Bearing in mind that the EU is the politico-economic expression of a defensive organisation - NATO- which countries would you be loathe to lose? And which would you not mind about if they stayed, went, or joined?
Angels would be loathe to lose Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, and the Iberian peninsula; would like to add Ukraine, Belarus, the Balkans, Norway and Switzerland; doesn't mind about the United Kingdom and Iceland.
Of course this Europe, core Europe and its surrounding states, is Christendom.
This Christendom
not the 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' with tambourine accompaniment Christianity so dear to other parts of the world.
Greece is not only or even primarily an economic problem. Greece is one of us and, as such, has an absolute claim on our solidarity through its political distress and false turnings: the exploitation of its people and the illegal export of its wealth, poor leadership, and all the violence of lost causes making their last stand.
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10 comments:
T'was allways said that the only differnce between Ireland and Iceland was one letter.
I fear Greece has already been abandoned. What it tells us is that the political classes all over Europe are beyond redemption or repair, that the EU is as I have said for a long time, a nascent tyranny (now emerging from that into realised tyranny) and that things may well get a lot worse for Greece and other imperilled countries, before it gets better.
I hope you are wrong, Elby. We need Greece. We should pay for what it gives not be mean about what was taken by cheats and liars.
There were wolves at the gates of Rome yesterday (literally) but Rome is built of brick (beneath the flamboyant travertino) and metaphorically they have been beaten off. (The Romans came out to marvel and to feed them; well, they would wouldn't they, given the history.)
Europe isn't a tyranny - it has been and it could be again - but now it stands against the global, a-cultural imperialists, and it needs Greece and all, even the name of that country, carries to help us.
The corrupt, bureaucratic, authoritarian institution called the EU is not Europe (thank God!)
Neither is the EU an offshoot of NATO which was once a wholesome, defensive alliance with limited purpose. Now, like the EU, NATO has become supranational and unlimited in its ambitions for "humanitarian interventions" .
"Greece" is not being "saved" by EU bail-outs - the financiers are.
There is no single European economy, so the euro always was an arrogant, imperial imposition - aided by the political and official classes of the former European democracies which found they had more in common with each other than the peoples they supposedly represented and served.
It is time that the body politic of Europe was cleansed of the metastasising cancer of the EU.
NATO, of course, includes Turkey
I am ambivalent on Turkey (and intending to research it for myself)
in several ways I find the Turks utterly admirable
(but that could be entirely consistent with rejecting their EU candidature ...)
I should have added: and I do not find the Greeks (whom I know much better) admirable at all
I was bounced on Dutch and Norwegian knees before ever I met an Englishman. It's always seemed mad to me that Greece - Ottoman Greece - is "in" and Norway "out".
When looking at Europe it might be said we look through a prism turning before the mind's eye.
ES sees the destructiveness of the current EU's institutions and actions on European democracies. Seeing the same thing I turn to Europe's cultural and strategic reason and forces for its unity in the face of uncivilised and rapacious assaults on its values and its peoples. And accept, for now, the Union with all its deficiencies and deficits.
The assertion of a single 'West' led by a 'global' America and its interests is repellent. NATO has become a monstrous armed threat to European values. (ES, we must differ on the inter-relationship between NATO and the ECSC, part of the prismatic effect.)
Looking forward to your thoughts on Turkey, ND. "Mamma, i Turchi" is the cry of fear of every child in Christendom. (except, of course in the UK it's Bonaparte).
Dearieme, indeed. Which century, even (to take a biggish time slice) should one look at when trying to think about Europe?
Hello Hatfield Girl!
Not long after the war, I used to go and stay with my granny, getting thoroughly spoilt, being tucked up at night in a feather bed warmed with a warming pan, filled with coals from the fire.
I was admonished to "Be good, or Boney will get you" . It was said with a nice smile but it certainly worked. I have often wondered whether my cousins and I were the last children to be kept in order by fear of the late Emperor of the French.
I was too young to know it but at about the same time Ernest Bevin (Foreign Secretary in the Labour government) was opposing the creation of the Council of Europe. "If you open that Pandora's box" he said "You don't know how many Trojan horses will come flying out!"
Unfortunately the Americans insisted and, as Britain was then dependent on dollar loans, he was overruled.
You're right HG, we - the people - must not abandon Greece.
But the Greek people need to help themselves, now: they need to tell the Germans to take a hike, shove the bankers into the sea, and start rebuilding their country.
Once they've done that, we will rally round and help them, but while they're in thrall to the political class there is not much to be done.
Today, things seems to be approaching some sort of climax; it has to happen, before the reconstruction can being, so for God's sake let us get it over and done with before any more money (notional) or blood (real) is wasted.
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