COMMENT: As cit­ed by “Pter­rafractyl” in a com­ment about “His­to­ry Teach­es Us that We Learn Noth­ing from His­to­ry,” Floyd Nor­ris  com­ment­ed in The New York Times, “Why Not Give Greeks Their Say?” A stark answer is to be found in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly excel­lent piece from German-Foreign-Policy.com, which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page of this web­site.

The recent­ly con­clud­ed Euro Cri­sis Sum­mit fea­tured Ger­man pro­pos­als for direct inter­ven­tion into the nation­al bud­get of indebt­ed countries–a fun­da­men­tal nega­tion of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty!

This is why the Greeks are so angry and scared–feelings shared, no doubt, by oth­er South­ern Euro Zone coun­tries.

Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel issued a thin­ly veiled threat that if the Euro were not saved, war could be expect­ed to be an even­tu­al out­come!  “In con­clu­sion, a per­son­al note: No one should believe that anoth­er half-cen­tu­ry of peace and pros­per­i­ty in Europe is a mat­ter of course. It is not. . . .”

Note that Ger­many has nixed the notion of anoth­er coun­try the­o­ret­i­cal­ly inter­ven­ing in its bud­getary affairs, while reserv­ing the right to inter­fere direct­ly in those of oth­er nations.

We must remem­ber that the Ger­man elite has tac­it­ly endorsed and fore­shad­owed the phas­ing out of democ­ra­cy, as set forth in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle from German-Foreign-Policy.com. The elim­i­na­tion of democ­ra­cy is to be expect­ed, ulti­mate­ly, in Ger­many as well.

This is not the Ger­many that reopened the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Munich Okto­ber­fest bomb­ing of 1980–this is the oth­er Ger­many, the cor­po­rate Ger­many pre­served by its Amer­i­can car­tel part­ners at the end of World War II and dom­i­nat­ed by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

(The lat­ter, for new­er lis­ten­ers, is the eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground and per­pet­u­at­ed in mafia-like style through enor­mous cap­i­tal accu­mu­la­tion and resul­tant polit­i­cal dom­i­nance. The sem­i­nal research on this was done by the late Paul Man­ning, a col­league and pro­tege of Edward R. Mur­row, at whose sug­ges­tion Man­ning under­took the work. Under­writ­ten by CBS News, the sto­ry was nev­er broad­cast and Man­ning’s text was active­ly sup­pressed. Avail­able for down­load for free on this web­site, a read­ing and under­stand­ing of Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile is fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of my work and, sad­ly, the world in which we live. New­er lis­ten­ers may well view my pro­nounce­ments as mad­ness if they don’t get this vital, albeit over­bur­dened, book under their belt.)

The fact that the U.S. econ­o­my will suf­fer great­ly if the Euro fails will, no doubt, pro­duce con­sen­sus among Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors that such steps are nec­es­sary. That, along with the super com­mit­tee in the U.S. con­gress, might be seen as the “calm judg­ment of busi­ness neces­si­ty” warned about at the end of FTR #511.

“Europe the Ger­man Way (II)”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 11/01/2011.

EXCERPT: Fol­low­ing the Ger­man vic­to­ry at the Euro Cri­sis Sum­mit, Berlin has been prepar­ing the next steps for expand­ing its unabashed hege­mo­ny over Europe. An option, per­mit­ting direct inter­ven­tion into the nation­al bud­gets of indebt­ed coun­tries, is to be inscribed as soon as pos­si­ble in EU treaties. This would remove key aspects of state activ­i­ty from demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol and expose, par­tic­u­lar­ly the south­ern Euro coun­tries to Berlin’s per­ma­nent direct inter­ven­tions. At the same time, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is push­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of the Euro­zone into a future core Europe. Just last week, the non-Euro coun­tries — includ­ing Great Britain — were exclud­ed from sig­nif­i­cant sum­mit deci­sions. Experts see this as cre­at­ing a two-speed Europe, and warn that Berlin, in light of Ger­man pre­dom­i­nance, should not become “the new Brus­sels.” Ger­man media has been accom­pa­ny­ing Berlin’s sum­mit vic­to­ry with vocif­er­ous jubi­la­tion and even bla­tant chau­vin­ism, giv­ing an idea of the true char­ac­ter of Berlin’s emerg­ing dom­i­na­tion. . . .

. . . Berlin’s envis­aged steps to broad­en its unabashed hege­mo­ny include the option of direct inter­ven­tion in nation­al bud­gets of oth­er Euro coun­tries. The Ger­man Min­istry of For­eign Affairs pub­lished plans to this effect already before the sum­mit. Accord­ing to these plans, the impo­si­tion of a bud­get on indebt­ed Euro­zone coun­tries should be made pos­si­ble under cer­tain cir­cum­stances. The For­eign Min­istry diplo­mat­i­cal­ly expressed that, as a last resort, it could be imag­in­able that Brus­sels even “active­ly sup­ports” the gov­ern­ments in ques­tion in the imple­men­ta­tion of their “admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures,” mean­ing, for exam­ple, the cuts in social benefits.[2] Sov­er­eign bud­get plan­ning is one of the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies. The plan put for­ward by the gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands, call­ing for the right of inter­ven­tion in nation­al bud­gets being trans­ferred to an EU “Sta­bil­i­ty Com­mis­sion­er” has met with Berlin’s rejec­tion. Berlin oppos­es this idea because an “inter­ven­tion” in the Ger­man bud­get can­not be ruled out with for­mal cer­tain­ty. The Ger­man Bun­destag’s bud­getary auton­o­my should not be inter­fered with, accord­ing to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for the rejec­tion. Nev­er­the­less, it could be imag­ined that the EU’s “Sta­bil­i­ty Com­mis­sion­er” would halt EU pay­ments to ren­i­tent coun­tries, accord­ing to the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry. This would seri­ous­ly prej­u­dice the poor­er coun­tries of South­ern Europe.

The Ger­man Chan­cel­lor declared that the so-called right of inter­ven­tion should be inscribed in the EU treaties. If Berlin is suc­cess­ful with this demand, all 27 EU mem­ber nations must ini­ti­ate the rat­i­fi­ca­tion process­es. Because a clear rejec­tion is to be expect­ed from at least some of the pop­u­la­tions — not only the Greek, but, for exam­ple, also the British — ref­er­en­da must be strict­ly avoid­ed. The Ger­man Chan­cel­lor once again [3] links Berlin’s demands to hard­ly-veiled threats. Last Wednes­day, Octo­ber 26, 2011, she lit­er­al­ly declared in the Ger­man Bun­destag, “In con­clu­sion, a per­son­al note: No one should believe that anoth­er half-cen­tu­ry of peace and pros­per­i­ty in Europe is a mat­ter of course. It is not. And there­fore I say, if the Euro fails, Europe fails and that should not be allowed to hap­pen.”

Along­side plans for bud­getary inter­fer­ence, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is obvi­ous­ly pro­mot­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of the Euro­zone into a future core Europe, bod­ing seri­ous con­se­quences. Already at the Euro Cri­sis Sum­mit last week, non-Euro coun­tries — includ­ing Great Britain and Poland — were exclud­ed from deci­sion mak­ing, even though these deci­sions were very sig­nif­i­cant for the EU, as a whole. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en was that, deci­sions con­cern­ing the Euro could only be made by coun­tries with the Euro. This, accord­ing to experts, cre­ates a sort of two-speed Europe. . . .

. . . Ger­man media has been accom­pa­ny­ing Berlin’s sum­mit vic­to­ry with vocif­er­ous jubi­la­tion and even bla­tant chau­vin­ism. For exam­ple, the Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung (FAZ), which is being care­ful­ly read by the Ger­man elite, writes that dur­ing the debates in Brus­sels, “the Greeks” had “not gone all out on the ques­tions of their des­tiny, so at one point in the course of the evening, the con­duct of the nego­ti­a­tions was tak­en out of their hands.” Fol­low­ing the sum­mit, the Greek prime min­is­ter thanked his coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion “for its will­ing­ness to make sacrifices.”[5] The so-called Troi­ka com­prised of the EU, IMF and the ECB (Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank) will main­tain a “per­ma­nent pres­ence in the coun­try to make sure that the Greeks are real­ly reform­ing their coun­try.”

The Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter, the FAZ writes, “came to Brus­sels with a 15 page let­ter,” in which “he describes his coun­try’s future reforms” — “as ordered by Ms Merkel and Sarkozy.”[6] “The strin­gent chan­cel­lor” not­ed “benev­o­lent­ly” that Rome vowed to reduce its debts. “And oth­er­wise” Italy’s let­ter “neat­ly lists time­frames and num­bers,” so that “the ‘chiefs’ could express their friend­ly approval and, at most, remark that what counts now is the imple­men­ta­tion.” The jour­nal con­tin­ues, “the EU Com­mis­sion has been ordered to keep an eye on every­thing, just to make sure.” . . .

. . . At the begin­ning of this year, Ger­many’s lead­ing for­eign pol­i­cy mag­a­zine “Inter­na­tionale Poli­tik” had already antic­i­pat­ed the con­di­tions now in devel­op­ment — at the time, pro­vok­ing, but today, seen quite real­is­ti­cal­ly. At the time, “Inter­na­tionale Poli­tik” pro­claimed Angela Merkel, “Chan­cel­lor of the EU,” who suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lished a sort of “author­i­ty to set guide­lines” in the “cir­cle of 27 heads of states and gov­ern­ments.” Look­ing at the EU lead­er­ship as a “gov­ern­ment,” one could “allot roles.” The French pres­i­dent “doubtless­ly has the role of vice-chan­cel­lor,” who can “take ini­tia­tives,” but “in cas­es of con­flict, can always be reined in by the chan­cel­lor.” . . .