From a Pew Research Hispanic Center report, “Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment,” which notes:
As recently as the class of 2000, only 49% of Hispanic high school graduates immediately enrolled in college the following fall. Since then general college-going has increased among all of the nation’s high school graduates, but it has risen the most—by 20 percentage points—among Hispanic high school graduates.
In the class of 2012 Hispanic high school graduates (69%) were more likely to be enrolled in college in October 2012 than either whites (67%) or blacks (63%). In 2012 Asian recent high school completers were the most likely of the major racial and ethnic groups to be enrolled in college in October (84%).
From Deutsche Welle, alarming evidence of the resurgence among the young [especially in the former East Germany] of xenophobia to levels held by folks raised under the swastika flag. Click on the image to embiggen:
From a stunning and very perceptive 1999 report by Robert Fishman for Fannie Mae Housing Facts & Findings on the trends shaping of American cities, past and future.
The number one trend he saw for the first half of the 21st Century is proving right on the money:
The past 30 years have seen increasing concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the income scale, relative stagnation in the middle, and worsening poverty at the bottom. Our respondents expect this trend to continue in the next 50 years, with possible dire consequences for American cities and regions. For growing disparities in income and wealth lead inevitably to an increasingly divided metropolis. If, as our respondents believe, these growing disparities of wealth will become the most important single influence on the American metropolis in the next 50 years, some of the negative consequences are detailed in the rest of the top 10 list: a perpetual “underclass” in central cities and inner-ring suburbs and the deterioration of the “first-ring” post-1945 suburb, as the struggling portions of the middle and working classes find themselves trapped in deteriorating older suburbs. On the wealthier side of the great metropolitan divide, we are likely to see the winners in our “winner-take-all society” isolate themselves in gated communities or other exclusive preserves at the edge of the region.
Other likely trends include a home-building industry increasingly focused on high-end “trophy houses” or “tract mansions;” a similar concentration in retailing on upscale malls; office parks located near the enclaves where the top executives live-locations that often leave the bulk of the employees with long, difficult commutes; and increasing disparities between the quality of the school systems and other services in elite suburbs versus less-favored suburbs and inner cities. We are also likely to see new building focused not just on the outer edge of a region but in certain “quadrants” favored by the affluent: for example, in Washington, DC, the Northwest; in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the Southwest; in Atlanta and Chicago, the North. For the affluent who choose to live in gentrified neighborhoods in central cities, the rule of isolation will also obtain, as the wealthy use the techniques of privatization, ranging from private schools to special tax-and-service districts, to insulate themselves from the urban crisis around them.
From Britain’s Channel 4, a short, disturbing portrait of the neo-Nazi party that has gained in popularity in Greece as the economic crisis deepens:
The program notes:
Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn is increasingly influential among members of the country’s political mainstream. Student Konstantinos Georgousis filmed party members on the streets of Athens.ational Film and Television School student Konstantinos Georgousis spent a month with the organisation last summer, as Greece hovered on the abyss, for his documentary film The Cleaners.Writing about his experience of making the film, Mr Georgousis says: “I walked through every nook and cranny in the centre of Athens to find these Golden Dawn members.
Keep Talking Greece reports today on what happened next:
The tolerance towards the incredible racism expressed by members of extreme-right party Golden Dawn was of very short duration. Hours after the video started to flood Greek media and internet sites, police intervened and sent the excerpts from the documentary broadcast on UK Channel 4 News to the prosecutor.
The Department against Racial Violence of Greek Police sent some excerpts from the documentary to the prosecutor in Athens.
“In the excerpts sent to prosecutor, an MP candidate for the parliament elections on the list of Golden Dawn speaks about migrants with threatening expressions such as “We are ready to open the ovens. Because soaps are nice… “Soaps to wash the cars, soaps to clean the sidewalks…, “some table lamps out of their skin…”, “take some teeth…” (o Vima )
According to SKAI TV, authorities are seeking the MP-candidate, while the prosecutor asked to watch the whole documentary. The politician in spe could face felony charges for violating the racism law.
Greek student Konstantinos Georgousis filmed “The Cleaners -the true face of Golden Dawn” during summer 2012. He spent a month going through the streets of Athens.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras made his trek to the Money Lords of the North, and he didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.
Yeah, both the Iron Chancellor and the ersatz Socialist told him they wanted Greece in the eurozone, but even that’s more rhetoric than reality — given that Germany’s already planning its Grexit strategy.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras made his trek to the Money Lords of the North, and he didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.
Yeah, both the Iron Chancellor and the ersatz Socialist told him they wanted Greece in the eurozone, but even that’s more rhetoric than reality — given that Germany’s already planning its Grexit strategy.
We open with the latest news, Samaras’s Parisian journal, follow up with Friday’s Merkel meet-up, word of some political Franco-German strategizing, Berlin’s preparations for a Grexit, Barack Obama’s Grexit worries, a very strange Greco-German settlement, and Greek cash woes.
We close with the latest developments in the cultural crisis fomented by pitting shell-shocked Greek natives against immigrants, “legal” and otherwise.
First, a video report from Britain’s SkyNews:
Merkollande deals out the tough love
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande spelled it out for Samaras today, following the prime ministers successive meetings with leaders of the eurzone’s two most powerful economies.
The cost for staying on the common currency will be unrelenting austerity, with no extensions granted to ease the misery for the Greek people.
From Xinhua:
Both French President Francois Hollande and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Saturday that Greece must stay in the eurozone.
They affirmed the position when talking to the press after they held talks on the Greece bailout.
“Greece is in the eurozone and Greece must stay in the eurozone, but it still has to demonstrate the credibility of its program and the willingness of its leaders to go the whole way, while doing it in a way that is bearable for the population,” said the French leader.
“Greece will manage it, will remain in the eurozone,” Samaras said.
Hollande also said Europe must make a decision quickly about Greece’s future once a key report is released next month by the troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
“Greece must stay in the eurozone,” French President François Hollande declared after meeting Greek PM Antonis Samaras in Paris on Saturday. But he added that its leaders must show they are ready to go the “whole way” with the tough austerity package that was a condition for European loans.
“Greece is in the eurozone and Greece must stay in the eurozone,” Hollande said at a joint press conference with Samaras at the Elysee palace. “But it still has to demonstrate the credibility of its programme and the willingness of its leaders to go the whole way, while doing it in a way that is bearable for the population.”
And more from the London Telegraph’s Rachel Cooper:
“Once these commitments, which are not only financial but about structural reforms that the Greeks want, have been ratified by parliament and confirmed, Europe must do its part,” the French president added.
He said that both Greece and Europe needed to put the turmoil behind them as quickly as possible, adding: “It’s now been two and a half years. There’s no more time to be lost.”
Addressing Mr Hollande’s concerns directly, the Greek prime minister said his government will meet its obligations.
“Of course we need to make an effort,” said Mr Samaras. “We can keep our promises and goals, reduce our deficit and debt, accomplish structural reforms.”
Basically, precisely where it stood before Samaras set out on his pilgrimage to the North.
From Andy Dabilis of Greek Reporter:
After being put on hold by German Chancellor Angela Merkel over his hope Greece could get a two-year delay to administer more reforms and austerity measures demanded by international lenders, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been told by French President Francois Hollande to wait for a report on the country’s progress first.
In a meeting in Paris, the French leader – who was elected on an anti-austerity platform – reiterated Merkel’s message: that they first want to see what inspectors from the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) determine.
That report is due in October, but Samaras’ uneasy coalition government is under the gun to make $14.16 billion in cuts and speed the pace of privatization, but he said the pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that came with bailouts have worsened the country’s recession and delayed recovery. He did not explicitly raise the idea of a delay with Merkel, however.
With Hollande telling him to be patient, Samaras’ Berlin-Paris swing essentially accomplished nothing and leaves Greece where it was before he went to meet the German and French leaders. Greece is expected next month to receive a $38.8 billion installment, the last in a first series of $152 billion in rescue loans, while a second for $173 billion is in limbo.
Before meeting with Hollande today, Samaras held a Friday sitdown with the German Chancellor, the key player in the eurodrama, given that Germany will have to cough up with the lion’s share of cash for any additional bailout.
Merkel’s message was clear and concise: She’s feels their pain, but expect no mercy.
From George Gilson of Athens News:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a stern warning to visiting Prime Minister Antonis Samaras after extensive talks about the Greek bailout programme in Berlin.
“We expect Greece to deliver all that has been promised,” Merkel declared. In remarks that were unusually sharp for a joint news conference, she stressed that Berlin has heard words in the past but now expects deeds.
The tough talk contrasted sharply with the head of state honours and diplomatic smiles with which Samaras was received on his first official visit, complete with red carpet and band.
More from the London Telegraph’s Louise Armitstead:
After talks with prime minister Antonis Samaras in Berlin, the German Chancellor said she was “deeply convinced” that the new Greek government was “doing everything to solve the problems.” Mr Samaras insisted that Greece “wants time not money.” But Ms Merkel refused to even address Greece’s plea, signalling a continuation of the deadlock at the heart of the debt crisis.
The sense of vacuum rather than solution was compounded by revelations that the European Central Bank (ECB) is planning to delay the progress of its bond buying programme. Sources at the central bank told reporters that there would be no decisions on the high-anticipated strategy, which has helped fuel the recent stockmarket rally, until Germany had approved the plan to boost the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
Investors and economists had hoped ECB president Mario Draghi would use a press conference on September 6 to announce a radical intervention plan. But the German court ruling on the legitimacy of the ESM is not due until September 12. Mr Draghi first hinted at a bond purchasing scheme on August 2, yet the timetable is now sliding towards the next deadline for a Greek default.
Robert Halver, at Baader Bank in Frankfurt, told reporters: “We need clear decisions. There is a possibility that Greece will leave the euro zone in October. Preparations for a Greece exit, and a subsequent domino effect are running. Markets need to know what the face of the new euro zone and policy will be.”
That’s a wonderful old American political term, referring to the art of putting the best possible spin on a truly ugly reality.
From Honor Mahony of EUobserver:
Greek leader Antonis Samaras has said talks on Friday with Angela Merkel signalled the start of new relations between Athens and Berlin but the German chancellor remained characteristically cautious.
“My visit today marks the start of new relations between our two countries. This is a new step for a new beginning,” said Samaras, following talks with Merkel on how Greece is proceeding with the structural reforms, privatisation and budget cutting that is being demanded of it in return for bailout money.
The centre-right leader, currently seeking to prove to eurozone leaders that Greece has earned the right to an extension in the amount of time needed to carry out reforms, said that Athens has two deficits Continue reading →
As we’ve noted countless times before, immigrants become targets when economic times get tough, whether they’re Irish-Americans in the United States in the late 19th Century or Eastern European Jews in 1930s Germany and Austria.
As immigration from Europe and Asia neared its crest in the late 19th century, anti-immigrant sentiment soared along with it. The U.S. was in the grips of an economic depression, and immigrants were blamed for taking American jobs. At the same time, racialist theories circulated in the press, advancing pseudo scientific theories that alleged that “Mediterranean” types were inherently inferior to people of northern European heritage. Drawings and songs caricaturing the new immigrants as childlike, criminal, or subhuman became sadly commonplace. One 1891 cartoon claimed that “If immigration was properly restricted, you would never be troubled with anarchism, socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!”
The same phenomenon is at work in crisis-gripped Europe today, with many in Northern Europe complaining about “lazy” Mediterranean peoples, and folks in the south singling out immigrants from a chaos Middle East and Africa who are fleeing violence Europe did so much [with the deep-pocket assistance of Uncle Sam] to provoke.
And there are Europe’s own native-born “aliens,” the Roma, Sinti, and Trvaelers often collectively called gypsies.
A French socialist ethnic cleansing
First, a video report from euronews of the latest action against Europe’s wanderers, the Roma, carried out by the French Socialist [sic] government of François Hollande, carrying out a tradition set by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy:
Next, the details from Radio France Internationale:
French authorities on Thursday evicted several hundred Roma from improvised camps in the north of the country and planned to deport others from the southern city of Lyon. Roma rights groups have accused the Socialist government of carrying right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies on the question.
Two Roma camps on state-owned land near Lille were evacuated on Thursday morning. About 200 people were expelled from one and “15 caravans” from the other, according to Villeneuve d’Ascq deputy mayor Maryvonne Girard.
And officials sent about 240 Roma back to Romania from Lyon, the biggest such deportation since President François Hollande took office in May.
Rights campaigners accuse Hollande of breaking an election promise that camps would not be dismantled unless alternative accommodation was available.
“At least the last president had the honesty to say what was going to happen,” commented Father Arthur, a Catholic priest who had planned to baptise six Roma children in Lille as a sign of resistance to evictions.
Last week Interior Minister Manuel Valls declared that he would not oppose evictions that a court ruled legal.
But on Wednesday he said he would review the provisions introduced by the Sarkozy government for handling Roma, raising the possibility of lifting an employment ban introduced in 2007.
The BBC adds that the raid also targeted “a camp housing about 160 Roma in the 19th arrondissement of Paris” which was evicted Wednesday.
They add:
A Roma rights campaigner, whose name was given only as Jean-Philippe, told France 3 television the voluntary returns were “expulsions in disguise”.
The compensation given – 300 euros (£237; $317) per adult – was a waste of public money, he argued, because many of the Roma would return to France.
Campaigners argue that the Roma face discrimination in their home countries.
The Roma are EU citizens, mostly from Romania or Bulgaria, but French law requires them to have a work permit and prove they have the means to support themselves if they intend to stay for more than three months.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who has cultivated a ‘tough on crime’ image, defended the raids as legal and necessary due to the health risks of hundreds of people living in makeshift accommodation.
“Unsanitary camps are unacceptable,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. “Often located in the midst of working class neighbourhoods, they are also a challenge to community life.”
>snip<
Valls said the government would re-examine conditions for granting the aid to illegal immigrants. It would also review restrictions on working in France for citizens of Romania – an EU country which is the home country of many of Roma migrants.
Rights groups said no arrangements for temporary housing had been made for the group of Roma near Lille, which includes some 60 children.
“What will become of these families?” said Father Arthur, a priest who advocates on behalf of Roma. “Everything is being taken away – it’s a breach of fundamental human rights.”
We begin with a video report from International Business Times on the massive “illegals” roundup now underway in Greece which has thus far swept up an estimated 6,000 people, most of whom proved to be “legal”:
And from Athens News, a police video of a sweep at the main train station in Athens Thursday:
And a report on the roundup from Capital.gr:
Migrants living in Athens are held at an ID-check operation in Athens. Around 1,000 immigrants were arrested and another 4,900 brought in for questioning by police.
Migrants living in Athens are held at an ID-check operation in Athens. Around 1,000 immigrants were arrested and another 4,900 brought in for questioning by police, Hurriyet Daily reported.
Greek authorities transferred about 1,000 undocumented immigrants an area close to the Turkish border Aug. 7, after a weekend police sweep in Athens led to a mass arrest of foreigners.
A local police official said the immigrants were being held in two temporarily closed police schools in Thrace, a part of northeastern Greece bordering Turkey, Agence France-Presse reported. It’s unclear how long the immigrants will remain in the centers, as recession-choked Greece has scant money to return them to their home countries. Greek government figures show more than 100 migrants crossing the country’s border with Turkey daily. Turkey and the European Union formally launched the visa-exemption process for Turkish citizens last June and initiated a readmission agreement with the bloc. The deal envisages the repatriation of illegal migrants in Europe via Turkey after temporary stays in the latter country, in response to key steps outlined by the EU for a visa-free agreement with Turkey.
From Athens News [story] [vlog], an alarmingly racist parliamentary pronouncement that sounds remarkably like a Hitler stump speech, though with a different cast of villains:
Program notes:
Ilias Kasidiaris, spokesman for Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn, says mass illegal immigration is part of a plot to turn Greece into “a wretched protectorate inhabited by subhumans, with no conscience, with no country, with no national culture.” He said minefields and Army special forces were needed to secure Greece’s border with Turkey. 7 July 2012. Read a Human Rights Watch Report on racist attacks in Greece.
Golden Dawn rhetoric translates into violence
UPDATE: Here’s a report on the rising racial violence in Greece from RT’s Jacob Greaves:
Program notes:
Greece is also in turmoil. Violent clashes have shaken the city of Agrinio in the west. Supporters of the far-right Golden Dawn party fought with anarchists, leaving cars and shop windows smashed, and one person injured. Golden Dawn’s influence is rising. It gained around 7 per cent of the vote in the recent general election. RT’s Jacob Greaves takes a look at xenophobia in today’s Greece.
Athens News scribe Makis Papasimakopoulos has written a very important story about a very revealing encounter between Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis and two women inmates, identified only as Andy and Rania, in Korydallos Prison in Piraeus.
A former constitutional law prof and national ombudsman, Kaminis won election as mayor of the Greek capital two years ago, running as a candidate of the Democratic Left, a partner with the New Democrats and Pasok in the new coalition national government. Ekathemerini profiled him back in January here.
Here’s a very telling excerpt from his abrupt confrontation with reality:
Rania: You don’t work with the police?
Kaminis: Of course, but combating crime, that is, the job of clearing downtown Athens from criminal elements is a job for the police. The municipality as far as it is concerned, must keep streets and roadways clean and lighted at night, work with the police and do what it can in a preventive role, through special programmes that deter citizens from following a path of crime. But I stress that it is not our job to combat crime. Each must do his own jobs.
Rania: On that we are agreed. We have seen police raids lately, in apartments and basements where 30 or 40 migrants live in. Have you ever been in one of these houses?
Kaminis: I haven’t but I have seen pictures of these places and I can well imagine what happens there. I am aware of the issue. The problem of poverty and despair in the downtown area has two sides. One is the financial crisis, that has pushed many people to poverty and brought a lot of problems to the surface, that had previously been hidden. The other is illegal immigration, the illegal entry of people in our country who then continue to stay here illegally, looking for a better life, looking to find a job, but not finding one, due to the crisis. This has greatly worsened the situation. These impoverished masses are the soil upon which crime blooms, because he who cannot work, will either become a victim or a perpetrator of a crime. All of organized crime, whether we are talking about prostitution, or drug trafficiking, or smuggling or even pan-handling, is manned by illegal immigrants, that have to turn towards it. If we can’t stop 300 people a day coming into our country illegally and heading for Athens, then I fear the problem will only worsen.
Ranis: Do you believe that concentration camps are the solution to immigration?
Kaminis: I think it’s best we don’t refer to them as concentration camps, because that refers to other kinds of establishments…
Note that phrase “all of organized crime. . .is manned by illegal immigrants.”
Organized crime arises among immigrants in part because it provides services, most notably in the form of protection rackets, that provide services not otherwise available. In the U.S. we first had Irish, then Jewish, then Sicilian, then Latin American and Asian organized crime.
Immigrant communities are easy scapegoats in times of crisis because they look and often act differently, ultimately betrayed by their accents if they otherwise “look like us.”
Police don’t protect them, and they are denied other avenues of acceptance, so provision of other illegal goods of services because a source of revenue and power.
In Greece, as we noted repeatedly, more than half of the police voted for the racist, anti-immigrant neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, the Brownshirts of Greece, quick with first, rocks, brass knuckles—even swords. In other words, the very folks police should be arresting, not joining.
And concentration camps, yes they are, an idea the Nazis borrowed from the Brits.
Then there’s that bit where he says the “impoverished masses are the soil upon which crime blooms.” Now we’re not sure if the metaphor holds true in Greece, but on this side of the pond, it’s an insult to call people dirt just because they’re poor.
We’ve got election news, a manufacturing crisis, a power grid on the verge of failure, a health system in collapse, a surge in anti-immigrant violence, and a story about Greeks themselves immigrating.
Syriza launches frontal assault
With elections two weeks away, the Greek political scene is heating up, with Syriza on the attack.
Today was the day the Left coalition officially unveiled its platform, and the coverage has been heavy.
From Greek Reporter’s Emmanouela Seiradaki:
Presenting his party’s economic program on Friday, Alexis Tsipras head of Greece’s Radical Left Coalition, said he would pursue to cancel the bailout terms, which have included brutal spending cuts and high taxes and have been blamed for the country’s extended recession.
“The first act of a government of the left, as soon as the new Parliament is sworn in, will be a cancellation of the bailout and its implementation laws,” Tsipras stated.”Let people know that in Greece there is still a democracy.” Alexis Tsipras said the bailout agreement is a failure that will force Greece to leave the Euro, despite EU leaders insisting that Greece must stick to its commitments or the money will stop coming in. According to Tsipras the bailout agreement “is a mechanism of definitive bankruptcy and pushing the country to a voluntary withdrawal from the eurozone… There is no more or less bad memorandum, you either apply it, or you cancel it. … We will cancel it.”
Tsipras said that if he wins enough votes to form a leftwing government, he will seek a Europe-wide deal to drastically reduce the debt payments, or seek a debt moratorium. He also said that he will cancel the law to cut the minimum wage by 22% and bring it back to 751 euros.
Tsipras also said that he would keep strategic companies like the companies that provide electricity, water, and telecommunications under state control and freeze wage and pension cuts demanded by lenders if he won June 17 elections. He also said he intends to create measures to help overborrowed Greek households and cut valued added tax (VAT), especially on basic food items like milk and bread. While Mr. Tsipras has repeatedly stated that “Our goal isn’t to blackmail or to terrorize, our goal is to shake them,” it is certain that both the EU and the IMF officials will feel terrorized with his latest statements.
Tsipras promised that a SYRIZA-led government would reduce the size of the cabinet, the number of consultants employed by the government and the “golden boys” hired to manage public enterprises and organizations.
However, most focus will fall on what Tsipras termed SYRIZA’s “national reconstruction plan” and the economic policies that entails.
“Immediately after cancelling the memorandum, the government will repudiate the odious terms and will ask for the renegotiation of the loan agreement,” he said.
“We will push for a new restructuring with the aim of reducing our debt or a moratorium and suspension of interest payments until the economy stabilizes and shows sign of recovery,” he said. “The debt servicing must be linked to the Greek economy’s growth rate.”
Tsipras said that a prospective SYRIZA government would also immediately repeal a 22 percent reduction of the minimum wage, raising it to 751 euros per month again, and extend unemployment benefit to two years, rather than one. It would also repeal recent labor market reforms that allow employers to negotiate individual deals with their employees if a collective contract has expired.
The GOP [Greek Ologarchic Party] launched an offensive of it’s own, and the cornerstone of its platform is one long familiar here in the U.S., where it’s only succeeded in making the rich richer while destroying public institutions and the working class.
From A. Papapostolou of Greek Reporter:
Greece’s conservatives on Thursday promised voters tax relief if they win a crucial general election, insisting that existing austerity measures can be made fairer, despite growing concern over the country’s future in the euro.
The debt-strapped country will hold its second election in six weeks on June 17. It was called after the center-right New Democracy party won a May 6 poll but was unable to form a coalition government.
The conservatives are roughly level with the leftwing anti-bailout Syriza party in recent opinion polls.
“Our pledge is jobs, jobs, jobs. … No new taxes and no new cross-the-board cuts. The era of taxing incomes that do not exist is over,” conservative leader Antonis Samaras told a meeting of business officials in Athens, presenting New Democracy’s economic program.
No a big one, but the story shows that the only serious questions are coming from the farther ends of the political spectrum.
From Ekathemerini:
The right-wing anti-bailout Independent Greeks party will not take part in a power-sharing coalition after the upcoming elections unless the next government agrees to scrap the EU-IMF memorandum, its leader Panos Kammenos said Friday.
Speaking to Skai television on Friday, Kammenos urged voters to punish Greece’s mainstream parties, PASOK and New Democracy, for backing the austerity measures mandated by the country’s foreign lenders which he denounced as a “crooked act.”
“Those who betrayed Greece must disappear from politics,” said Kammenos, a former New Democracy deputy who left the party to form his own, picking up more than 10 percent of the vote in the May 6 election.
Recent polls show that the party’s power is on the wane. The last survey to be published by Kathimerini before the June 17 elections found that support for Continue reading →
That’s the picture emerging of the slayer of 77 Norwegians, most of them children, as his trial continues today in Oslo.
Survivors of last July’s massacre at the Utoeya Island youth camp have wrapped up their testimony and the focus is now on the police officers first to arrive at the island.
Their testimony describes a man we can only describe as a malignant narcissist, vain and self-obsessed of striking body-builder poses when it came time for his police photos.
From the BBC:
As they detained Breivik, the police superintendent said the killer’s main concern seemed to be blood loss from his cut index finger.
“I said: ‘You’ll get no band aid from me.’ Look around — dead and wounded people are lying everywhere,” [police superintendent Haavard] Gaasbakk said.
He also recalled that the gunman said: “You are not the ones I am targeting. I consider you as brothers. It’s a coup: I must save Norway from Islamisation.”
Another police officer, Oerjan Tombre, told the court that Breivik, stripped of his fake police uniform, posed like “a bodybuilder” as they prepared to take pictures of him.
He also spoke of Breivik’s concern for his finger-wound and his fear of dehydration. The self-confessed mass killer was eventually given a sticking plaster and a drink.
Surrounded by the bodies of dead and dying children, the preening, self-absorbed Brevik displayed the classic symptoms of malignant narcissism: “an extreme form of antisocial personality disorder that is manifest in a person who is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, and with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.”
This is the man hailed by many, including some folks who’ve commented on our previous posts, as a hero, committed to “saving” Europe.
In Sunday’s Greek election, a new party entered parliament — Chryssi Avgi, or Golden Dawn — after capturing seven percent of the votes.
For anyone with a sense of history, the party’s intentional evocation of another European fascist movement that also arose in time of economic deprivation and chaos is, quite simply, chilling.
And like that earlier movement, born in the back room of a Munich beer hall, Golden Dawn focuses it’s rage on people from a different religious tradition linked to the Middle East.
Here, from their YouTube channel, is a propaganda video, Blood & Honor (for those who died for us), directed at the English-speaking world:
And here’s their marching song, Hooray the Golden Dawn:
The lyrics, via Google Translate:
Hooray hooray the Golden Dawn
Time for revolution
fight for a strong Greece
against the darkness, a new beginning,
for our people and country
move forward
changes in your faces as,
From the trembling fear of the enemy.
Hooray hooray the golden dawn
Time for revolution
fight for a strong Greece,
the ancestors of the voice commands,
for the flag and our race,
we fight together with our soul,
like a spear,
long live the Golden Dawn.
The video we find most historically resonant is this one, released Thursday, showing members singing the group’s anthem during street rally. Note particularly the Nazi salute and the torches:
We couldn’t find the words to the anthem, and if anyone locates them, please let us know.
Some other folk were fond of torchlight rallies and out-thrust right arms, as shown in this clip from 30 January 1933.
We’ve noted the similarity of the Golden Dawn’s symbols to those of the Nazi Party, which itself began as a creation of a Munich mystical order called the Thule Society — which gave also gave the Nazis their newspaper and their symbol.
Now we’ve found another symbolic leak, thanks to Wikipedia, which features an image of the first issue of the Golden Dawn magazine from 1980. We were struck by the symbol, which is a direct descendant of the Thule Society’s logo:
Golden Dawn, 1980
Thule Society, 1919
Golden Dawn in action
A chilling story from EurActiv gives us an idea of another way in which Golden Dawn apes their German ancestors:
Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn), which won 6.97% of the votes and 21 seats in the Greek parliament in Sunday’s parliamentary elections (see background), has made intolerable death threats against Xenia Kounalaki, the editor of the foreign news desk of Kathimerini, Greece’s leading broadsheet, unleashing a wave of reactions on the resurgence of neo-Nazi extremism.
On 12 April, Kounalaki wrote an op-ed, arguing that the Greek media should ignore Chryssi Avgi, a party of what she called Nazi thugs, and which according to her should have been banned from running in the elections.
The response was almost immediate: a 2.500-word article, revealing many details of Kounalaki’s personal and professional life, and mentioning her daughter for no apparent reason, was published on Chryssi Avgi’s website.
“Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat, kommt Attentat!” wrote the unknown author of the article. Anyone who speaks German, like Kounalaki (born in Hamburg), knows that this is a barely masked threat against her life.
“I don’t think they will actually exercise physical violence against me and I am not afraid of them. But the fact that many of my friends and colleagues and even the Greek police advised to stop writing against them for a while is a first victory for Chryssi Avgi. This is the target of their fear campaign. To make journalists say: Let’s leave them and write about something else,” Kounalaki told EurActiv.
Elections dominate the news today, with weekend votes set in France, Greece, and Italy, and a vote just finished in Britain [the latter two being local races rather than national].
While the French President Nicolas Sarkozy appears to be on his way out [though poll numbers are growing closer], it looks like a contentious new Greek parliament emerging after the weekend voting may have troubling in naming a successor to bankster-appointed Prime Minister Lucas Papdemos.
We’ll open and close with economic news, the last item being a rousing rebuke of European austerians from Latin America.
European economy slows
Yet more confirmation that the 17-nation eurozone economy is tanking.
On three separate measures, the signs of a new wave in the ongoing depression are crystal clear.
From EUbusiness:
The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) compiled by the London-based research firm Markit fell to 46.7 points in April, well down from an initial 47.4 estimate.
After logging 49.1 points in March, April marked one of the steepest slides since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008-09 and the sharpest decline in six months.
The closely watched indicator of services and manufacturing has a boom-or-bust line of 50, confirming other recent data showing the 17-nation eurozone is now likely deep in recession.
A separate Markit survey published earlier this week showed the April adjusted manufacturing PMI falling to 45.9 from 47.7 in March.
Friday’s report put the services sector PMI at 46.9, down from the initial estimate of 47.9 and the 49.2 recorded in March.
In Italy, the deepening crisis is even producing protests against cuts in the military as the nation heads to the polls Sunday for the first of two days of local elections, reports euronews:
The number of jobless in the eurozone is at its highest since the introducion fo the euro, and some see the problem as a threat to its stability, including economic professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi from Rome’s LUISS university:
“Those who are in the labour force and who are losing their jobs have no future as well, so you can’t expect that this destruction of the main links, the major links in society, what I call ‘social capital’, can be accepted for long before there is some turmoil.”
And frustration is already growing. On Thursday a demonstration was held outside the Ministry of Defence against planned cuts in the military.
It could all turn out to be a big headache for technocrat prime minister Mario Monti. Local elections on Sunday and Monday are the first real test of his policies of austerity.
Voters in election for local government councils turned their backs on the Tories except in the biggest venue of all, the City of London, where Mayor Boris Johnson, the baron of braggadocio, narrowly won reelection.
James Tapsfield and Ben Glaze of The Independent:
Ed Miliband today declared that Labour was “winning back people’s trust” after a night of big gains in mid-term local elections across the country.
Miliband’s party took control of a series of key councils including Southampton, Birmingham, Plymouth, Reading, Norwich, Thurrock and Harlow.
Prime Minister David Cameron – who suffered the embarrassment of losing seats in his Witney constituency to Labour as it made inroads into the Conservative heartlands of southern England – blamed the setbacks on the tough economic climate nationally, but insisted he would continue to take the “difficult decisions” needed to deal with Britain’s debt.
With around half of the votes counted, Labour had won control of 22 councils, racked up around 470 new seats and looked set for overall gains of more than 700, while the Tories looked likely to lose more than 350 seats and the Liberal Democrats about 200.
The race between incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy ersatz socialist Françoise Hollande will be decided Sunday, with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel being the party most interested.
Hollande wants to tinker with EU austerity pact, which is weighted more in Germany’s interest than in France’s, while Sarkozy happy to be the lesser partner in a de facto duopoly.
Sarko and Hollande agree on almost everything else that matters, and their differences are more of degree than substance.
The poll numbers, more from Deutsche Welle:
Opinion polls released just 48 hours before the polls open in the run-off vote in France’s presidential election show that the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, has narrowed the gap on his frontrunner challenger, but with Francois Hollande still comfortably in the lead.
A survey by the BVA polling company gave Hollande 52.5 percent of the vote compared to 47.5 percent for the incumbent Sarkozy. That’s Continue reading →
Two stories of note today, one from France and the other Brussels.
Beauty pageant idiocy in Paris
While we question when whole notion of “beauty pageants,” the following tale exemplifies how the trivial can be turned into a platform for something else entirely
From Rosie Collyer of Radio France Internationale:
Ultra-nationalists from the group New France protested outside the first ever Miss Black France beauty pageant in Paris on Saturday. They were demanding a white-only version of the competition.
Riot police were called to contain a potentially volatile situation between ultra-nationalists demonstrators and spectators of Miss Black France. A group of some 30 members of Nouvelle France, or New France chanted slogans and held a banner, which read: When will there be a Miss White France?
The group has a “nationalist” agenda but does not align itself with the Front National political party of Marine Le Pen, which won over 20 per cent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections. A group member, who asked to remain anonymous, told RFI:
“France should be for French people. Why should Asians and Africans come here and have more rights than us? This is why we are demanding a Miss White France,” he said.
Yeah. Franc should be for French people. But that raises the question of who is French?
Lots of French people have ancestors who came from different places [ancient Greeks and Romans, Carthaginians, Basques, Huns. . .well you get the idea]. And when you get right down to it, we’re all Africans anyway if you go back far enough.
So we suspect what the buffoon really means is “France should be for white people.”
And the Roma win a major court victory
Before we get to the hard news. First we’ll bring you some remarkable videos.
The Roma [the largest of the peoples grouped together under the “Gypsy” label], have their own anthem, Dzelem Dzelem [I traveled, I traveled], set to a traditional melody with words by Žarko Jovanović and adopted at the first World Romani Congress in 1971.
The 1949 lyrics are set against the background of the Porajmos, “the devouring,” the Nazi effort which targeted the Roma, Sinti, and Sorb peoples for extermination along with Europe’s Jews.
Hence the lines referring to the black-clad minion’s of Heinrich Himmler’s SS:
I once had a great family,
The Black Legions murdered them
We offer three versions.
The first, recorded two years ago, is performed by Macedonian Roma artist Esma Redzepova:
Our second version, recorded in 2009, is by Serbian Romani singer Jelena Marković:
Finally, a rendition by the children of the Gandhi School Choir of Pecs, Hungary:
And now for the court victory
From Deutsche Welle’s Sonya Angelica Diehn:
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that evicting Roma from an established community outside of Sofia, Bulgaria, would violate the right to life. Amnesty International called it a “landmark judgment.”
The Strasbourg-based rights court issued the ruling last week in favor Continue reading →
From Costas Douzinas, writing in Greek Left Review:
One of the most worrying aspects is the rush to the right by mainstream politicians who, imitating Sarkozy, compete to display their xenophobic credentials. Coalition ministers – Michalis Chrysochoidis and Andreas Loverdos – have spread panic about immigrants as criminals and carriers of infectious diseases, and have set up detention camps in order to contain this “threat”. Amnesty International has called the idea “deeply alarming” and “discriminatory”. Meanwhile, Athens’ Mayor Kaminis has, with Chrysochoidis, called immigrants “trash” and has organised campaigns to “cleanse” Athens from foreigners, while the coalition plans an anti-immigration wall on the Greco-Turkish border. It is an attempt to mobilise the politics of fear by using the ‘wretched of the earth’ European diktat keeps exhausted and starving in the Greek streets. In this climate, the neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ party which organises pogroms against immigrants may enter Parliament reminding Europeans the final days of Weimar. It will be a bitter irony for the country with the most successful resistance against the Nazi occupation.
With nearly one in five French presidential election votes going to far Right candidate and neocon President Nicolas Sarkozy getting 27.1 percent to “Socialist” François Hollande’s 28.6 percent, National Front candidate Marine Le Pen’s 17.9 percent of the electorate is being courted by both men in advance of the 6 May runoff vote.
Sarkozy lurches further to the right
Sarkoleon’s already established himself on the hard right on the biggest fear of French xenophobes with his record of actions against both Muslims and Europe’s wandering peoples, the Roma, Sinti, and Travelers, so he would seem their natural choice now that it’s down to a two-man race.
And he’s pandering hard.
From Tony Todd of France 24:
Sarkozy needs some 80% of the FN’s 6.4 million voters to back him in the second round on May 6. But polls show he only has 60%. The next two weeks will see a concerted drive to win the others over.
Courting the FN is a risky operation for the incumbent president and his centre-right UMP party.
Not only does Sarkozy risk alienating potential centrist supporters of Francois Bayrou (who got 9.3% in Sunday’s vote), but there is also a danger that he will further legitimise the French far right by delving deeper into populist themes like immigration and national identity.
Here’s another take from John Lichfield of The Independent:
Nicolas Sarkozy bounced back aggressively yesterday from his defeat in the first round of the French presidential election, accusing the Socialist front-runner of cowardice and promising “respect” for the record-breaking score of the far right.
>snip<
Around 60 per cent of Ms Le Pen’s National Front voters told pollsters they will vote for Mr Sarkozy on 6 May. The President plans a hard-right, second round campaign in pursuit of the rest – even if that alienates supporters of centrist candidate François Bayrou.
President Sarkozy said yesterday that the unprecedented score for the far right was a vote born from “crisis and suffering”. He said he would “respect” the voters’ choice and “respond” to them in the next two weeks.
Incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had already swung to the right in the campaign, brandished his right-wing credentials in his first post-results speech on Sunday.
“These anxieties, this suffering, I know them, I understand them,” he said. “They are about respecting our borders, the determined fight against job relocation, controlling immigration, putting value on work, on security,” he said.
The same issues were present as he addressed crowds on the campaign trail on Monday. He also set the tone for the next 12 days of campaigning with an outright attack on his Socialist rival François Hollande.
“I have suffered the insults of a certain number of candidates, both male and female, and I will not take lessons in morality from anyone,” he said. “Certainly not from those on the Left who were keen to put Dominque Strauss-Kahn in the Elysee a few months ago.”
From Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less, a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center:
From the summary by by Jeffrey Passel, D’Vera Cohn and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera:
The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.
The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.
The report is based on the Center’s analysis of data from five different Mexican government sources and four U.S. government sources.
