Greek fury, British candor.

See a video clip of Greek politicians slapping each other here. A male member of the Nazi “Golden Dawn” party and a female member of the Communist Party come to blows on a TV show, after the Nazi throws water (or something) at another leftist lady.

And here Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party “tells it like it is” in the European parliament. ( A talking shop merely, it has no powers. The EU is run by the diktat of bureaucrats. It is not a democracy.)

Germany and France drove the creation of the European Union (EU). Both wanted to be part of a vaster, more powerful political entity: Germany in order, forlornly, to dissolve its national guilt in it; and France, pathetically, to rival the power of the United States with it. Neither hope has been fulfilled. The EU is a failure.

What is the EU? It’s a conglomerate of disparate nations, run by unelected bureaucrats. It has a parliament with no power worth having.

How could it have been expected to succeed? It doesn’t even have a common language. Every document “of major public importance or interest” has to be translated into every one of its 23 official languages.

Imagine the cost of that alone. Bill Bryson wrote (in his book Mother Tongue) that way back in 1987, when the inchoate union was called the European Economic Community (EEC) –

An internal survey found that it was costing $25 a word, $500 dollars a page, to translate all its documents. One in every three employees of the European Community is engaged in translating papers and speeches. A third of all administrative costs – $700 million in 1987 – was taken up with paying for translators and interpreters. Every time a member is added [to the original 6], as most recently with Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the translation problems multiply exponentially.

There are now 27 member states, prices have risen steeply, and in any case no one knows how much the EU pays for anything. Its costs are never accurately calculated.

Because it is irredeemably corrupt, its accounts cannot be cleared. Despairing auditors who turned whistle-blower have been sacked and abused. Officials riding the  gravy-train grow rich on fraud.

Now its nemesis has caught up with it. The 16 member states that adopted the euro as their currency  are not at ease with one another. Their socialist policies are bankrupting them as they were bound to do. Greece has been temporarily saved from economic death by the rest of the EU (and also by the IMF, to which American tax-payers contribute the most). But the peoples, especially the Germans who’ve been made to fork out the bulk of the EU contribution, resent having to do it. (Recent elections in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia indicate that voters are angry with the federal government’s decision to help Greece and “defend the Euro”.)

The dream of a United States of Europe was always an impossible one. The attempt to realize it is a nightmare.

George Will writes:

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction — that “Europe” has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration… The bills depict nonexistent windows, gateways and bridges. They are from … nowhere, which is what “utopia” means… [The euro] is an attempt to erase nationalities and subsume politics in economics in order to escape from European history.

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

It also presupposes something else nonexistent. The word “democracy” incorporates the Greek demos — people. As the recent rampages of Greece’s demos, and the reciprocated disdain of Germany’s demos, demonstrate, Europe remains a continent of distinct and unaffectionate peoples. There is no “European people” united by common mores.

Even the Financial Times – which is pink in color politically as well as literally – warned on May 14 that “displays of anger” in the member states may “become more widespread”,  and that “a Europe hounded [sic] by market forces has acted too late” with sudden desperate programs of austerity to save itself from economic catastrophe.

The Euro will fall further. The EU itself may fall apart. That at least, to our mind, is an eventuality devoutly to be wished.

Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn survey an eventful day – yesterday, May 6, 2010 – and cover a lot of ground in their discussion of it. Here’s an extract, ending on a hopeful note as they look forward to the November elections:

HH: What a day, Mark Steyn. The markets went crazy. The Dow dropped at one point a thousand points. It finished off, you know, it was a bad day, but it wasn’t a horrific day. In reaction to what I think is a glimpse of our future, I think that the Greek debacle is simply, you know, the Christmas Future, showing … what’s going to happen to this country if we do not change. Your thoughts?

MS: Yes, I think what it illustrates, as I understand it, it might just have been as simple as one trader typing a B instead of an M for million, typing a B for billion, and it wipes off a thousand points off the stock market, as opposed to being a reaction to what’s happening in Greece, where real people are being killed in what are essentially riots over keeping unsustainable, featherbedded, government jobs. And in a way, what happened in Greece and what happened in New York, I think, both illustrate the kind of fragility of the global economy, and in a broader sense, of civilization …

HH: I think there will be defaults, a rolling series of defaults, … and that people had better look at Greece right now to see what’s coming. But Mark Steyn, that may not be the most important act of violence by a long shot. We had another successful terrorist penetration in the United States. But for their incompetence, a second massacre within four months of Detroit, the fourth under President Obama, counting the Arkansas and Fort Hood terrorist attacks, and still, it does not seem that they can get past the idea of when do we give them their Miranda rights.

MS: Yes, and this idea that it’s a criminal matter involving a few isolated extremists, or whatever the president said in reaction to the panty bomber at Christmas time. The most absurd commentary, I thought, was from the Washington Post, which speculated it was because the guy hadn’t been able to keep up payments on his home in Connecticut, so that this was in fact something to do with actually the Greek story, it’s to do with the global economy, it’s to do with subprime mortgages, that this is somehow an act of subprime terrorism and not Islamic terrorism. This is ridiculous. The guy spent five months in Pakistan, so clearly when a guy is spending five months in Pakistan, we don’t know what he was doing there, that’s the pretty obvious reason for why he isn’t able to keep up payments on his home in Connecticut. It’s because his job in Connecticut, and his house in Connecticut, are not what’s important to him, and are not what he sees as his primary identity. And the stupidity, the persistent stupidity in trying to look for anything other than what is really driving this activity is becoming beyond parody now.

HH: Mark Steyn, today’s profile of him in the New York Times, I don’t know if you had a chance to read it yet, but it’s very much the same. It’s the lonely, Mr. Lonely Hearts. He’s sitting on couches not drinking…and it makes it sounds like he’s depressed, so he became a jihadist.

MS: Yes, and that was the same thing that was said about the panty bomber just before Christmas time. In fact, they’re very similar, they’ve very similar types in a way. They’re not poor people. This idea that we heard after September 11th, poverty breeds terrorism, these are middle class people leading middle class lives. This guy had an MBA and some other super duper degree. He could be holding down a big time six figure salary anywhere on the planet. And instead, he decides that’s not what he wants to do, and instead he wants to blow up Times Square. And at some point, we have to confront the reality of that. And our unwillingness to, you know, when the enemy, which is what they are, by the way, when the enemy read the New York Times and the Washington Post, they draw their conclusions from that kind of coverage.

HH: Mark Steyn, the incompetence displayed in the Gulf after the explosion, and now the gaps in our security system, add the hat trick for the president. We’ve got ideological extremism, plus a hyper-partisan approach to politics, and now incompetence thrown in. That’s a heavy burden for Democrats. I think it’s why David Obey quit yesterday. Do you think the president can escape this, and his party can escape this by November?

MS: No, I think in a way, he’s lucky, he’s as lucky as he’s going to be, because if this had been a Republican in the White House, we would be getting the full Katrina on what’s going on in the Gulf. Instead, he’s got friends at these dying publications like Newsweek that are willing to protect him almost to absurd degrees. But the hyper-partisanship, with the perceived softness on national security, and the willingness to abase himself before thugs and dictators, plus, plus the incompetence issue in the Gulf, I think is just a lethal combination for Democrats this November.

We hope he’s right about November. They say “a week is a long time in politics”, so six months is an age. A lot more harm can be done to civilization by the Democrats in that stretch of time. And if the Republicans return to power in Congress in November, will they, can they, save civilization?

Socialism doesn’t work.

Mark Steyn explains the colossal shipwreck of Europe, and observes that the Democrats are hell-bent on steering America on to the same rocks.

Here’s part of what he writes:

For Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. Over 30 percent of German women are childless; among German university graduates, it’s over 40 percent. And for the ever-dwindling band of young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward there’s precious little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in order to prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that’s before the EU decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who retire at 67, are now expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly payments per year of Greeks who retire at 58.

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less-profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out, anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out of Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick Americans with their defense tab. And, in America, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

Most west European governments have known for the last thirty years at least that it is impossible to maintain the welfare state. None has had the courage to start dismantling it. No matter what party was in power, whether outrightly socialist or nominally conservative, each successive government tried only to postpone the day of reckoning.

It seems that day has now arrived.

Vasko Kohlmayer writes at Front Page about the eurozone’s ‘skyrocketing debt’ and its likely consequences:

The European Monetary Union lays down strict regulations … The so-called Stability and Growth Pact requires each country’s to hold down its annual budget deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The Pact also stipulates that any member’s public debt is not to exceed 60 percent of GDP.

This year only one eurozone country is expected to have a budget deficit that falls within the three percent limit. The rest will go over, most by a large margin. Germany, which was the country that lobbied most rigorously for the strict fiscal requirements, was among the first to break them. Greece is currently the leading offender with a deficit that equals 12.7 percent of its GDP. But the figures are generally abysmal throughout the monetary union. Ireland’s deficit, for example, is 11.5 percent, Spain’s 11.4 percent, Portugal’s 9.3 percent.

As far as public debt is concerned the average European ratio is 88% of GDP, nearly 50 percent above the “allowable” limit. The worst offender is Italy whose public debt stands at an astounding 127 percent GDP. Greece’s debt is 113 percent, Belgium’s 105 percent, Germany’s nearly 80 percent. High as these figures are, the reality is probably worse as EU countries routinely use an assortment of accounting tricks to understate their deficits and obligations.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that if the euro is to continue as a viable currency, eurozone states must take decisive measures bring their finances under control. This, however, appears to be a nearly impossible task. Greece shows us why. Shortly after the government announced a package of budget cuts and tax increases the country’s civil servants took part in a nation-wide strike. Plans are afoot for another one next month. At the same time, Greece’s umbrella private sector union is planning an extensive walk-out for the last week of February. The Associated Press observed that the Greek government “may find that unions and voters push back against cutbacks that will take years to show results. With a potential public backlash, their chance to win approval for such measures remains unclear.”

Memories are still fresh of the protests that took place early last year. Angry at cuts in their subsidies, Greek farmers blocked major roads and paralyzed the country. Parts of the nation were thrown into chaos as lines of vehicles stretched for 12 miles or more. Unable to restore order, the prime minister was forced to beg the farmers to remove the roadblocks. “There is an urgent need to free up the roads. A whole society cannot be held hostage,” he pleaded.

This time around far more substantial steps must be taken in order to put Greece’s fiscal house in order. This is certainly not going to sit well with the Greek public and there is fear that things could deteriorate in dramatic fashion. …

The Eurozone … faces a seemingly unsolvable conundrum. Even though it is steeped deeply in debt, almost every serious effort to curtail spending meets with popular rage. The problem is that they cannot have it both ways. It is impossible to have a large welfare state and a sound fiscal house at the same time. It is either one or the other.

Until recently the euro was considered a possible alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It was thought that the Monetary Union’s strict guidelines would safeguard its debasement. But it turns out that the Union’s respect for its founding documents is only paper deep. It is now becoming apparent that the disregard will have dire consequences. It may even bring about the break up of the eurozone and the demise of what once seemed like a solid currency.

Given that the United States is taking the same path of unrestrained spending, we would do well to take heed and learn from Europe’s painful lessons.

*NOTE: The eurozone is not the same as the European Union (EU). The European Union has twenty seven members as of this year. The eurozone is made up of those countries within the European Union that use the euro as their sole currency. The eurozone currently has sixteen member states.

The crisis may cause the break-up of the eurozone. Undesirable as this may be for economic reasons, one highly desirable political consequence could be the end of the welfare state as such, with the proof of its unsustainability so incontrovertible that no one – not even Barack Obama – would attempt to resurrect it.

The welfare state pays people not to work, not to produce, not to innovate, not to marry, not to have children – or if they do, not to take care of them themselves.

It may be that the peoples of Europe are dwindling away (which they are) because they have no incentive to beget children and strive to raise them. Or to put it another way, they may be dying out because they have nothing to go on living for.

Even al-Jazeera can be worth watching. It has published this map.

The range of Iran’s missiles

The Shahab-3 and Sejil missiles tested by Iran have a range of about 2,000km, according to Iranian military officials.

The long-range missiles would enable them to target Israel, US bases in Gulf countries – such as Bahrain and Qatar – as well as some parts of Europe.