What happened to Europe?

[TheMeInTeam]

The Mongol conquests of the 13th century ravaged..

Hmm wait, I don't know what you're talking about.

Oh true, this makes some sense if you think in terms of technological progression in pre vs post colonial times. It's hard to keep up when masses of your population dies to disease and you're slaughtered wholesale.

But for stuff happening in the last 20 years I'll need a refresher on exactly what metrics we're supposedly using here.

 

[Yeekim]

it should not be forgotten how Germany (their gov and parts of the population/low media) started this whole mess with their beyond just terrible handling of the debt situation.

Hear hear!
The British handling of a similar issue in 1850 was decidedly superior.

 

[innonimatu]

Hear hear!
The British handling of a similar issue in 1850 was decidedly superior.

I miss the days when power was wielded openly with gunboats sailing into the harbor. We all know that even now the glove comes off when too much resistance to the stealth approach is met. The end result was the same but at least people were not treated as idiots.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I miss the days when power was wielded openly with gunboats sailing into the harbor. We all know that even now the glove comes off when too much resistance to the stealth approach is met. The end result was the same but at least people were not treated as idiots.

I miss the days when Greece was spending all its Marshall plan money on weddings and parties. Then the US stepped straight in and control Greece.
The US Media reported Greece, being corrupt, not paying taxes and cornisim. Oh Greece how times have not changed.

Greece Has a Long History of Debt and Bankruptcy

nothing outshines the bizarre economic traditions that the small Balkan country has managed to establish since its inception. For instance, it has a long-standing habit of borrowing vast sums of money with painfully large interest rates

famous " Marshall Plan." US officials watched on for several months as their finances were spent on high society functions and weddings, while the Communists strengthened, until they finally installed a tightly-controlled administration.

1950s, American correspondents in Athens spoke of about 5,000 members of the Greek upper class who were basically siphoning off the country's international financing
"cries all day for their fatherland, but does not deign to pay taxes and maintains the entirety of their deepest in New York, Switzerland,

continued the custom of lending out money with high interest rates and distributing it among a the political ruling class and the military machine

shipping illegal workers from Asia directly into construction sites, from which they didn't leave until after the completion of the Olympic stadiums, didn't seem to bother anyone particularly; all everyone cared about was not having to see those immigrants in public spaces.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's claim that he would make German Chancellor Angela Merkel "an offer she can't refuse"

It's a society that seems ready to surrender to any sort of a miracle.

https://www.vice.com/read/the-history-of-greek-debt-and-bankruptcy-8876

 

[Bootstoots]

I miss the days when power was wielded openly with gunboats sailing into the harbor. We all know that even now the glove comes off when too much resistance to the stealth approach is met. The end result was the same but at least people were not treated as idiots.

Still, it seems likely that this velvet-glove approach does greatly reduce the global casualty rate due to war, versus just wielding force as a first resort. Now a disobeying country is usually first approached through diplomatic channels, then some sort of economic measures are taken (sanctions, closing down the banking system, denying use of payments systems), then color revolutions are attempted, then there's a limited airstrike campaign and/or a coup. Only after all that would there be a full-scale war, and usually not even then because they don't really make economic sense, so a proxy is used instead if available.

This doesn't quite apply in all cases (notably the Iraq War, when idiots decided to dispense with the usual protocols and just invade), but in general I'd argue it's a cleaner, friendlier way of wielding global power. And it has the added advantage of making most people in the imperial core and its close allies not even think they're in an imperial system at all, so they wouldn't even think to question it.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Hear hear!
The British handling of a similar issue in 1850 1843 was decidedly superior.

Fixed for Eesti
I'd imagine that 2019 the War of PAY DEBT will be when Germany occupies Athens to ensure the payment of Greek Debt.
EDIT: Also time for Greece to have a German king Queen again.

1843 episode, where the British and French occupied Piraeus (the port outside Athens) to ensure payment on the old loan

 

[Yeekim]

The end result was the same

Was it? I was under the impression that the naval blockade proved pretty efficient in collecting levies as debt repayment...

Fixed for Eesti

Thank you. I'm losing track of all the times the British and/or French had to occupy Piraeus...

 

[innonimatu]

You can't squeeze blood from a rock.

 

[BvBPL]

But you can get elected on a platform of promising to.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You can't squeeze blood from a rock.

Squeeze ? Greece has only sold about €3.5bn of assets in about 6 years.
Which is ironic given that €5bn per year is uncollected tax revenue / tax fraud.

Stop squeezing a Rock and start squeezing the Rich gold vein that has not been touched. That or let Greece default for the 9th time and be done with it.
Germany should just give a sweetened Grexit deal. Greece then then control its own financial future or 10th default whichever.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's a good example of how wealth trickles upwards under a gold standard. If you cannot pay your debts, your assets are bid on based on the ease of getting value out of them. So, while the books are being rebalanced, the ownership of production goes upward.

And because there's never enough gold to pay debts, a timely holding of one's fortune can cause cascading bankruptcies.

 

[FriendlyFire]

It's a good example of how wealth trickles upwards under a gold standard. If you cannot pay your debts, your assets are bid on based on the ease of getting value out of them. So, while the books are being rebalanced, the ownership of production goes upward.

And because there's never enough gold to pay debts, a timely holding of one's fortune can cause cascading bankruptcies.

That is so true.
So Odd that even now Greece resist the very reforms it so badly needs to join with the modern, industrialized Europe that had left it behind. Greece remains so backwards in so many ways.

Greece is a victim of its own cronyism and corruption

no trust on which to build such institutions or any long-term plan for the redistribution of resources. Greece remained a deeply hierarchical society

healed in the 1980s, as the Socialist party (PaSoK) won power and the country joined the European Union. Its leader, Andreas Papandreou, remained highly confrontational and embarked on a programme of public spending and of hiring his supporters to public sector jobs, to redress “historic injustices”

populist spending and cronyism became the norm for both main parties

Why didn’t the Greeks resist this slide into cronyism and corruption? In the late 1980s there was a movement to open up radio and television, until then a state monopoly. Under the pretext of “civil disobedience” wealthy businessmen set up seven television channels. There was no competition

virtually without regulation or any safeguards of journalistic independence. They operate at the mercy of the owners who fund them and who use them to support their wider interests (in the oil business, real estate, banking, construction or shipping

Refused to destroy the privileges of the special interests that kept them in power. The government of Syriza also resists reform, ostensibly because of hostility to “capitalism”, but in reality because most special interests have switched their allegiance to Syriza as the real anti-reform party and the vehicle of a new cronyism. Hence, Syriza has done nothing to regulate the media oligarchs, open up the economy, or introduce meritocracy in the civil service

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ion=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click

 

[MilitantSecular]

European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech?
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censorship
In June 2016, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone's Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called "Sweden's Migrant Rape Epidemic." In an editorial, Gatestone wrote:"After enormous grassroots pressure from Gatestone's readers, the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook's heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid's account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid's video more attention."Facebook and the EU have backed down — for now. But they're deadly serious about stopping ideas they don't like. They'll be back."

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Inb4 locked!

 

[Kaitzilla]

European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech?
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censorship
In June 2016, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone's Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called "Sweden's Migrant Rape Epidemic." In an editorial, Gatestone wrote:"After enormous grassroots pressure from Gatestone's readers, the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook's heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid's account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid's video more attention."Facebook and the EU have backed down — for now. But they're deadly serious about stopping ideas they don't like. They'll be back."

They already jail and fine people for saying/writing certain things.
Hardly a surprise that they are extending it into the internet.

The government setting a "code of conduct" for the internet was the next logical step after they saw how easily the IT companies agreed to help spy on us and be silenced with gag orders and non-disclosure agreements.

 

[Ironsided]

Back they will be... Europe... It's the final countdown...

 

[Hygro]

Then we colonized the place

This explains a lot.

Probably back then americans only saw and heard liberal and social democratic europeans, but now the conservatives have gotten a much larger voice.

And to some extent it's been the opposite in America.

This explains a lot.

that was before nations like Sweden started to implode

Sweden's Immigration Crisis and Political Correctness Problem

This does not.

 

[Bootstoots]

This does not.

Backlash against Muslim immigration is definitely a huge factor in why Europe seems less cool today than it did during the Bush years.

 

[Ironsided]

Let’s just be perfectly clear on this one point: Europe is at least fifteen times cooler than the US could ever hope to become.

And the Muslim immigration is a direct cause of the Bush years.

 

[Kyriakos]

Let’s just be perfectly clear on this one point: Europe is at least fifteen times cooler than the US could ever hope to become.

And the Muslim immigration is a direct cause of the Bush years.

Not all of Europe. Many of the countries that only joined in 2004 are rather way too much on the fascist side of things. Which means the current EU barely resembles what it supposedly was set up to be.