Greek Triumph

I am happy for the people of Greece and the EU this week after voters elected Alexis Tsirpas as its president.  The Greeks were able to achieve what so far the Scots and Spaniards have not--a blow to the Eurocratic Empire.  It's interesting that a desire on the part of the Greek people to self-govern is somehow considered "radical" in the west.  The radical part seems to be a desire to escape a fiscal austerity program that has been imposed by the EU.  It's only the beginning, but the Greeks are euphoric for the moment and having a grand party of it all.

Now the dilemma for Tsirpas is how to do this while remaining on the Euro currency and that has Eurocrats nervous about Greek payments.  The New York Times reports, "Some of the creditors still seem to feel that a debt is a debt to be repaid in full, and that the Greeks 'deserve' punishment for their history of profligate spending and habitual tax evasion."  Again a very one-sided view from the west.  Nothing is said of the shenanigans of Goldman Sachs to crash the Greek economy so that vulture capitalists could buy up Greek bonds on the cheap.  As investigative reporter Greg Palast revealed in his excellent book, Vultures' Picnic, Greece is a crime scene, and the people are being looted.  Now the Greeks have had enough and they've begun to fight back.

This is a small victory for the people of the world against multinational corporations and international bankers, not just for Greece.  The best government is local government.  The frictions that borders cause for international trade are not just costs to be removed from a value chain, but cellular walls that protect nations and the people of the world.  They create jobs, protect cultures, preserve local environments, and ensure that the will of the people is not abrogated by central planning or a bureaucratic elite.  One of the great oxymorons of globalization is that the destruction of nation states and their sovereign cultures in favor of large, homogenous regulatory unions is somehow a way of embracing "diversity."  The Eurocrats have shown their predisposition toward Orwellian state-craft and there is no uglier example of that than what has happened in Greece.

Eleven Eleven Eleven

Though I never knew him, the story goes like this...  My Great Uncle Nils, the day after the United States entered the Great War, went to Sausalito and took the ferry to San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge did not exist at that time) where he enthusiastically enlisted in the Amry.  After basic training, he was shipped to France and was immediately sent marching to the front to counter the Ludendorff Offensive which had made huge advances toward Paris.  With little rest and probably still a bit seasick from the long ocean voyage, he went over-the-top and into the Argonne Forest.  Whether he was one of the famous "Last Battalion" I honestly don't know, but what I do know is that he was cut down by machine gun fire not long after the assault began.  He took a ride across the river Styx, departing in Northern California and reaching the other side in a wasteland called a forest.  He rests someplace here now...

Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery (France)

Has there ever been a war so terrible to have been a soldier in?  Only a few battles from other wars are comparable in their scale of brutality and certainty of death (e.g. Stalingrad, Gettysburg), unless you start to take into account civilian casualties and events such as the firestorms of Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden, the Battle of Berlin, Hiroshima, etc.  Whether you are talking about WW1's Eastern Front, Western Front, Gallipoli, or Isonzo, the casualty and death toll were horrifying.  There's no doubt in my mind that if it possible for any of the soldiers stuck in the thick of those battlefields to transfer through time to Okinawa, Tunisia, Khe Sanh, etc, and trade one version of Hell for a seemingly lesser, they would have done so.

I've sometimes felt that I've been reincarnated from a prior life that ended in those cryptic trenches.  I remember taking a train from Frankfurt to Paris and for whatever reason, the train had to stop somewhere on route.  Passengers were allowed to disembark temporarily and as I did I immediately recognized the tortured landscape around us.  I remarked to the people I was with, "Do you realize where we are?"  None did, though we stood in a giant killing field.  The trench lines were still recognizable.

Why do we take time to remember the mistakes of the past if we continue to repeat them?  God damn the people who have the power to prevent war, but let it happen anyway.

World War 1: Putin and Russia's New Perspective

I've been personally disappointed by the lack of recognition and public ceremony in the U.S. over the 100th anniversary of WWI, or "The Great War," as the Brits like to call it.  WWI is one of my favorite and most studied periods of world history and is still probably the seminal event of the last two centuries.  Obama and other European leaders gathered at the Menin Gate in Ypres earlier this year, but the even was largely ignored in America.  Russia had its own ceremony and the speech is really quite revealing of how Vladimir Putin and modern Russia and look back on its past.  Instead of venerating the Bolsheviks and murderers like Trotsky and Lenin, he calls them out for what they really were--not altruistic communists, but thieves who "sought only power for themselves."  Putin's view of the Russian Civil War of 1918, one can presume, is decidedly more White than Red.

YES!!!... for Scotland's Independence! Freedom!!!

A short shout out to all my distant clansmen and Scots.  Vote yes for your independence and self rule!  I've yet to make it to Scotland, but for the record my grandmother's folks on my father's side came to America from Scotland in the 1800s.  I'm a mixed American mutt, but on my great grandfather's side my family is from the Colquhoun Clan.

I recently visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the American Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution of the United States was drafted and executed.  I'll be brief with my argument here--all progress in human civilization has come from the decentralization of power.  The Roman Senate, The Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution are all examples of where authority and information was distributed.  When power is held in fewer hands, brokerage of that power occurs across a more narrow range of interests and humanity suffers.  This has certainly been the case with the trend toward supra-sovereign organizations and treaties like NAFTA, the G7, and EU.  Though their stated goals are ostensibly humanitarian, there is always an undercurrent of avarice and nepotism that reigns in policy.  The most visible victims (for those who care to look) are nations like Greece, Argentina, and Azerbaijan.

The Founding Fathers of the USA understood something very important about the consolidation of power.  It's bad, okay?  Thus most of the time and furious debate over our fledgling Constitution centered not around what was considered Democratic or Republican (by today's standards).  The debate that raged for years was over the distribution of power between the federal government and states' rights.  Unfortunately, the U.S. has taken a strong turn back toward Federalism, which is the natural consequence of war-time crisis (Civil War, Great War, WWII, War on Korea, War on Poverty, War in Vietnam, War on Drugs, War on Iraq, War on Terror, war, war, war...).  The average middle or working class person is always the loser.

What has the consolidation of power at the UK and EU brought Scotland?  What has hard fought independence throughout history brought Scotland?  The eyes of the world are upon you.  Choose your independence and, like Iceland recently, you will find your own path.  Your friends and distant clansmen the world over will support you.  I personally will visit Scotland at long last and hopefully have a chance to meet some long time Nazareth fans and raise a glass to your independence.

Freeeeedom!