To be an accomplished, all around numbskull takes effort; to be a numbskull of world renown is the product of high art; to be a numbskull of world renown that also manages simultaneously to shoot himself in the head is the work of unparalleled genius. The Greek political classes and their lick-spittle "journalist" helpers have managed to excel in all three departments in the past few days.

This is a supremely critical moment: the Greek government is running out of cash to pay its bills in two weeks, and our survival depends upon the willingness of our EU partners, especially the Germans, to offer a financial helping hand. And yet, quite on form, the slimy non-entities that run this country have chosen precisely this moment to put on display their abysmal meanness of spirit and their autistic primitivism by unleashing an anti-German furor for which alone they would deserve to be left to to stew in their malodorous juices.

If they were literate, they might just read the blood-curdling deadline of the Daily Telegraph declaring that Greece has well-nigh buried her chances of rescue on account of her anti-German rhetoric.

The latest salvo in this obscene campaign was delivered by our traditionally self-obsessed deputy prime minister, who in a rambling discourse on the BBC basically equated the present German government with the nazis. This earned him the enthusiastic approbation of the extreme nationalist right. It also gave the signal for a cacophony of ignorant hatred that flooded the airwaves with intellectual filth of nauseating virulence. Language is being depleted of words potent enough to characterize this orgy of mental stupefaction and moral degeneracy, whose protagonists are precisely the people who in the last thirty years have grown fat by misappropriating the funds provided principally by those they are calumniating for the purpose of modernizing this country.

Truth to be told, the British journalist conducting the interview deliberately provoked the outburst of the weighty gentleman in question -not that the latter did not relish the opportunity to unleash his warped historical interpretations. The British press, as is well known, is steeped in anti-German bias too -of course on a much more sophisticated level of historical awareness (I am talking about its serious component) compared to its Greek counterpart. So, they have used the Greek crisis as an opportunity to pour some of that traditional venom, using expressions such as "the sound of Wehrmacht boots in the streets of Athens" (in the Guardian) and "Greece balks at self-immolation for the sake of Germany". This Schadenfreude is of inestimable use to the Europhobic segment of the British establishment, with Cameron emphasizing that under his prospective stewardship (which I hope never materializes) the UK will never adopt the Euro.

Of course, some of the British columnists were trying to make a legitimate point, one that I also stressed in one of my previous posts: namely, that the rescue of Greece would be in Germany's own interest given the latter's economic predominance in the Eurozone. This is a point of view which is also given prominence in German newspapers as well in an attempt to counteract the understandable, but still simplistic and wholesale, anti-Greek animus in the populist press and in the streets.

But these reasonable counter-arguments to the hardline opponents of the Greek rescue such as Issing are picked up here not as arguments, but as a pretext to deny any wrongdoing on the part of the Greek ruling elites and to blame the current situation wholly on the evil machinations of imperialist enemies who want to strangle history's "chosen people". The shameful thing about our domestic situation is that it has long degenerated into a collective psychopathy where the few rational voices are drowned in the drum roll of bestial emotionalism. The most laughable delusions have taken on the status of sacred truths, in a puerile self-absorption that has cut off the public mind from any connection with the wider world.

To his credit the Greek prime minister, despite some verbal concessions in parliament, did not kowtow to the screeching vermin of nationalist idiocy -although given the extremity of the hour he should have thrown out by the ear both his deputy and the comical Speaker of parliament who led the anti-German raucous threatening to bury us as a people worth the name.

I fervently hope that there are enough sane and sober leaders on the German side to rise above the gutter in which prominent opinion leaders here are flailing and writhing -and indeed the signs are that there are such, with the chancellor among them. She has invited the Greek leader to Berlin and during their meeting on March 5 let's hope that the final deal will be struck pulling us out of the hell hole that the malfeasance of the Greek feudal party-political aristocracy has dug for the Greek people.

It's a good thing that there are thoughtful voices in the Greek press with the courage to castigate the embarrassing foolishness of the nondescript nonentity playing Speaker of the Greek parliament, who had the nerve to call in the German ambassador to complain about what the German press is writing (!!!) in connection with Greece. How dense can you be indeed... Only goatherds cut off in their mountain gorges and unaware that a world exists beyond the ridge that can be expected to show such grunting imbecility -and goatherds possess a great number of redeeming virtues that render them infinitely more attractive than the pompous nincompoop in question.

Apparently His Asinine Excellency has a conception of journalists such as applies to this country, i.e. either as mindless brutes simply spouting lines fed to them by the press offices of the political parties or as agents in the pay of various business interests and/or the government -or all of the above.

And then there is another minor detail: the content of the German articles that so enraged our good Speaker just happens to be true down to the last t, as the average person in the street here will readily tell you. And indeed it was the common knowledge of these common persons that the foreign journalists culled to present to their readers, who as a result have every reason to be outraged by what happens to their hard earned money once it reaches "the cradle of democracy", the "birthplace of the Olympic Games" etc. etc.

Incidentally, another recent exploit of this insufferable gentleman was to resist by tooth and nail any diminution of the scandalous privileges and astronomical bonuses enjoyed by Parliament employees, whose number exploded to about 1800 (from 600 or so) in the past five years as the relatives of various party hacks to the third and forth degree were inducted to sit around scratching their private parts while drawing salaries of 4000 euros per month. This at a time when the rest of us are asked to make huge sacrifices to put this country right again, while the whole world by now knows that the cause for the present collapse is the hydrocephaly of our public (and anti-social) sector.

But to repeat what I said in my last post: if your aim is to turn German public opinion totally against Greece and thus render politically impossible the rescue plan currently mulled by Merkel, it is in the manner of our Sublime Genius of a Speaker that you should behave.

The current anti-German outbreak in Greece was, to begin with, to be expected. Aggrieved national feeling and the bugbear that "The People" are subject to prosecution from all points of the compass is the well-tried recourse of bankrupt politicians who want to divert attention from their own failures and crimes. But beyond that it is also a sign of the complete ignorance here of the history of the project of European integration and of the history of Germany in particular.

The approach to Europe by the Greek ruling elites has always been instrumental. There is a more benign version of this instrumentalism, as represented by the elder Karamanlis in the 60's and early 70's. The idea here was basically to "shield" the country from its own weakness and disability, economic and political. Its integration into a populous market would confer obvious benefits to Greek business. Politically European norms and institutions would prevent the relapse into the kind of strife that brought about the military dictatorship of the sixties.

After the Cyprus crisis of 1974 another layer was added to these calculations, namely that Greece as a member of the European community would now have behind it the unanimous support of its fellow members in its various disputes with Turkey.

The economic calculation proved spectacularly right with the massive inflow of European structural funds, which the local rulers immediately set about to devour and to squander. That is the reason why the rabid opposition of the left to Greece's accession to what they idiotically called "the den of lions" was abandoned. And with the rise to power of the mock-socialist party in the early eighties this opposition was transmuted into an incessant "struggle" within Europe to extract financial benefits and advantages for "The People" (i.e. for the increasingly venal party and union apparatchiks) with the most minimal adherence possible to the common rules. This obstructionism and obstreperousness was of course irritating to Greece's partners, but it was put up with for political reasons.

This done, the emphasis now was increasingly placed upon the "national" goals to be obtained through Europe, primarily the check-mating of Turkey and later on the political obliteration of poor Slav Macedonia. The demand put forward was that Greece would itself define what its "historical rights" were in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean and that the others would simply fall behind these claims and self-definitions. When they did not, an anti-European clamor was raised.

Thus, as more and more European moneys streamed in to be transformed into Mercedeses and ugly imperial villas for the political elites and their retinue, the more intense the anti-European sentiment fomented by these crooked politicians and their squalid allies in the media. As the material well-being of the average Greek was rising rapidly and the country was being transformed from a dirt poor third world outpost into a tolerably developed state close to the European average, its political orientation veered towards a primitive thirld-worldism, with Ghadafi and Saddam and of course Milosevic and (yes) even Bin Laden later on as the shining lights of its opinion-makers. A vicious anti-westernism took general hold permeating all sides of the political spectrum including the dazed and putrescent so-called right. These antics, egged on after 1998 by an Orthodox Church that had itself adopted xenophobic nationalism as its standard, isolated the country on the European level, as civilized people could simply not comprehend this collective regression to the murderous psychoses of the early twentieth century.

I do not want to go into the details of the "national" debate -it would be a stomach-turning business. Suffice it to record one telling detail: when China, Russia and even "brotherly" Serbia recognized Slav Macedonia as the "Republic of Macedonia" no one batted an eyelid. When the US proceeded to do the same some years later it was perceived as an earth-shattering treachery and there were violent riots in Athens and Thessalonica. This gives you a measure of the perversity into which the public mind had by then sunk.

The important consideration is this: the very heart of the project of European integration was the abandonment of the nationalist isolationism that has soaked the history of the continent with blood. The chief aim was the suppression of ancestral hatreds through the cultivation of open communication and shared institutions. And there is no greater and more inspiring example of this progressive effort than the Franco-German reconciliation under the leadership of De Gaulle and Adenauer. Rivers of German and French blood had flown into the Rhine in mutual massacre, but all this was consciously put behind for the sake of a peaceful and prosperous future. But this point was entirely lost upon the Greek ruling classes, who preferred to cement their rapacious and socially unjust rule by precisely cultivating the most atavistic forms of national hysteria.

One particularly sad note here concerns the active complicity of the left in this moral and intellectual degeneration. Their traditional anti-imperialism was effortlessly transmogrified into thoughtless anti-European hatred, stressing the "violation" of Greek "national rights" by the west with vehemence even shriller than that of the extreme right. Their ingenious way of camouflaging their reactionary nationalism as a "progressive" stance was the claim that the Bosnian Muslims, for instance, and the Macedonian leadership (even under the communist Gligorov) were agents of the Americans acting to secure imperialist control of the Balkans. On this reading the Yugoslav wars were caused, instigated, deliberately started by the foreign villains. They would never have happened if the Serbs and the Croats who were so much in love with each other and had such a history of harmonious coexistence had been left alone. This silliness was the guiding dogma of the Greek left who anointed Milosevic as the hero of anti-imperialist struggle.

The same profound ignorance and misrepresentation stamps the dominant ideas on Germany. That despite the inevitable survivals of Nazism, the post-war federal republic has made the most determined effort in its general culture and educational process to face up to the historical guilt of the country and to cultivate mentalities that would prevent any relapse to racist nationalism is something that no one is aware of here. That whatever resurgence of nazi-tinted racism one observes in the country emanates primarily from the formerly communist east, where the "workers and peasants" regime did nothing at all to deal with German historical guilt but rather cultivated militarism is a fact that would be vehemently denied. That Germany's participation in the unification of Europe and especially its abandonment of the mighty Deutschmark was the most important manifestation of this determination to anchor the country in a common European destiny, rather than adopt a renewed course of national aggrandizement with its concomitant Drang nach Osten, is also something no one has an inkling of or would appreciate. That Germany incurred significant economic liabilities as a result of these choices, by being for example by far the largest net contributor to the EU budget, is also something nobody notes. That the agricultural subsidies that for more than a generation now have fed and fattened an increasingly parasitic and destructive Greek so-called farmer class have come out of German pockets nobody admits. That the German tax payer has coughed up over this period something like 10000 euros per each inhabitant of Greece (according to some figures I saw lately) does not count for anything in the mind of the inflamed dervishes of nationalism here. All was fine as long as we were gobbling up Germany's (and others') contributions for the private gratification of our execrable (as everyone readily admits) rulers. Suddenly, now that they refuse to pour more of their own people's sweat into this black hole the righteous wrath of the "anti-imperialists" is ignited and the memories of the occupation return. The Germans "have not paid war reparations" and are out to get us. This is so disgustingly pathetic.

It is also stupidly self-destructive. There is a vigorous debate currently going on in Germany concerning the wisdom of rescuing Greece, while in the background the populist press is screaming for blood. If you want to strengthen the side arguing against the rescue, i.e. if you wish yourself in hell, then you adopt the moronic anti-German stance that is becoming increasingly loud here.

The talking (empty) heads of the Greek media and their partners in emptiness in parliament are in a tiff. Their "national honor" has been insulted by the cover of Focus magazine in Germany, depicting the Venus di Milo showing the finger. That this expresses the extremely hostile feelings of the average European citizen towards the lying and cheating policies of successive Greek governments goes without saying -but the prime victims of this trickery have been the Greek people themselves. So it violates basic human decency for the leaders of Greek feudalism who have destroyed the economic and ethical basis of their society by pocketing for themselves the vast sums of European economic assistance to affect an innocence they do not have. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. They deserve not just this kind of humorous put down, but infinitely more severe treatment which must include, if not the scaffold, definitely long jail terms. The unfortunate thing is that this shameless demagogy of the very people that brought the country to the brink of the abyss finds fertile ground among the people in the street, the principal victims I repeat of the thuggery of those now protesting about "national honor". This poisonous sentiment is a serious impediment to the implementation of any set of real economic reforms.

With respect to the "national" dimension of the Focus cover: one may call it tasteless -that would be legitimate. But to rip one's clothes in the name of the "sacredness" of antique symbols mishandled by vicious foreigners is just rank hypocrisy, which is in plentiful supply here. In the past few years storm troopers from the parties of the left have repeatedly invaded and occupied the Acropolis (breaking down gates by night etc.) in order to cover its entire southern (Cimonian) wall with their hideous placards denouncing now a visit by the American secretary of state, now this or that government policy. One cannot envisage a more vicious desecration than that. And yet not one of these highly sensitive national souls currently frothing at the mouth had a single word of protest to utter against this barbaric usurpation of the supreme symbol of Hellenic spiritual achievement by the philistine hordes of party-political brutishness. And the reason for this silence, amounting to support, was of course that the perpetrators of this cultural atrocity were self-proclaimed communists and "anti-imperialists". Under this cover any and every filthy anti-social act, including actual crimes, is readily excused in this country.

The campaign of the official classes against Focus stinks of pettiness and dishonesty. It is, above all, testimony to their complete ignorance of and contempt for Hellenic ideals.

A few short notes. My comments on the striking customs officials were made with the internal revenue officials in mind. But, they still apply: they are birds of the same feather. Besides the latter went on strike last week protesting the possible loss of their outrageous bonuses and just at the precise moment to make a mockery of the government's protestations in Brussels that Greece can cure its fiscal problem on its own. A more egregious kind of anti-social egotism cannot be conceived. These people, together with the wild-eyed trade unionists currently occupying the finance ministry, are dancing on the carcass of their country. They seem moronically to think that they can secure through violence something for themselves even though the entire ship is sinking. They can surely cause us all to drown, but they themselves will also suffer the same fate. Rats are not known as keen swimmers. With respect to the customs people it suffices to mention that they have left our houses without heating in the middle of winter.

A tale of two editorials: the Economist's comments on Feb. 18 are suffused with smart ass contempt bordering on cultural racism. That Greeks went out on Clean Monday (the beginning of Lent) to fly kites and eat sea food is neither here nor there. You cannot expect a whole society to turn itself off culturally simply because of the (admittedly extreme) financial predicament. Movie theaters and bars are also still open: what is exactly the Economist's suggestion? That we shut ourselves up in our rooms trembling and praying? The British high class has stubbornly refused to give up fox hunting even though public opinion is overwhelmingly against it and parliament legislated to ban it. I do not recall the Economist being terribly exercised about that. That said, the substance of the argument developed in the editorial needs to be taken seriously. But it is not self-evidently true. The founding of a European monetary fund can be an effective response to situations similar to the Greek one in the future, and this is the option envisaged in the rescue plan for Greece being worked out by the German finance ministry as reported on Saturday by Der Spiegel. The danger of undue political influence can be obviated through the strict rules of operation proposed.

Compare the thoughtful and constructive editorial of the New York Times on the same day, which is a continuation of the enlightened attitude first expressed in their editorial of Feb. 1 pleading for Europe not to let Greece go under. If Europe is interested in putting Greece on the road to a more sane handling of its economy they should not barge in to effect its "fiscal strangulation", the paper says. This kind of shock therapy will simply kill off economic activity thus crippling the ability of the state to collect tax revenue and hence balance its books. This is sensible counsel. It comes from afar, but perhaps because of that it takes a more rounded and long term view, which eschews ideological rigidity. In the Economist approach on the contrary one senses an overriding motive to uphold liberal economic orthodoxy first and foremost. This is of course the reason for the very existence of the Economist in the first place. But as Bush found out in September 2008 when the world collapses around you ideological virginity is a luxury that can barely be afforded. Fortunately, Merkel has also come around to the opinion that the prime consideration at this moment is a pragmatic solution to an impossible situation, rather than lily-white theoretic posturing. Her distancing from her liberal partners in the ruling coalition goes hand in hand with her wise decisions in the Greek case.

One last thought: I wish the bulk of Greek "journalists" and ignorant politicos barking and baying on the air waves each night would just take five minutes reading the consistently pro-Greek pronouncements of the great American newspaper -in case, that is, they can read at all. They should also consider, if again they are capable of any sane consideration, that it was the New York Times that exposed the machinations and hence the responsibility of Wall Street in connection with the Greek debt crisis. But I have a feeling that this is too much to ask.....

Stupidity is a fake crown that can nevertheless shine far and wide, and currently nobody is wearing this with greater pride than the main opposition party in the Greek parliament.

One would normally not waste breath or spittle in reference to this gathering of ignoramuses and incompetents, which for the six years they were in power until last October did all they could to give the final push down the cliff to the rickety contraption called the Greek state.

But when their ape-like bigotry makes headlines in Germany, at the very moment when the German ministry of finance is putting the finishing touches to the rescue package eagerly awaited by all of us here with the hope of avoiding utter ruin, they should be castigated in the firmest possible manner, lest people in the civilized world get the notion that all of us here are as brain dead as that.

On Thursday last one of their MP's for Thessaly disputed the right of the German government to prescribe fiscal rectitude for Greece on the grounds that Germany has not paid war-time reparations and that there are Greeks who are still mourning the fate of their fathers at the hands of the SS. This is taking the discussion to the lowest possible level of vulgarity, besides feeding the corresponding anti-Greek hysteria of the German tabloid press.

Someone ought to remind his Idiotic Honor that the billions of subsidies, on which his Thessalian constituents grew fat asses and bellies producing nothing and ruining the vital ecosystem of their area in the process, came primarily from the German exchequer. Besides, a huge part of the government loans that fed their appetite for luxury cars, villas and brothel fun also came from German banks. This shameless exploitation of historical traumas is a bathetic evasive action that I would not dignify with even a fart in the Honorable Member's face, except that it fosters an undercurrent of nationalist mindlessness on the streets which if not checked will make much more difficult the escape from the present deadly trap.

The incident also demonstrates that in political terms there is no alternative to the present government despite its manifest inadequacies. Its spokesmen to their credit have not adopted the Neanderthal approach of blaming the Europeans for the unconscionable squandering and stealing of European money by the Greek feudal elites. Just yesterday, at the meeting of European social democrat heads of government in London, the prime minister himself acknowledged again that Greece's plight is of its own making -although I could barely suppress a laugh seeing him seated next to the Norwegian Premier, whose country's social decency and probity is at the exact antipodes of the Greek case.

That said, it must be remarked that the authorities here are still hoping to banish the danger by applying a talking cure to the situation. They are a discombobulated crowd running in all directions like headless chickens at times. They keep desperately trying to apply rhetorical band-aids to a life-threatening wound. Their actions always come after the fact and after much resistance, which means that when they do come they are already overtaken by events.

Still, we will see how they face down the current sabotage of the country by striking customs officials. These latter are the vilest tribe of all-devouring beasts creeping on the face of this earth. They have been for generations exercising a ruthless stranglehold on the average citizen and business. Their systematic blackmail has rendered them fabulously rich, with the government rewarding this thuggery with outrageous bonuses in the hopes that some portion of what they extort from us might end up in the state's coffers. From what I hear the authorities are challenging the legality of the strike in court. Let's hope that they prevail.

All this makes even more imperative the strict and unbending supervision of Greek finances by the European authorities. This is of course humiliating for the average patriotic citizen here, who seems however to realize that the bitter pill is unavoidable if we are to escape the clutches of our domestic malefactors. What is in any case intolerable is to hear a member of the political party that put the last nail in the country's coffin emit shrill cries in defense of its national independence.

It is highly advisable that the Greek crisis be approached by all concerned without undue emotionality -especially of the rabble-rousing kind. Anger and resentment by the average European citizen at the trickery of successive Greek governments is understandable, but this should not degenerate into an anti-Greek hysteria with racist overtones.

The vulgar tirades of Bild Zeitung are stocking the worst reflexes of the German populace. Meanwhile in Holland the xenophobic parties of the extreme right have seized eagerly on the Greek issue, even proposing it seems a referendum for the expulsion of the country from the Eurozone. This is an ethical and political unraveling much worse than the economic one brought about by Hellenic slovenliness. This means going down the cliff of bristling national egoisms, i.e. back to Europe's calamitous past, precisely the condition that the founders of the European community had in mind to heal.

Besides, any such development would hurt drastically in economic terms the very countries of the self-disciplined North currently smarting from the irresponsibility of the lax south. For the Protestant work-ethic of Teutonic Europe is by no means innocent of blame for the current financial instability and imbalance. The "republic of the holier-than-thou" must own up to its own share, rather than wallow in its own national narcissism and the facile bashing of the "ouzo drinkers" and Club Med beach bums. I am borrowing these terms form an admirable article in yesterday's German edition of the Financial Times by Peter Ehrlich, a writer whose name is in rare and exemplary harmony with the sobriety and open-mindedness of the opinions he puts forward.

Cheap credit to sub-prime states like Greece actually fueled a consumer boom which benefited German exporting firms -not to speak of massive contracts with the Kiel shipyards to sell warships to the Hellenic navy. Greece is a market dominated by German economic might. Barring currency devaluation Germany has for a decade now resorted to wage devaluation ("wage dumping") in order to boost its competitiveness abroad. But in this manner domestic demand has been stifled, making it impossible for other countries of the Euro area to sell in the German market while furthering the one-sided orientation of the German economy towards exports. About half of German products are sold in the European common market. The Euro experiment has been a shield around weaker economies even encouraging the corruption we have seen in Greece. But it has also been an immense boon to German industry. It would be completely mindless to call for the dismantlement of this arrangement in order to satisfy one's vindictiveness against a delinquent member, since this would immediately plunge the "virtuous" segment of the EU into a dizzying downward economic spiral as well.

A responsible German government trying to overcome the initial firestorm of opposition to a Greek bailout (not least from within the ruling coalition) can and should put forward this argument from sheer economic self-interest. The cost of saving Greece from its own foolishness would be infinitely smaller than the one incurred if the country is allowed to go to the dogs. The emotional satisfaction from the latter choice would evaporate fast anyway.

Luckily, it seems that Merkel -despite her harsh tones in Brussels last week- has reached precisely this conclusion, if Die Zeit is to be believed (and the paper is categorical in this assertion). And in this manner she validates the best traditions of the pro-European German elites under both Schmidt and Kohl, who were willing to sacrifice the narrow national pride of the Germans, even giving up the mighty Deutschmark, in order to realize the noble goal of a united Europe and a European Germany. But she is also right insisting that "there are rules that must be obeyed".

At this point in time everybody's best bet, the one that also minimizes the moral hazard everybody is concerned with, is applying the screws on the Greek establishment so that the deep-cutting restructuring measures are implemented. Greece can be forced to heal herself under a regime of supervision and control explained to the people as the necessary medicine in order to get rid of the toxic past. And, as I have written before, the people to their credit seem to understand this clearly enough. There is the distinct and realistic possibility of a self-sustaining "virtuous circle" arising in due time from all this.

There will be another noisy strike this coming Wednesday, but this also will be just an exercise in face saving by the corrupt trade union leadership. With respect to the government, the current prime minister is a very slow learner, but at least he does learn something in the end, if only because he has no choice. That he professes to be a "socialist" provides him with a smokescreen of ideological legitimacy to begin chopping off the heads of the vile public sector, the many-headed Hydra that his father created. Remember that it was Nixon who could afford to travel to communist China..... In our case it takes a "socialist" to attack the Potemkin village of a bogus "welfare state" under whose cover the most outrageous regime of social inequality, discrimination and exploitation was erected. The European leaders must see that it is in their own interest to support him in this enterprise, leaning hard on him of course but at the same time promising tangible support in no equivocal terms.

There is a poisonous undertone to the debate here concerning the ruinous state of public finances. The sophisticated version of this was expressed by the prime minister himself, and it amounts to the claim that the situation is to a significant extent the fault of Europe. There is a modicum of truth to this, acknowledged by Juncker himself yesterday. It is a fact that the Europeans were not monitoring the situation and thus gave free rein to the Greek government's impulse to gobble up other nations' money to feed the ravenous greed of its hangers on. But from this to conclude that the cause of the collapse here is the weakness of the European authorities is total perversion of the truth. The waste and corruption is entirely home grown, and to its credit the government acknowledges this.

Still, the anti-European rancor, however hedged, has deleterious consequences. Firstly, it encourages the international speculators to assume that there are no financial teeth to the European declaration of solidarity, thus digging deeper the hole that the country is in. Secondly, it stokes the sentiment of perennial national victimhood emanating from the extreme right and left and finding fertile ground among the broader masses.

The worst service that one can render this society at the moment is to erect a wall of nationalist denial, under the pretense that the crisis is just an attack against "the people" by sinister foreign forces.

This, firstly, is a big fat lie. As it has emerged in the last few days these sinister foreign forces (a.k.a. Goldman Sachs) have been actively colluding with the Greek government in order to cover up the tyrannical debauchery of the Greek feudal elite. Secondly, if this notion takes root in the public mind (and it has not yet) it will simply render impossible even the mildest effort at reform. The syndrome of the "saintly nation" under attack from all points of the compass will again assert itself.

It was this mindless nationalist reflex to begin with which played a decisive role in the deterioration of public finances. For it caused the country's horrendous military spending, the highest in NATO. This is a factor that has not been touched at all by the foreign commentators. The colossal defense expenditure was fertile ground for the most insidious and vile corruption. The ministry of defense has been traditionally a worm-hole teeming with seedy contractors and middlemen trading on a generalized feeling, promoted by pseudo-journalists in their pay, of peril pressing on the country's eastern and northern borders. The result has been a military establishment loaded with useless hardware, a flabby, unwieldy squid of a thing capable only of putting on pompous shows. If, God-forbid, it ever came to an armed confrontation between Greece and Turkey, half of the country would be overrun in a matter of hours -Cyprus in 1974 is a telling precedent. Not because there are no brave and dedicated men in the ranks capable of the highest heroism. But because, as everybody knows, the whole set up is rotten to the core, geared to serving the private interests of an unscrupulous mafia an in no sense the real defense needs of the state. Lots of highly intelligent, conscientious and public minded persons can after all be found everywhere in the recesses, cracks and holes of the rickety and oppressive structure called the Greek state. But they have no impact whatsoever on its functioning.

It is highly significant that the very same "journalists" and opinion makers that were instrumental in fanning the nationalist hysteria since the disintegration of Yugoslavia in particular are the very same individuals beating the drums today against the EU and against the government which is trying, however ineffectually, to implement the restructuring that might make possible the European rescue.

An essential feature of that restructuring has to be the drastic reduction in defense spending, something which would in parallel necessitate a sincere and determined effort to resolve the differences with Turkey in the Aegean. This sincerity and determination has been lacking in official policy up to now, precisely because of the hegemony in the ignorant media and the venal political classes of the nationalist hotheads clamoring for confrontation with all and sundry. The present prime minister in times past has been one of the rare leaders pushing for enlightened accommodation in the international relations of the country, only to be ambushed by the pit-bulls of nationalism in his own party in particular. This is the moment to face these dogs down once and for all, if he summons up the requisite courage.

Yesterday's Guardian characterizes the Greek prime minister's pledges of radical reductions in the budget deficit as "mythological". Die Zeit on the other hand considers the decision to step in with financial support as already taken, the precise details of the operation being a secondary matter. The Rubicon towards a new European arrangement of common economic and, tacitly, political government has already been crossed. The two points of view are in fact complementary, for it is the Greek government's fuzziness and inability to put in practice its declared intentions that will necessitate the bailout. At any event, if the rapaciousness and incompetence of the Greek ruling classes have served as the instrument for bringing the Europeans face to face with a choice that cannot be avoided, then something supremely good will have come out of the present sorry situation.

The whole issue is at the same time embroiled in the civil war raging within the German ruling coalition, with the Free Democrats being adamantly opposed to any rescue involving German money. It is a "good" thing from the point of view for the bankrupted country ("good", that is, in the immediate sense of not going under straightaway, although whether it will be good in the real sense of leading to a complete overhaul of its feudal structures depends on the strictness of the international supervision)that Westerwelle has drawn the ire of significant segments of the establishment because of his clumsy attacks against the principle of the welfare state. If the person who considers the very idea of social solidarity as equivalent to collectivist "socialism" (like the blockheads of Republican extremism in the US who led the world to the precipice in the first place) is at the same time the chief voice against the Greek plan, then his loss of political standing will also undermine the campaign against the financial rescue.

It remains true, certainly, that the large majority of the German people are also against it -for good reason from their point of view. There is indeed something outrageous in Greeks striking against the extension of the working age to the 63d year, while Germans already must work to the age of 67. If, however, it is explained to the latter that if they do not do it now they will be forced to do it later at a much higher price, public opinion will come around. It is a straightforward choice between a lesser and a greater evil.

In point of fairness, it should be stressed that those clamoring in the streets of Athens do not represent the majority opinion. It is firmly established through repeated surveys that large majorities here also favor a radical restructuring plan, provided that it does not weigh disproportionately upon the middle and lower classes that have been bled dry by the political establishment for years on end but also wipes away the scandalous privileges of the party apparatchiks, the public sector bosses and their parasitical coterie. The rest of us are also going to suffer badly -there is no way around that. But at least we will be able to endure it with some equanimity knowing that the architects of this moral and economic disaster have been shorn of their oppressive feudal privileges (some of them hopefully ending behind bars).

A more sober assessment of the European declaration on Greece a couple of days ago may lead one to the conclusion that Merkel's position of refusing immediate financial aid was the right one after all. She did state that Greece would not stand alone, and this, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine noted, may be plausibly construed as a pledge for future last-ditch assistance when things come to a head next April.

That Greece cannot be allowed to default is, to my mind, a shared understanding behind the scenes. That would be a tsunami of colossal proportions, sweeping away the Euro and much else besides. The markets, beginning Monday, will of course call the European bluff, to see if it is a bluff. The Euro will weaken in the short term, but this is not either an unexpected or an unwanted thing, least of all by the German export-led economy. The Greek spreads will also rise.

But if, on a clear-headed reading, it becomes obvious to all players that should an endgame situation arise, then the bailout will be forthcoming, then those betting against Europe at the moment may yet get their fingers burned. This decision can wait for another month, so Merkel may have been just right in opposing Sarkozy's drive for an immediate rescue package. The Frankfurter Allgemeine again called her firm stance a "victory of reason". That's a bit saccharine. It may have been a victory for Germany's best interest, and secondarily for the best interest of everyone involved. The French view of the Euro has always been political, rather than strictly monetary -and there is something to be said about that. But this a long term proposition, involving the inevitable move in the direction of a political federation which is even right now bruited about under Rompuy's neat formula of a common "economic government". For the time being, however, the paramount goal is to secure that the Euro remains a hard currency, without it beginning to melt like Dali's clocks and watches. It is in this sense that Angela's hardness is tied up with the hardness of the common currency itself, thus performing good service for the European idea.

With respect to Greece it has to be made clear and understood beyond any doubt by the ruling class here, as well as by the people at large who have been misled and corrupted through the antics of the said criminal syndicate, that the rescue is going to be proffered under draconian conditions. There is no doubt that part of Merkel's strategy was to take the supervision of the Greek fiscal situation away from the feckless Barroso and his coterie of happy-go-lucky commissioners doing their somersaults in their ideological and nationalist clouds, and into the hands of the ECB and the IMF. This in practice means running Greece from Frankfurt (with Washington crucially involved from the sidelines). This is, as I have written before, a salutary development for the country. In the long run it is going to result in a much healthier situation here both in terms of economic growth and economic equality. But before this transpires the extremely unpleasant purgatives will have to be gulped down, so that the deadly toxins now rampant in the system are cleared away.

These toxins, let it be said, include specific individuals and groups of individuals who led -in full knowledge of what they were doing- the present descent to hell.

In his statement yesterday the Greek prime minister accepted as an unavoidable fact the ceding of "national sovereignty" in the economic area as well as the harsh restructuring measures that it implies. But he coupled this admission with a lot of grumbling about the failures of Europe herself as well as the malicious actions of "speculators". This smacks like an attempt to shift the blame for the hideous mess on to others, a standard practice by the media, the political parties and the average coffee shop philosopher here. Let us hope that this outburst was for domestic consumption alone.

A writer in today's Die Welt finds a literary parallel to Greece's current woes in Zorba and his harebrained schemes.

But this is not apt. Zorba was a heroic visionary. He was full of natural humanity and creative energy, his projects were attempts to improve the world he was living in. Of course he was reckless and everything came crushing down around his ears. But this was a noble failure.

There is nothing noble or uplifting in this society's present predicament. Zorba was defeated by the inspiring range of his fantasizing, by the greatness of his values. The present debacle here is completely devoid of values; its salient character is rather the reduction of human striving to pure vegetative passivity. The chief value in the life of this place for a generation now -if that's the word for it- has been gratifying one's cravings by all means and at the expense of those around him and the wider society. In this environment all transcendent quests of the human spirit simply went forfeit.

Foremost in this debasement were the ideals of the left, which now became simply the cover for the most sordid bilking of the public purse for private gain. All and sundry suddenly declared themselves leftists, including those that had shamelessly served the dictatorship of the colonels. And in the process those most craven in their new found party-political zeal colonized the public sector falling with exemplary mania upon the common property of the nation in an orgy of plunder.

The signal for this charge of the insatiable brigades was given in the early 80's under the administration of Andreas Papandreou, who in a memorable pronouncement set the ceiling for ....bribe-taking and the pilfering of public property (yes, you read right!) for those in the state administration at the astronomical sum of 500 million drachmas (1467351,43 euros in today's prices). This occurred under the cover of deafening paeans to the People and "anti-imperialist" oratory. Arafat was repeatedly honored guest in the country. Brezhnev at his funeral was eulogized as one of the greatest world leaders of all times. Ghadafi was praised to the skies and the false declaration was made that he was supplying us with a billion dollar credit line. And when the Soviets shot down the Korean civilian airliner in 1983, Greece, which at the time was holding the rotating presidency of the European community, actually came out in defense of this crime outraging and disgusting the nations it was supposed to represent. You get the picture....

What was to follow was totally predictable, and the first financial collapse occurred in 1985. But the country was then saved by a hefty devaluation of the currency, by running up the sovereign debt which was still at relatively low levels, and by using up the European regional funds. After a brief period of consolidation that came to an end in 1987, the spiral of generalized stealing from the public recommenced. This time it was the turn of the pension funds to be depleted. The ruin was completed during the infamous all-party government of 1989-90, when the state was practically auctioned off to the highest private briber. It was at this time that SIEMENS virtually hired the entire political class to secure its monopoly in the domestic telecommunications market. The next binge of private profiteering at the expense of society and the average citizen took shape around the tasteless farce called the Olympic games, which has left behind the rusting hulks of various useless white elephants, with the rowing complex at Marathon for example having by now turned into a stinking swamp. This rampage continued under the pseudo-conservative administration that was voted out of office last October. They had come to power promising the cleaning up of the state administration and finances and proved themselves to be worse looters than their predecessors. When they realized that the ship was now sinking fast they abandoned it like slimy rats.

This is the story in short. And it has nothing in common with the barefoot dancing of Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates on that Cretan beach.

A significant side-issue of the moral hazard involved in the current Greek situation involves Ireland. It is indeed unfair that Ireland, having undertaken significant self-correcting measures, should watch from the sidelines as the Greek elites benefit from their own deliberate delinquency.

But, if one wishes to discuss this from the moral point of view, if Ireland succeeds in reforming itself it will avoid the humiliation of external tutelage that Greece ought to submit to. It will reap the satisfaction of its own virtue, something that will enormously strengthen her claim to belong to the hard core of the European association with equal deciding rights. Whatever the outcome in Greece, on the contrary, that country will be placed in the guard house for a very long period to be watched for recidivism which is highly likely if it is let off easily now.

Ireland, you see, is a serious society and a culture highly self-conscious of its history. The Irish were tyrannized over by the British, but they had the greatness of soul to absorb what is best in the British mentality, namely the spirit of moderation and compromise and a commitment to the common good. These seeds took a long time to sprout, but they bore the fruit that are plainly visible in the northern part of the Gaelic island. That the terrorist affiliated wing of Ulster unionism and the terrorist affiliated wing of republican nationalism would form a common government there, which moreover is committed to overcoming the inevitable hurdles that keep propping up, is a splendid outcome and an inspiration to all civilized people. The Irish are ensconced in the very heart of the European idea.

If the Greek political classes had shown just a tiny fragment of this good sense with respect, let's say, to the problems in Cyprus and the Aegean those situations would have been resolved long ago to the immense benefit of the Greek people themselves who would have thus avoided paying the bloody price for the imbecilic choices of their rulers. But, again, the Irish showed a marvelous capacity of learning from their history.

Modern Greeks like to portray themselves as the paradigmatic "suffering nation" of European history, a stereotype that has been mightily reinforced by the color-blind "anti-imperialism" of the Greek left. But this hagiographic self-image, like every other aspect of official culture here, is based upon a thorough ignorance and/or distortion of the historical record it appeals to. It has no inkling of, and even if it did it would not care a bit about, the martyrdom let's say of the Irish people, let alone that of the Scots or the Poles or -God forbid- the Jews. The well-nigh annihilation of the Irish in the potato famine, for instance, is a non-event as far as the public mind is concerned. Historical injustice, like just about everything else really, is supposed to be the exclusive ownership of the modern Greek "race", thus giving it special claims and privileges vis-a-vis other peoples who must do perpetual penance for the real and imaginary sufferings inflicted on this "saintly nation". This caricature of historicity, primed by the shrill cries of vulgar and venal politicos and pseudo-journalists, is always the last court of appeal.

That the flag of the European union should be burned in the streets of Athens by corpulent farmers, whose huge belly -over which they had laboriously to bend in order to light the match- is due entirely to the subsidies of the European agricultural policy, is just a graphic illustration of this warped way of thinking. Ireland should be proud not to be in this moral bind.

But then again, as Stiglitz argues (and he of course knows better), the Irish austerity measures may not be working. If this is the case, then Ireland has a greater claim to an EU bailout compared to the third digit of the PIGS acronym -which incidentally is the only one rightly associated with that unfortunate animal. Germany, I am afraid, should also in her own interest take that in stride.

If you want to change driving from the right to the left you do it at once and completely.

If the decision has "in principle" been made to rescue Greece from bankruptcy, it had better be announced openly and frankly with the full complement of financial details so that the markets know exactly who is going to put their hand in their pockets and how. Unfortunately the statement in Brussels this afternoon seems to have fallen short of that. It was a mere declaration of political and moral support, but these days this will not buy you a cup of tea. Disappointing was also the claim that Greece itself had not asked for the disbursement of any funds and that her partners were confident that the government's austerity measures were going to work. This is just pusillanimous evasion and reinforces the image of the EU as a three-headed monster (Rompuy, Barroso, Zapatero) that cannot put one foot in front of the other.

The facts are stark and they had better be faced unequivocally: the country is insolvent and to wait till April for her next attempt to borrow on the open market will simply multiply the costs of the eventual rescue which is unavoidable anyway. Merkel is, understandably, huffing and puffing, but in this manner she is shooting herself in the foot. This is illogical for the additional reason that, as the wires report, behind the scenes the concrete details of the operation have indeed been roughly worked out. She is protesting too much in defense of a notional virginity which has been forfeited long ago. She'd better come out of the closet, and brush aside the rivalry with her liberal partners in government. That Germany will pay a significant price for the action that she will be forced to take is unavoidable. The Greek insanity will contaminate the sound economic core of the union without doubt. Germany's own spreads, ironically, will rise after the rescue: in other words the difference in interest rates between the German Bunds as they trade today and as they will trade after the deal is sealed and revealed. But if you do it now the contamination will be checked at a low level.

So one might hope that even by the end of today the European meeting will come out with something more tangible than the vague solidarity of a few hours ago. Nobody believes, and especially those living within the country, that the current political establishment here will muster the will and the competence to do anything significant in terms of economic restructuring and budgetary restraint. The gesturing and the outbursts against the speculators, that we heard from the prime minister again this afternoon, is a transparent smokescreen.

There is certainly a huge question of moral hazard -the Germans are right on that. The profligate Greek ruling classes, having wasted and stolen the European billions heaped upon them since 1981, have resorted to a desperate blackmail: either you bail us out, or we all go down. This is infuriating and unacceptable from the point of view of the German working class who has had to shoulder the immense burden of unification. But that could be and was swallowed on obvious historical grounds. What sticks to the gullet is subsidizing the obscene lifestyle of some Mediterranean "beach bums", as a writer in the London Times expresses it today. Not all Greeks are bums of this sort, obviously. But the top segment of this dysfunctional society, together with their ruthless and worthless hangers on, are exactly that, and it is indeed a shame that as T. Michas wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday they will get away with their serial criminality with a mild slap on the wrist. And yet the alternative would be a much greater catastrophe, namely the derailing of the European project. If the moral deficit of the present situation is not incurred, the prospective moral disaster of returning to a Europe of narrow national egoisms will be immeasurably greater.

But there is still something that can be done to mitigate the bending of the rules involved in the Greek rescue, namely stringent and inescapable conditions of audit and control on the actions of the Greek ruling elites that will make sure that there is no relapse to past prodigality. It would be a moral calamity immensely greater than succumbing to the present blackmail if, after a period of relief following the bailout, eyes were turned away and the authors of this shambles were allowed stealthily to return to their execrable habits and practices.

For this to be avoided, of course, the country will have to cede sovereignty in the economic field -and indeed this is the direction that things seem to be taking. This will be a boon for the average working Greek who has been bled dry under the pretext of a "social state" managed by ruthless vultures. To tie the hands of the local kleptocrats would eventually result in a much more humane, equal and just social setup -despite the shame of being forced from the outside to do the right thing that you cannot bring yourself to doing.

The necessity of eradicating the depravity of the local ruling elites for the sake of the idea of a strong united Europe will also force upon the rather flaccid and prevaricating bureaucrats in Brussels the choice of moving in the direction of political as well as economic integration -yes, let's not be coy about it, in the direction of a federal European state.

This cannot be avoided. The present half-way house of a common currency and twenty different economic and national policies cannot be continued, what with the disastrous charade of the Giscard constitutional project, the infuriating antics of the Polish twins and the latest stranglehold exerted by the Czech president on the Lisbon charter. This is a Marx brothers night at the opera situation. The Greek political personnel, incidentally, cannot complain if such a course robs them of wiggle room for their evil shenanigans for, rhetorically, they have been -believe it or not- the most vocal proponents of a united states of Europe!!! Now, under conditions that their very stupidity has brought about, they will be forced to put their money where their mouth was.

So, this is a great opportunity for Greece and for Europe to clear the Augean stables and emerge purified from the present debacle. Greece, as has been said, has only been the canary in the mine (a predicament certainly that it brought on itself). The fortunate thing is that the Greek people themselves have finally realized the gravity of their situation, acquiring consciousness of the necessity to abandon the suicidal mentalities and practices that their leaders coaxed them in in order to enrich themselves at the people's expense.

Huge majorities support the austerity measures and condemn the Neanderthal "militancy" of the blockading farmers and the civil service unions. The latter in particular have no moral standing in the eyes of the underprivileged masses, who know them for the fat-ass drones that they are. The strikes yesterday were a dud - as I can personally attest. They made for striking pictures in the international press, but they were a minority affair. That the communist party can bring ten thousand people out beating drums and paralyzing traffic downtown is no big deal. Besides, it is actually very fortunate that the unavoidable dissatisfaction with the drastic belt-tightening necessary is channeled through the communist party, rather than the looting and burning crowd of hooligans calling themselves "anarchists". The CP, despite its ideological blindness, is a conservative party, thoroughly integrated into the system, subsidized by the government budget and profiting from an extensive network of private businesses. Its adherents, moreover, are decent working people. Their protests, though misguided, are a normal sign of democratic life.

So, if one takes a long term view there is actually reason for subdued optimism. We may not live to see a much better day, but our children probably will -if everybody somehow avoids screwing up in the present juncture.

This architectural and ecological brutality spread like pestilence all over the land, and within a few years of the demolition of historical Athens the countryside as well as transformed into an heap of grotesque cement cubicles with rusting iron rods sticking out of them. Extraordinarily beautiful and culturally seminal islands like Crete and Rhodes were pulverized into amorphous heaps of concrete that could only have issued from the rotting brains of anthropoid creeps. The Cyclades were provisionally spared the worse of this barbarian rampage, although islands like Myconos, once famed for its untouched naturalness, have by now become the domain of the vulgar kleptocrats of the Athenian ruling class whose obscene villas and swimming pools paved over the hinterland. It will not be long before the remaining enclaves of natural and architectural beauty are drastically degraded.

And this has transpired, as I have noted before, in a country that trumpets the fact that it is the only one to include a clause protecting the environment in its constitution. This ties in, of course, with that other predicament previously mentioned, namely the total perversion of language in this place, where concepts have been gutted of their proper meaning and you can be certain that when used they signify the opposite of what they pretend to denote.The sanctimoniousness of official utterances is the surest sign of the actual suppression of the ethical norms that they nominally uphold. Unabashed hypocrisy is the order of the day, with those taking the lead in the subversion of all constitutional, ethical and even plain humane propriety being the most vocal in the fake defense of the values that they have done the most to destroy.

One hears ad nauseam, from official lips as well as from journalistic talking heads, the slogan that "this is the most beautiful country in the world". This would be a silly and ludicrous statement even if Greece were still unspoiled, for the beauty of all places is unique and no hierarchy of degrees can be placed on it. But under present conditions of widespread architectural blight and environmental degeneracy it amounts to more than a lie: it is an offensive violation of common decency.

So what is the cause of all this? The facts as have been laid out are true beyond the slightest doubt, but the explanation of them is a highly complex affair, with many subsidiary processes feeding into the general dynamic that brought about the horrid state of affairs we described. But, I believe that the chief reason for this retrogression into cultural aphasia is the gradual dismantlement of education, the demolition of the social edifice of Paideia both in its institutional as well as its axiological dimension. The "old education", to use that well-placed Aristophanic rubric, i.e. the state sponsored indoctrination with national values that derived from the nineteenth century and endured until the 1960's, was autocratic and filled with stereotypes. It was marred by huge gaps and deliberate omissions. But it was, nevertheless, rule-based and resulted in a functional knowledge both of the language and of the basics of history, however slanted and tainted. Underneath the official cant there was still sufficient factual awareness that enabled some functional social behavior -as well as critical thinking that challenged the ruling assumptions and official doctrines. Above all it was based upon a sound recognition of the intrinsic value of knowledge and a deep-going respect for those who had dedicated themselves to its cultivation. The students looked up to teachers that could boast of intellectual and ethical substance.

This official education was of course nationalist in a narrow and even hysterical sense, but it was not anti-European. In fact its chief claim was that European culture rested upon a Hellenic foundation and that a Hellenic-minded and Hellenic-educated person could feel at home in the mental habits and spiritual structures of Europe.

Now, these attitudes were essentially shared by those who adopted a critical stance vis-a-vis the official mode as it became progressively petrified through the years. The rebellious youth shared a commitment to intellectual cultivation and a commitment to Europe, despite the fact that they drew upon diverse strands of the European heritage in order to buttress a new and progressive version of the modern Greek identity. This was eminently true of the famed literary generation of the thirties; but it also applied to the Marxists who had derived their ideological property from Germany and France and who quite properly understood the "revolution" within a pan-European context. There was no blanket anti-westernism current in the forward-looking segments of the intellectual class. This type of mentality characterized, rather, the extremist fringes of the "national" camp -and even they were under the influence of western versions of anti-westernism, such as that of Barres for instance.

There was certainly general awareness of that "eastern drop in the Greek blood" (something after all present since immemorial antiquity), and this was now materially symbolized by the presence of the refugees. But the progressive political and economic elites of the refugees themselves were decisively oriented towards the west, something that was not canceled by the orientalism of the social habits of the refugee masses. Venizelos, the political god of the refugees, was the most determined westernizer and Seferis who introduced Anglo-Saxon modernism into literature was also of refugee stock and even of pronounced populist sensibilities (viz. his attitude towards Makrygiannis and Theophilos for instance). The drama of Greek political and spiritual life was thus enacted on a European stage, or on what understood itself as an extension thereof.

It was this fundamental orientation, this openness to a universal cultural becoming, which came to an abrupt end in the seventies and eighties of the previous century. Traditional education was dismantled, but its sound ingredients (generally acknowledged by left and right, as we said) were also thrown out. Knowledge and culture were now turned into a mere instrument to promote political ends that became all the more venal as time passed. This "closing of the mind" resulted into an utter confusion of notions and beliefs whose chief purveyors now were various nonentities and charlatans that flooded into and took control of the educational system under the pretext of "democratization" and whose only credentials were their politics, their determination to serve the party system and to benefit from this service.

The architectural and ecological wasteland now on view is the direct outcome of this decomposition of the collective consciousness of the country.

In an interview for a local architecture and design journal the ambassador of France in Athens (the darling of local feather-headed socialites and self-adoring literati with roots in the turgid depths of modern French word-mongering trying to cajole some kind of French state distinction or benefit from him) declared his admiration for the city of Athens as a vibrant hub of culture and entertainment. We will let that pass. He went on to acknowledge the ugliness of the place, which he immediately excused, however, by saying that when the refugees poured in from Asia Minor in the twenties of the previous century architectural aesthetics and urban planning were the last thing on their mind. What they needed, he said, was a just a roof over their heads procured in whatever manner possible and stitched together from whatever materials were at hand.

This is precisely wrong. This is an example of the well-meaning flattery by many foreigners of the thoughtless pretensions of the local elites, which under a hypocritical veil of "social" consciousness, do nothing but sustain long standing nationalist myths about this society.

The refugees had absolutely nothing to do with the present awfulness of a city which back in the thirties, for instance, was a charming example of European elegance and charm, what with wide boulevards, neoclassical edifices and pleasant tree-filled squares appointed with academic but expressive classically referenced statuary. The refugees did indeed build hastily the ramshackle banlieues that girded the historical center of the city, but there was nothing ugly or inhuman about their construction. Actually, their habitations exuded the spontaneous folk spirit of the peasant communities they hailed from, and it would have been a great cultural and historical boon if they had been preserved. They were filled with the spirit of human solidarity and pulsated with the elemental desire of human beings to fulfill the deep and sacred needs that define their humanity. These communities were suffused with the age-old wisdom of people who live in tune with the eternal rhythms of nature, and their peasant humbleness constituted an appropriate complement to the official neoclassical city, thus affirming in splendid visual terms the vaunted cultural continuity of the Hellenic ages which official education had reduced to dry-as-dust and hence repulsive rhetorical formulas.

Ever since, both the stately face of Athenian classicism as well as the organic, earth-rooted harmony of the refugee districts have been wantonly demolished. And at a time when all the war-ravaged cities of Europe east and west were exerting themselves to reconstitute their historical image and recover the brutally assailed past of their civilization, one of the most important historical cities of the continent was in fact systematically destroying all visible testimonies of its cultural legacy. This amounts to a despicable act of cultural vandalism, one of the most egregious ones to grace the annals of human folly.

So what brought about the present abomination, the utter ruin of all character and the reduction of this monstrous urban area to a concrete and iron cage for beings who have shed all inner feeling, tenderness, grace and historical awareness?

Joseph Stiglitz was right the other day to complain during his stay in Athens that there are some people in Brussels who are "deficit fetishists" and that they get pleasure from talking tough to Euro-zone economic miscreants. He was also right that during times of crisis it is by deficit spending that you stimulate the economy -along the lines of Obama's stimulus plan of last year.

But on both of these points he was right on the purely theoretical level -they, unfortunately, are not considerations that can be applied to the current Greek situation. Stiglitz's views on Greece seem to be refracted through the opinions of his close friend, the current prime minister. The latter seems to be of the opinion that the current dust up is due to speculators trying through rumors to take down "strong governments" (this is how he expressed it at Davos). Anybody who would count Greece among strong states unfairly facing the malign designs of evil forces is of course either lying or dreaming. But this is a notion that goes down well with the klepto-socialist diehards of the prime minister's own party, who are chiefly responsible for the present shambles not only of the economy but of the entire institutional and ethical framework of this society. It also stokes the nationalist resentment of the average man in the street who -again under decades of ideological manipulation by "leftist" pilferers and robbers of the public coffers- is more than eager blame to the present collapse on anyone but the misdeeds of the local political class. There is always good old imperialism to conjure up when anything goes awry, for this removes the responsibility to look ourselves in the mirror and to recognize the deformity of our own outlook.

With respect to Stiglitz, the Greek deficit was not run up during times of crisis. It was the result of sustained bad management for the last three decades at least, whose purpose was to provide a scandalously privileged existence to a thin layer of well connected bribers, blackmailers and outright thieves by a governing class who also in turn grew disgustingly fat in the process. Public moneys were never primarily expended for infrastructure projects but siphoned off to the private accounts of party bosses and also the parasitic consumption of their political clientele. As a result of this type of deficit spending, the streets of the country became filled with Porsches and all the latest in luxury cars and SUV's at the same time as the health service and education simply rotted away, and the portion of the people, i.e. the great majority, who had no access to outrageous public sector privileges secured by ruthless unions in cahoots with the ruling parties were strangled by taxation.

The public sector that, thus, became a bloated whale not only did not contribute anything to economic growth, but has been the most decisive factor in preventing healthy economic investment and competition through all kinds of absurd regulations whose effect was to cut the country off from the broad European environment in which it operated. The ever expanding coils of bureaucracy (that put to shame the achievements in this field of Czarist Russia for instance) was their lethal weapon in sucking the blood out of the real economy and preventing structural reform. To these people, still in effective control of the state apparatus, Stiglitz's statements are music to the ears. Not because they know or care anything about Stiglitz and his theories (he is, after all, also a cunning imperialist and a Jew to boot), but because he provides them with cover for carrying on their anti-social rampage under the guise of the "welfare state" -a state, that is, whose only purpose is, as far as they are concerned, to fill their insatiable bellies at the expense of everyone else.

In his severe article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a few days ago condemning in categorical terms any attempt of bailing out Greece as an effective dismantling of the Euro, Othmar Issing remarks that no country has benefited more from the common European currency while at the same time systematically violating all obligations and collective goals flowing from its membership.

On this he is absolutely right. The structural funds flowing in since 1981 were used for parasitic consumption, while at the same time a warped ideology of national exceptionalism took hold which gradually distanced the country from the core of values and cultural attitudes defining the European project. An egregious "closing of the Greek mind" took effect, whereby the more the material standard of living rose towards the EU average (at the expense primarily of the German taxpayer) the more rabid the anti-European and anti-Western orientation of the collective mind became. Half of the population, practically, declared themselves journalists, professors, actors, intellectuals of various itinerant sorts, all of them demanding to be supported by government funds (drawn, again, from Europe's purse and from taxing the rest of the population to death) and seeing as their lives' purpose to denigrate and to vilify the very project of integration that made their bloated and conceited existence possible.

Since the beginning of the 80's Greek governments constantly declared that they were going to Brussels to "do battle" in favor of "the people". This meant that they were going to fight to secure the continuing flow of European monies that fed the increasingly venal political class and their business cronies and arse-licking hangers on. The notorious cotton farmers of Thessaly, in particular, were gorged on subsidies from the CAP. Emboldened by the tacit and open support of the ministry of agriculture they filled their crates with stones under a thin layer of the white stuff in order to suck ever growing amounts of Brussels lucre. The result was the execrable quality of their cotton at artificially high prices, the ruining of the livelihood of third world cotton producers, and finally the destruction of the Thessaly plain itself under unconscionable use of water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, an environmental calamity of the magnitude of lake Baikal.

A byproduct of this was the effective demolition of traditional architecture in the country under a spate of phony development. Greece (which boasts of being the only country with an article in its constitution protecting the environment!) was in a couple of decades transformed into an immense eye-sore of ugly concrete, a heap of formless and soulless structures stifling the mind and even robbing you of breath. What remained of the countryside was put to the torch.

All this, mind you, occurred under the label of socialism and "anti-imperialist" militancy. And by the nineties of the previous century everybody in the country, all political formations were socialists or communists of some sort -even the extreme right declaring that in social terms they were red collectivists.

This lurch to utter depravity was given its final push by the Yugoslav conflagration. Suddenly, the journalistic and political establishment, that bunch of vulgar and corrupt ignoramuses believing in nothing else but their bellies (κακ'ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἷον: never were the words of Homer better applied) discovered Orthodoxy!!!! Our "brothers in faith" were under attack by the perfidious and scheming West. A wave of hysterical racism drowned the country. Suddenly we were back in the days of the Balkan wars, the "Macedonian struggle" commenced all over again. Even the communist party itself, shrugging away the implosion of the "fraternal regimes" in eastern Europe, took up the nationalist banner openly and unashamedly. Within the past year they have combined this with a full-blown return to Stalin.

Thus, the economic dimensions that Issing underlined are only one side of this tragic and suicidal story. The more dependent for its economic well-being the country became upon European largesse, the more rabid its hatred for Europe and the west in general, the greater the distance between its collective consciousness (molded by comic and rotten opinion makers) and the fundaments of the European mind. In fact, as education itself decomposed under a spate of "reforms" introducing ideological and party-political manipulation as the guiding principle at all levels, elementary knowledge of history, including Greek history, disappeared. Historical awareness degenerated into a cacophony of primitivist screams pouring from the air-waves, public property hijacked now with the blessing of the governments by various charlatans, bigots and dunces who had appointed themselves leaders of the nation -becoming filthy rich in the process.

In this maelstrom even the very language itself became deformed and warped in order to serve the interests of these vandal hordes, mutating into what can only be described as a spiritless patois devoid of all historical depth and aesthetic integrity. As a life-long educator, it pains me to attest that the younger generations have well-nigh forfeited not just the capacity to formulate a coherent thought, but even the ability to put together words on a line, or to voice a comprehensible utterance. It is no accident that Greece ranks last in all international surveys (PISA etc.) on education -and sinking fast. It is very traumatic to say it, but this descent into a Neanderthal-like anti-Europeanism has ipso facto been a de-Hellenization of the country. I believe it is fair to say (and again it pains me immensely to pronounce this) that there is no other place where there is less knowledge of and less love for the basics of Hellenic culture. This is a society that has deliberately severed all its vital links with the historical past that flourished in its geographic area, including the recent one. It is a broken branch on the ground. Oh, but of course: invocations of "our glorious ancestors" are rampant. But all this is a meaningless and tasteless rhetorical flourish, just as fake as the 2004 "return of the Games to their homeland" and the drug-soaked triumphs of the local athletes in them.

The more I think about it, what Taylor seems to be aiming at is that in a crushingly technological age such as ours religious feeling should not be ruled out of court. In this he is of course absolutely right. But I believe that the best way to go about it is not to stress the alleged commonalities between science and religion, but quite the contrary to bring out as sharply as possible the distinct character and function in life of the two endeavors. They ought to stand side by side and be affirmed as worthy exercises of the active self (for whomever chooses to engage in them) precisely because they fulfill fundamentally different needs, precisely because they cannot be reduced one to the other or be brought under some common denominator. The best argument in favor of the indispensability of religion vis-a-vis the stupendous strides of the scientific spirit in the past few centuries is that religiosity was not extirpated in a modern environment suffused with this-worldly rationality. Modernity was not desacralized or disenchanted in quite the thorough way that M. Weber diagnosed or feared. On the contrary, in the interstices between the regions of life pervaded and guided by means-to-ends rationality the poetic spirit still managed to thrive in new intense ways. And of course the notion of God is the supreme creation of the poetic imagination. In this region of Wittgensteinian silence which is the flip-side of "all that is the case" logicism religion and art can find all the oxygen they require to thrive.

Charles Taylor is one of today's great philosophers, and one that I am personally attached to ever since the appearance in 1975 of his great work on Hegel. My doctoral dissertation was based on the insights of that seminal interpretation, which I still think to be the most plausible account of the the thought of the German metaphysical speculator. The theistic background of Taylor's philosophy is also well-known, and to me especially suggestive and challenging.

Be that as it may, the views that he expressed a few days ago at a Cambridge philosophical conference concerning the relation between science and religion (if these views were reported correctly, for I have not yet read the actual transcript of the proceedings) do call for some comment. He was trying it seems to draw essential parallels between the two fields by pointing to the decisive function of "intuition" in both. And he brought in Kuhn's account of science in terms of "paradigm shifts" in order to argue that ultimately science itself is a matter of "faith".

With all due respect, this is just far fetched. "Intuition" in science, i.e. the sudden conception of a possible hypothesis organizing a given set of data, belongs to the context of discovery and not to the context of explanation. The hypotheses "conjured" in this way presuppose to begin with a thorough familiarity with current theory which has been antecedently tested by experiment and assented to by the scientists working in the field, and secondly it is itself meant to be subjected to these experimental tests so that it might appeal to the scientific community. The mere conjuring by itself does not provide it with any theoretic warrant whatsoever. From this point of view, science is by definition intersubjective (if one is loath to use the currently maligned term objective), which means a public enterprise that aims to establish an encompassing "paradigm" in which all current research takes place. Normal science is unitary in this way, and the anomalies that turn up and which may eventually lead to the overthrow of the theoretical consensus are the results of ordinary experimental methods. Besides there is a huge question whether the "overthrowing" we are talking about involves the complete disabling of the antecedent theoretical framework and its replacement by a new one "incommensurable" with it, or whether the superseded science is somehow incorporated into the new and more far-reaching explanatory perspective. If one considers as paradigmatic the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican cosmological vision, then she/he would be inclined towards the first interpretation. If on the contrary, the supersession of Newtonianism by Einsteinian relativity is privileged, the latter view on paradigm shift might be preferred.

The additional point to be stressed in connection with Kuhn is that he always strenuously insisted that his philosophy of science was not relativistic, because science itself was not relativistic. He may have not been able to argue this with complete success (for whatever it's worth, I personally believe that relativism does creep into his account). But the important consideration is that he did not want to be, or to be considered to be, a relativist. This aversion to relativism is to my mind an essential characteristic of the scientific temper (despite recent well-known attempts to break out of this commitment) -and precisely the point on which the most stringent and uncompromising separation between science and religion must be based.

For religion is, and we must insist that it is relativistic, in its very concept and definition. There is and can never be any unitary framework of religious faith obligatory upon all practitioners in this particular field. There cannot be, and ought not to be either, any systematic procedure of falsifying, disestablishing or overthrowing a given religious paradigm -unless one is bent upon a war of cultures. This relativistic nature of religion we must defend resolutely against religious absolutists of all stripes, who consider of course their version of faith as the only true one. Fortunately (we must hope that)reasonable and decent religious people themselves (again, of all stripes) are opposed to the absolutism of the extremist fringe of their particular religion.

For, after all, religion cannot be understood to be dealing in truth, since with respect to the matters of special interest to it no rational or empirical mode of investigation of any sort is in principle allowed. Its "truths" are just mystical intuitions, of the kind that can never be subjected to any rational test whatsoever -and hence absolutely distinct from "intuition" as it functions in the heuristics of scientific research. These mystical visions may indeed have extreme emotional significance to some individuals or groups, who because of this psychologically comforting function of their faith are moved to attach the name of truths to them. This is an idea that dominated W. James' account of religious experience. But if we are not willing to accede to an epistemology which (as in James) assigns truth value (or "cash value" as he felicitously phrased it) to a proposition merely because it is emotionally soothing and satisfying to someone, then we should reject the subjective, psychological effect on the believer as a proper "empirical test" of the theoretic adequacy of any religious hypothesis. People can and do believe in anything and everything for the purpose of finding their way in the world. But this in no way speaks to the truth content of these fancies. In his Cambridge remarks as I understand them Taylor seemed to be making some such claim: since religious belief is somehow supported by the inner experience of its holders then it qualifies as a form of truth, and in this manner it is epistemologically indistinguishable from scientific theory. I sincerely hope I have misunderstood. But any such utterance, even in an oblique and heavily hedged form, would be a philosophical monstrosity.

The kind of experience that a scientific hypothesis is based upon is qualitatively distinct from psychological dispositions and feelings, of its proponent or any other individual. It is established by public experimental procedures that allow access to it to all concerned and is then accepted (or rejected) on the basis of external, intersubjectively available criteria and outcomes. Religious "truth", on the contrary,is absolutely inner and non-accessible to intrusive strangers, articulated in terms of private meanings and even a private language, the ineffable expressivism of mystic transport. This is tantamount to saying that it is fundamentally inexpressible, and anybody trying to render it in terms of scientific rationalism or empiricism is doing violence to its very nature.

The immense value of religious faith resides precisely in the fact that it safeguards the inviolability of an inner sanctum, a province of the interior self which is the the most precious possession of a human being precisely in the present day and age. But of course Taylor has written the definitive account of that inalienable and irreducible interiority.

For the rest, if we take the issue from the other end, the reduction of science to a variety of religious faith is the cherished enterprise of post-modernist obscurantism, this wrong-headed enterprise of destroying meaning and meaningfulness in existence altogether, this bathetic insistence on the wild power of the irrational to which it is proposed we must succumb. Taylor certainly is not a philosopher of this stripe.