centrist To Potami and the Socialist Pasok parties, which all backed Tsipras in parliamentary votes on the bailout this month, demanded a response to the reports.

"The revelations that are coming out raise a major political, economic and moral issue for the government which needs in-depth examination," it said in a statement.

"Is it true that a designated team in the finance ministry had undertaken work on a backup plan? Is it true they had planned to raid the national Mint and that they prepared for a parallel currency by hacking the tax registration numbers of the taxpayers?"


Tsipras thus finds himself in an extraordinarily difficult spot. Passing two sets of prior bailout actions through parliament cost him dearly on the political front as more than 30 Syriza MPs defected on both votes. This means he'll be forced to rely on the support of opposition lawmakers to govern going forward or at least until he can call for elections and get a "clean start" after the third troika program is formally in place.

If Syriza's political opponents come to believe that their efforts to back Tsipras on the way to keeping Greece in the euro are being subverted in secret by members of Tsipras' own party, their support could dry up quickly leaving the PM with no support from either side of the aisle.

Given all of this, it's easy to see why many analysts and commentators still belive that Grexit - and everything that comes with it both for Greece and for the EMU - is still the most likely outcome.

 

[a_majoor]

Austerity does pay off for Spain, and some of the other PIIGS are beginning to recover as well. This will be a long and drawn out process (especially since the actual problem is debt overhang and a "haircut" cure is being avoided for political reasons across the EUZone):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/spain-emerges-as-europes-economic-star-after-years-of-austerity/article25819288/

Spain emerges as Europe's economic star after years of austerity
ERIC REGULY - EUROPEAN BUREAU CHIEF
ROME — The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Aug. 03, 2015 5:05PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Aug. 04, 2015 4:42PM EDT

Memories of the Spanish tourism downturn have vanished. New photos of the beaches along Spain’s Costa Blanca, on the Mediterranean, barely show any beach at all, just umbrellas and human flesh, packed together like canned sardines.

Spanish tourism is at record levels – the industry was up 4.2 per cent in the first half of the year, with 29.2 million international visits – to the point some vacation spots can’t cope with the crush. But to the Spanish government, the tourism wave is yet another sign that Spain has made a remarkable comeback.

Spain’s economy is growing faster than any of Europe’s big economies. The International Monetary Fund forecast Spanish growth at 3.1 per cent this year and 2.5 per cent in 2016, about double the average of the 19 euro zone countries. Of course, the centre-right government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is taking most of the credit for the turnaround, citing the success of the labour and banking reforms and the fiscal tightening. “Seeing what is happening to others right now, one has to say: It was worth it,” he said in a recent radio interview.

While economists argue that low oil prices and the barrage of stimulus unleashed by the European Central Bank can take more credit for the turnaround, there is no doubt that Spain has emerged as the economic star among Europe’s heavyweight economies. Not too long ago, it was the anchor member of the crisis countries known as the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. At one point, Spain’s unemployment rate, at more than 26 per cent, was as high as Greece’s. Spain was in such bad shape that it took a backdoor bailout through the €41.3-billion recapitalization of its banks, funded by the same European agency that came to the rescue of Greece.

Ireland’s economy is also surging ahead, with year-over-year growth in the first quarter at 6.5 per cent. Portugal is recovering, too, though much more slowly, with expected growth of 1.6 per cent this year. Italy is finally out of recession, if only barely. The standout laggard is Greece.

Greece’s dire economic plight was highlighted Monday by the collapse of both its manufacturing industry and its stock market.

Greece’s factory purchasing managers’ index, published by Markit Economics, fell at a record pace in July, to 30.2 from 46.9 in June. A reading below 50 indicates contraction. The Athens stock exchange, which reopened after five weeks of capital controls, plunged almost 23 per cent in early morning trading, later recovering somewhat to finish 16 per cent down. The banks, which are still subject to tight controls on cash withdrawals and international money transfers, fell 30 per cent, hitting the exchange’s loss limits.

Many economists think the Greek economy, which seemed on its way to recovery, will shrink by 2 per cent or more this year as it negotiates its third bailout since 2010. More than a few think the crisis, now in its sixth year, is so dire that it will push Greece out of the euro zone.

The post-2008 crisis and deep recession hammered Spain, of which domestic demand fell 16 per cent from peak to trough. The culprit was not high debt, as it was in Greece; it was the bursting, in 2007, of the housing and construction bubble. The collapse transformed Spain from the euro zone’s greatest jobs generator to greatest jobs destroyer.

How did Spain go from economic dud to darling?

Nick Greenwood, an analyst at Afi, an economics consultancy in Madrid, said Spain has a highly leveraged national balance sheet, meaning that even small improvements in the financial conditions can produce outsized benefits. Greece’s net international investment position is sharply negative – foreign liabilities exceed foreign assets by about 100 per cent of gross domestic product. Factors such as much lower debt-servicing costs have lifted Spain’s growth rate at a faster pace than it did in less leveraged economies.

Mr. Greenwood also cites the fall in the euro, the launch of the ECB’s €1.1-trillion ($1.6-trillion) quantitative easing program and the plunge in energy prices. While all European economies have benefited from low energy costs, the impact has been especially favourable in Spain because it imports three quarters of its energy, well above the European Union average of just above half.

Austerity was a drag on growth, as it was in other bailed out countries, but Spain did austerity well and those measures are now coming off as the election-bound government of Mr. Rajoy tries to sweeten up voters, propelling GDP. “Spain’s strong track record in both delivering austerity and structural reforms was very important for it to regain market confidence,” Mr. Greenwood said.

Spain is no miracle economy. Its jobless rate, while well off its peak, is 22 per cent, more than twice the precrisis level. Political risk is rising, as it did in Greece in January, when the radical left, anti-austerity Syriza party swept into power. Spain’s answer to Syriza is Podemos, of which popularity has fallen since Syriza failed to negotiate any austerity concessions with its creditors.

Still, Podemos is polling at 18 per cent, making it a viable coalition partner in a possible Socialist Workers’ Party-led minority government – the Spanish election has to be held by the end of the year. Another threat to the Spanish recovery comes from Catalonia, where the two main pro-independence parties are coming on strong. But the quick economic recovery is working in the government’s favour. “We remain confident that these [political] risks will not derail the recovery and economic adjustment under way in Spain,” Goldman Sachs said in a June 25 report on Spain’s turnaround.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Economist is an overview of the forthcoming UK referendum, compared to the 1975 version:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21660592-lessons-last-time-britain-held-poll-its-membership-eu-well-fed-men-v?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fpe%2Fst%2Fwellfedmenvmavericks

The EU referendum of 1975
Well-fed men v mavericks
Lessons from the last time Britain held a poll on its membership of the EU

Aug 8th 2015 | From the print edition

AS BEFITS Europe’s awkward partner, Britain’s forthcoming referendum on its relationship with the continent will not be its first. In 1975, only two years after Britain acceded to the European Economic Community, the Labour government of Harold Wilson held an in/out referendum, as it had promised during the previous year’s election campaign. Then, as now, the prime minister pledged to renegotiate the country’s terms of membership, and put the new deal to the electorate. The result was a resounding two-to-one vote to stay in.

If opinion polls are to be believed, the next referendum—due to take place before the end of 2017—will be much tighter. The 1975 vote offers some useful hints as to how both sides might prepare their cases. It also points to some of the political consequences that could flow from such an unusual event.

The politics of the 1975 vote were a mirror image of how the Europhiles and Eurosceptics line up today. Then, the issue divided the Labour Party down the middle, whereas the Tories and a small Liberal Party were almost unanimously pro-European. Now, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are broadly Europhile (though the Eurosceptic left is reasserting itself), and it is the Tories who are split. Indeed, David Cameron’s motive for calling his referendum is as nakedly political as Wilson’s was, namely to prevent his party falling apart over the issue.

Then, as now, the German chancellor helped the prime minister to confect a “renegotiation” of Britain’s membership, and came to London to promote the deal. Wilson won a few mostly cosmetic concessions; enough at least for the government officially to support a Yes vote in the referendum. Mr Cameron must hope to repeat the trick.

In another echo of 1975, Mr Cameron will go easy on cabinet ministers determined to support the No camp. The prime minister plans to let them resign for the period of the campaign, then reinstate them afterwards. Wilson did not even require them to step down temporarily. Mr Cameron may want to reflect on the consequences of this approach to party management: in the long run, smothering divisions contributed to the break-up of the Labour Party in 1981, when several of those cabinet ministers who had been part of the Yes campaign six years earlier (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers and David
Owen) set up the new Social Democratic Party (SDP). Released from the straitjacket of tribal party politics in 1975, they found the freedom of campaigning on a vital issue with like-minded people from different parties intoxicating.

One of those people, the young deputy leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel, recalls now: “The referendum had a long-term effect like that, it made me realise that there was more to life than pedalling away in one political party.” During the referendum campaign he formed a strong working relationship with Jenkins, in particular, which formed the basis of the SDP-Liberal Party alliance in the 1980s, when they tried to “break the mould” of British politics.

All it achieved, however, was to split the left, allowing Margaret Thatcher to canter to a couple of landslide election victories without ever winning anything near a majority of the popular vote. Thus the 1975 referendum did indeed help to break the mould of politics, if not in quite the way that Jenkins and Lord Steel (as he now is) would have wished.

Mr Cameron has the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) breathing down his neck, already a sort of breakaway Tory party (its only MP, Douglas Carswell, is a former Conservative). The prime minister must fear that, in a free vote, dozens of UKIP-inclined Tory MPs might find the freedom of a referendum campaign equally exciting, leading to a similar cleavage in the Conservative party as happened to Labour.
Should Mr Cameron therefore enforce strict party discipline to save the party? If he gets enough out of the renegotiations, it might be tempting.

On the campaign itself, in 1975 the Yes camp had the full weight of the establishment and business on its side, so was able to outspend the Noes by a ratio of around 12 to one. All the big guns of the time fronted the Yes campaign. Jenkins, its leader, admitted that they all looked a bit too much like “well-fed men who had done well out of the Common Agricultural Policy”. This time round the Yes campaign will not enjoy quite the same unanimity of support from business, but it will still be ahead of the Noes in terms of money and gravitas.

The press, which was unanimously pro-Europe in 1975, will be more divided this time around, too. John Mills, a businessman and national organiser for the Noes in 1975, remembers that they were unable to compete with “the sheer weight of propaganda on the other side”. One historian, John Campbell, has written that the 1975 campaign was led by “the mavericks, romantics and extremists of all parties”, from the renegade right-wing Tory Enoch Powell to the communists. The No campaign thus looked rather cranky. That suggests that this time, the Noes might do well to front their campaign with people with a wider appeal. That probably means someone other than Nigel Farage, UKIP’s popular but polarising leader, a long-time admirer of Enoch Powell.

I rather hope the UK referendum succeeds ... I believe that Britain is, in economic terms, better off "in" than "out," but I also believe there is more to politics (and grand strategy) than just economics. (Although some may not believe that, given what I often say in these fora.) I think that both the EU and the UK need some "shaking up." The UK is, potentially the most productive nation in Europe, but it (fairly) consistently fails to live up to expectations. Equally, the EU could be a very productive free trade area, but it is distracted by politcal and monetary issues. I will not use another layer cake illustration, but ... those who want to be "just barely in" and those who want to be "all in" should both find a comfortable place in a bigger, looser EU.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Globe and Mail is reporting that "Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will submit his resignation to the country’s president later Thursday to clear the way for early elections on Sept. 20 ... Tsipras effectively lost his parliamentary majority after a rebellion by hardliners in his Syriza party who oppose a bailout agreement struck with international lenders."

 

[a_majoor]

Europeans are starting to wake up to the idea that they may have made some poor decisions about how the EUZone is set up and works. This will have consequences as Europeans not of the political or bureaucratic class push back hard against these decisions. We already see some of it with people coming out in force to prevent refugee claimants from the Middle East or Africa from settling in their countries or cities, and the security issue is bound to inflame many more people:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213018/

IMMIGRATION: Terror Attack On Train Puts Spotlight On Schengen.

The ease with which the terror suspect in the failed train attack moved around Europe has put the spotlight on the passport-free Schengen Area.

Calls for tighter border security within Europe are expected to increase after it emerged that the gunman overpowered by passengers in France on Friday was known to anti-terror authorities in France, Belgium and Spain.

Charles Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, called for urgent talks with France, Germany and the Netherlands on increasing security on cross-border trains.

However, the European Commission said the Schengen treaty on freedom of movement was “non-negotiable” and there were no plans to change it. But it said increased security controls could be compatible with Schengen “if they do not have an effect equivalent to border checks”.

The train originated in the Netherlands, passing Belgium before entering France — three of the 26 Schengen countries where people travel without the need for passports and security checks. Passport and luggage checks are, however, carried out on Eurostar services that run to Britain, which is outside the Schengen Area.

I predict that more countries will choose to be outside the Schengen Area if this keeps up. Even the Germans are talking about it:

The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, on Saturday called the train episode “a terrorist attack” and proposed “an urgent meeting of transport and interior ministers from Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands to reinforce antiterrorist measures, notably identity and baggage controls,” his office said.

Attacks like this one, combined with Europe’s difficulties this summer with a surge of migrants and asylum seekers from Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries, have made some officials question the open borders under the Schengen Agreement, which allows free movement without border controls across much of the European Union. Even the German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, has suggested a new examination of that agreement because of the large flow of migrants to Germany and other northern countries from entry points in Greece, Italy and Hungary.

Borders exist for a reason.

and people looking to push back:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213014/

IMMIGRATION BACKLASH: Sweden’s nationalists lead polls for first time.

More people support Jimmie Åkesson’s Sweden Democrats than any other political group in Sweden, according to a new poll which puts the nationalists in the lead for the first time in history.

The Sweden Democrat party has been gradually rising in popularity since it scored 12.9 percent in the country’s last general election in September 2014.

But a survey by pollsters YouGov published in Sweden’s Metro newspaper on Thursday suggested that 25.2 percent of those questioned would now vote for the nationalists, who are calling for dramatic cuts in immigration to Sweden.

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s Social Democrat party – which remains in favour of helping large numbers of refugees from war torn nations – scored 23.4 percent in the poll. The centre-right Moderates, led by Anna Kinberg Batra who took over from the country’s former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt earlier this year, saw their share cut to just 21.0, having previously scored higher than their ruling rivals in recent surveys.

The Sweden Democrats, with roots in the country’s most radical extreme right, entered parliament in 2010 with the ambition of curbing Sweden’s immigration and refugee policy.

If the establishment won’t give the people what they want, then “radical extreme” people will arise to do so.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Who is the happiest man in Europe, today?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
                                   

                                    It's UK Prime Minister David Cameron

The reason Prime Minister cameron is so happy is that the Labour Party has elected left-wing-nut Jeremy Corbyn as leader, rendering that party unelectable except in its already loyal loony-left strongholds in the last bastions of British trade union dominated enforced poverty.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Europeans are starting to wake up to the idea that they may have made some poor decisions about how the EUZone is set up and works. This will have consequences as Europeans not of the political or bureaucratic class push back hard against these decisions. We already see some of it with people coming out in force to prevent refugee claimants from the Middle East or Africa from settling in their countries or cities, and the security issue is bound to inflame many more people:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213018/

and people looking to push back:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213014/

More on Sweden's immigration problems in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/swedens-ugly-immigration-problem/article26338254/

Sweden’s ugly immigration problem

MARGARET WENTE
The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Sep. 11, 2015

In Europe, refugees from Syria and Iraq have been cramming the ferry-trains heading from Germany to Denmark. But once in Denmark, many refused to get off. Where they really want to go is Sweden, where refugee policies are more generous. When the Danes said no, they hopped off the trains, and began heading toward the Swedish border by taxi, bus, and foot.

Sweden has the most welcoming asylum policies and most generous welfare programs in the European Union. One typical refugee, Natanael Haile, barely escaped drowning in the Mediterranean in 2013. But the folks back home in Eritrea don’t want to know about the perils of his journey. As he told The New York Times, they want to know about “his secondhand car, the government allowances he receives and his plans to find work as a welder once he finishes a two year language course.” As a registered refugee, he receives a monthly living allowance of more than $700 (U.S.).

Sweden’s generous immigration policies are essential to the image of a country that (like Canada) prides itself as a moral superpower. For the past 40 years, most of Sweden’s immigration has involved refugees and family reunification, so much so that the words “immigrant” and “refugee” are synonymous there (unlike in Canada).

Sweden takes in more refugees per capita than any other European country, and immigrants – mainly from the Middle East and Africa – now make up about 16 per cent of the population. The main political parties, as well as the mainstream media, support the status quo. Questioning the consensus is regarded as xenophobic and hateful. Now all of Europe is being urged to be as generous as Sweden.

So how are things working out in the most immigration-friendly country on the planet?

Not so well, says Tino Sanandaji. Mr. Sanandaji is himself an immigrant, a Kurdish-Swedish economist who was born in Iran and moved to Sweden when he was 10. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and specializes in immigration issues. This week I spoke with him by Skype.

“There has been a lack of integration among non-European refugees,” he told me. Forty-eight per cent of immigrants of working age don’t work, he said. Even after 15 years in Sweden, their employment rates reach only about 60 per cent. Sweden has the biggest employment gap in Europe between natives and non-natives.

In Sweden, where equality is revered, inequality is now entrenched. Forty-two per cent of the long-term unemployed are immigrants, Mr. Sanandaji said. Fifty-eight per cent of welfare payments go to immigrants. Forty-five per cent of children with low test scores are immigrants. Immigrants on average earn less than 40 per cent of Swedes. The majority of people charged with murder, rape and robbery are either first- or second-generation immigrants. “Since the 1980s, Sweden has had the largest increase in inequality of any country in the OECD,” Mr. Sanandaji said.

It’s not for lack of trying. Sweden is tops in Europe for its immigration efforts. Nor is it the newcomers’ fault. Sweden’s labour market is highly skills-intensive, and even low-skilled Swedes can’t get work. “So what chance is there for a 40-year-old woman from Africa?” Mr. Sandaji wondered.

Sweden’s fantasy is that if you socialize the children of immigrants and refugees correctly, they’ll grow up to be just like native Swedes. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Much of the second generation lives in nice Swedish welfare ghettos. The social strains – white flight, a general decline in trust – are growing worse. The immigrant-heavy city of Malmo, just across the bridge from Denmark, is an economic and social basket case.

Sweden’s generosity costs a fortune, at a time when economic growth is stagnant. The country now spends about $4-billion a year on settling new refugees – up from $1-billion a few years ago, Mr. Sanandaji said. And they keep coming. Sweden automatically accepts unaccompanied minors. “We used to take in 500 unaccompanied minors a year,” he said. “This year we are expecting 12,000.”

Yet Sweden’s acute immigration problems scarcely feature in the mainstream media. Journalists see their mission as stopping racism, so they don’t report the bad news. Despite – or perhaps because of – this self-censorship, the gap between the opinion elites and the voters on immigration issues is now a chasm. According to a recent opinion poll, 58 per cent of Swedes believe there is too much immigration, Mr. Sanandaji noted. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party is now polling at between 20 per cent and 25 per cent.

Sweden is a cautionary tale for anyone who believes that Europe is capable of assimilating the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants who are besieging the continent, or the millions more who are desperately poised to follow in their wake. The argument that these people are vital to boost the economy – that they will magically create economic growth and bail the Europeans out of their demographic decline – is a fantasy.

It’s really very simple, Mr. Sanandaji explained. You can’t combine open borders with a welfare state. “If you’re offering generous welfare benefits to every citizen, and anyone can come and use these benefits, then a very large number of people will try to do that. And it’s just mathematically impossible for a small country like Sweden to fund those benefits.”

Things will get worse before they get better. As Judy Dempsey, a senior analyst at a Berlin think tank, told The Wall Street Journal, “Europe hasn’t seen anything yet in terms of the numbers or the backlash.”

Meanwhile, Sweden’s neighbour, Denmark, has cut the benefits for refugees in half, and has taken out ads in Lebanese newspapers warning would-be migrants to stay home. The Danes don’t want to be a moral superpower. They can’t afford it.

My take, based on some experience in Sweden and with Swedes, is that are a naturally fair, just, generous and liberal people ... maybe that comes from being a small, rich, secure and stable society.  :dunno:  But I am reading, again and again, that cross cultural immigration is not working for any of the Scandinavian countries. I don't know, again  :dunno: why it seems to be more problematical in, say, Denmark or Sweden than in e.g. Germany: is it sheer size? is it Scandinavian cultural homogeneity?  :dunno:  But it does seem to be a problem ... and a warning?

 

[GAP]

In 5 to 10 years we are going to see the end result of this stream of refugee's.

It is not going to be pretty.

There are a good many who will assimilate, but much, much more will hunker down and just plain consume whatever they can get and blame their hosts that they are not giving enough.

They play the victim to the hilt.

 

[Kirkhill]

I have had the pleasure (occasionally dubious) of spending a good amount of time with Scandinavians socially and commercially.

Rule No. 1:  Norwegians, Danes and Swedes are Scandinavians except when they are not.
Rule No. 2:  Norwegians, Danes and Swedes cordially detest each other.

They are not the same people and don't see themselves the same way.

The Danes laugh at the Swedes for their culture,  defined as the Danes see it, by the phrase "It is not allowed".  As far as the Danes are concerned the Swedes are so bound up by rules that there is no human function possible unless it is expressly permitted. They consider the Germans, whom they really hate and call Judenbrenner, as socially liberal by comparison.    The Swedes are/were also laughed at (and sworn at) for their weekly invasion of Denmark.  I understand the bridge to Sweden and joint membership in the EU have changed things but for decades, every Friday every Swede within reach of the coast would head for Denmark.  Once in Denmark they wouldn't get past the docks.  Come Saturday Morning the Nyhavn in Copenhagen was littered with beer bottles, plastic beer mugs and dead drunk Swedes.  The Danish work crews swept up the bottles and mugs and left the Swedes alone.  They may have been drunk, disorderly and ill - but they were a great source of money. 

One other thing I that I noticed about Swedes and Danes is that neither language differentiates between the words "may" and "can".  I had to look up the Danish words for "please may I" or "please will you" because in over two decades of working with them I never heard those phrases, either in Danish or English.  At first I just thought it was their professional demeanour.  Then I started to wonder if it was just that they saw all employees the same way.  Then I finally got it.  Even social exchanges have all the warmth of an O-Group.  Until the beer and Gamel Dansk start flowing.  Then you start to hear about the Judenbrenners, the drunken Swedes and the Iranians who have taken over the government apartment buildings in West Copenhagen (just across the harbour from Nyhavn) and how you can't find a taxi driver who speaks Danish or who doesn't need to be given directions.

Danes are blunt.  They have no filter and certainly no nuance.  And I like them a lot.

The Swedes on the other hand are very filtered. They filter their own thoughts.  Getting drunk in Denmark is/was one of their few releases.  They would never, while sober, allow themselves to say what they think.  That would be more than the height of bad manners.  It is simply "not allowed".  The church wouldn't allow it.  Their neighbours wouldn't allow it.  Their friends wouldn't allow it.  Swedes don't bend.  Consequently they break.

Norwegians.  I have no knowledge of the home culture - I only know their expat community, almost exclusively sea-going.  They are immensely proud of not being Danes or Swedes.  (They just got their independence from Denmark in 1905).  They seem to me to be the modern inheritors of the Viking culture.  Rules are not a top priority for them.  They are merely things that have to be navigated to make money.  It was the Norwegians that figured out how to beat the Yanks and the Jones Act.  They determined that the only thing necessary to build a ship in foreign yards for commercial service in the US was to transport the most mangy, rusty, clapped out piece of Yankee trash to a Norwegian, cut it apart and sell it all for scrap.  They would keep one piece of metal: that portion of the keel on which the nautical equivalent of the Vehicle Identification Number is stamped - and then build a completely new ship around it.  The ship would then sale back to the US and start sucking American fish out of American waters in an "American" boat and sell them to the Japanese. And they weren't above having company brawls in parking lots in Seattle involving company vice presidents if that is what it took to defend their commercial rights.

Each of the three nations rely on a key industry.

For the Norwegians, currently it is hydro-carbons, but historically it is the sea - ships and the things they can bring back to Bergen.
For the Danes it is the pig.
For the Swedes it is iron.

The Swedes have been supplying iron to the world since the fall of the Roman Empire - they have a good claim to having caused it.  They supplied the iron in the form of swords they carried and in the form of ingots which their opponents could buy to defend themselves against Swedish swords.  Or they could buy the swords. Or they could buy the technology.  One thing they could never secure was the iron mine itself.

The Swedes built their society on the iron mines and technology. 
They mine iron from hard rock.
They smelt the iron.
They forge black iron and stainless steel.
They make plate and pipe.
They make ball bearings and heat exchangers,
They make pumps and valves and specialty process equipment.
They make electrical motors and controls.
They make vacuum cleaners and food processing plants.
They make the Carl Gustav 84mm, the Bv206, the CV90, the Visby Corvette, the Gripen fighter and the Gotland Air Independent Submarine.
One thing sells the other and they make money from it all.

To survive in that country you need to work. 
You need to have a technical skill. 
You need to be able to say: "Sju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor."

Some foreigners can get their tongues around it.  And no Swede will laugh at you for trying (unless they are drunk). That is not allowed.  However, in the attempt, you demonstrate that you are not Swedish and never can be.

Edit to add.  The Danish economy is essentially an agrarian one.  They have no resource base to build on.  Consequently they, along with the Dutch and their cows, have focused on developing technologies that get the best out of the available animals.  Danish cuisine is defined by the polser: the sausage/wiener/hot dog.  And they make a fortune selling pigs, pork and the technology to sell everything they can from the pig - including the squeal.

The Danes are lean and green from necessity.
The Norwegians are green because they can sell more stuff that way.
The Swedes are green because nothing else is allowed and because they can make money by being lean and efficient at home and by selling the technologies overseas.

 

[dimsum]

I have had the pleasure (occasionally dubious) of spending a good amount of time with Scandinavians socially and commercially.

Great insights - pretty much got exactly the gist of what I gathered from my Norwegian military friends.  They also said some things about Finland that bordered on offensive, so I won't say them here.

I visited Oslo and area about 5 years ago in the summer, when (to paraphrase my friends) "the dumb Swedes come to take our jobs".  They were talking about the service industry (waitressing, etc) but that was when Sweden was paying about 1/3 less than Norway for the same job.  Incidentally, in my 3-4 days of roaming around Oslo and environs, I didn't really see any stereotypical blonde Nordic women - or those that were, as pointed out by my friends, were Swedish.  Strange.

As an aside, if Denmark's industry revolves around pigs, how do their Muslim/Jewish/non-pig-eating sector survive (if they even have them)?

 

[GAP]

And they make a fortune selling pigs, pork and the technology to sell everything they can from the pig

As an example....one of the colonies I deal with bought 1300 pigs from Denmark to repopulate their barns....at $1200 each. Apparently it paid off big time. larger, hardier and higher count on litters.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Great insights - pretty much got exactly the gist of what I gathered from my Norwegian military friends.  They also said some things about Finland that bordered on offensive, so I won't say them here.

I visited Oslo and area about 5 years ago in the summer, when (to paraphrase my friends) "the dumb Swedes come to take our jobs".  They were talking about the service industry (waitressing, etc) but that was when Sweden was paying about 1/3 less than Norway for the same job.  Incidentally, in my 3-4 days of roaming around Oslo and environs, I didn't really see any stereotypical blonde Nordic women - or those that were, as pointed out by my friends, were Swedish.  Strange.

As an aside, if Denmark's industry revolves around pigs, how do their Muslim/Jewish/non-pig-eating sector survive (if they even have them)?

I spent a lot of time in Norway, mostly safely employed in the remote and mountainous regions of their arctic in wintertime, but spent time in Oslo, Tromso, Bergen, Hamar, Rjuken and a few other places.

if you want to see the Aryan side of Norway the nightclubs are generally full of Abba look alikes... who can't hold their drink of course. ;D

I stumbled upon this TV series and recommend it to anyone who wants a good idea of what it's like to live there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilyhammer

My wife couldn't take it. I kept bursting out laughing and screaming 'THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT'S LIKE!!!!'.

 

[Kirkhill]

And for a perspective on Southern Culture and Sr Prudori's countrymen:

The Palio

...don't for one minute assume anyone in Siena wants the race cleaned up. "The intrigue is very much part of it," she says. "In Siena, rules are there to be bent and people who do it well are admired."

It is an attitude that many observers have ascribed to the rest of Italy too, where one of the most common proverbs is Fatta la legge trovato l'inganno ("No sooner is a law made than someone will find a way around it.") And it is why the Sienese are fond of the saying Il Palio e vita ("The Palio is life.") The system is rigged, so the only way to win is to be more devious than your opponents.

As Tobias Jones notes in his book The Dark Heart of Italy, in which he set out to explain the popularity of the former prime ministerSilvio Berlusconi, "Furbo, cunning, is the adjective most usually used by Italians to describe, with both admiration and dismay, their fellow countrymen: Italiani, furba gente ('cunning people')."

But bribes and deals and foul play do not always win the day. In the Palio last month, commentators ascribed the win of Giovanni Atzeni to "the best jockey, on the best horse". It was, to many people's way of thinking, a boring race.

"It's a typical human desire to control your life, to feel you can control everything," says Spender. "But the Palio proves that, sometimes, you can't control that much."

Italians - More Norwegian than Swedish.

 

[Kirkhill]

“We can’t lose the people who always believed in us, the simple people who work, who aren’t any less intelligent than the elites. They’ve always supported Europe and it is about reconquering their heart.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11949038/Europes-glory-days-at-an-end-warns-Juncker.html

And this is what sticks in the craw of every "Englishman".  And what fires the Anti-Intellectual charge against all "Englishmen" and their  "intellectual" heirs.

The Junkers of Europe, and the world, can't come to terms with an educated mob.  The "English" of the world will not accept being dictated to by self-styled intellectuals.

Anybody that styles themselves as an intellectual or a member of the elite is already suspect.

 

[Kirkhill]

More frivolities in Europe

Portuguese President disallows the election results because they would upset Brussels.  Link.

Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power
Constitutional crisis looms after anti-austerity Left is denied parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government.

Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.
Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.


He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.

This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.
President Cavaco Silva

Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership.


“In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said Mr Cavaco Silva.

“This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.

"After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,” he said.
Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels.

This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.

The conservative premier, Pedro Passos Coelho, came first and therefore gets first shot at forming a government, but his Right-wing coalition as a whole secured just 38.5pc of the vote. It lost 28 seats.

The Socialist leader, Antonio Costa, has reacted with fury, damning the president’s action as a “grave mistake” that threatens to engulf the country in a political firestorm.

“It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament. The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defence of our democracy,” he said.

Mr Costa vowed to press ahead with his plans to form a triple-Left coalition, and warned that the Right-wing rump government will face an immediate vote of no confidence.

There can be no fresh elections until the second half of next year under Portugal’s constitution, risking almost a year of paralysis that puts the country on a collision course with Brussels and ultimately threatens to reignite the country’s debt crisis.
The bond market has reacted calmly to events in Lisbon but it is no longer a sensitive gauge now that the European Central Bank is mopping up Portuguese debt under quantitative easing.

Portugal is no longer under a Troika regime and does not face an immediate funding crunch, holding cash reserves above €8bn. Yet the IMF says the country remains “highly vulnerable” if there is any shock or the country fails to deliver on reforms, currently deemed to have “stalled”.

Public debt is 127pc of GDP and total debt is 370pc, worse than in Greece. Net external liabilities are more than 220pc of GDP.

The IMF warned that Portugal's “export miracle” remains narrowly based, the headline gains flattered by re-exports with little value added. “A durable rebalancing of the economy has not taken place,” it said.

“The president has created a constitutional crisis,” said Rui Tavares, a radical green MEP. “He is saying that he will never allow the formation of a government containing Leftists and Communists. People are amazed by what has happened.”

Mr Tavares said the president has invoked the spectre of the Communists and the Left Bloc as a “straw man” to prevent the Left taking power at all, knowing full well that the two parties agreed to drop their demands for euro-exit, a withdrawal from Nato and nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under a compromise deal to the forge the coalition.


President Cavaco Silva may be correct is calculating that a Socialist government in league with the Communists would precipitate a major clash with the EU austerity mandarins. Mr Costa’s grand plan for Keynesian reflation – led by spending on education and health – is entirely incompatible with the EU’s Fiscal Compact.

This foolish treaty law obliges Portugal to cut its debt to 60pc of GDP over the next 20 years in a permanent austerity trap, and to do it just as the rest of southern Europe is trying to do the same thing, and all against a backdrop of powerful deflationary forces worldwide.

The strategy of chipping away at the country’s massive debt burden by permanent belt-tightening is largely self-defeating, since the denominator effect of stagnant nominal GDP aggravates debt dynamics.
It is also pointless. Portugal will require a debt write-off when the next global downturn hits in earnest. There is no chance whatsoever that Germany will agree to EMU fiscal union in time to prevent this.

The chief consequence of drawing out the agony is deep hysteresis in the labour markets and chronically low levels of investment that blight the future.

Mr Cavaco Silva is effectively using his office to impose a reactionary ideological agenda, in the interests of creditors and the EMU establishment, and dressing it up with remarkable Chutzpah as a defence of democracy.

The Portuguese Socialists and Communists have buried the hatchet on their bitter divisions for the first time since the Carnation Revolution and the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in the 1970s, yet they are being denied their parliamentary prerogative to form a majority government.

This is a dangerous demarche. The Portuguese conservatives and their media allies behave as if the Left has no legitimate right to take power, and must be held in check by any means.

These reflexes are familiar – and chilling – to anybody familiar with 20th century Iberian history, or indeed Latin America. That it is being done in the name of the euro is entirely to be expected.

Greece’s Syriza movement, Europe’s first radical-Left government in Europe since the Second World War, was crushed into submission for daring to confront eurozone ideology. Now the Portuguese Left is running into a variant of the same meat-grinder.
Europe’s socialists face a dilemma. They are at last waking up to the unpleasant truth that monetary union is an authoritarian Right-wing enterprise that has slipped its democratic leash, yet if they act on this insight in any way they risk being prevented from taking power.

Brussels really has created a monster.

Give me the chaos of the mob......

 

[a_majoor]

A multitude of articles on Angela Merkel packaged tog3ether on Instapundit. Lots of links to follow there as well:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/220959/

ANGELA MERKEL NAMED TIME MAGAZINE’S ‘PERSON OF THE YEAR,’ AP reports:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named Time’s Person of the Year, praised Wednesday by the magazine for her leadership on everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis.

“Not once or twice but three times there has been reason to wonder this year whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft,” Time editor Nancy Gibbs wrote. “You can agree with her or not, but she is not taking the easy road. Leaders are tested only when people don’t want to follow. For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is TIME’s Person of the Year.”

In response, Donald Trump snarked:


“I told you Time Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite,” Trump tweeted. “They picked person who is ruining Germany.”

And he’s right on that — Merkel is taking Germany “Down a Suicidal Path,” as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in late October:


In terms of tough leadership, Germany’s iron lady, Merkel, had trumped even the reputation of Britain’s late former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. In world opinion, Merkel was deemed just as decisive as Thatcher, but with a far stronger global hand to play and with a more popular embrace of social justice.

In sum, the new post–Cold War Germany was evolving into the leader of the West, especially during the American recessional from world affairs orchestrated by President Barack Obama.

No more. In just the last six months Germany in general, and Merkel in particular, have imploded.

Merkel’s disastrous decision to open the borders of Germany — and with them Europe’s as well — is proving both selfish and suicidal.

Hordes of migrants are swarming into Europe. Merkel’s naïveté cannot be dressed up in her professed humanitarianism, given that many of the migrants are young, single men from the Middle East who pour into Europe not as political refuges but as opportunists eager for European social largesse.

Aside from the costs, and the religious and social tensions that hundreds of thousands of young unemployed Muslim males will create in Europe, there are lots of other hypocrisies in the German migrant situation.

Germany was far tougher in its fiscal negotiations with kindred European nation Greece than it has been with Middle Eastern migrants.

Merkel logically lectured Greece that its reckless borrowing could not be allowed to undermine the European Union. But isn’t that selfishness similar to what Germany is now doing? With Merkel urging other European nations to take in waves of migrants and thereby inviting a flood of refugees across the borders of its neighbors, Germany’s far poorer neighbors will bear much of the cost.

All of which can be summed up in a single word that was on everyone’s lips last month: Paris.

Which Merkel — or at the very least those with her “what could go wrong?” mindset  — deserve more than a little blame for. In the 1920s, Henry Luce, the center-right founder of Time magazine, originally conceived his “Man of the Year” category as a way of recognizing that individuals making choices drive history, and sometimes via quite disastrous decisions, as Jonah Goldberg noted in 2006,  after Time wimped out by choosing you! — and me! — and everyone! — as their “Person of the Year,” rather than plastering Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their cover:


The intellectual flubber of Time’s decision is manifest on many levels. Though some argue that Time was patting the American people on the head for voting the way they wanted in the last election, the more obvious explanation is that Time’s editors didn’t want to offend anybody. “If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people,” Richard Stengel, Time’s newly vintaged managing editor, told the Associated Press. “But if you choose millions of people, you don’t have to justify it to anyone.”

Well, isn’t that convenient. Heaven forbid a news editor do something controversial that would have to be defended on the merits. Spare the delicate flowers such hardship!

Stengel added that if Time had to choose a real person to be Person of the Year, it would likely have been Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “It just felt to me a little off selecting him,” Stengel said.

One might wonder if it felt “a little off” to past Time editors who awarded the Man of the Year award to Hitler in 1938 or to Stalin — twice, once in 1939 and again in 1942 — or to the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

But the answer is that it didn’t bother the old editors, not really. Because Time’s Man of the Year award was originally conceived as something other than the Mother of All Puff Pieces.

Time founder Henry Luce swam against the stream of Marxist determinism which held that history unfolded according to cold, impersonal forces. He believed individuals — i.e. great men and women — matter. He said the original award should go to the person “who most affected the news or our lives, for good or ill, this year.” That was the point of picking Charles Lindbergh as the first Man of the Year — because he, and he alone, seemed to be ushering in a New Age. Hitler was MOY in 1938 because he might have been ushering in a Dark Age. You are Person of the Year because the editors of Time want to live in a Feel-Good Age where everyone is empowered (hence Time’s rationalizations about the people-power of the Internet).

Of course, Time has punted many times before. For example, in 1988, beating the fierce competition, Earth was named “Planet of the Year.” No doubt that choice sounded very clever in the editorial-board meeting.

Time’s 2001 decision, naming Rudy Giuliani person of the year, was even more telling. This was a true profile-in-cowardice moment. There was no intellectually defensible standard for suggesting that the able mayor affected the news or our lives more than Osama bin Laden, who at the time seemed at least to be the Gavrilo Princip of the 21st century. (Princip was the fellow who launched World War I, which in turn launched World War II and the Cold War.)

While Henry Luce wouldn’t recognize very much these days at the magazine he founded other than its logo, give Time credit for getting their choice this year right, even if they can’t see the reasons why themselves. And for passing over the massive PR blizzard that would have come from putting The Donald on there. Or to bring this post full circle:

jimgeraghty

"No German Chancellor has done more to change the demographics of Europe since...Oh."

 

[a_majoor]

Angela Merkel is starting to "talk the talk", perhaps becasue the German people are not anywhere near as accepting as their political elites seem to think, but the real question is will she "walk the walk"?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/12/14/angela-merkel-multiculturalism-is-a-sham/

Multiculturalism is a sham, says Angela Merkel
By Rick Noack December 14 at 2:29 PM 

Merkel: Multiculturalism remains 'a lie'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that multiculturalism in Germany remains "a lie," telling immigrants to "obey our laws, values and traditions." Her comments came as part of a speech on Dec. 14, in Karlsruhe, a city dominated by Europe's refugee crisis. (Reuters)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party's convention on Monday that she had to stop them.

The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: "Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’ ” or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. "The challenge is immense," she said. "We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably."

Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had "utterly failed."

"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'Let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.' But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said in 2010.

Repeating those ideas on Monday was meant to calm her supporters who have grown increasingly weary of the influx of refugees. Newcomers, Merkel stressed, should assimilate to German values and culture, and respect the country's laws.

Merkel emphasized that despite her commitment to limit the influx of refugees, she was standing by her decision to open the borders earlier this fall. “It is a historical test for Europe,” she said, adding that other countries in Europe should accept more refugees to take some of the burden off Germany.

Refugees in need should be helped, she said, but she also suggested that not everyone who has come to Germany fulfilled those criteria. German authorities are expected to ramp up deportations in the coming months.

Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, overwhelmingly approved of her refugee policy, with only two out of about 1,000 delegates voting against a resolution in support of it.

Merkel's comments may also reflect a particular understanding of assimilation. Many Germans expect immigrants to quickly learn the German language and to contribute to their communities and work life.

Multiculturalism usually has a positive connotation, but to Merkel it symbolizes the emergence of isolated societies within Germany — and ultimately a failure of assimilating immigrants. Her policy toward the issue is supposed to avoid the creation of suburbs such as the areas around Paris, for instance, where young immigrants are isolated from the rest of society.

However, her speech comes at a sensitive time. Germany has opened its borders to approximately 1 million refugees this year, many of whom are still being accommodated in makeshift housing. Fights have broken out in multiple reception centers, raising fears about the country's ability to deal with the influx.

Local disputes have caused tensions in national politics as well. Last year, Germany's influential Christian Social Union party proposed that everyone in Germany should be required to speak German "in public and in private with their families." The public backlash forced the party to retract the draft resolution.

Compared to 2010, when Merkel first voiced her criticism of multiculturalism, there was little reaction Monday. The applause following her speech lasted nine minutes and again had to be interrupted by Merkel. "Thanks, but we have work to do," she said.

Rick Noack writes about foreign affairs and is based in Europe

 

[George Wallace]

The topic of "multiculturalism" being a failure is not new in many countries, even our own.  I would have to agree with her comments when one considers her having allowed the sudden influx of over one (1) million refugees (of various types; economic, etc.) into Germany.  This is not building multiculturalism, but creating the slow erosion of the existing culture, be it multicultural or not; perhaps even the rapid transition of the current culture into one that is radically different.

 

[a_majoor]

And the EU gets more heartburn as Euroskeptic governments are elected in Poland to join that of Hungary. My idea that eastern Europe will form another power bloc either within or outside of the EU (along with the Nordic Zone, Mitteleuropa, the "Latin zone" and England, with the Balkens and Greece perhaps being an appendage) seems to be developing. Of course the reason parties like this are appealing to people is they address issues trhe people are invested in, and are responsive to the moods of the people, unlike the distant Eurocrats in Brussels. (This is also the reason behind the spectracular growth of Nativist parties like Marie Le Pen's "National Front" throughout Europe, which go far beyond what the Polish Law and Justice party (PIS) proposes.

http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/the-situation-in-poland-europes-new-scapegoat/

‘The situation in Poland’ — Europe’s new scapegoat
Olenka Hamilton
12 December 2015

When an EU country elects a government with nationalist or Eurosceptic policies, the European Parliament calls an urgent investigation into ‘the situation’ in that country. When Victor Orban became Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010 for example, the European Parliament called a debate entitled ‘the situation in Hungary’. Orban’s Fidesz party is known for its conservatism and its regard for national sovereignty. When Orban was democratically elected with a two thirds majority in the Hungarian Parliament, he was elected with a mandate to reform the state institutions, which had become corrupt under communist rule and had been stagnating ever since. When he set about enacting the above, the European Parliament accused him of aspiring to dictatorship by replacing enemies with friends within the judiciary. It then drafted a resolution which condemned Hungary for allowing for ‘a systemic deterioration of the rule of law’.

Hungary was asking for it. Its nationalist policies were considered a threat to EU integration —and rightly so. In response to the EU’s latest proposals to impose ‘quotas’ which would share migrants fairly amongst EU countries, Orban said:

‘[Hungary’s] problem is that the [European courts] see the world differently. They belong to part of Europe which represents the life that transcends the nation-state and we are below them because we live the lives of nation-states’.

Orban has also taken a tough stand against migrants who were forcing their way into Hungary. He was accused of inciting hate crimes for saying he wanted to keep ‘Hungary for Hungarians’ and ‘Europe for Europeans’. Inevitably, discussions on the situation in Hungary re-opened with renewed vigour and the resolution on the situation in Hungary was updated. ‘The situation in Hungary’ has, they say, taken a turn for the worse:

‘whereas recent initiatives and interference by the Hungarian Government, in particular over the past 12 months, have led to a serious and systemic deterioration of the rule of law as regards media freedom and pluralism, the fight against intolerance and discrimination, the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, the freedom of assembly and association, the freedom of education and academic research, the equal treatment of religion and belief, restrictions on and obstacles to the activities of civil society organisations, the rights of people belonging to minorities, including Roma and LGBTI, the independence of the judiciary and many worrying allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest undermining the rule of law’.

Hungary’s tough border controls and its refusal to participate in the EU’s asylum proposals have led the European parliament to ‘initiate an in-depth monitoring process concerning the situation of democracy…in Hungary’.

Europe now has a new ‘situation’: Poland. The European Parliament has been calling for a debate to discuss ‘The Situation in Poland’. They are outraged because the newly-elected Law and Justice party (PIS) has blocked the instalment of five judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, a powerful body that rules on the constitutionality of laws. The accusation against the new government, much like that against Orban, is that they are illegally sacking the judges and replacing them with their own people. But the accusations are unfounded: the restructuring of the Constitutional Tribunal had to happen as a result of corruption which took place before PIS came to power.

In June 2015, the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), knowing that they were on track to lose the elections in October, wanted to secure their influence before the new government came to power by ensuring a PO majority in the Constitutional Tribunal. The judges, mostly PO appointees, cooked up a new law which stated that judges whose terms came to an end after the election could have their replacements lined up before the election. This way, the judges would be chosen by PO. The first hint of corruption was that the Constitutional Tribunal is not allowed to initiate legislation, and here it was doing just that. As a result, it is now acting as the judiciary in a trial contesting the constitutionality of a legislation it itself created. The proposal was pushed through by the then-president Bronislaw Komorowski so quickly that nobody saw it happen.

They can’t have seen it happen because there is no way that they would have agreed to it. For once the legislation was passed, the upcoming breakdown of the Constitutional Tribunal was set to look like this: out of 15 judges there would be 13 PO, 1 SLD (social democrats), 1 PSL (Polish People’s Party) and 0 PIS. This would mean that no legislation put forward by the governing PIS party would ever stand a chance of seeing daylight. For attempting to de-politicise the judiciary, or at least balance it out, PIS have been accused of playing the President’s puppet master, pushing him to restructure the state institutions to increase the government’s power. The Economist writes that they ‘violated the constitution to replace the previous government’s appointees on the constitutional court’. Fact, as we now know, indicates that the constitution was violated before PIS were elected.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament has had to drop discussions on the situation in Poland because it knows it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. It is obvious that ‘the situation in Poland’ refers to something else entirely, namely the fact that the Law and Justice (PIS) party are in power again, and are proving to be quite the Eurosceptics. The international media reporting from Poland toes the same line as the European Parliament, and is no less transparent in what it finds so objectionable about the new Polish government. What The Economist is actually annoyed about is that a Eurosceptic party is in power in Poland.

Like Fidesz, PIS is a huge threat to the EU. The Economist’s article, while pretending to be concerned about ‘a decay of Poland’s institutions’, says as much: PIS, it says, is Europe’s new ‘headache’ and ‘will cripple the EU’. PIS are, says the Economist, ‘a motley coalition of social conservatives, Catholic nationalists, Eurosceptics, anti-corruption zealots, conspiracy theorists, protectionists and agrarians’. It is obvious that ‘Eurosceptic’ and ‘nationalist’ are meant as insults, lumped as they are with ‘conspiracy theorists’. You can sense the pro-EU camp’s trepidation as the motley coalition is fast becoming the mainstream.