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.