It is Scylla and Charybdis for our time!

Dear reader, I cannot tell what the Greeks should vote in the coming Referendum. The choice between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Oxi and the Nai, the Yes or No, the sink or founder, is like asking them to chose between death by hanging or by electric chair. So Alfred B Mittingon refrains from taking a position, and from making predictions as to what will happen next Sunday.

What I do know, however, is that the Brussels Eurogues will use the outcome, whatever it is, to get rid of the Syriza government. They will use a No vote to the Austerity Deal as a convenient excuse to refuse any further dialogue with ‘an intransigent regime of upstart radicals’ (or words to that effect), and allow Greece to plunge into total chaos, which will lead to new elections; while a Yes vote implies that the Syriza government has lost its mandate to resist the Abominable Troika, and has no choice but to step down.

Soon after, through new elections or – preferably of course – by simple backroom horse trading, the previous government will return to power. A government led by Mr Samaras of Nea Demokratia, in combination with the good old PASOK and a few more spineless fringe parties; the same folk, that is, who plunged Greece into its present plight by their corruption, clientelism, cronyism and abuse of public funds. The same who lied through their teeth to have Greece join the Euro. The same who borrowed to their heart’s delight to buy votes and fill their party coffers. Europe will welcome them with open arms, because ‘they may be bastards, but they are OUR bastards’. They are our friends. They are our lackeys, who will do our bidding and follow orders.

And here is the true irony. As soon as this new obedient rogue regime has taken office, the Troika and the Brussels Nomenklatura will miraculously see the light, and grand the country a gigantic debt relief (to be shouldered by the European taxpayer) because they suddenly recognize that not in a thousand years a tiny country in the present state of depression can repay the entire burden of institutional debts (why do you think the ever cautious IMF yesterday hinted at precisely such a thing?) Thus, the friendly new cabinet of yesterday’s kleptocrats will be granted the very deal which would have made Mr Tsipras and Mr Varufakis gladly accept the ‘rescue’ program.

But it could not be done before, you see; because doing so would have given a lease on life to a rebellious regime which dared to stand up to EU Diktats. And that was unthinkable. For getting rid of the elected enemy has been the first priority of our Brussels Masters in what they passed off as negotiations ever since January. Syriza had to be crushed. And crushed they will be.

I leave you with a dark and gloomy thought: when all is said and done and the bottom line is reached, Mr Tsipras has been doing the Brussels Beurocracy the greatest imaginable favour an adversary ever bestowed on his foe. It was obvious from the start, and got clearer by the day, that the Greek debt situation was going to implode and lead to Grexit if not worse. Now, however, the Junckers and the Dijsselbloems, the Merkels and the Schläubes, the Tusks, the Schulzes, the Draghis and all the other heartless Eurogues can blame the denouement, not on the rotten structure of their Eurozone, but on the evil doings of a handful of communist radicals.

I hear a sigh of relief from the banks of the Spree, the Seine and the Senne. I hear the flexing of monstrous muscles in preparation of the next move…

Brace yourselves, ye Europeans! Very soon Scylla and Charybdis will be coming for you as well!

Golden Quotebook: Charles Colson on the Family Jewels

The tangle, the defiance, the challenge and the reckless gamble by all involved in the coming Greek referendum, immediately brought to my mind a somewhat rough, but certainly utterly honest observation by Charles “Chuck” Wendell Colson.

Mr Colson used to be a special assistant to President Richard Nixon back in the 70s, and in that capacity performed a number of rather disreputable tasks, among other things (the more amusing ones you can read up on here) the organisation of the Watergate burglary that ultimately brought the Nixon administration down. For this and many other transgressions he served a prison term, after which – to his credit – he saw the Light, found the Lord and did his best to make up for his many sins as a preacher and a conscientious Christian.

Chuck Colson was, if anything, a ruthless Realpolitker (it was said by one who did not even dislike him all that much, that he was ‘The Evil Genius of an Evil Administration’, who wouldn’t think twice about walking over his own grandmother if this were necessary to win a re-election…), and he believed that the way to political popularity often involved a certain dose of pressure. Or, as he himself put it in far more flowery terms than my own:

Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow…!

This, dear reader, is of course what today the Brussels Nomenklatura firmly believes about the Greek populace. Let them sweat! Let them starve! Let them panic and make them bleed! Never give in an inch, and then they will learn to love us!

They may well be right, for bullying often works wonders. But anybody who – like myself - has ever read a history book about the roughly 2,500 years of Greek history, say from the Battle of Thermopylae through the Ottoman Empire to the Greek War of Independence and the German Occupation, surely will share my doubts… Yes, the Greeks may be a little bad and a little mad, but you cannot beat them when it comes to pride and dignity.

Next Sunday will tell…

Hold your breath for the Hermaphrodite!

Oh Horror! Oh Tragedy! Oh Unjust and Undeserved Irony! On the very same day that Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the legalisation of gay marriage (congrats, ye Emerald Islanders; Ah, if only you showed such backbone, stamina and wisdom in your referendums on EU diktats and ukases!)… Exactly on that happy day, then, a Swedish homophobe wins the European Song Contest in Vienna!!

Is it a sinister revenge of Male Pig Chauvinism? Is it Karma’s cynical way to compensate an unexpected swing of mankind’s moral pendulum? Was it perhaps a rigged election, paid for by the taxes of the Tea Party? I can hardly believe it. But truly mindboggling it is, dear reader! For the ESC is now famously a gay love feast, an agape of alternative lifestyles. Over the last 25 years or so, it has developed slowly but most surely into a party of the pansies, by the pansies and for the pansies – to use the charming, if somewhat anachronistic, idiom of my youth....

The juvenile fool in question, by the name of Mans Zelmerlow, declared during his participation in a cooking program on national Swedish television (certainly one of the most macho activities that we know of…!) that he considered homosexuality ‘unnatural’ and ‘an abnormality’ and added that gays really should not be allowed to adopt children or produce them by way of hired surrogate mothers… He then added that he had absolutely nothing against homosexuals; an assurance which he repeated ad nauseam during the following days when the scandal broke over his not too well endowed little head…

For yes, you surely can imagine the outcry, reader dear! All along the line, Gay Rights activists denounced the young hulk, and the entire confederacy of Song Festival Soothsayers predicted that this would cost him countless votes and, most probably, the Prize. Well, surprise surprise: they were wrong. Indeed it may have cost the fellow votes (and just imagine what a landslide he might have enjoyed without that lamentable faux pas!), but he did rise comfortably to the top of the chards in the end, and the immortal laurels of a European Song Context victory were his… Soon, I expect, he will repair the damage done to his PR by appearing in public with a notorious, elderly, outspoken homosexual – Elton John, say, or Liberace – and with a little luck we may hear him say that some of his best friends are fagg---…. gays!

Yet the damage is done, dear reader, and it cannot be allowed to remain that way! The ESC badly needs to reaffirm its Gay Credentials after this most unfortunate incident! And there is only one way to go about it: a new, original, even more daring and audacious example of Alternative Lifestyles must be allowed to compete and win Europe’s yearly bonfire of good taste and musical talent. Unfortunately that is no easy matter. A simply Gay or Lesbian performer will no longer do the trick. That has become common, blasé, jaded even. The new figurehead needs to be far more eye-catching, flamboyant, and undeniably symbolic for the Triumph of Tolerance in the Fight for Equal Rights. But where does one find such a figure, after the 1998 success of Israel’s Dana International, a transsexual, and last year’s coup by Conchita Wurst, the crooning Bearded Lady? How many more variations of mutated, intertwined gender biology are out there, ready to storm the stage?

Well, take it from an old man, who has seen many splendours of human creativity flower over a long lifetime. There are still two such specimen available, who will live up to the task, and of whom I hope to welcome at least one in the Sweden festival next year. The first is a functioning, certified Hermaphrodite. This would, as a matter of fact, be my first choice, since it is only one step up the ladder from the bearded lady we already enjoyed. Unfortunately, there is a catch to that. In order for the world to really see and believe that it is a singing Hermaphrodite it is watching on the telly, that person would have to, well… show the various assets openly; and this may of course run counter to European rules of media decency which of late are getting no more lenient.

Possible flashy outfit of the next ESC winner

So, possibly, we will have to settle for the next best thing still waiting in the wings: the pregnant man. No, don’t laugh! Don’t scoff at poor Alfred B Mittington! For this jewel of the surgeons’ art is already a reality. Back in the States a few years ago, a transsexual gentleman, who had made sure that the doctors, during the necessary interventions and operations, left the existing feminine reproductive organs in place, gave birth to a child (the first of several as it happens). And it was recently revealed (see here) that in Australia, which yesterday for the first time was allowed to participate and to vote in the European Song Contest, no fewer than 54 babies were born to men.

So: for the Good of Diversity and the dignity of next year’s European Song Contest, let’s just hope one of those happy antipodean Heila’s knows how to sing and dance… !

Get my Goat!

I am, dear reader, no fan of goats. I almost like them as little as rabbits (and you gourmets who follow my cook blog know what I think of them nasty buggers, don’t you?). Goats are ugly, they stink, possess a most unpleasant personality, and excel in horrid dietary practises, stripping innocent trees of their green sprouts, and occasionally devouring newspapers and  - worse – the 11^th volume of my Collected Works (‘Brief writings on natural history and the meaning of the universe’), as one particularly vile and ghastly billy goat dared to do back in the summer of 1963.

But… no matter how ugly, stinking, unpleasant and wolfing goats may be, they do not deserve to be treated as they used to be in Manganeses de la Polvorosa – a charming little town in Old Castile, the pompousness of whose name is only surpassed by the imbecility of the locals’ character. To put it in a nut shell: every years during the village festivities of St Vincent, the most Christian brotherhood of the local church tossed a live goat off the bell tower, to the applause of the congregated village plebeians below. The idea was to catch the animal in a life net, held up fireman-style between a number of village toughs; but as all participants were inevitably stoned drunk, this often went a little wrong… which only increased the fun, of course!

Needless to say, the European Union, which bravely stands up for all the oppressed in the world (human, animal, plant or mineral), which has Commissions to battle every Global Injustice from the racial discrimination of chess pieces to the human rights of deformed cucumbers, never did anything against such village feast practices, because, you see, such goings on are Art, High Culture and Valuable Folkloric Tradition; and as such the rights of animal abusers in half the European nations are protected in and under the admirable European Constitution. It took the courage of a local mayor to forbid – in 2002! - this yearly pass time of drunk boors and juveniles, and to replace the breathing victim with a giant stuffed teddy bear.

Unfortunately, local mayors of such courage are few and far between in Spain. Provincial governments are too busy robbing the till or running from prosecution to be overly concerned with innocent fiesta fun. And the central government – be they left wing or right wing, it makes no difference – deeply loves and believes in regional folkloric traditions and would never lift a finger in the name of civilisation.

And so – while the goat no longer drops in Manganeses – Spain is still home to hundreds upon hundreds of crude, cruel, distasteful, sadistic and brutish fiesta practices that nobody cares to do anything about.

Ah, and they say that goats stink…!

AnimAl B. Mittington

PS: I am planning to compose a list of cities, towns and villages that continue in their barbarous fiesta ways, so that people of true Taste, Sophistication, and Culture may shun those spots on their holidays and not throw good money after bad habits. Suggestions from my readers are, naturally, welcome.

Crush them evil Greeks again !!!

Back in the year 2012, our Beloved Brussels Masters, they who run the EU show, were horrified to learn that the Greek government, a decade before at the time of the introduction of the Divine €uro, had cooked the books and lied through their teeth on their application forms, so as to be allowed to join the single European currency. Oh shocked shocked shocked our Masters were! How could such a thing ever have happened? How could any governing official be so very unscrupulous as to tell a profitable untruth? No, they had had no idea, our witless Beurocrats; and no little red warning light had lit up in any of the well-educated, well-groomed technocratic skulls when it turned out that the wealthy, well-run, highly responsible and accountable country of Sweden, who had likewise applied, did not meet the criteria for joining, while good old Mediterranean Greece, never famous for its probity and fiscal morals, passed the test with honors…

With Great Helmsmen like these, who needs cliffs and tempests??

No, they had not seen it coming. It took them completely by surprise. And they were very very VERY angry… So annoyed were they, that they swore to get even. Oh yes! An evil affront like this, sprung on a blameless, innocent Empire-in-the-making, they wouldn’t let that pass unpunished!

Recently, Tim Geithner, the then US Treasury Secretary, described in his memoirs the mood of the EU bigwigs whom he met at the time during a G7 conclave in Canada. In a tone of sheer disbelief, he writes: ‘The Europeans came into that meeting saying: “We’re going to teach the Greeks a lesson. They are really terrible. They lied to us. They suck and they were profligate and took advantage of the whole thing and we’re going to crush them.” [That] was their basic attitude, [of] all of them.’

One can only gape and flabbergast, dear reader, at such incredible infantility lurking in the minds of supposedly adult and responsible public servants who pretend to be the best and the brightest that our poor old continent has to offer. Their behaviour resembles that of a schoolboy romantically spurned by a classmate, who swears vengeance by twittering embarrassing nude snapshots of his obscure-objet-de-repugnance.

But that toddler mind-set is not even the most awful thing about this episode. The true horror lies elsewhere: in – and this may surprise you – the use of pronouns. Yes! For, when these hollow men in silk suits said that ‘they had lied to us, and we are going to crush them’, they meant two completely different third person plurals, and two very different sets of Greeks. The first ‘they’ referred to the corrupt, nepotistic, self-serving old elite, consisting of the right wing Nea Democratia party and the socialist PASOK. Those were the ones who had lied. But the others, the ‘them’ whom they were going to crush mercilessly, were the Greek people. The children, the elderly, the infirm, the unemployed, the disadvantaged and the weak. (I wrote on that little theme before, as in this here article…)

And who do you think would do the ‘crushing’ of that second ‘them’ at the bidding of our Brussels Masters? Yes, you guessed it: the old corrupt, self-serving, nepotistic, elite of PASOK and ND, who were more than willing to obey the Brussels dictates and apply the salubrious austerity medicine of the Abominable Troika, as long as they would be allowed to remain in power. Astonishingly, these two old oligarchic parties, who for over half a century had made a marvellous show of how they bitterly hated and despised one another like rabid dogs and vicious cats (while they snugly alternated in power and took turns at robbing the till), now welded themselves into a Grand Patriotic Coalition, under the pretence of saving the Motherland! (1) And Brussels saw it, and Brussels saw that it was good; for Brussels needed obedient elected lackeys in Athens power, so as to administer a healthy, satisfying dose of Crushing of Greeks.

And now there are elections in Greece, and the chicken are coming home to roost. For you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people most of the time, but let it simmer long enough, and people will recognize what is really going on. They will see, and suffer, the harm done by the old political mafia in tandem and cahoots with the plastic foreign technocrats who possess neither conscience nor human feeling. And then they will be fooled no longer, and vote in an outsider who is NOT willing to do the bidding of Brussels Apparatchiks building a Byzantine Empire. Enter Syriza…

Of course, this does not go down well in the corridors of Brussels power. And so out they come, the Commissars, the Bankers, the Chancellors and the Foreign Ministers, to warn the Greeks of the consequences if they vote for ‘the wrong party’ (Mr Juncker came up with that phrase…). Your banks will fail. Your economy will collapse. Your international credit will evaporate. There will be no more money for medicine, or petrol, or milks for the dear little Greek children. You may have to leave the warm and comfortable Euro zone, and the EU paradise… We may not help you…

The message is clear… If, in spite of our friendly, warm-hearted, paternal warnings, the Greek electorate has the shameless audacity to vote for the wrong party, one that is no EU lapdog and will play no Troika hangman, Brussels will not only allow the country to leave the Eurozone and even the Union… No, it will, once again crush them. It will do what it can to make the Grexit punitive, disastrous, calamitous and an economic massacre. An example will be set, pour decourager les autres. For Brussels does not accept disobedience. And worse: it will not allow anyone to escape unscathed from its heavenly project of Bringing Democracy and Prosperity to Europe…

So brace yourselves, ye descendants of Solon, Pericles and Demostenes! The days of Democracy are over, and you vote, not with a show of hands, nor even with your feet, but with your blood!

So be wise, and think twice, before you sign pacts that you will rue in the future…

(1)       This supposed enmity was always pretty fake. I just learned that the leader of Nea Democratia, Antonis Samaras, used to share a room, back in his students day, with the long-time leader of PASOK, George Papandreu…!! Will you believe it? One does wonder how GREEK their relationship really was??