Yanis told you so: "How Syriza’s capitulations allowed the Greek right to escape the dustbin of history."

As we've observed here in New Albany at a grassroots level, breaking free from the tentacles of business as usual is a daunting task. As an example, there are too many beak-wetting imperatives to justify local government perpetually spending money on shoddy annual repaving projects rather than examining the realities of car-centrism and alternatives to it -- and if you believe against all prevailing evidence that "leaders" like Bob Caesar have any interest in learning new tricks, think again. They're too busy nuzzling the effete pants legs of oligarchy-drunk entities like One Southern Indiana, hoping they might be tossed a tattered bone.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Greece.

In an essay at New Statesman, Yanis Varoufakis explains the invariable result when the Left, forever unwilling to stand by the veracity of its own political principles, caves to the Right -- itself forever willing to seize opportunity when the vacuum presents it.

How Syriza’s capitulations allowed the Greek right to escape the dustbin of history

The left-wing party’s embrace of austerity created the conditions for a parasitic and cruel oligarchy to return.

 ... What the people of Greece had said to us, their government, in that 2015 referendum, made perfect sense: “We don’t want to leave the euro or to clash with the European Union. But, if the European Union is demanding of you, of our government, the intensification of the austerity-insolvency doom loop that forces our youngsters to emigrate and the expropriation of what is left of our public assets, don’t you dare surrender — even if Grexit is the price we must pay.”

That night, while our people were out on the streets celebrating their remarkable victory, the political representatives of Greece’s oligarchy were in tatters. The leader of New Democracy resigned, the party’s cadres wallowed in deep despair, the oligarchy they represented was in a state of panic. Alas, they worried unnecessarily. For at the same time, a coup against the people was being hatched in the office of my colleague, the prime minister.

"The stakes are high in the Brexit impasse precisely because the working class has not been cowed by academic disapproval, editorial condemnation, or managerial contempt."

Over at The Economist, which currently is editorializing on behalf of a second Brexit referendum, a "great rescrambling of Britain’s parties" is viewed as being underway.

PEOPLE HAVE been talking about the collapse of the British party system for decades. Now it may actually be under way. The government has lost its authority. Parties are dissolving into factions. Factions are forming left-right alliances. Backbenchers are seizing the limelight while frontbenchers are hiding in the bushes.

That's because the Tory and Labour parties seemingly are split in two on the topic of Britain's departure from the European Union, with factions in each party both for and against.

It's far too deep a topic for quick analysis, but while the political situation in Britain and America isn't altogether analogous, it isn't far-fetched to suggest that we're both on the verge of a political realignment reflecting the final disintegration of the post-WWII settlement.

For those having a difficult time imagining how a British leftist can support Brexit -- specifically, the "no deal" Brexit feared by many of his or her countrymen -- please follow this link.

It's the clearest explanation I've yet seen.

Why No Deal Is the Real Deal: Brexit and the Politics of the Interregnum, by Maurice Glasman (The Nation)

Leaving the European Union is the necessary goal of the left in Britain.

The defeat of Theresa May’s government this week by an unprecedented margin in an alliance between pro-Remain Labour MPs and no-deal Tories opens up a fraught 10 weeks in British politics. The clock is ticking toward March 29, when, deal or no deal, Britain will leave the European Union. Having lost a crucial vote by the highest margin in a century, on the following evening Parliament returned a vote of confidence in her government. These are unusual times.

In the House of Lords, barons and baronesses of the Labour movement ask me to sit down and explain how “anyone” could support Brexit. After half an hour and a cup of tea, they shake their heads in sorrowful incomprehension and drift back to their old friends. Bearing in mind that you may well agree with them, here is why I believe that leaving the European Union is the necessary goal of the left in Britain—and why staying in would doom us to a never-ending Clinton presidency in which the rich get richer and all change is good, unless it leads toward socialism. A progressive eternity of democratic impotence.

The European Union is the greatest capitalist project ever devised by the human mind. It guarantees, in treaty form, the free movement of capital, labor, goods, and services throughout its territory as a constitutional right. These are known as the “Four Freedoms.” Imagine NAFTA underpinned by a political union so that it would be illegal to resist capitalism. A union in which economic policy is decided not democratically—but by judges interpreting whether the policy is “treaty compliant.” Yet that is the institution supported by the vast majority of progressives throughout the continent—and the main cause of the palsy that has overtaken social democrats across Europe. They think political and economic liberalism as the legal form of globalization is the best you can hope for. That is the European Union.

Whenever the left cannot make the distinction between globalization and internationalism, or democracy and populism, it loses working-class support in an orgy of legalistic self-righteousness. Give up on the democratic resistance to the domination of capital, and the meaning of socialism becomes obscure to a lot of people. The stakes are high in the Brexit impasse precisely because the working class has not been cowed by academic disapproval, editorial condemnation, or managerial contempt. The “basket of deplorables” have not given up on the idea that a democratic, self-governing nation is a better bet than the European Court of Justice. They are not changing their minds ...

Focus on Portugal: The Carnation Revolution in 1974, and Portugal in the current age.

Before the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (1989), there came the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974).

Remembering Portugal’s Carnation Revolution (Freedom House)

... The Carnation Revolution—the first of the world’s many subsequent flower or color uprisings—is little remembered today. Its very success may account for its obscurity. At the time, however, the Portuguese developments were understood to be extraordinarily important. The Carnation Revolution brought about the overthrow of an entrenched right-wing dictatorship. It ended, once and for all, European colonialism in Africa. It was decisive in ensuring that at some time in the future, Europe could truly boast of being whole and free. It set the stage for peaceful and democratic change in neighboring Spain. It produced a democratic breakthrough at a time when strongmen and commissars seemed to be on the march around the globe. And it was eventually recognized as the event that triggered the “third wave” of democratization, a phenomenon that was to transform politics throughout the world.

There were immediate implications of the Carnation Revolution in Angola and other soon-to-be former Portuguese colonial realms.

Portugal's new regime pledged itself to end the colonial wars and began negotiations with the African independence movements. By the end of 1974, Portuguese troops had been withdrawn from Portuguese Guinea and the latter had become a UN member state. This was followed by the independence of Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola in 1975. The Carnation Revolution in Portugal also led to Portugal's withdrawal from East Timor in south-east Asia. These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal's African territories (mostly from Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million Portuguese refugees — the retornados.

Portugal was accepted into the European Economic Community (now the EU) in 1986. At the time, the country was among the poorest in the EEC. It joined the Euro zone in 1999, and after a transitional period of three years, the escudo disappeared in 2002.

Between 2009-16 the Portuguese economy experienced a severe economic crisis – characterised by falling GDP, high unemployment, rising government debt and high bond yields. This was caused by a combination of the global recession, lack of competitiveness and limitations of being in the Euro.

Portugal's policy of austerity in the wake of the recession proceeded without the newsworthy tumult of protests in Greece. It was controversial nonetheless.

The Next Portuguese Revolution, by Mark Bergfeld (Jacobin; 2014)

... Beneath the cloak of unity, bitter wars have been raging over the nature of 1974–5, the government’s eager submission to the Troika’s austerity agenda, and whether the new Portuguese left is up for the task of providing a people ravaged by capitalism with a viable alternative to it ...

... While many of the gains of that revolution have been eroded, the poet Ary dos Santos reminds us that “no one will ever close the doors that April opened.”

To keep up with current events in Portugal (in English), visit The Portugal News Online.

Grexit to Brexit, "Yanis Varoufakis has written one of the greatest political memoirs of all time."

Our plans to seek exile in Cornwall have been muddied by Brexit, and Yanis Varoufakis is keeping me informed about it.

The six Brexit traps that will defeat Theresa May

Two years ago Yanis Varoufakis led Greece’s failed attempt to negotiate with the EU. He explains how the Brussels establishment will do everything to frustrate and outmanoeuvre the British prime minister, using tactics ranging from truth reversal to ‘the Penelope ruse’

On the same topic, a reminder:

Superlative current events panel discussion: "Brexit: An unorthodox view," with Yanis Varoufakis, Srećko Horvat and Elif Shafak.

I consider this absolutely essential viewing for anyone interested in learning numerous themes (generally) specific to the UK and the EU, but at the same time applicable to current events in America. Yes, it's 90 minutes. I'd say it's worth an hour and a half for context alone, and recommend especially to local Democrats.

This brings us to Varoufakis's new book.

Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis review – one of the greatest political memoirs ever? by Paul Mason (The Guardian)

The leftwing Greek economist and former minister of finance tells a startling story about his encounter with Europe’s ‘deep establishment’

Yanis Varoufakis once bought me a gin and tonic. His wife once gave me a cup of tea. While dodging my questions, as finance ministers are obliged to, he never once told me an outright lie. And I’ve hosted him at two all-ticketed events. I list these transactions because of what I am about to say: that Varoufakis has written one of the greatest political memoirs of all time. It stands alongside Alan Clark’s for frankness, Denis Healey’s for attacks on former allies, and – as a manual for exploring the perils of statecraft – will probably gain the same stature as Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon B Johnson.

Yet Varoufakis’s account of the crisis that has scarred Greece between 2010 and today also stands in a category of its own: it is the inside story of high politics told by an outsider. Varoufakis began on the outside – both of elite politics and the Greek far left – swerved to the inside, and then abruptly abandoned it, after he was sacked by his former ally, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, in July 2015. He dramatises his intent throughout the crisis with a telling anecdote. He’s in Washington for a meeting with Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary and Obama confidant. Summers asks him point blank: do you want to be on the inside or the outside? “Outsiders prioritise their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions,” Summers warns.

Elected politicians have little power; Wall Street and a network of hedge funds, billionaires and media owners have the real power, and the art of being in politics is to recognise this as a fact of life and achieve what you can without disrupting the system. That was the offer. Varoufakis not only rejected it – by describing it in frank detail now, he is arming us against the stupidity of the left’s occasional fantasies that the system built by neoliberalism can somehow bend or compromise to our desire for social justice.

In this book, then, Varoufakis gives one of the most accurate and detailed descriptions of modern power ever written – an achievement that outweighs his desire for self-justification during the Greek crisis ...

Superlative current events panel discussion: "Brexit: An unorthodox view," with Yanis Varoufakis, Srećko Horvat and Elif Shafak.

I consider this absolutely essential viewing for anyone interested in learning numerous themes (generally) specific to the UK and the EU, but at the same time applicable to current events in America.

Yes, it's 90 minutes. I'd say it's worth an hour and a half for context alone, and recommend especially to local Democrats.

Brexit: An unorthodox view, Yanis Varoufakis, Srećko Horvat & Elif Shafak (full)

Published on Feb 14, 2017

Srećko Horvat, a Croat philosopher, Elif Shafak, renowned Turkish novelist, and Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, bring to this conversation an intriguing perspective. As intellectuals who know Britain well, they understand first hand the perils of nationalism, disintegration, isolationism and marginalisation. They place post-Brexit Britain in a context informed by a view of Europe and Britain from the continent’s opposite ‘corner’, sharing insights from Greece’s tensions with Brussels and Berlin, Yugoslavia’s disintegration, and Turkey’s fraught relationship with a Europe that both courts and marginalises it.

More here

Brexit, final -- for now: "We will leave the EU but remain within the neoliberal system."

A brief breakdown of the referendum, from City Lab.

The divide is more than geographical, however. As this exit poll makes clear, younger people voted Remain while older people voted Leave, thus swinging the vote away from the people who will experience Brexit most keenly and for the longest. This statistic itself is fueling anger among the young, but there’s no denying a basic truth: this was a referendum with a high turnout, in which the Leave camp won.

Two days later, the question has become this: Who will dare to pull the trigger on article 50?

The EU seems united at this early juncture:

They spoke with one voice, in essence: "There’s the door. Please don’t let it slam on your way out."

Gary Younge captured the Friday morning mood.

After this vote the UK is diminished, our politics poisoned, by Gary Younge (The Guardian)

... Britain is no more sovereign today than it was yesterday. We will leave the EU but remain within the neoliberal system. Left to the mercy of the markets we are arguably now less capable of directing our affairs than we were. We are not independent. We are simply isolated.

We are also diminished. Our politics are poisoned, our discourse is fragile, our leaders are discredited. Facts ceased to matter, knowledge ceased to be valued, compassion appeared to evaporate. As large majorities for one side or the other racked up in various parts of the country it became clear that for many of us, beyond our families, we didn’t just disagree with the other side. We literally didn’t know them. Britain is not greater for this decision and this campaign but smaller, weaker and more vulnerable.

Coming full circle, from the Berlin Wall to Brexit.

Al Jourgensen was there at the very inception of the New World Order. It goes to show that we all should listen to more Ministry.

Above all else, Brexit to me is a symbol of my life of the mind, coming full circle. It has been an exhausting few days, and I'm not even British.

Since the early 1980s, I've rightly or wrongly accused the drunken stork of depositing me on the wrong continent. Even when stretched thin and utterly distracted by life, I've tried to stay abreast all all things European.

On Friday, after the referendum vote was announced, it dawned on me that I was feeling extremes of depression and exhilaration, and the last time these conflicting emotions were so strong was 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down.

Back then, I was not unlike many others. We thought that with the Cold War ending, there'd be the opportunity for progressive solutions to world problems. I struggled with the notion of pulling stakes and trying to be a part of this, on the ground, somewhere on the continent, but after much thought, my choice was to go into business, be an American Europhile in exile, and take a stab at indie capitalism.

Now, 25 years later, I'm finished with that chapter -- and Britain says it's done with Europe. I've learned quite a lot, and am no longer interested in binaries, whether Leave or Remain, or Democrat or Republican. During my quarter century of NABC, I was too busy pouring myself into grassroots this-or-that, right here at the local level, to fully grasp the implications of neoliberalism.

It's all gone sour, folks. The facts changed, and I changed my mind. I regret that it took so long. Incrementalism probably isn't going to cut it.

Brexit has been immensely emotional for me, but the one sure thing is that cramming these events through the familiar American-centric shape shifter isn't tremendously useful. There's more to it than Yanks bitching about their 401Ks, or trying to create memes with strained Trump/Clinton analogies.

In many respects, Timothy Garton Ash guided me through the fall of Communism in Europe and its aftermath. I own several of his books, and I feel his pain. His final sentence in the passage quoted below is especially relevant.

As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life (The Guardian)

Yet the origins of this debacle are as much European as British. As so often, the seeds of disaster were sown in the moment of triumph; of nemesis in prior hubris. It would be an exaggeration to say that a wall will be going up at Dover because a wall came down in Berlin, but there is a connection nonetheless. In fact, there are three connections. As their price for supporting German unification, France and Italy pinned Germany down to a timetable for an overhasty, ill-designed and overextended European monetary union. As a result of their liberation from Soviet communist control, many poorer countries in eastern Europe were set on a path to EU membership, including its core freedom of movement. And 1989 opened the door to globalisation, with spectacular winners and numerous losers."

Brexit and neoliberalism.

The Brexit talk will continue, but there are a few personal points I'd like to make.

First and foremost, while the referendum may represent a push-back against neoliberalism, it's going to take more than just this.

You say you want a revolution?

It's the wrong classic rock song. Try this one instead: Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

That's because whether Leave or Remain, Trump or Clinton -- and any or even all of these "choices" -- outside, it's still neoliberal globalism, and still predictable alliances of purported political opposites combining to defend the monopolistic interests of a tiny minority of economic elites.

It's deceptively simple to blame Brexit on racism. Surely racism is involved, but it's an opportunistic infection, one clearly diagnosed by the largely ignored progressive argument for the UK leaving the EU.

There is, however, an obvious reason why immigration has proved an effective weapon for the leave side. Life is tougher for millions of Britons on modest incomes than it was a decade ago.

Further corroboration can be found here: Political Elites’ Program of Austerity Set the Stage for Brexit (Foster; The Nation).

... Outside of London, jobs have been lost, wages depressed and public services cut massively. Since 2010, the Conservatives’ austerity measures have slashed funding for the NHS, welfare spending and budgets for social and public services: the keener the deprivation in an area, the higher the cuts, proportionally. So the poorest have borne the brunt of austerity, and had little left to lose.

At a forum in May, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek described the unfortunate binary "choice" for Europeans (underlining is mine).

 ... But Europe’s current predicament, Žižek argued, is that its most potent political forces – the technocratic power base in Brussels on one hand and rightwing nationalist parties such as Pegida and Front National on the other – represent the greatest danger to the universalist values on which the European Union, or any form of transnational government, ought to be predicated.

In this formulation, the European central government is reduced, perhaps not unfairly, to little more than an instrument of global capital; in touch only with the managerial class and unable to provide a unified response to any of the manifold problems assailing Europe in 2016. The deadening effect on public and political life of a Brussels beholden to its banks thus finds its perverse echo in the considerable number of voters now throwing their weight behind Europe’s new far-right. The task of the left, according to Žižek, is nothing less than to save Europe from itself.

In America, we have Clinton versus Trump. Encouraging, eh? I posted the following a few months ago, and am repeating it by virtue of relevance.

---

Must read: "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems."

Think of it as a concise explanation of how both "major" American political parties are playing the very same hand, operating from the very same fundamental economic assumptions.

Yes, in a few quantifiable ways, Democrats and Republicans differ on social issues, which have been elevated into culture wars, which in turn keep the 99% at each other's throats while the fundamental assumptions remain unchanged.

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Estonia Spring Break 2016: Day Eight, and home, though not before a few reflections.

(As is my custom when posting trip summaries, I'm backdating them to the actual day of occurrence. Previously: Day Seven)

You know the drill: Cram the suitcase extra full, flag a taxi to the airport, and relish a day filled with shoe, belts and sanity removed for scrutiny. We were on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta. The cans of Heineken were free, and so I drank way too many. In other words, in spite of airBaltic on the opening leg, it was routine.

So, Estonia.

Perhaps an offbeat choice for a trip -- neither Cancun nor Disney World, just daily reality in a nation of relatively recent vintage, filled with people who've been speaking that "devilishly difficult" language for thousands of years.

"Their biggest problem," says Mailis Sutiste, "is the letter 'Õ.'" " Õ" as in " Õun" (apple). " Õ" like "Õde" (sister), or "Õnn" (happiness). In fact, Sutiste's profession - " Õpetaja" (teacher) is even a difficulty for her students to pronounce in a way that is mutually understood amon Estonians to be the true "Õ ."Sure her Estonian class at Tallinna Keeltekool can reshape their "O's" - cut them down, swallow them whole - but they still can't get that "Õ" sound - though they get very close.

Regardless of the " "s - for Sutiste, as well as for other teachers of Estonian, the fact that people are trying to learn their language - and not only Russian-speakers studying to pass the state examination to get full citizenship - is a bit flattering. There is an interest in learning Estonian in Estonia that has never really existed before.

The Baltic Germans spoke German, the Soviets Russian. Estonian was always a "native" or "peasant" tongue. Now it stands alone as the official language of Estonia, and that has created an interest in learning it, an interest that Sutiste says is increasing as Estonia gets closer to becoming an official language of Europe - that is, a European Union language.

Never mind that English is the de facto second tongue, and Estonians tend to speak our language better than we do. The history of the country is aptly summarized by these three paragraphs, highlighting Estonians, Baltic Germans, Russians -- and now, Europeans.

In 1991, Estonia regained its independence, only to be presented with a thorny problem. Exactly how does one recover from 50 years of Sovietization? In broad terms, Estonia's answer was avoid shortcuts and endure whatever pain was necessary in the short term in order to gain a long-term objective of inclusion in the European project. Consequently, it took only 13 years to gain membership in the EU.

In contrast, it's been ten years of recovery in New Albany, and the streets still run one way.

The usual disclaimers apply: But of course Estonia could achieve this. Emerging from communism, the country remained culturally and linguistically homogeneous in spite of an alien (read: Russian) minority. Estonia's cousins in Finland stood by, ready to invest. It was in the EU's (and NATO's) best interest to transform Estonia into a buffer against bordering Russia. And so on.

But the ditches still need to be dug and fiber optic lines buried. Speaking for myself, this American saw something in Estonia rarely witnessed back home: A remote semblance of shared values and purpose. If we're the most powerful country in the world, can't we have an encrypted on-line passport?

Perhaps the memory of oppression remains sufficiently fresh, and by oppression I mean the genuine article, not the ludicrous suffocation purely imagined by so many of my fellow white males in the States.

I'm also aware of that 20-odd percent of Estonians who are Russian. It's sometimes hard to separate national characteristics of Russia from the lives of ordinary Russians, who are warm, passionate and welcoming people. In fact, the same might be said of Americans, which is why I persist in thinking that Russians and Americans have much in common if their governments might only leave the room and allow us to communicate with each other.

In Estonia, it's more complicated, although arguably less so for the young. In the Estonian context, reasons for Russian immigration differ markedly from those bringing Mexicans to the United States, because the Soviet Union shifted its own people from place to place for cynical political reasons, not in response to market forces.

I'm not sure any of it matters. Whether Russian or Mexican, if you've lived in a place long enough to consider it home and follow the rules, isn't it home?

Yes, I know. The devil resides in the details. It's why we have barrooms.

Next up for the Confidentials: A touch of Sicily in the fall. Mt. Etna's on my bucket list, and the eating and drinking ...

Joseph Stiglitz 2: "How I would vote in the Greek referendum."

It's about to get real, isn't it?

Mistrust, anger and resignation on the streets of Athens, by Lauren Zanolli (Al Jazeera)

ATHENS — After a heated day of last-minute bailout pleas and rejections, the prospect of Greece missing its $1.7 billion loan payment to the International Monetary Fund — the subject of months of speculation and hand wringing — became a reality overnight.

As Gomer Pyle was known to exclaim, "Surprise surprise": It isn't entirely about the money, but about the power. Are millions of ordinary Greeks so very culpable in the higher level chicanery not just of Greece, but the EU overall, that they must be punished forever?

It's important to remember that the "bailout" funds constantly being referenced are not migrating to Greece, to help Greeks. They're going to banks ... to help banks. The Europeans themselves obviously don't have all the answers, and neither do I.

However, it's easy to see which are the hostages, and which the hostage takers.

Joseph Stiglitz: How I would vote in the Greek referendum, by Joseph Stiglitz (The Guardian)

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Varoufakis on Greece: “We’ve lost everything, so we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do."

Sovereignty?

Greece will say it as it is: five years on, the medicine prescribed by Germany, Europe’s paymaster, to mend the ills of run-away profligacy hasn’t worked. Instead, the nation has become an echo of its former self; its economy slashed by almost a third, one in four out of work, one in three facing the prospect of living in abject poverty.

“We’ve lost everything,” he says. “So we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do.”

Damned book readers.

I wonder if he knows Papa John personally?

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis: ‘If I weren’t scared, I’d be awfully dangerous’, by Helena Smith (Guardian)

... At 53, Varoufakis is still clear that he “understands the world better” as a result of having read Marx. But he no longer considers himself a diehard leftie, whatever others may think. Rather, he says, he is a libertarian or erratic Marxist, who can marvel at the wondrousness of capitalism but is also painfully aware of its inherent contradictions, just as he is “the awful legacy” of the left. “It is a system that produces massive wealth and massive poverty,” proclaims the economist who taught at the universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Glasgow and Sydney after gaining his doctoral degree at the University of Essex. “I don’t think you can understand capitalism until and unless you understand those contradictions and ask yourself if capitalism is the natural state. I don’t think it is. That’s why I am a leftwinger.”

More than that, Varoufakis is an iconoclast, a self-styled “contrarian” who is also an idealist, “because if you are not an idealist, you are a cynic”. And he has, he laments, lost a lot of friends on the left who believe that Grexit, Greece’s exit from the currency bloc, would be the country’s best course.

Je suis Greece.

I may be a Europhile, but underdogs come first.

Those who would say that it's just another instance of a slacker country looking to evade its debts are missing the metaphor. In a world dedicated to income equality and the preservation of the 1%, most of us are Greece, already.

Greece's leaders stun Europe with escalating defiance, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (The Telegraph)

"The euro is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” says Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister

Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has spelled out the negotiating strategy of the Syriza government with crystal clarity.

“Exit from the euro does not even enter into our plans, quite simply because the euro is fragile. It is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” he said.

“Do we really want Europe to break apart? Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous. Who would be hit after us? Portugal? What would happen to Italy when it discovers that it is impossible to stay within the austerity straight-jacket?”

New Albany looks to Greece.

Photo credit: Guardian

Sort of a Salvador Allende moment for the EU, wouldn't you say?

Don't miss this comment, also in The Guardian: Greece shows what can happen when the young revolt against corrupt elites (Paul Mason).

The rise of Syriza can’t just be explained by the crisis in the eurozone: a youthful generation of professionals has had enough of tax-evading oligarchs ... From outside, Greece looks like a giant negative: but what lies beneath the rise of the radical left is the emergence of positive new values – among a layer of young people much wider than Syriza’s natural support base. These are the classic values of the networked generation: self-reliance, creativity, the willingness to treat life as a social experiment, a global outlook.

Negotiating the terms of engagement. Imagine that.

Syriza’s historic win puts Greece on collision course with Europe, by Ian Traynor and Helena Smith (Guardian)

• Voters reject EU austerity for radical alternative of far-left party
• Upstarts fall two seats short of an overall majority
• ‘Greece has turned a page,’ says 40-year-old leader Alexis Tsipras

European politics has been plunged into a volatile new era following a historic victory in Greece’s general election by far-left radicals committed to ending years of austerity.

More than five years into the euro crisis that started in Greece in October 2009 and raised questions about the single currency’s survival, Greek voters roundly rejected the savage spending cuts and tax rises imposed by Europe which reduced the country to penury ...

... The clock is already ticking. When the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande, British prime minister David Cameron et al assemble for an EU summit in Brussels in just over a fortnight, they will be joined at Europe’s top table by (Alexis) Tsipras, probably the only man there not wearing a tie. The symbolism will be enormous. Europe’s anti-mainstream mavericks and populists are no longer just hammering on the doors.

My kingdom for a horse (sausage), part one.

I didn't squawk about the steak, dear. I merely said I didn't see that old horse that used to be tethered outside here.
-- WC Fields

Two articles in the New York Times consider the implications of Secretariat Shish Kebab, first from a standpoint of hygienic faith.

Of Fraud and Filet, by Frank Bruni

 ... We’re spooked by the horse meat story, disturbed by the fish tale and riveted by other instances of false food advertising because they remind us of a truth we try hard to forget. Every time we eat something that we haven’t grown and reaped and cooked ourselves — which means, for most of us, every time we eat — we’re taking a leap of faith: that it was protected from contamination; that it was inspected properly; that the cook didn’t mix in something objectionable; that the waiter didn’t drop it on the floor. We’re in a position of both extraordinary vulnerability and extreme trust.

Then, how these little bits of Seabiscuits 'n' Gravy in Ikea's spicy meatballs pertain to the very notion of European unity.

Recipe for Divided Europe: Add Horse, Then Stir, by Andrew Higgins

... The horse meat scandal has brought into the open the deep divisions, cultural and otherwise, that bedevil the European Union.

Part two here

The European Union, the Habsburg Monarchy and my nightstand.

"Downton Abbey's" okay, but quite unexpectedly in 2012, the history and legacy of the Habsburg dynasty again became a theme with me, reflected by three novels forming the core of my reading since the middle of June:

Robert Musil, “The Man Without Qualities”
Joseph Roth, "The Radetzky March"
Gregor Von Rezzori, "An Ermine on Czernopol"

Musil was a lengthy commitment, and Roth a far easier read, though no less compelling. The latter novel is ongoing, but may prove to be the most interesting of  them all.

I covered some of this in an earlier post: European Journal. Well, sort of. In the following essay, Cooper picks up where the late Otto left off.

The European Union and the Habsburg Monarchy, by Robert Cooper (Eurozine)

The Habsburg Monarchy lasted five centuries. It was both solid and flexible; it aroused genuine affection among its citizens. But it vanished in a puff of smoke. Should we expect the European Union, shallow in history and unloved by those it serves, to do better?

To be fair, it was more than a puff of smoke. The bullets from Gavrilo Princip's revolver killed the Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia. What killed the Habsburg Monarchy was the four years of pounding by artillery that followed. This brought death and ruin to the old Europe; in Russia it brought revolution and tyranny, and in Germany regime change accompanied by failed revolution, then inflation and depression, and finally world war and genocide.

What arose from the ashes? The answer is: the European Union and NATO. It is the EU and its resemblance to the Habsburg Monarchy that is the subject of this essay, but something needs first to be said about NATO which was and is its indispensable partner.