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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Greeks Bearing Political Gifts I am not yet as convinced as Telegraph journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that the West or, at least, the EU is entering upon some Kali Yuga style end-game of strife, discord, quarrel, and contention. But his article in today’s Telegraph, titled Greek fighting: the eurozone’s weakest link starts to crack, makes a fair case for it. It also provides as good an assessment of the situation in Greece as I have yet come across. I won’t reproduce the whole piece here. But I will copy the following passage, which concluded it:- I am a little surpised that the riot phase of this long politico-economic drama known as EMU has kicked off so soon, and that it has done so first in Greece where the post-bubble hangover has barely begun. The crisis is much further advanced in Spain, which is a year or two ahead of Greece in the crisis cycle. My old job as Europe correspondent based in Brussels led me to spend a lot of time in cities that struck me as powder kegs - and indeed became powder kegs in the case of Rotterdam following the murder of Pim Fortyn, and Antwerp following the Muslim street riots (both of which I covered as a journalist). Lille, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Amsterdam, Brussels, all seemed inherently unstable, and I do not get the impression that the big cities of Spain and Italy are taking kindly to new immigrants. The picture is going to get very ugly as Europe slides deeper into recession next year. The IMF expects Spain’s unemployment to reach 15pc. Immigrants are already being paid to leave the country. There will be riots in Spain too (there have been street skirmishes in Barcelona). Hedge funds, bond vigilantes, and FX traders will be watching closely. In the end, a currency union is no stronger than the political will of the constituent states. No doubt events will be ugly in Britain as well. My comments are not intended to suggest that British behaviour is better. Far from it. But I am certain that the British people still feel that the authorities who set economic policy are ultimately answerable to Parliament and to the democratic system. Will the Greeks, the Spanish, the French feel that way about the European Central Bank and the Stability Pact when the chips are really down? The Telegraph software appears to display only the first twenty of the comments. There are, apparently, forty-two others on the thread that I cannot get to load on my browser. However, those twenty are also worth a read. There are more and more such eye-popping sentiments appearing on newspaper threads. Dissent is becoming endemic, but it lacks focus ... political form. What Evans-Pritchard’s piece really tells us is that we are embarking upon if not the revolutionary process exactly then, at the very least, a revolutionary preamble ... a lengthy period of reflection upon what it will really take to destroy the present system. The “ugliness” to which Evans-Pritchard refers ... the riots, the cynicism, the street politics ... will not do it. Its all about focus. Without that, these convulsions will as likely operate as safety valves. Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 12:31 AM in World Affairs Comments (53) | Tell-a-Friend Poster Comment: Turtle has been saying for years wetbacks are not going to take over the US, or Muslims Europe, blah blah blah. Why? Because there is always a tipping point, and when it comes, boom. I would prefer things to be settle peacefully, and Third Worlders expelled, but the way of the world seems to be violence.
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