Divide et Impera

So. Greece got its 130 billion bailout. Well… got…got? The spoils are being put into a bank account with the label Greece on it. But the Greek cannot dip into it. The money is to go, from the European taxpayer directly to the banks that Greece owes money. This to prevent Greece uses it for other, illegitimate purposes. Paying kickbacks to political cronies, for instance. Or keeping schools open. The construction is called an Escrow Account. Why is it I feel that that E really ought to be in the middle of the term?

Naturally, nothing comes for nothing. Draconian budget cuts must be made, the sheer number and nature of which makes my old head hurt. Given the Supreme Objective behind this whole operation – saving the Divine Euro by keeping Greece in the Heavenly Eurozone – none of these horrid measures can be helped. And yet the Eurogues still want a little more. Something extra. Something justified by the treachery and untrustworthiness of the Greek and their leaders.

They want a Permanent Troika in Athens. A kind of almighty Triumvirate of Bureaucrats superimposed upon Greek sovereignty with a right to veto whatever they please. And they want something else even more ardently. Namely: No Elections! For God’s sake: NO ELECTIONS IN APRIL! None too subtle hints have already been dropped in that direction by several Brussels bigwigs, and many more are soon to be expected, ‘in the interest of stability’. You see: elections are most dangerous things! Elections may upset the whole apple cart. For the entire Brussels elite is aware, deeply aware, of one dire inescapable truth: whenever you put a European proposal to the vote, the electorate returns a resounding No.  

And that must never happen…

Northern Europeans stand at the sidelines applauding all this. Serves the Greek buggers well, I hear them say. You deserve every bit of your punishment, I’ve seen Dutch and German and Finnish facebookies scribble. Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they’re doing. They do not realize that what is being done to Greece today will soon be done to them in other ways. For the object of the Brussels Beurocracy is to shape Federal Europe along the lines of the Chinese system: nearly unbridled economic liberty combined with a near total absence of Democracy. ‘A huge power block,’ in the wise words of the great Theodore Dalrymple, ‘under the domination of a self-perpetuating political class and its auxiliary nomenklatura, free of the most minimal democratic oversight or constitutional restraint.’

Divide and rule… Yes, the old trick still works. But old tricks often lead to old mistakes. And I’ll say again what I said last week:

Stop wrecking our democracies. Stop starving our poor. Stop repeating history.