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…and the winner is…

So, the EU has deposed the democratically-elected leaders of Greece and Italy and replaced them with EU puppets. Um…that there’s called a coup d’état. It’s like the UN toppling George Bush and replacing him with Madeleine Albright.

Holy shit.

I’m speechless.

When Italy said, “excuse us, we’d like to hold an election to replace Berlusconi”, the president of the EU said “This country needs reforms, not elections.”

Criminy buckets.

The president of the EU would be Herman Van Rompuy, the moldy gray leprechaun in the picture, of whom Nigel Farage famously said “he has the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk.” Never heard of him? Well, he’s the King of Europe now.

You have to remember, the veneer of democracy — even nationhood — is pretty thin over much of Europe. Despite its great age and long history, many of the modern nations of Europe were cobbled together from principalities and city-states, busted up or invented out of nothing quite recently. The switch from monarchy to democracy is a shaky and incomplete project.

Well, this new thing won’t last. It can’t. The math doesn’t work and neither does the human calculus.

The Germans want the Greeks to grow up and act like Germans. The Greeks want the Germans to shut up and keep signing the benefit checks. You can substitute “Northern Europe” for Germans and “Southern Europe” for Greeks throughout.

Oh, man. And I’m going to be standing next to it when it blows.

Comments


Comment from Gromulin
Time: November 14, 2011, 10:38 pm

You gotta admit, watching post-modenism destroy itself is pretty entertaining (from a safe distance).

I’m stocking up on bullets and bourbon. Not that I need any particular reason for that, mind you.


Comment from Oh Hell
Time: November 14, 2011, 10:40 pm

I am wondering how much of the fall out is coming our way…..I think I’ll stock up on more ammo.


Comment from Oceania
Time: November 14, 2011, 11:10 pm

Stocking up on ammo in NZ for the last year.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 14, 2011, 11:19 pm

There has been so much threatening and speculation here, people are getting pretty sick of it. I’m hearing more and more people saying along the lines of, “so fail already, and let’s start getting this austerity shit over with.”

One practical tip: we’ve been told in the event of a banking crisis, there would be a short-term halt on ATM machines. So pull some cash to have at the ready.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: November 14, 2011, 11:41 pm

Recently monarchies?

Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain were fascist dictatorships well within living memory – and France’s acquaintance with anything an Anglo-Saxon would recognise as a system of government vaguely resembling representative democracy lasted about two tenths of a second a very long time ago.

What we are witnessing is continental Europe’s reversion to its natural, authoritarian condition.

‘Common sense’ – that condition which means only mental patients in the anglosphere ever practice the goose-step – is a quality that evaporates somewhere half a mile off the coast of Dover.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 14, 2011, 11:46 pm

There’s a lot of amazing stuff being posted about the crisis at the moment. This one from the Spectator is especially interesting (hat tip: badger).


Comment from Spad13
Time: November 14, 2011, 11:59 pm

Eh, it will all be a caliphate in 20 years anyway.
So long and thanks for all the wine.


Comment from Gromulin
Time: November 15, 2011, 12:14 am

Every time I meet a Europhile leftist trying to convince me that, by it’s very nature, anything European is better than anything American, I remind them that two of the past five generations of Europeans have launched the bloodiest, most depraved wars that history has ever known. They generally don’t have any comeback for that, and sputter on about Reagan or some other non-sequitor before they wander off for an easier target.


Comment from JeffS
Time: November 15, 2011, 12:28 am

Sounds like Merkel has found a way to re-form the Wehrmacht, only it uses economics as a primary weapon. Sarkozy is the same, but think Napoleon instead of Alfred Jodl.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 15, 2011, 12:36 am

That’s basically it, JeffS. Conquest by other means.

It’s no accident that Merkel is saying things lately like, “we can’t take peace for granted.” Like, whoa!.

Germany has no (or very little) army, of course. But the Europeans are superstitiously certain the EU is the only thing standing between them and mutual annihilation (again). That’s why they’re clinging to this doomed thing so hard against all the evidence.


Comment from Cobrakai99
Time: November 15, 2011, 12:39 am

The bureaucrats have successfully taken over the Continent.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: November 15, 2011, 12:46 am

England is, thankfully, not as dependent on the EU as other nations because she retained her own currency, but yeah. This isn’t going to last. The only thing that’s really kept the peace in Europe for 50 years has been the presence of the US in NATO, but we should have left years ago.


Comment from JeffS
Time: November 15, 2011, 1:02 am

Stoatie, looking at the military capabilities of the other Euroweenie nations, it wouldn’t take much of a military force to overwhelm them. Especially since Euroweenies are more interested in paid vacations, booze, and entertainment than in maintaining their basic rights. They’ve traded their security for unfettered access to an X-box, with their spines thrown in for security.

A single Waffen SS division, brought forward in time from WWII, could conquer all of Europe with a few sharp “examples”, with massive surrenders all around. Assuming that the SS troops didn’t laugh themselves to death, of course.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: November 15, 2011, 1:04 am

We live in interesting times.
I say let loose the hounds. The sooner the shit hits the fan, the sooner we can bury the zombies.

Myself, I’ve been boning up on olde-timey survival skills the last couple years: canning, homemade soap, beer brewing, the odd gold-eagle, etc. The rifle and handgun thing is next on the list, with the final expenditures being dependent on next Novembers election.

I’ve been reading a lot of econ-pundits lately saying that we won’t catch European bedbugs. But then again, when the house is infested with cockroaches, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Whatever you do, don’t read this blog; http://www.zerohedge.com/

Just keep canning, and read up on Popular Mechanic’s DIY Bomb Shelter.


Comment from James the lesser
Time: November 15, 2011, 1:30 am

You’re closer to ground zero than I am, but the shock will go everywhere.
With armies drawn down so far, I don’t see war–at least not right away. But… What would we expect to see on the way? Demonizing the other guys, sure–don’t quite see that at warlike levels yet, fortunately. (At least from over here) Expanding the forces somehow, or making arrangements to expand them quickly? Rifles and uniforms are cheap, experienced drill sergeants a little less so, trucks and depots and artillery and aircraft–is anybody trying to buy back stuff they sold to third world countries?


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: November 15, 2011, 1:53 am

I have been reading about the French Revolution recently. As I gather (although a weak scholar at best, and willing to be corrected) that the main problem leading to the revolution was not the starvation of the peasants but the bankruptcy of the government and the crushing taxes and over-regulation of business that resulted.

It’s remarkable to me how many of the same elements seem to be recurring today. Now having said that it took more than 50 years from the point where the revolution seemed inevitable till it actually began.

By the way, almost all of today’s ‘progressive’ ideas to reform and/or create a better society were tried with horrific results during the revolution.

Just sayin’


Comment from mojo
Time: November 15, 2011, 2:13 am

Class-5 shit-storm, ahoy!


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: November 15, 2011, 3:07 am

…”It is the new assemblies (Here read the EU in Brussels) which assess the taxes and superintend their collection; which determine upon and direct all public works; and which form the court of final appeal in regard to matters in dispute.

The sub-delegate, the elected representative (Here read elected parliaments and national assemblies), thus lose three-quarters of their authority. Conflicts arise, consequently, between rival powers whose frontiers are not clearly defined; command shifts about, and obedience is diminished. The subject no longer feels on his shoulders the commanding weight of the one hand which, without possibility of interference or resistance, held him in, urged him forward, and made him move on.

Meanwhile, in each assembly of the parish arrondissement, and even of the province, plebeians, “husband-men,” and often common farmers, (Here, read you and me) sit by the side of lords and prelates. They listen to and remember the vast figure of the taxes which are paid exclusively, or almost exclusively, by them—the taille (Literally Salt Tax but here read VAT) and its accessories, the poll-tax and road dues….”

The people are invited to speak out, they are summoned, and they are consulted. There is a disposition to relieve them; henceforth their misery shall be less; better times are coming. This is all they know about it. A few month after, in July,the only answer a peasant girl( Read the entire country of Greece) can make to Arthur Young is, “something was to be done by some great folks (Here read Germany, England, USA) for such poor ones, but she did not know who nor how.”

The thing is too complicated, beyond the reach of a stupefied and mechanical brain.—One idea alone emerges, the hope of immediate relief. The persuasion that one is entitled to it, the resolution to aid it with every possible means. Consequently, an anxious waiting, a ready fervor, a tension of the will simply due to the waiting for the opportunity to let go and take off like a irresistible arrow towards the unknown end which will reveal itself all of a sudden…

The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume
2 (of 6), by Hippolyte A. Taine


Comment from BigBluBug
Time: November 15, 2011, 3:49 am

I got a bad feeling about all of this.

Europe is screwed. It’s become a giant basket of codependency. The only social changes that happen suddenly in Europe are bad ones. At some point, there will be a contagion of banks runs. The governments will have to stop them and when they do, there will be riots outside of Greece. Spain and Italy are full of hot blooded loonies and things will get bad there first.

Once the Germans start rioting, call me. It’ll be time for me to implement what I like to call, Operation Geronimo:

Hooker’s and Blow in Vegas until the money runs out or my heart explodes. I’ve always wanted to drown in a swimming pool full of buxom brunettes.

BBB


Comment from enter exiting sandman
Time: November 15, 2011, 5:38 am

Lived in Eurabia in the go go 80’s and frequently asked the stupified German youth what they thought of the US and NATO. They were already a dulled down, entitlement prone lot who wanted to reneg on NATO and hug the RUSSIANS. When the EURO and EU die I wonder how they’re going to like being screwed between their own Muslim troubles and the ever present RUSSIANS? Be a lot fewer social perks and month long vacays then. Trouble coming their way soon. Too bad. Oopsies.


Comment from enter exiting sandman
Time: November 15, 2011, 5:46 am

On the other hand…if you’re an end of the world type…well that Eurotrash toilet is usually the first one flushed in most scenarios anyway…might as well get the action under way. Not really a fan of soccer, techno music, the Pope or Islam, so I got no dog in this fight cept stoaty and some American ex pats… so let’s dance and start the rebuild already.


Comment from enter exiting sandman
Time: November 15, 2011, 6:01 am

And let’s not forget how prone the Eurotrash are to rewriting one another’s borders at the business end of a gun. Nations forcibly created out of whole cloth… borders erased…gubmints replaced…enemies forced to live in a simmering pot at gunpoint like Yugoslavia or the Soviet republics…nothing new about that. Just no shots fired or governmental buildings burned so far. All gonna end up with sharia law and Friday prayers, so I’m not gonna sweat this one. Not my fight.


Comment from beasn
Time: November 15, 2011, 4:21 pm

“…rewriting one another’s borders at the business end of a gun.”

Whose gun? They have successfully disarmed and wimpified themselves.


Comment from beasn
Time: November 15, 2011, 4:27 pm

So, the EU has deposed the democratically-elected leaders of Greece and Italy and replaced them with EU puppets.

The first borders being knocked down towards the greater ‘one nation, no borders’ utopia. And the EU is saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’…knowing the masses would rather piss and moan and break windows over their freebies – the only exertion towards their own well-being they are concerned with.


Comment from Goober
Time: November 15, 2011, 4:31 pm

Not my fight

I pray with every ounce of sincerity in my soul that we can keep it that way this time. if Europe is dead-set on conflagrating itself for a third time in 100 years, I say we let them do it and keep American blood from spilling this time.

“Every soldier that is worth a damn is anti-war. but still, there are things worth fighting for” Norman Schwartzkopf.

This isn’t worth it. If they want it, let them have it, and let them deal with the consequences. Pull our troops out of there all together.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 15, 2011, 5:15 pm

There are more arms than you might think in Europe. The French in particular have kept their hand in and aren’t shy of using force when it suits them.

For what it’s worth, though, it doesn’t look like war between nations that’s brewing. Not at the moment. More like violence between the ruling classes and the governed. More and uglier rioting in the streets would be my guess, at least for a start.


Comment from Redd
Time: November 15, 2011, 5:19 pm

I watch Russell Howard. And though I know he is a lefty, I was shocked that he never mentioned the UK riots. He should change his name to Russell Coward.


Comment from enter sandman
Time: November 15, 2011, 5:40 pm

In reference to my comment from last night, let me clarify…the ciitizens may be disarmed, barring the Finns, Swedes and the like, true. BUT it was the governments I was referring to, and they are not unarmed by any means. There is a strong international arms trade in Europe and the governments are more than willing to negotiate by gun. Witness Russia and Georgia and Russia and Chechnya. How about the clusterbang that is the Balkans? Remember a little thing called WWI? That was started by an assassination and started in the Balkans. They do this as a matter of course, a way of conducting business.
Like I said…par for the course for Eurotrash and not my fight. I stand by that opinion. But that’s just for me. Your mileage may vary.


Comment from enter sandman
Time: November 15, 2011, 6:00 pm

And weas, it does strike me that like someone already stated, this might be a springboard for not just unelected people taking over but the overhaul of the command structure of the EU in the form of more of that traditional European favorite…authoritarian gubmint. Blaming it on the idiot population and the social safety net comes close to the source of Hitler’s popularity and his own animus…the financial debts of the Armistice that ended WWI and beggared Germany and Austria. Money would make the perfect excuse to suspend normal elections. And the EU parliamentarians aren’t popularly elected anyway.
Sounds like business as usual for Europe.


Comment from Allen
Time: November 15, 2011, 7:22 pm

Remember back in the day when some were saying this whole idea of an EU would lead to the destruction of democracy and end in totalitarianism? Crazy fringe kooks was the best said of the people saying that.

Bwahahahaha! I give you, Rompuy the First. The first in a very long line of the House of Bureau.


Comment from exit sandman, formerly enter sandman, waffling sandman…
Time: November 15, 2011, 7:47 pm

ALLEN is correct: the knobs in charge of the EU are and always have been bureaucrats, apparatchiks, functionaries of the bland, faceless, self promoting type. Think David Spade as the butt kissing sycophant in the Coneheads movie and you have the idea.

Rompuy has the personality of boiled linguini and so do the rest of the Eurocrats he comes from. Probably why Tony Blair lost the job: not bland and unassuming enough.

Europe will descend into a Muslim dominated Dark Ages and one day some Afghan dude will be making an AK using a hand drill and hand files outside the shuttered Louvre. Maybe a dude who cooked something with a sauce will be hanging from a street lamp in the city of lights. Gonna be a dark ghetto by then. Darn glad I got to see what I wanted to of old Europe before it gets a Saud inspired Sharia makeover.

Wouldn’t cross the street to stop a war on the Continent. Their time has come and gone and ours may be ebbing as well if a mutt like Nobama stays in office.

Seriously, is he the best kenyan we could find?

Really?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 15, 2011, 9:37 pm

I wouldn’t put my money on the Caliphate. I know it looks that way from outside, but the numbers don’t add up. Not yet, anyway. And there’s terrific internal stress between immigrants who are assimilating and those who aren’t (think honor killings).

There are so many angry cultural divides, and tight economic times are putting strains on fragile relationships. Just in the UK, we have a very stark and angry division between rural and urban and between North and South…and that’s between ethnic Brits. Start bringing the multiculti stuff into it, and it’s a minefield.


Comment from MIke C.
Time: November 15, 2011, 10:27 pm

Feh. The basic problem is that Europe never grasped the concept of individual rights. It’s just that simple. Europeans don’t have rights, they have priviledges, granted by the rulers of the day, just as in all the centuries before. This inevitably leads to a mad and deadly scramble to see who can be the rulers.

Now mind you, the concept of individual rights has been getting pretty short shrift in America for a good, long while as well, and is under assault today like perhaps never before. But at least the idea/ideal is recognized.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 15, 2011, 10:39 pm

I would agree, Mike C.

Britain is the exception, of course. They have a rich history of individualism out of which America flowed naturally. Wherever free markets and English common law have gone, the human condition has improved.

But don’t get me started on the Anglosphere.


Comment from Oceania
Time: November 15, 2011, 10:50 pm

And a hearty ‘Sieg Heil’ to you this morning Miss Weasel.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 15, 2011, 10:52 pm

You’re a recipient of the benefits of the Anglosphere, too, Oceania. I don’t think you would enjoy living with France or Germany’s speech laws, for example. I do believe that ‘Sieg Heil’ could land you in trouble in certain parts of Europe.


Comment from MIke C.
Time: November 15, 2011, 11:50 pm

Ever hear the phrase “pissing up a rope”?


Comment from Oceania
Time: November 16, 2011, 5:50 am

I’ve heard pissing into the Wind … and have tried it several times, usually on the tops of ridges.

I’m sure that I can handle a bunch of Europeans.
Recipients of Benefits? Like? We were cut of at the knees in 1973 by the UK when they refused to take our produce, and ended up trading with the CCCP and China.

Cook, Hague and Cameron have tried various scams with us to get their goods into China through NZ. Not going to happen.

Besides, the Chinese are actually National Socialists – more or less. Least you know where you stand … unlike with European Nations.

The European collapse will not really affect us – as we don’t trade with the EU significantly.


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: November 16, 2011, 12:00 pm

> The European collapse will not really affect us – as we don’t trade with the EU significantly.

Because a complete collapse of the EU couldn’t possibly mean war in Europe (again), and the Anglosphere couldn’t possibly get drawn in (again) like they have the last two times.

No. Nothing at all that could possibly affect us. Nothing to see here, please move along.

Gods, you have one of the biggest cases of cranial-rectal inversion I’ve ever seen.


Comment from exit sandman, formerly enter sandman, waffling sandman…
Time: November 18, 2011, 5:08 pm

Once again, Oceania, you prove that you are the poster child for birth control.

Oh yes, you’re a douche nozzle. And that, my dear troll, is an ad hominem attack. ‘Cept you’re kinda short on that hominem part. More like douchenozzlem. Yep, that’s you.


Comment from exit sandman, formerly enter sandman, waffling sandman…
Time: November 18, 2011, 5:15 pm

😮

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