Headline of the day: Downsizing Eurogranny

From Radio France Internationale:

French retirement home throws out 94-year-old woman on winter weekend

The Austerity Allstars: Bugger the Bankers!

A wonderful, lively song from Britain designed to brighten up your day, even if, like esnl, you’re headed off for the first round of chemo.

You’ll find the lyrics here.

Headline of the day: Belated barn door closure

From an EUobserver story that includes this money quote from the economists’ report: “Forecasters significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal consolidation”:

IMF economists admit ‘errors’ on austerity policy

Quote of the day: The road not traveled

Rosa Luxemburg, quoted by Paul Le Blanc in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal:

“Socialist democracy does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators”, Luxemburg argued. Genuine socialism was inseparable from freedom, and “freedom must always be freedom for those who think differently”. She warned: “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. . .at bottom, then, a clique affair — a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians. . .”

Headline of the day: Worse than Bunga Bunga

From The Guardian:

Benito Mussolini: a dictator for all seasons in Italy?

Reverence for Il Duce, who adorns calendars and T-shirts, is spreading from neo-fascist youths to the Italian mainstream

Another kind of austerity yields joy, community

Here’s a remarkable video from *faircompanies, a Spanish website focused on voluntary simplicity and sustainable living.

It’s the story that might be called Occupy Lakabe, the saga of the occupation of an abandoned village in the hills of Northern Spain that began three decades ago and has blossomed into a exemplary community, showing that a different way of living is not only possible but desirable.

The program notes from *faircompanies:

Medieval Spanish ghost town now self-sufficient ecovillage

It’s a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that.

There are now a few dozen “ecoaldeas” – ecovillages – in Spain, most buil[t] from the ashes of former Medieval towns. One of the first towns to be rediscovered was a tiny hamlet in the mountains of northern Navarra.

It was rediscovered in 1980 by a group of people living nearby who had lost their goats and “when they found their goats, they found Lakabe”, explains Mauge Cañada, one of the early pioneers in the repopulation of the town.

The new inhabitants were all urbanites with no knowledge of country life so no one expected them to stay long. At first, the homes weren’t habitable so they lived 14 in a large room. Slowly they began to rebuild the homes and the gardens.

When they first began to rebuild, there was no road up to the town so horses were used to carry construction materials up the mountain. There was no electricity either so they lived with candles and oil lamps.

After a few years, they erected a windmill by hand, carrying the iron structure up the hill themselves. “Even though it seems tough and in some ways it was, but you realize you’re not as limited as you think,” says Mauge. “There are a lot of things people think they can’t do without a lot of money and there’s never been money here.”

In the early years, they generated income by selling some of their harvest and working odd jobs like using their newfound construction experience to rebuild roofs outside town. Later they rebuilt the village bakery and sold bread to the outside world.

Their organic sourdough breads now sell so well that today they can get by without looking for work outside town, but it helps that they keep their costs at a minimum as a way of life. “There’s an austerity that’s part of the desire of people who come here,” explains Mauge. “There’s not a desire for consumption to consume. We try to live with what there is.”

Today, the town generates all its own energy with the windmill, solar panels and a water turbine. It also has a wait list of people who’d like to move in, but Mauge says the answer is not for people to join what they have created, but to try to emulate them somewhere else.

“If you set your mind to it and there’s a group of people who want to do it, physically they can do it, economically they can do it. What right now is more difficult is being willing to suffer hardship or difficulties or… these days people have a lot of trouble living in situations of shortage or what is seen as shortage but it isn’t.”

From our own experience going back a few decades, we can say that we lived life at its fullest when we had the least cash and the most friends, all working toward common goals.

Austerity’s getting a bad rap these days, because the term has been coopted by economists to signify the sacrifice of the common good for the sake of private profits.

For Buckminster Fuller the desideratum was synergistic emphemeralization, which he defined as the art of doing more with less. With human communities, the process occurs when we rely more on community and less on commodity, finding the infinite variety of richness that comes from interaction with others in pursuit of common, mutually enriching goals.

So our hat’s off to the people of Lakabe for giving us a glimpse of what’s possible now.

Headline of the day: Uh, read your history books

Deportations of the marginal? Hasn’t Germany done that before?

From The Guardian:

Germany ‘exporting’ old and sick to foreign care homes

Pensioners are being sent to care homes in eastern Europe and Asia in an austerity move dismissed as ‘inhumane deportation’

Keiser Report: Ho, Ho, Freaking Ho!

Max and Stacy bring us a Christmas special, replete with punk poetry, high dudgeon, and existential absurdity. Come for the coat, stay for the laughs:

RT’s program notes:

In this episode, Max Keiser first talks to punk poet John Cooper Clarke about Who Stole Bongo’s Trousers, private equity rock stars, the music business and onesies as the next big thing in fashion. In the second half, Max is joined by Stacy to talk about the ‘poverty barons’ financed by the British taxpayer.

A Christmas address from Julian Assange

Speaking from the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, Assange focuses on the plight of 232 journalists now behind bars and those like Bradley Manning now facing long prison sentences for exposing the secrets of those in power. He has few kind words for the mainstream press.

And then there’s his announcement that 2013 will see a million new documents posted on WikiLeaks.

From RT:

Watch out for those Icelandic maidens

A tourist discovered their playful side, to his own regret, after police slapped the cuffs on him after he paid attention to some advice he’d received from a pair a mischievous maidens over one glass too many:

The Reykjavík Grapevine reports:

According to the tourist, he had met some Icelandic girls in a bar who told him it was an Icelandic tradition to run naked on the grass of the Prime Minister’s office. They offered to hold his clothes as he performed the task. Instead, the girls ran off with his clothing, leaving him naked in public.

The tourist was wrapped in a blanket and taken to the police station, but as his wallet had been in his pants, he had no ID to prove who he was.

The story ends on a somewhat upbeat note, however, as when the tourist returned to his hotel, he found his clothes waiting for him at the front desk. The girls who had tricked him, though, had left.

Read the rest.

Oh Noes! Monti’s out; Bunga Bunga’s back?

It’s been, as our dad was wont to say, a coon’s age since we last wrote about the ongoing European debacle.

But the passage of weeks has wrought little in the way of substantial change in the patterns we devoted so much time and energy to charting. Spain is still screwed and Greece remains headed over the edge of the abyss.

And as for Italy. . .

Well, just consider this cover from Liberation, heralding the Mummy’s return:

Yep, that’s none other that Silvio “Bunga Bunga” Berlusconi, whose party has dropped its endorsement of Troika-imposed Mario Monti, who was forced to hand in his prime ministerial papers Friday, paving the way for the greatest comeback ever.

From the BBC:

Mario Monti has resigned as Italian prime minister, officials say, keeping a promise to step down after the passing of his budget by parliament.

MPs earlier passed the 2013 budget drawn up by his government with 309 votes in favour and 55 against.

An announcement on whether Mr Monti will take part in elections – expected in February – will probably be made at a news conference on Sunday.

Read the rest.

Andrea Vogt of the London Telegraph adds:

He handed in his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano on Friday after passage of the 2013 budget.

“The government has now terminated its role, but not because of the Mayan prophecy,” he joked with staff after attending a morning mass.

In his last formal act as prime minister he spoke to Italy’s foreign ambassadors, stressing the importance of continued close economic and military collaboration with European partners and the United States.

“Since I am about to give my resignation, I want to thank you now for sharing with me these very difficult but fascinating 13 months,” he told the diplomats, who gave him a standing ovation.

Read the rest.

Berlusconi, the Rupert Murdoch of The Boot, could use another stint in office, what with the prosecutorial immunity election guarantees.

Seems the septuagenarian lecher is facing criminal charges of sex with a minor and other assorted felonies, and the key figure in the case, known as Ruby the Heartstealer, is headed back to Italy next month, clearing the way for a criminal trial.

So the former lounge singer turned billionaire media mogul needs a handy election to say his bacon, and his media empire is spinning mightily to sway the electorate.

Hans-Jürgen Schlamp of Spiegel reports:

Silvio Berlusconi is a man driven by fear, but also one whose political war coffers are flush with cash. He’s in control of three TV stations and has hundreds of experts at shaping public opinion at his disposal. That’s the starting point for Berlusconi’s election campaign. Already, his campaign machine is running at full steam. And although this campaign can at times come across as imbecilic or insane, is actually the product of savvy media professionals. Pollsters measure the mood of the people every day and track what is and isn’t working for the Berlusconi camp.

These days, the news they have to share is positive. Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party (PdL) has gained three percentage points in the polls in recent days. Of course, so far only 17 percent of Italians say they are actually prepared to elect the former prime minister again. But that number could grow once the Berlusconi Show gets into full swing.

He will have to act fast though. Italian law limits the exposure of politicians on television during the 45 days leading up to an election, so Berlusconi only has until early January to convince Italians that he can deliver the brave new world he has promised. The big media push has to come now — and Berlusconi is already hard at work.

Read the rest.

Scaring the bejeezus out of Europols

Mario “Three-card” Monti has been basking in waves of adulation from an assortment of European politicians and Troikarchs. That’s because the resurrection of the Baron of Bunga Bunga scares the crap out of them.

The London Telegraph offers one reason what Berlusconi’s comeback frightens them so much:

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has said Italy would be forced to leave the eurozone unless the European Central Bank

Headlines of the day: De gustibus non est. . .

And for an explanation of our own headline, which goes back to two years of high school Latin, see here.

From the Reykjavík Grapevine:

Two Tonnes Of Ram Penis Exported To China

From France 24, conclusively proving the downfall of a nation:

French mouths water with the return of Burger King

From the Metro [London]:

Bacon flavoured shaving cream goes on sale

Headline of the day II: French catch Moody’s blues

From the London Telegraph:

France stripped of prized ‘AAA’ credit rating by Moody’s

France has suffered a serious blow to its economic credentials after being stripped of its prized AAA credit rating by Moody’s

The full text of downgrade is here.

A view from Greece: Utopia on the Horizon

From ROAR Magazine and the Syntagma Multimedia Team, signs of hope emerging from the misery being inflicted on the people of Greece by the global banking systems and their minions in government:

The program notes:

ROARMAG.org presents: ‘Utopia on the Horizon’, a documentary for those who chose to struggle.

In May 2011, hundreds of thousands of Greeks swarmed into Syntagma Square in Athens to protest against the firesale of their country, their labor rights and their livelihoods to corrupt domestic elites and foreign financial interests.

In a matter of days, a protest camp was set up — organized on the principles of direct democracy, leaderless self-management and mutual aid — providing a glimpse of utopia in the midst of a devastating financial, political and social crisis. On June 28-29, during a Parliamentary vote on further austerity measures, the state finally responded with brutal force, eventually evicting the protesters from the square and crushing the radical potential of their social experiment.

A year later, Leonidas Oikonomakis and Jérôme Roos — PhD researchers at the European University Institute and co-authors of the activist blog ROARMAG.org — returned to Athens to speak to activists involved in the movement and the occupation of Syntagma Square, as well as WWII resistance hero Manolis Glezos. What follows is this dramatic portrait of a country veering on the brink of collapse; and the people who chose to struggle in order to build a new world on the ruins of the old.

Manolis Glezos, articulate and insightful at age 90, is Greece’s most famous hero from the World War II resistance to Nazi occupation, immortalized in the Greek heart by his daring 30 May 1941 capture of the Nazi flag installed over the Parthenon a month earlier.

Headline of the day: The devil and the details

From New Europe:

Shadow banking industry nearly tripled from 2002

From the story:

On 18 November, the Financial Stability Board announced that the shadow banking industry grew rapidly, despite the crisis, from $26 trillion in 2002 to $67 trillion in 2011. The increase average approximately 158 percent and according to the report, the largest share of the global shadow banking activity remains in United States.

However, the report stresses that compared to 2005, shadow banking activities (SBA) global share in US declined from 44 percent in 2005 to 35 in 2011. Furthermore, SBA increased in the euro area and UK, holding at the end of 2011, 33 percent and 13 respectively.

Charts of the day: The European Double Dip

Though it sounds like a dance from the Roaring 20s, it’s the crushing reality that Europe is now slumping deeper into the slough of economic despond.

First, a look at some industrial declines via Economic Policy Journal:

Next, a chart of soaring unemployment in both the European Union and the smaller eurozone common currency group via Real World Economics Review:

And from euronews, a brief report on the official announcement of the advent of the second dip:

Headline of the day: Pity the poor mass murderer

The the Dublin Journal:

Anders Behring Breivik complains about “sadistic” Norwegian prison conditions

Complaints range from not having a personal light and TV switch, censored phone calls, “screaming” prison mates and cold coffee

Charts of the day: Impoverishment & its fruits

First, from Eurostat [PDF], the latest. just-released official “adjusted” unemployment numbers for the European nations, with Greece {EL] and Spain [ES] reporting the highest, still soaring numbers, with the European Union [EZ] and common currency zone [EA] highlighted. Click on the image to enlarge:

And, from Gallup, health correlates of poverty:

Gallup’s Alyssa Brown reports:

Americans in poverty are more likely than those who are not to struggle with a wide array of chronic health problems, and depression disproportionately affects those in poverty the most. About 31% of Americans in poverty say they have at some point been diagnosed with depression compared with 15.8% of those not in poverty. Impoverished Americans are also more likely to report asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks — which are likely related to the higher level of obesity found for this group — 31.8% vs. 26% for adults not in poverty.

Read the rest.

Two videos on the rise of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn

Xenophobia flourishes in times of economic crisis, as desperation drives the economically marginalized to seek scapegoats for their misery.

In Greece, the crisis has sparked the rise of a once marginal party to national prominence, a party that evokes the same tropes and symbols as their brown-shirted German predecessors [including the Hitler salute].

What follows are two videos on the phenomenon.

From Journeyman Pictures: Backlash – Greece

From Journeyman Pictures:

As the crisis deepens in Greece immigrants have been facing a harsh crackdown by the government. And with chaos across the country, the far right party Golden Dawn are implementing their own violent backlash.

“Get out! This is my country!”, one angry local shouts. For immigrants, Greece is no longer the land of hope and opportunity it once was. In Athens they’re being rounded up by police and thrown into overcrowded detention centres. The system is chaotic and the European Court of Human Rights has recently condemned the centres for their appalling conditions. Meanwhile, the far right group Golden Dawn has sought to capitalise on Greeks’ growing discontent with violent attacks, which many Greek police seemingly turn a blind eye to. “They will kill me. I’ve become afraid for myself”, says a terrified business owner from Cameroon. In the push to round up illegal immigrants genuine asylum seekers are also suffering. One such group of refugees fled the fighting in Syria only to be firebombed by local thugs. “If we knew we would have stayed in Syria”, they say from the flat they don’t dare to leave. With Greece in the grip of increasingly violent conflicts, is the country on the brink of disaster?

The Unstoppable Rise of Golden Dawn

From vlogger EuropeanWatchman2, a pro-Golden Dawn video:

Note that chant intoned by the crowd: Blood! Honor! Golden Dawn!

While the party’s leader claims the group isn’t neo-Nazi, we would point out that the motto of the Hitler Youth was Blut und Ehre, blood and honor.

Note also that the first and foremost of the Nuremberg Laws, enacted by decree on 15 September 1935, was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor [Das Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre].

Blut und Ehre was also the title of a key ideological tract of Alfred Ernst Rosenberg, the Baltic German who was one of the earliest Nazi Party members who became head of the party’s foreign policy office, chief of it’s ideological purity arm, and Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories after the invasion of the Soviet Union. He was also author of the seminal Nazi ideological tract, Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts and provided the ideological justification for slaughtering Jews, Sinti, Roma, and other “subhumans” — a term also recently invoked by the wife of Golden Dawn’s leader when describing immigrants.

But they’re not Nazis, right?

Headline of the day: Whack Tinky Winky!

From The Reykjavík Grapevine, reporting on unintentional Icelandic media mayhem:

Teletubbies Get Sopranos Subtitles, Hilarity Ensues