When we started this column in November as a space to discuss 'the big picture' with an emphasis on Russia’s relationship to Euro-Atlantic relations, we could not have imagined that some nameless editor at BBC Monitoring would fancy our term ‘Russophobic hack pack’. Unfortunately, we cannot trademark this label and sell it on t-shirts along Old Arbat to tourists, next to the tees of Putin and a housecat cozying up to the ‘Polite People’ of Crimea. As a link to the original source made clear, this pithy phrase comes from the tweets of a Muscovite Irishman, RT social media editor Ivor Crotty.
Greeks Bearing Bonds and Where the Eurocrats Can Stick Them - an EU/NATO 'Brezhnev Doctrine' for Greece?
As we hoped Russia Insider readers would pick up on, the name ‘Byzantium’ is itself a parody of The Economist’s unsigned ‘Charlemagne’ columns on Europe (upon the advice of RI’s editors we opted against calling ourselves Constantine Palailogos, since the name might prove too obscure for a broad audience). We chose the 'Byzantium'reference last year in anticipation that the Greeks would soon rise up against their Eurocrat overlords, and that Brussels invoking its own version of the Brezhnev doctrine but enforced via bank runs, ‘bail ins’ (what Depression-era Americans used to call ‘theft’ by the banks when it was done to depositors of the Bailey Savings and Loan), and bad press. Our instincts from November have proven correct as the new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has proven the old saw correct: if you owe the bank 10,000 euros, you have a problem. If you owe the bank 100 billion euros and cannot pay, the bank, in this case the European Central Bank backed by the IMF and German Bundesbank, has a big problem. A headache so massive that it cannot be cured via the US Federal Reserve elixir of massive electronic money printing, at least not without making Germans whose postwar motto was ‘never Weimar hyperinflation again’ nervous. The Germans led by Wolfgang Schauble are predictably digging in against any debt jubilee, because if Greece’s debt of a paltry few hundred billion euros can be either forgiven or inflated Japanese-style into oblivion, why not the debts of 40%+ youth unemployed Italy, Spain or Portugal?
Meanwhile, the same Russia-loathing circles that denied the coup in Kiev one year ago was funded in part by the United States government are seeing Kremlin influence everywhere, from Syriza’s big win in Athens to the rise of Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France and Podemos in Spain. The message from The Economist with its story “In the Kremlin’s Pocket” is plain: any developments in Europe adverse to continued US domination of the Continent and preserving EU sanctions against the Russians must be the result of Moscow’s ‘active measures’. Meanwhile, any suggestion that the State Department, George Soros, Sen. John McCain’s friends at the National Endowment for Democracy, or Bandera/OUN-worshipping Galician exiles cultivated by Paul Goble types at the CIA for decades had a hand in the events on the Maidan and years of ‘Colored Revolutions’ in the post-Soviet space remains pure Kremlin ‘agitprop’. If one believes The Economist, there is absolutely no reason, even after the ‘bail ins’ of March 2013 on Cyprus and years of Great Depression-level impoverishment, for Greeks to blame the European Union and the utopianism of yoking Athens and Berlin together in the same monetary union for their troubles.
Complete story at - Washington’s Loosening Grip on Ukraine and Europe Has ‘Russophobic Hack Pack’ Howling with Despair - Russia Insider
Greeks Bearing Bonds and Where the Eurocrats Can Stick Them - an EU/NATO 'Brezhnev Doctrine' for Greece?
As we hoped Russia Insider readers would pick up on, the name ‘Byzantium’ is itself a parody of The Economist’s unsigned ‘Charlemagne’ columns on Europe (upon the advice of RI’s editors we opted against calling ourselves Constantine Palailogos, since the name might prove too obscure for a broad audience). We chose the 'Byzantium'reference last year in anticipation that the Greeks would soon rise up against their Eurocrat overlords, and that Brussels invoking its own version of the Brezhnev doctrine but enforced via bank runs, ‘bail ins’ (what Depression-era Americans used to call ‘theft’ by the banks when it was done to depositors of the Bailey Savings and Loan), and bad press. Our instincts from November have proven correct as the new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has proven the old saw correct: if you owe the bank 10,000 euros, you have a problem. If you owe the bank 100 billion euros and cannot pay, the bank, in this case the European Central Bank backed by the IMF and German Bundesbank, has a big problem. A headache so massive that it cannot be cured via the US Federal Reserve elixir of massive electronic money printing, at least not without making Germans whose postwar motto was ‘never Weimar hyperinflation again’ nervous. The Germans led by Wolfgang Schauble are predictably digging in against any debt jubilee, because if Greece’s debt of a paltry few hundred billion euros can be either forgiven or inflated Japanese-style into oblivion, why not the debts of 40%+ youth unemployed Italy, Spain or Portugal?
Meanwhile, the same Russia-loathing circles that denied the coup in Kiev one year ago was funded in part by the United States government are seeing Kremlin influence everywhere, from Syriza’s big win in Athens to the rise of Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France and Podemos in Spain. The message from The Economist with its story “In the Kremlin’s Pocket” is plain: any developments in Europe adverse to continued US domination of the Continent and preserving EU sanctions against the Russians must be the result of Moscow’s ‘active measures’. Meanwhile, any suggestion that the State Department, George Soros, Sen. John McCain’s friends at the National Endowment for Democracy, or Bandera/OUN-worshipping Galician exiles cultivated by Paul Goble types at the CIA for decades had a hand in the events on the Maidan and years of ‘Colored Revolutions’ in the post-Soviet space remains pure Kremlin ‘agitprop’. If one believes The Economist, there is absolutely no reason, even after the ‘bail ins’ of March 2013 on Cyprus and years of Great Depression-level impoverishment, for Greeks to blame the European Union and the utopianism of yoking Athens and Berlin together in the same monetary union for their troubles.
Complete story at - Washington’s Loosening Grip on Ukraine and Europe Has ‘Russophobic Hack Pack’ Howling with Despair - Russia Insider
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