The Dump is:
For posting comments that don’t get up at the Drum, and for having a pleasant, mirthful or enlightening off-topic discussion.
It’s not for personal abuse of other commenters.
Please do that somewhere else if you must.
Play nicely or piss off.
However, why doesn’t a poster add a link for us to read and comment on here, much quicker. Maybe we can do a bit more bagging here, not that I speak for the moderators, yet.
NB: Being tiresome and boring, racist, sexist or just plain creepy is not playing nicely.
———-
The Pig’s Arms exists because a dozen or so years ago our other favourite playpen – the ABC’s Unleashed blogsphere started to go off. Like a sack of prawn heads in the sun. Something had to be done.
Moderation was taking forever. Comments seemed to be rejected randomly – outrageous ones appeared and reasoned ones were pinged. When they released the Drum / Unleashed ….. things actually got worse !
So many pieces from professional writers appear with no obvious merit. And the moderation has become, to put it frankly, appalling.
As a former contributor and a commenter, I was deeply disappointed at the plummeting quality from our pre-eminent media empire. And I resented so many challenging or dare I say, witty or funny posts in which we’ve invested seconds of our precious time – getting the chop.
So here, for all our benefit – is an open slather blog. Copy and paste your best rejected comments here for posterity. Does not matter whether you’re posting on the Guardian, First Dog on the Moon or wherever else.
And sprinkle pointers to the Pig’s Arms amongst your comments. Let’s try to rescue some of the old faithful.
Cheers,
Emm.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
But why burn out, why not just walk away. I think that there is a general answer to that. In the beginning one is just trying to fix something. It is only well after the end that one realizes that the reason it became increasingly and with greater complextity unfixable is because the error, problem, mistake or dysfunction was deliberate.
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And so it is with puzzlement, then astonishment, and then bewilderment, and then shock, and then fury that one becomes aware of deceit.
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I argue that this is the crux. That it is not a flaw. It is not a failing. It is not a mental illness nor is it a disorder. I argue that it is in fact an excellent piece of physical confirmation, of evidence if you will, that some kind of system failure is occurring that should be looked at. Not an investigation of the system of that person’s body or mind. An investigation of the system that has spat that person out.
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And I say that if that Finance Minister is not showing signs of authentic burnout then he is probably faking.
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The thing about Visions
Sometimes visions and dreams prove to be nothing more than illusions and the grander these visions and dreams the grander these illusions. When they become grand enough, they turn into delusions.
I have yet to make up my mind as to whether the grand vision of 50 countries -some of which have floating borders- all on the one continent can live in peace, harmony and mutual respect. Fifty countries! One Europe! One currency! One set of laws! One cauldron of cultures!
This is certainly a grand vision, perhaps one of the grandest ever and it might well be a grand illusion and for the visionary, a grand delusion.
The PM of Greece, Alexis Tsipras was interviewed for well over an hour yesterday, 14th July 2015, by two of Greece’s most eminent journalists, Andonis Alafogiorgos and Panos Haritos.
The interview challenged some of my views regarding Mr Tsipras’ work during the five or so months as a Prime Minister and more particularly his skills as a negotiator of difficult conflicts. It has also made me think quite more carefully about that conflict, what, in fact, it was and on which side of it he should stand.
Previously, I took the vision of a United Europe as a utopian dream, never to be accomplished and that the people of Europe should treat as nothing more than a fantasy, not even a dream and certainly not a calling.
Listening Mr Tsipras challenged that view, the view that such a united Europe was unattainable. And it was that view that gave Mr Tsipras the fervour of his involvement in those negotiations. He is possessed of that vision and he wants it to happen. He wants those who try to turn it into a nightmare gone. So he fought and fought bravely and gallantly, a fight much like that which the men at Marathon and Thermopylae fought over two and a half thousand years ago. He stood alone, defending a small country, in a narrow path, against hordes of ferocious and well armed enemy.
Whether he won or not is yet to be identified.
At the end of those negotiations I thought he lost and that Greece had been conquered. So did many others. Now I am not so sure.
If one is as possessed of that united Europe vision as Mr Tsipras and his ex minister for Finance, Yiannis Varoufakis were -but not so his new Minister for Finance, Mr Tskalotos, then one would have no doubt in raising Mr Tsipras’ hand up into the heights given to victors. For his or her, Mr Tsipras had won a glorious victory, for him, for Greece and for that vision of a single Europe.
However, if one is not similarly possessed, as I was until that interview, then one would be enormously angry at the blatant waste: of time, of heroes, of a country and its people.
But Mr Tsipras is convinced and he has made me convinced that the vision is not only held by him but by many countries, albeit mainly the Southern, poorer countries, though, I dare give myself the indulgence of some ethnic and cultural chauvinism and say that the division is not a fiscal one but one of grand ideas (yes, illusions some times) vs crass materialism and pragmatism. The North, I would argue is besotted by the “pragma” the “material” whereas the South is besotted by the “idea” ie, the ideal.
I don’t want to go here into explanations of Plato’s Theory of Forms (and Ideas) as he expounds them in his Republic but that is what I am thinking about.
Grand ideas of justice and virtue and beauty of the soul and power and gods and suchlike, fighting against what he, and the Stoics would call, crass ideas about a hunger for things: money, power for its own sake, castles and slaves.
The North vs The South. It’s a simplistic view, I admit but I feel it has quite some validity.
And this is why I believe that visionaries like Alexis Tsipras are wrong thinking that it can happen; and even if they are right about the vision, I cannot see that it can be implemented as things are right now.
And this is where Alexis Tsipras emerged victorious: He has shown to the world exactly what is holding that vision from becoming a reality:
He went into the negotiations full of ideas, grand ideas thinking that he will be talking with people who were also full of ideas but, instead, found himself fighting -fighting, not discussing as did Socrates with all comers- with people whose heads were clogged with “pragmata” with things, with the pursuit of material, not spiritual things, not with things that enlarge a soul, that enrich a soul that unite people but things that separate and repel people in the most brutal ways.
It was what our war mongers cal an asymmetrical war, a war that was fought with different weapons.
Tsipras’ victory is that he exposed this in all its dismal reality. Europe is run by a very few materialists, capitalists with little if any regard for anything that the visionaries of a United Europe love.
And he exposed not only the brutality of this phenomenon but, even more importantly, the narrowness of its purpose. Whereas a United Europe would allow for an expansion of thought and an enrichment of a European’s life, an enrichment of a European’s heart, this group of men and women was diminishing it with lethal speed and enthusiasm. Tsipras saw that the Eurozone ran Europe and the men and women who ran the Eurozone were not, in fact, men and women but human manifestations of banks and calculators and computers that shuffled wealth out of countries and into what looked very much like a Germanocentric institution, an institution that behaved like a bunch of loan sharks, impoverishing other nations and trying to destroy what it can of their culture, its spirit, its philosophy, its great store rooms of ideas.
The Eurozone, Tsipras worked out, was destroying not only the pure vision of a United Europe but of real live people.
He didn’t want to get out of there, to turn from the single currency, the Euro, which was totally manipulated by them and onto a new currency for Greece because he didn’t want to allow these anti-United Europe men and women to win, to destroy his vision.
He fought, tirelessly for that, and I’d suggest even to the detriment of one country, his Greece, so that these supreme capitalists -thieves really, to be honest because capitalism does not have to include brutality or theft or disrespect or the destruction of lofty ideas- did not destroy his Europe, the Europe of which Greece was undeniably a member, right up until the Germans and their sattellite countries installed their loan shark machine.
As I write, the politicians of Greece are gathering in Parliament, about to debate the new “offer” by the zone, Tsipras’ worth and position, and the worth and position of his party, SYRIZA, itself. Both, he and his party will survive and the “offer” will be legislated. There is no alternative at the moment. Either the banks will be recapitalised (by the ECB, Dragghi’s baby) or they will remain shut.
Tsipras says this is not an option. Banks must open their doors and the cogs of the Greek economy must begin to turn again.
But during that period of negotiations, he showed to the rest of the world the ruthless, bloody minded, mean way the eurozone functions.
He managed to divide the rulers, Germany and France; the rulers of Germany, Merkel and Schaubel, though not for anything of substance but for the way each wanted to go about making Germany even more powerful -in material things.
The people of Germany are now angry at both these two figures.
The people of the Southern States soon will all have elections, beginning with Spain and, one by one these hoarders of things who run them, will be replaced with men and women who love the mind, the values, the discussions about good and evil, about the lightness or otherwise of the soul, about justice.
And then we will see a new Europe very much resembling the past, the dismantled the trampled Europe.
The Eurozone is not about Europe, nor is it related to it by any other means than by geography. The Eurozone is about the Eurozone and the Eurozone only!
In that battle, I think Mr Tsipras has won and I wish him, and wish Europe and Greece, all the very best.
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So do I.
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Didn’t they used to call it Burnout, didn’t they say oh such and such has burnout? Before it became a mental illness I mean, wasn’t it a sign that the wiring was kind of firing off?
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Ah yes. You know I reckon not one knowedgeable person around that Finance guy has even thought to say burnout to him. Not one.
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They’re probably all too busy thinking about how annoying he is, or why he doesn’t work harder, or why can’t he just do this or that.
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That helpful wikipedia page brought to you by some major insurance company or another.
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There’s one piece of information we need. When he talked clouds was he talking Rolling Stones, Monkey Magic or some online storage facility.
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Star Trek. Was it Microsoft? Apple? IBM? The original West Wing? Those leaks must have driven them mental.
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Chuck Shitatya:
14 Jul 2015 9:23:36am
Another bout of fraudulent froth from a said to be student of economics, who is actually an ambitious bumboy of the IPA, the Institute of paid anuses. […]
….
well said sir, well said. I take my hat off to you. (I’m surprised the mods allowed it)
🙂
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Amazing – I just went and found it. Terrific.
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I’m amazed their pseudo gets a gig. Brilliant comment though.
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I don’t know if that milk-yoghurt-vanilla was such good advice. I may have been only thinking of Crete.
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Anyway what I’m thinking is that definitions are being hastily re-written. The Europe we’ve been so used to has been largely written by the cold-climate people and it was as if everyone in Europe was a cold-climate person and England was ‘European’, that was a good one, some interviewer with Chomsky, I really chortled over that one, he appeared to be wanting Chomsky to admit he was wrong about something because of his American perspective. Now I think we may be finding our way back to some of the stereotypes that I recall from my seventies childhood and although much of that is a bad thing and I learned a great deal from my co-worker back in the late-eighties that altered forever my understanding of Greek people I think it may not be a bad thing for some of those stereotypes to surface for a while as a way of breaking this impasse there in Europe Land.
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No I cannot listen to Q&A I have an inkling of where we’re going next in this Gender War and I think I’m going to have some more milk.
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Letter to a friend:
Hi, H.
The fog of war has not lifted yet H and it will take quite a bit of time before it does, though a few things are clear already, at least to my mind:
1: The Troika, Schauble-Merkel-Germany lost. Both within Germany and without. Germany’s satellites –though fascist right wingers- are becoming edgy and those few little nations who were thinking of joining the cave of troglodytes, are now also dealing with loosened knees.
2: The duo, Hollande-France, won.
So did the Eurozone, the Euro and the brutal cannibals who run it, lose much credibility, possibly lethally so.
3: Tsipras and Greece are yet to be declared one way or another.
Both, Tsipras and Greece are two entities one would love to love but both, now are challenging that sentiment.
Syriza is now split with quite a number of Ministers declaring their dismay, annoyance and other, more intense emotions, Konstantopoulou, the President of Parliament and arguably as eloquent an orator and as intelligent a politician as Tsipras, being but one of those Ministers. There are other, dangerously too many, also enormously bright people who felt no scruples about voicing their concerns at what they call “a conspiratorial capitulation” and that they felt that, for reasons they could not fathom, Tsipras began to look as if he had become too comfortable in the company of the enemy, “enemy” being the catch cry of syriza before and after the elections.
One of the Ministers (of Health) said that he was convinced that Greece will go to general elections very soon. He was certain of that as he was also adamant that it should happen, seeing that Tsipras, after all his fine, stirring speeches since the referendum, he had delivered to the Greeks a worse agreement/memorandum than that they had to deal with when they first gained govn’t.
The ND-PASOK-KKE forces are having a party!
The best economists, not only of Greece but of the world, like Krugman and Stiglitz, as well as other eminent political commentators made it as clear as it could possibly be made, that Tsipras should have turned his bum to the likes of Schaubel and Merkel and the rest of those thugs and get out of the eurozone and the Euro, since these two entities not only had nothing to do with the real Europe but would also see Greece in abject poverty.
It will be very interesting to see what Podemos and Ireland do now.
Personally I can’t figure it out.
Perhaps the game is far too nuanced for clods like me to follow and perhaps there are other moves that will happen to mitigate or even cure this fault. I don’t know.
Tsipras tried to reassure the people that the money will come not from those who have been paying it so far but from those who have been avoiding to pay it.
That did not convince too many, in and out of politics.
If he can do this now why couldn’t he do it the moment he became PM?
It has been said that, by far the greatest percentage of those 61% who voted NO in the referendum are inconsolable and are already preparing huge demonstrations. I am hoping for no blood, no guillotine and no Madame Defarge, though I wouldn’t mind seeing Lagarde and Merkel and Schaubel and Soultz and Jizzboelm and Juncker and Gabriel and the Belgians and the Danes, the Italians, as well as Samaras and Venizelos on a horse cart heading for the Syntagma Square.
Tomorrow, Tuesday their and your time the first curlicues of the fog will dissipate and much will be revealed.
He took the cash but the cash is like Medea’s wedding present to the Princes. Laced with lethal poison. Or so I think.
He is still, a man I’d love to love. He has brought the crisis issue to the attention of the world outside that little country and the Troika of debt colonisers and their nasty ways and he inspired the Greeks and other left leaning and justice minded people elsewhere. For that he needs hugs and kisses.
For this agreement though, unless I am reading it wrong, he needs a cutting kick up the bum!
I must admit, H, my heart is a little battered at the moment but I am holding my choler a little longer.
Cheers and blessings,
G
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I can’t fathom it either.
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I think the Greek finance chappie is having a bit of post-traumatic adrenalin overload.
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I would suggest though not from any medical perspective of knowledgability that he drink a lot of milk with yoghurt and real vanilla in it.
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I reckon Greek adrenalin is probably better than anglo saxon adrenalin especially with the austerity but that it’s not looking good and he should understand that he is now in super-hero land and nobody gets it.
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He should probably refrain from asking people what they’re on. It will only bring further trouble.
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The thousandth cut is nigh!
The death by 1000 cuts continues unabated with the cuts becoming more frequent and ever deeper, drawing greater rivers of blood.
The Left in Greece must unite and get serious about its identity and about its purpose.
If the Eurozone is Europe then Europe has changed. It is no longer the Europe of visionaries but a Europe of accountants and malfunctioning computers, of vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes and scorpions. The only thing that unites them is their lethal poison. The polite nomenclature for which is “technocrats.”
This is not a “Europe” we are forced to deal with, this is a growth, a tumour on the body of Europe, it is the Eurozone. It is a cancer and one does not ask nor expect a cancer to cure itself.
Only the steady hand of a surgeon can help here and help by removing it.
Not only we mustn’t be complicit to this mutation of humanity, of humaneness, of the high virtues that comprise it, we, instead must stand up, as the brightest light we once were and topple this deformity. Eradicate it once and for all.
Germany and her satellites have not the slightest intention of doing any deals with Greece or with anyone else. They want to obliterate Greece. At the very least to blow into oblivion the faintest hint of a govern’t of the Left. To turn it into a slave yard, complete with rotting carcasses of men and land, of factories and schools, of thought and joy! They want Death, not Victory to roam the battlefield!
This cave of cannibals is not interested in any agreement with anyone other than with cold calculators and non human zombies. When will we understand this? When will we become fully cognisant of this?
I have a personal view of behaviour: I never knock on doors that will not open for me and allow me a welcomed entry. Germany’s door is firmly shut in our face and sign with flashing lights hangs on it: “Go Away.” The message is crystal clear!
Fine. Let us accept this rejection and let us not go on knocking on it, a knock which now sounds like the sounds made by a poor, wretched beggar.
We are not beggars!
Syriza note: We are not beggars! Stop shuffling your feet in front of their growling teeth!
Why are we still rolling this bitter lolly in our mouths, this lolly about “Europe is Greece and Greece is Europe.” When will we spit it out and show these brutal, inhumane creatures what Europe is really like!
How long before we understand what we are dealing with? When will we ask ourselves, what is it that we are really negotiating about?
When will we understand that it’s not the money but the real estate? The land, the people, the beheading of a people, the shutting down of a mind and the replacing of it with a pouch full of miserable Judas coins?
Aristophanes said it well and he said it in his own inimitable way: “Peace will come when the Pricks of the porcupines are made smooth!”
(https://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/aristophanes/peace/)
What was the French revolution about Mr Hollande, if it wasn’t to free the common man and woman from the ever hanging noose of the fat beasts that roamed wildly and freely in your country?
And Mz Merkel, what did you do with all that wealth you stole from the people of East Germany when you smashed the wall of division?
I cannot resist this very crass metaphor and I ask for your tolerance:
A horse is overburdened with a huge load of hay and its owner is flogging it ruthlessly. At some point the horse is hungry and asks the owner for some hay to eat. The owner is overjoyed by this request. He gets another load of hay and instead of putting it in front of the horse, it throws it on top of the other load.
Now you have the scenario that is played out in Brussels and Berlin.
I recommend highly and urge people to read Ezra Pound’s Canto called “Usura.”
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A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above.Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
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It could be anti-occidents.
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grapes. blueberries. red berries. nuts. dark green veggies. sweet potatoes and orange vegetables. tea, whole grains, beans and fish.
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I dunno, maybe the PM’s Communications Crew have been sent to another duty or something. But where could they be?
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“We’ve got another mission for youse. It’s gonna be dangerous.”
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I reckon they might be out bidding for Sydney real estate and in big trouble if they win anything.
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Well half of them anyway probably the half they pay and the OTHER half have been out spruiking that book. Cognitive dissonance. That’s what we need to spray upon the people, cognitive dissonance. There’s nothing like a good dissolutionment to quieten people down.
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We’ll release it as part of the Greek package on the Death of Democracy, that’ll give’em pause.
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But it’s as I suspected. It’s Democracy they’re after, democracy they’ve found some kind of legal flaw in, democracy that’s up on the stand now. You see how you like that now huh pow pow pow. Likely it’s too fragile to hold up to this kind of onslaught.
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Kick arse Aunty!
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Anti-democracy with extra sauce. So the Chinese are allowed to come in and make a big mine out of our kitchen garden even though they must be really wanting to have a garden not a mine and then buy up all the Sydney houses with their rich people and price ordinary Australians out of the market and oh, the shame of it.
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But wait. Didn’t Democracy move to America when she was old enough to sneak on board one of those ocean liners and didn’t France send over her torch? Democracy, isn’t that an American thing now?
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Illusion of Democracy
..from somewhere..
“Popular rule as a façade:
The 20th Century Italian thinkers Pareto and Mosca (independently) argued that democracy was illusory, and served only to mask the reality of elite rule. Indeed, they argued that elite oligarchy is the unbendable law of human nature, due largely to the apathy and division of the masses … and that democratic institutions would do no more than shift the exercise of power from oppression to manipulation.”
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One aspect of geopolitics appears to be a way of treating the world as if it were a game board, with parts that moved around can affect the outcomes of countries. This way of making strategic decisions treats the separate parts, whether resource or geographical feature or human, as if they are parts.
Another aspect of geopolitics is as a political theory, in the way that marxism is a political theory, or capitalism is a political theory, or globalisation, which appears to me to be a kind of post-geopolitics, is a political theory. That is, it is a kind of map. It is a kind of instruction manual.
A fourth aspect is that geopolitics teaches people that if the world can be looked at like a kind of game, then it can also be manipulated like a game. It is not necessary to stop at observing other parts of the world, it is possible to affect them negatively or positively in order to improve one’s own situation. The conditions of other countries become a part of one’s own game and there is no longer a separation between what you will do to or for your own country to get advantage and and what you will do to another country. That is, I suppose there is a breakdown of sovereignty when one begins to consider the world in this way. Because you no longer consider the sovereignty of another country to be inviolable, or something to be respected.
A fifth aspect is that geopolitics blurs the line between real and virtual. If your world is not what you want it to be you can say it is anyway, if people do not act or believe the way you want them to then you make them different. So I believe it may go past the use of propaganda into something that is more like a kind of virtual genetic engineering, where instead of genetically modified objects, it is genetically modified beliefs and behaviours and perhaps even thinking.
So we can perhaps think of pre-geopolitics as people with a map looking at that map and trying to figure out how to fight a battle. But post-geopolitics as being people drawing a map so that they will win the battle. And then perhaps sneaking into the other side’s camp and switching maps there too.
Then, there is some possibility that essentially globalisation is geopolitics with a new name.
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In short, it may have been a break-down in ethical behaviour or something. And so the UN was made, to reach an agreement on some basic ‘universal’ ethical behaviours. Which for some reason an awful lot of countries are now backtracking away from. They may have found some kind of logical inconsistency in something. It’s entirely possible.
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And to be honest with you although I don’t have any evidence at all to support this theory I have a suspicion that it was North Korea that set that little ball rolling.
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Anyway this has been my small segue into the world of International Relations, they’re not letting me teach that any more I’m a bit sad.
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Ideally if I could convince anyone to let me teach something again I’d kind of like to try Philosophy of Engineering.
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I’d like to be able to try to pinpoint where and how they crossed the line.
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Certainly post-geopolitics they may have crossed the line by inventing an entirely different name and theory for themselves and packing geopolitics into it. But some way back they first crossed the line, I want to know what that was. But I think it might be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Without a metal detector I could be here for a long time.
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Often you can tell I reckon when they cross a line. Putin, line, England, line, for Scotland, line, Abbott, line, America, generally, EU, Greece, line.
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Tsipras’ Syriza and Merkel’s Eurozone stab Europe’s heart.
The assessment of the Greek offer to the zoners, by many commentators falls a little short, but unfortunately this does not stop it from being grave, if not a lethal offer for the Greeks.
It’s true, this package has been voted in, in the convocation held late last night and it has been delivered to the hands of the vampires in Brussells.
It has hurt me enormously, listening to all the politicians involved in the debate, one of whom burst into tears with the righteous anger and terror she felt for allowing this brutal punishment of her people to see the light of day.
To be fair, the package does ask for 13b euros for the austerity alleviation program and 35b euro to get the banks to shut the fuck up with their whining and to open their doors, (by remote control from Brussells, of course, through its so called “European Stability Mechanism).
It is also asking for a 30% reduction of the debt. It should be at least 80%, if not 100% according to the estimations of many economists but there it is. It’s something. Whether Greece will actually get that, it’s another matter but every fiddling of the numbers that the zone does in its favour, it encourages syriza to get back to the people (or not) with a new referendum about a divorce. It should not go to a referendum, in my opinion and just fucking do it! They are elected to do things!
Various economists exhort, “something has to be done to take the banks out of intensive care.” (Preston http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33475455)
No, mate, the banks are the bloated pigs. Healthy and wealthy to a disgraceful degree; and they are so, because they are the institutions that were used by the financial hyenas of zionoamericanoenglish Wall St and Fleet St beast which has its reproductive organs in Rothchild’s back pocket!
They don’t need “intensive care,” they need closing down, its managers taken to the Hague, prosecuted for crimes against humanity and either shot dead or jailed for all eternity, in Guantanamo-like prisons.
They are not in intensive care.
Greece is! They are the cancer that needs to be removed.
They should be all nationalised, or at least a publicly owned bank, a national bank should be opened with its own vaults that holds its own currency.
Nothing else will do! A sovereign currency.
A foreign currency rules from a foreign land. Full stop!
Is this Democracy?
All else is tinkering around the edges of famine and of eternal beggary and buggery and Syriza knows this very well. Varoufakis and Tsakalotos know this, so does Lafazanis, so does Zoe Konstantopoulou, so does another utterly brilliant lady, Rachel Makris (Ραχήλ Μακρή) and a dozen or so other, very committed members of the Left.
These had their heart brutally ripped out of them.
The problem stems from this bullshit idea that was promoted from the very first moment by Tsipras himself and which gave me an utterly uneasy feeling. My stomach churned violently every time I heard it: that “he, Tsipras, had no mandate to exit the eurozone!” Do not exit “Europe” every one shouted with him!
Total bullshit!
And Tsipras knows it!
He was put there for exactly that very reason. To get the bloody claws of this beast out of the country. To kill it. To tell it to get fucked. The more I heard him utter these words the more the bile reached my throat and the more my heart prepared itself for a betrayal.
So, everything that Tsipras’ Syriza (and there is the Syriza of a whole lot of others, at least 17 or so) did was based on the crass excuse and the base cliché that “Europe is part of Greece and Greece is part of Europe!”
What the fuck do a bunch of blood-sucking, filthy rich thieves have to do with Europe?
What the fuck does this conglomerate of self serving criminals have to do with the likes of Voltaire and DesCartes and Bach and Spinoza and Diderot and Goethe and Kant and Mozart and Rousseau -and not allow others the to wag their finger at me I won’t mention the Greeks) and a legion of other European men and women who shone the light of clear thought and of conscience to the rest of the planet?
What do these morons have to do with the enlightenment? With the cauldron of culture in ancient Greece and Rome and England?
What an insult to the real Europe, the breeding ground of thought and emotion this herd of barbarians are and what an insult it is to call them “Europe!”
What a disgraceful view it is that says these vulgar creatures are remotely connected with the continent!
Sorry, Tsipras but for all your brilliant rhetoric you did nothing to show that you understand or that you really want to save one of the most important -perhaps its very heart!- members of the body of Europe, Greece.
You did nothing to show that you understand Europe herself and that you tried at all to save her.
Manolis Glessos’ words did not touch you! What a shame! They have touched every other Greek, and every other sentient being who heard them, young and old!
But perhaps it is I who cannot understand what is going on here, on this dark chess board and this dim and gloomy opera. After all, it’s not all over yet since the Bitch has not yet sung! Perhaps it’s a ploy by Tsipras and his Syriza, a ploy that will make the criminals eventually move the Queen on this chessboard where he, Tsipras wants her.
Perhaps.
I certainly hope so.
The package is yet to be accepted by the criminals and brought back to the Greek Parliament for further debate.
It will be discussed in the zone tomorrow and brought back to Greece on Monday, or so it is expected. Anything could happen at these discussions of course but I am not holding too big a bag of hopes!
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Seems it does not matter which way one looks – everything is turning to shit.
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Abhorrently so, yes, vivienne!
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Do read Anne Summers in the SMH weekend paper. Re Greece/NSW/Jack Lang. You’ll love it.
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We didn’t used to have so many Royal Commissions. Didn’t we used to have Tax Investigations. Isn’t that how we got people in the past when they grew too big? I am wondering why we aren’t having Tax Investigations any more and why they are Royal Commissions. Money doesn’t hold the morality it used to? Something?
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I wonder if the word that everyone is working to but nobody is saying is: proper.
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So I wonder now about our ABC. It seems she has her own ideas after all. And why not, she’s an institution of some age, maturity and experience. I suppose this is where she slaps down her antagonistas. This is the bit they’ve never managed to get past.
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The bit where she changes.
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Yes, I think she will survive the meddling of Our Tone.
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Its a worrying development our Turd blowing his foot off like this. This won’t play well with his own supporters. The ABC should always be independent not a parrot of the government of the days bad policies. Turd’s government is becoming more totalitarian every day.
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Bloody idiotic. Someone like Keating, Hawke, or Fraser, would have dealt with any perceived problem by going on the show, or being interviewed by the journalist, not bringing in Gulag regulations.
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I think its in Turd’s DNA, the violent behavior of yesteryear gives way to this bully boy behavior. It’s all confected nonsense this Q&A thing, yet there is no one with the balls in their party to stand up to Turd and say listen Turd your making a goose of yourself on this let it go.
I thought John Valder a doyen of the Liberal party’s letter in the SMH was telling today. He called the witch hunt RC for what it was and pointed out the bleeding obvious, that those in charge are partisan.
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Yes Algy, Valder very politely said it as it is. I was watching as Heydon spoke and thought the same – dreadful.
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The Prime Moron has just announced a ban on new wind farms, because they are ‘utterly offensive’. Perhaps he should come to the Hunter valley for a look at some coal mines….hang on, he was here a fortnight ago, supporting a Nationals MP, who, last year, admitted to taking kick backs from coal miners, but he’s still in the job.
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Yep, everyday – another horror. It’s the effing bloody pits.
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I think Malcolm Turnbull should stop being the voice of reason for the government and let Abbott dig himself and his government out of the holes he keeps digging himself into each day. Turd is a dinosaur who thinks 1955 Australia is the place the country wants to immerse itself.
Barking mad Barney should resign from the Cabinet over that abomination on the Liverpool Plains Who in their right mind would allow a F*#king Coal mine in the most productive farming land in the country. Surely the Hunter Valley is a lesson on what not to do with highly productive farm land. I hope Windsor runs in New England. Barney could go back to being a primary cattle producer in Barraba or was that an Accountant in St George.
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Barnacle Joyce needs to go back somewhere, preferably away from other humans.
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Algy – the gutless wonders of the Nationals (ex Country) – the insanity of it all is depressing. Lot of farmers making tidy off-farm income from wind power. They don’t want more coal mines on very valuable ag country. What are they doing in politics and in government – SFA.
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Yes, unbelievable. The Prime Moron was visiting the Hunter, just before the announcement of the new mine. Had he visited after the announcement he would have been picketed.
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Might have had rotten fruit thrown at him. That would be an insult to the rotten fruit.
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The Idiot’s guide to Australian Politics.
One: How to lose an unloseable election and to win it without really trying!
Abbott is utterly incompetent as a politician but he is an expert in the art of war.
He knew well that even if nothing came out on the floor of this filthy inquiry, lots would happen in the peripheries -as it alwαys does- and we all know that peripheral wars can be lethal.
The turmoil in the ALP alone, which it would most certainly cause and it did, would engage them in conspiracies and at the same time, disengage them from politics and from any attacks against him and his political incompetence for a long time, long enough to see him through to the next elections.
Who knows, Abbott might have also been aware of Hogg’s treacherous disposition and Maxine’s disposition to such silence, which, incidentally, baffles the shit out of me!
And who knows what else -who else- will soon emerge bearing a knife between his or her teeth.
The rest of the ALP – every lazy and cowardly one of them- should be out there defending as ferociously as possible their leader, almost constantly; and they should be attacking unceasingly and relentlessly the hyenas on the other side.
Only one, Brendan O’Connor, managed to raise the requisite courage and energy to speak up and he was firmly bypassed by the journos who wanted, instead, to take a better look at, and to broaden Hogg’s platform.
Where are they all?
As much as I can’t stand the current ALP, I also hate such abject surrender!
Shame on you, you bastards! Bloody shame!
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Ato I the electorate by and large sees this Royal Commission for what it is. A witch hunt. Ihats been set up to get Bill Shorten with its findings to be handed down later this year for the up coming election. Did anything come out any smoking gun no. I didn’t watch the proceedings, but Mrs A did, she came up with a completely different conclusion to that portrayed by the ABC. If find it extraordinary the at the Royal Commissioner would berate Shorten like he did. It demonstrates to me that he appears partisan.
Leigh Sales and Tony Jones last night where at their onanistic best, in overdrive. Complete lack of objectivity. Brendan O’Connor held his own and gave it back. Hogg for mine blew his foot off, hypocrite.
I’m amazed when sitting Liberal politicians are found to be associating with the Mafia that the media looks the other way. Or where its demonstrated that senior Liberals are deep in cash for favours that they don’t prosecute it. I’m hoping that Hockey loses costs from his court case.
I don’t get what the Labor party stands for and find myself drifting closer to the Greens now that Richard di Natale is the leader and Christine Milne has gone. If only Le Rhiannon would do the same.
Regardless of what has happened this week. Adolf Turd and his band of fuckwits are dead in the water. They are behind in every state except WA and NSW where its 50:50. In WA its trending Labors way.
I agree Labor politicians need to grow a set. and take it up to the likes of Abetz who frankly looks and sound a bit silly on this. Albo should be the leader not Shorten, that’s what the party wanted the pollies thought differently. But he’s there till the next election.
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I’ll second Algy’s comments. I watched and listened to most of it. Stoljar’s interrogation often bordered on rude and he spoke to Shorten in a fashion suggesting Shorten was thick as a brick. Heydon’s criticism was dreadful and wrong. Many of the questions to Shorten were of the kind … have you stopped beating your wife? The fact Shorten kept his cool was amazing because I would have had a go at Stoljar and Heydon for being entirely out of order.
Having said that, it is indeed worrying that only O’Connor has come out with good defense, good comments. If Labor doesn’t pull its collective fingers out very very soon I’ll be extremely angry.
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What pisses me off about this witch hunt is that has diverted $80m from the Royal Commission into Child Abuse all to serve Adolfs base political means. Plays well to some I suppose.
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You’d have liked it George, it was about how France supplies philosophy to the French people as an alternative to their predominant religious philosophy which is catholicism because unlike the British government their religion is not always aligned with the state.
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Perhaps is not always expected to be is more correct. This funny thing happened the other day. This big black car sped into the street, braked, these three incredibly muscled men bounced from the car into action man poses in front of a gaggle of baseball club high schoolers and spat out the words: Get Home. What was amazing was that I had never seen a Japanese Animation cartoon in real life. Some of them are almost real life you know. I’m telling you I was watching and it isn’t that the car stopped and the doors opened and the men got out of the car, that’s not how it happened. What happened was the car braked and the men bounced onto the road and assumed action man poses. It was pretty truly impressive. It was the thin, thin like between order and anarchy.
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Also it was about how the French State is willing to allow the French people philosophical tracts with which to navigate tricky problems because they generally want to be seen as sympathetic to a people who can take their loyalties to a foreign church that is pretty meddley but the British Church which is also a state and so has some unparalleled dichotomies generally wants to put the problem onto the people and see what they do before they have some ethical standpoint because they don’t have much experience and don’t really know what to do and generally think they should just avoid it by making it one of those no not wicked problems, I don’t necessarily agree that there is such a thing as a wicked problem, by making it simply impossible to actually see. By making it invisible if you will, and as we know invisible is something very different to what we think it is, invisible is generally something we are not able to see although it is there.
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Thus, as the ABC gets smaller and it’s resources fewer the slots will be much less and the options limited and we will no longer be able to see what was essentially invisible and we will be back where we were in the containable days of the seventies, eighties and even nineties and then News will not have to spend that huge huge huge amount of money inflating one tiny bit of that subculture into appearing as if it were the culture.
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I kind of doubt that the audit is about liberal&coalition versus labor bias. I reckon it’s something more about “being for” or “being against” Australia’s interests. What they might be, hmmmm.
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It sounds more like a charge to me.
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Some of my best musing regarding state and religion. Gone. Forever.
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Received a quick reply from the Drum re closure of comments (I asked for an explanation etc)
Hi Vivienne
Combination of factors: staff illness, resources and a few technical problems. We hope to have comments restored soon.
The Drum
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What a joke, they’re all off skiing that’s the real reason. Couldn’t the coffee boy step in and do the job.
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Not that I’d have much time for commenting but I see the Drum isn’t open for business today or comment. The moderator must be having a sickie.
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They stopped moderating/putting comments up mid afternoon on Tues. Odd.
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Gosh, old mate WS is all hot and sweaty over marriage equality over at the Bum!
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I thought so. Got his leg over his shoulder over the number of votes. Of course he seeks the truth….. through Wikipedia of course.
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I don’t know why the Moderator allows such ignorant comments, but WS isn’t alone!
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If you have a look today the aren’t allowing any.
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He’ll argue black is white or white is black all day. The man remains a total fool.
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I honestly don’t know how the mod puts up some of his comments, perhaps comedic value?
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Last night on Q&A
Larissa shone, of course but Vrassidas stank to high Olympus!
Marles was an inarticulate cold!
Sheridan was the shit that he is.
The woman in the Green shirt is a crass profit-and-loss nerd. Bugger all humanities in that ledgered head of hers.
But Vrassidas Karallis!
Vrasidas, while he used a soft, humanitarian voice for all matters other than Greek, used the voice of his true view of conservatist laissez fair capitalists and rapacious financiers of debt about the crisis faced by his country.
It is this rotten and rapacious view that has brought about that crisis in the first place and living here and being in his well paid job, obviously allows him to see nothing other than the plight of his elderly mother in Greece.
That allusion alone showed the abject vulgarity and hollowness of his views.
The notion that there are other elderly mothers and fathers, other children, starving, with no access to hospitals or schools, or bed to sleep on at night, has yet to enter -and I doubt it ever will- his selfish, well feathered head or heart.
He said nothing about why the Greek banks were really closed and by whom, through what meanness and for what sickening purpose.
He said nothing about how the debt was concocted and by whom.
He castigated the Greeks, like all other nasty, insensitive morons and puppets of the Cleptocrat bankers and of other toxic tools of the Wall St and the Rothchild money launderers that has brought about this cataclysm of a social structure that was once the envy of the world.
He gave no credit to the audacious (Obama once used this word but dropped it in the too hard basket since) spirit of the Greek people.
He merely echoed the words of the previous Govn’t which governed, not for the Greeks but for the voracious hyenas outside it.
His views were blurted out in deafening decibels and tones throughout Greece, on a 24/7 basis through the crass commercial media. The same shit, over and over again as if in competition with Goebbels’ boys and girls, during the 40’s!
Tell us, Vrass, how long do you flog an exhausted horse?
The Greeks would call him -to his face- a traitor; and the worse traitors are those with a soft voice!
Another shameless creature who’s doing no favours to Greece but plenty to himself!
He was in favour of the “yes” vote… coyly, he qualified, “mildly so.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake Vrassidas! For the love of Zeus spare us this barbaric shit!
Shameless!
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I thought Sheridan sounded far more reasonable than he ever has – ever. Larissa did shine – lots.
Power to the Greek people Ato. They’ve done the right thing. Time for the Euro countries to try a bit of democracy just for a change. Being government by banks and funny orgs is stupid.
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“Marles was an inarticulate cold!”
How did that happen?
Vivivienne, quite so about Larissa and quite so about Greece and the thieving usurers of the kleptozoners.
But Sheridan is sly. More sly than any wooden horse the Greeks could ever build.
He was in a crowd and sitting next but one to Larissa so he cut his cloth accordingly. Among effusive declarations of love for the Libs, he showed the dismay and bemusement of the best and most experienced actors.
I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could kick him.
But Marles, vivienne! Bloody Marles! What an articulate donkey! I was waiting for him to give us Abbott’s head jerking while saying nothing which he’s made him so famous!
Then I was hoping that someone would hand him a raw onion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woUK-yKATFY
We’re in deep poo, I’m afraid, vivienne.
And this is why the people voted for Abbott. They couldn’t see what the difference was.
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We all saw it coming Ato. Worse than I imagined.
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Quotes from Varoufakis.
See what he once said about Howard!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/greek-debt-crisis-yanis-varoufakiss-funniest-and-most-memorable-quotes-10367973.html
Varoufakis:
Quoting poet Dylan Thomas:
“Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night. Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light.”During Greek elections”
On summing up Europe in a nutshell:
“A clueless political personnel, in denial of the systemic nature of the crisis, is pursuing policies akin to carpet-bombing the economy of proud European nations in order to save them.”
Likening politics to The Eagles:
“Greece is absolutely, irreversibly, committed to staying in the eurozone,” he told CNN. “The problem is that once you’re in, it goes just like the Eagle’s song ‘Hotel California’ – you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
On taking down Greece’s political elite:
“We are going to destroy the basis upon which they have built for decade after decade a system, a network that viciously sucks the energy and the economic power from everybody else in society.“
On Australia’s prime minister, John Howard:
“That awful little man.”
On (sort of) embodying a House of Cards ruthlessness:
“To those who say that, effectively, this is a referendum on the euro, my answer is: You may very well say this but I shall not comment. This is your judgement, your opinion, your interpretation. Not ours!”
On the people responsible for Greece’s bailout:
“[They’re] a committee built on rotten foundations.”
Channeling President Roosevelt:
“FDR, 1936: “They are unanimous in their hate for me; and I welcome their hatred.” A quotation close to my heart (& reality) these days”
When asked if he’d sign bailout proposals that didn’t include a restructuring of Greece’s debts:
“I’d prefer to cut my arm off.”
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A missive from a very bleary eyed ancient Greeks, floating in the clouds above Mt Olympus:
Sergeants Schultz and Schaubel are still kicking, thinking they’re still alive.
They are still in cloudcookooland and think that those naughty, haughty, incalcitrant Greek kids should be punished severely, whipped a thousand times for a thousand years, in public so that other naughty, haughty, recalcitrant kids in their school yard learn a lesson.
In the meantime lawyers both in Greece and elsewhere demand their prosecution, along with a number of other members of the Troika of crims and low lives, both inside and outside Greece, in international courts for their crimes against humanity and won’t rest until the courts clap handcuffs on them. The Nuremberg defence will apply. No fucking excuses for committing a heinous crime against a people!
And I am certain this will happen as I am certain the world will learn a lesson about the need to fight for one’s dignity, dignity being the quintessential element of existence, the very proof that one exists; and that the fight should go on until victory has been achieved; and that nothing, not all the money, nor all the brawn is mightier than justice.
Australia has a bloody good reference for standing up against the vile idiots who have stripped it of its dignity!
The cleptocrats and their bum boys and girls (κωλόπαιδα, in Greek) and the tryrants and their bum boys and girls, world-wide will learn a lesson and it is this: you may tear off so much flesh off the body of Democracy, so much but no more!
The thieving technocrats world-wide and media moguls world-wide will now be whipped a thousand times for a thousand years, in public and the people, the common people of Greece, the wine makers and the candle stick makers and the makers of ouzo and coffee and bread and shoes, and elsewhere will sit by in the sun with a Greek coffee, a shot of ouzo and a piece of baklava and watch with delight the public whipping!
Victory was certain from the moment Tsipras, Varoufakis, Kostantopoulou and a whole lot of other intelligent and compassionate humans stepped into what had become the Augean stables of dictators and tyrants and began to clean them up! There was no question in anyone’s mind: it was the end of an era and the beginning of a new, a bright one, bereft of poverty, of suicides, of homelessness, of youth disappearing into the deep caves of foreign countries.
Bereft of servitude!
The people saw in the faces of these young men and women, the faces of the heroes of the Persian wars, in Platea, in Thermopylae, at Marathon and in Salamis.
“Ελελευ! Ελελευ!” Go get them! Was the shout of the Greeks as the attacked the Persians.
How stupid, how churlish the idiots who are groaning under the whip sound and look and when their faces turn purple as they shout “Armageddon, Armageddon! Lord save us from Armageddon!”
History is being made anew in Greece and in Europe and all around the planet, indeed!
Go Greece!
Go Tsipras!
Go heroes of Syriza!
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Yay !
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Yanis has resigned. I don’t understand his point.
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Yannis knows more about economics then that narrow little click of idiots put together. He was and is hated with a vengeance. And there is also a woman from Austria who was thought to be a nasty piece of intransigence, so a deal was made that Yannis and she would stay out of the negotiations. Neither will retire from their respective govnt’s, just from the ministries so that the discussions could progress without all that personal animosity.
The Greeks are discussing right now who will replace Varoufakis.
From The New Democracy Party, Samaras was told in no uncertain terms by his own people (Dora Bakogiannis, the new leader) to fuck off coz he caused, she said, this disaster for them.
Another significant change is that this time the negotiation will take place in Paris nd not Brussels and Berlin. Hollande was told by his own people to stop being Merkel’s little yes boy and start showing some authority.
All eyes are at the moment focussed on the Greek buildings to see who emerges as the new minister for Finance (Varoufakis’ replacement) and in Paris to see when or if Draghi will let the hard currency flow.
A brilliant SYRIZA female Minister has declared that she will take a whole lot of the Troika bastards, including Lagarde, Schultz, Schaubel, Juncker, et al, as well as the
“in house troika” of Samaras, Georgiades, Stournaras et al, to the Hague and charge them for committing crimes against humanity. In chrysostomic speech she said she had proof adequate to send them to prison for a long time.
Things are getting intrestinger and intrestinger by the moment!
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News just in, the replacement is a softly spoken economist by the name of Euclid Tsakalotos who hates the eurozone experiment even more than Varoufakis! He was very vociferous about Greece wasting its time with negotiating and playing footsies with the likes of Merkel and Shaubel. Interesting! It’s as if Tsipras is saying to them, “you don’t like Varoufakis? Fine, Cop Euclid!”
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Yes, I heard the better explanation for Yanis resigning last night and it’s just as you say.
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I scored well today on Dunlop’s piece. Amazing.
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I didn’t have much success. Might have something to do with me posting 10 minutes before the mods went to bed on Friday night.
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Work seems to get in the way of blogging. Still astounded at the idiotic type of comment that does get through.
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That’s my problem Big M. Mine was in reply to the walker’s latest brain fart on gay marriage. Seems like it was channelling the party line and Otto’s nephews latest comments
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Yes, all of his statistics are from Wikipedia. Wouldn’t be acceptable for a high school essay.
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For idiocy: Jane:
03 Jul 2015 5:45:37pm
You are aware that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Lebanon are in Asia?
Whatever happened to the Middle East. She forgot Israel !
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There is a website which lists all the Middle East as being part of Asia – including Russia.
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It is bizarre – half the countries of the world are classified as Asian including Russia, Cyprus etc.
I don’t think the Asian Century idea was meant to mean much more than our near neighbours and China and India. Amazing that Europe isn’t all part of it.
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Most of Russia is in Asia. I found a map that describes, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania as being part of the Middle East. Mauritania has a sea border on the Atlantic but what the heck (It was a Jewish site). Arabs must live there so it must be.
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Syriza’s Marina Prentoulis Debates Greek Crisis:
The lying of the BBC (Zion) interviewers.
Nasty, deaf, shitty loud!
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Last night’s Greek media (other than ERT, the newly reopened State media) was an orgy of wild nastiness and abject idiocy!
It was a frenzy of right wing wailing and howling, declaring the end of the universe, Earth’s Armageddon and the galloping horses of the mythical Apocalypse!
Rapture at its most rapturous!
One nightmare rolled into another.
One fear followed another!
Station after station had panels all made up of members of the Opposition who without flinching, told lie after lie as they proclaimed the end of civilization as we know it, the end of Greek History, the death of wisdom (which, of course only they possessed) the death of Democracy and the death of Freedom in the wonderful, white supremacist, Israelite world!
The horror, the horror!
The shame, the shame!
Listening to this endless cataract of diarrhea I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
So much bullshit!
So much energy expanded in concocting it!
So much disdain for the truth, the reality crying right in front of them!
So much love for the banks!
How can humans shed, so willingly, so much of their humaneness?
When they roll out the Archbishop of Greece (Ieronymos II) to make his pulpit speech in favour of the Right Wing, you know well that they’ve run out of the very last of their scruples!
It was a disgraceful and phosphorescent exhibition of the true nature of the previous govn’t!
The shamelessness of these creatures is there in all its primal sludge glory for all to see!
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Just like the Liberals here hey Ato.
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Indeed, vivienne!
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I listened to the Greek news on SBS this arvo but could only understand a few words. Are you tuned into overseas channel somehow? Well done. Look, it is only money, funny money. If it is not repaid (and assume they are adding interest all along) what difference will it make. Oh, might make Spain think differently I guess. No one else is going to starve, just the poor Greeks who probably had nothing to do with this saga in the first place.
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Yes Vivienne. I’m tuned into many TV live stations but the main one (the State owned one) ERT is here: http://webtv.ert.gr/ert1-live/.
I’m also tuned into three or four radio stations on my mobile, again the main one being ERT and the one I like personally is the Left leaning one, called, appropriately, In The Red (Sto Kokkino)
The so called money Greece owes has been repaid around 20 times over. She has paid back -to the original 300mil Euros, some 1.27 trillion! She didn’t even owe the first 300! Germany -and her thugs in the so called EU (as it was at that stage, before an extra inner sanctum of 19 poor sucks was concocted) kept forcing by hook or by crook -as they are trying to do it again now- new TPPs so that the poor countries could produce nothing , export nothing and could only import from their huge mates. Cars from Germany and France, parsley from fucking Argentina, for Christ’s sake… thus, no income and thus starvation and “austerity,” suicides, old men scavenging the garbage bins, youth leaving the country…
What shits me are two things: a) Tsipras should have told the fuckers in the Merkelzone to go eat shit and get cracking with the new currency whatever he wanted to call it. and b) the communists, the fucking communists, are out screaming to vote a YES! They always do that. Their whole membership could fit in a medium sized bedroom but they scream and squeal their Trotsyite dogmatic bullshit louder than the Right Wingers scream their Free Market Rothchild puke!
But the Greeks got wise to them also!
The family won’t let me go down there and vote! I am angry about that as well!
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