Greece:What to Do with Missed the Mark Politics of Coalition Partners?

By Con George-Kotzabasis May 3, 2013

The Samaras’ Government, like Atlas on his back, is carrying and attempting to transform and move Greece’s awesome heavy burden of unprecedented economic insolvency, since the ending of the Second-World-War, onto the stage of economic recovery and development. By succeeding in this most difficult enterprise it will also justify the positive, against the negative, economic remedies formulated in the second Memorandum by the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the so called Troika, for the purpose of saving Greece from economic catastrophe, and thus simultaneously enhance the credibility, and indeed, the survival of the EU as an institution of crucial influence and guidance in world affairs.

In this call to national salvation three politically and ideologically disparate parties 0f New Democracy, Pasok, (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) and the Democratic Left (Demar) decided to form a coalition government whose main goal was to keep Greece within the European Union and salvage the country, with the financial help of the latter, from economic bankruptcy that would have devastated the standard of living of the major part of the population and would have brought a proud nation to the status of indigence and economic despair for at least a generation. The two leaders, of Pasok and Demar, Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis, respectively, seeing the prodigious dangers the country was facing, raised their height to these dire circumstances and wisely decided to stand hand in hand with an ideological opponent, that is, the liberal conservative party of New Democracy and its leader Antonis Samaras, for the purpose of saving Greece from this imminent catastrophe. Hence the two leaders of the left put their ideological reputation and the future viability, and, indeed, the existence of their parties at immense risk by their decision to support a government led by Samaras, their erstwhile conservative opponent, and tie themselves and their parties to the fortunes of the latter, that is, whether the Samaras’ government will succeed or not in pulling the country out of the crisis and start the economic development that is so vital in overcoming the terrifying economic difficulties that Greece countenances at the moment.

There are grounds to make one believe that Greece economically and politically might be at a turning point. The Samaras government after succeeding in convincing its European partners, in exceedingly difficult negotiations, to provide the funds Greece needed, to ignite its economy and place the country on the path of development, under less onerous terms of the bailout than the initial ones the Europeans were demanding. This was a great success and a great achievement of the government and demonstrating at the same time its virtuoso skills in the art of negotiations.

The government announced last month that it had beat its budget targets for 2012. Finance Minister Stournaras claimed that the government was close to achieving a primary surplus—the budget surplus before taking into account payments on the debt—this year that would deliver, according to the mutual agreement of the parties, a further package of help from the Euro-zone.  Employment statistics also showed, that within the span of the last two months the number of workers hired exceeded by nearly nine thousand the number of workers dismissed for the first time since the crisis. Furthermore, the recapitalization of the banks was on track and bound to be consummated in the next few weeks and the spigots of liquidity were therefore ready to be opened that would provide the private sector the funds for investment. Last week, the president of the National Bank stated that levels of liquidity are progressively established and 10 billion Euros could flow into the real economy. And already 50% of one thousand of small and large private enterprises announced that they were preparing to start investing within the current year. The internationally renowned telecommunications company Nokia is planning to establish a branch in Athens that would employ hundreds of highly skilled technicians and could become a magnet that would attract other foreign corporate giants to the country and thus by their presence would provide a continuous economic confidence for the country’s future. The Task Force of the European Commission last week issued favourable reports that the Greek economy was about to be re-ignited although it warned the government that small businesses had been dried of funds and their future operations were at risk. Also the credit ratings agency Moody’s estimated that Greece would have a positive rate of growth in 2014, after five years of negative growth.

Thus we see that there are ample encouraging signs that Greece might be at the crucial point of overcoming the crisis. It is most important therefore that the two parties, Pasok and Demar, that support the Samaras government, must first take note of these auspicious indices and that the current measures of the government are putting the country on the axis of economic development, and second, must not jeopardise this favourable situation by rigidly sticking to their parties position on other issues, such as labor relations and on the restructuring of the public sector, which are contrary to the overall current policy of the government and could endanger the economic progress the latter is making in overcoming the crisis.

The coalition partners must become fully aware that their political viability is tied up not with the sacred ideological position these parties hold on a variety of issues, contra the neo-liberal position of New Democracy, and pushing these toward their consummation, at this critical juncture whose primary goal is the salvation of the country, is a most imprudent diversion from the main goal. On the contrary, their political future is tied up with the success of the Samaras government in pulling the country out of the crisis. The electorate will not remember them and will not elect them for being pure to their ideological position but for their pragmatic support of a neo-liberal government that saved Greece from economic oblivion and mass poverty. In the event the Samaras administration fails in this complex immensely difficult and great task would likewise totally discredit and everlastingly condemn and cast to political oblivion both Pasok and Demar for their support of this failed government, no matter how favorable the former have been on other minor issues, in comparison to the major issue, that are dear to the hearts of the many. Their responsibility to the country and to themselves therefore lies in their pragmatic assessment of the policies of the government beyond ideology as to whether they are better placed to extricate the country from the crisis.

It is for this reason that in this process of the Renaissance of Greece, under the wise and strong leadership of Antonis Samaras, the cohesion of these partners in the salvation of the country is of unaccountable importance. Thus for Pasok and Demar not to miss the mark is to realize that the failure or success, in this uniquely historical venture of saving Greece, will determine their political viability in the future and not their ideological hues on secondary issues.

I rest on my oars:your turn now

The Fallacy of Moral Equivalence between Christian and Muslim Fanatics

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathisers (M.E.) with the doctrine in other lands constitute one united threat which must be met by force”. Edmund Burke, (Writing on the French revolution, and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.)

In a battle between flaming (M.E.) fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win? Irshad Manji Muslim writer

The above two quotes apply to all the naive simpletons of this thread who search in vain for moderate Muslims in a religion that is irreversibly replete with hate against all infidels. And the comparison of moral equivalence they attempt to make between Christian and Islamist fanatics shows their prodigious ignorance of history and that they are fugitives from reality. Christianity never threatened another civilization with fanatical suicide-bombers. It’s Islam that does so in an era of nuclear weapons and WMD. It’s this lethality which distinguishes Muslim fanatics from Christian fanatics and the great dangers that the former carry and hide around their midriffs which are incomparable.

The hackneyed terms of ‘Islamophobes’and ‘Muslim haters’ that the Islam sympathisers use to discredit their opponents is a defence reaction on their part for their inveterate doltishness and inanity which bars them from the course of reason.

The Fallibility of Technocrats no Reason to Debunk them

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have.” Henry James

Science has been built on a “mountain” of errors. No correct policy has arisen—like Athena out of Zeus’s head—from an immaculate conception but from a compilation of corrected mistakes. The task of a wise, imaginative, and intrepid technocrat is not to despair before mistakes, like Professor Yanis Varoufakis, and be pessimistic about the future, but to overcome them. This is the task and challenge of both Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos, whom both professor Varoufakis disparages, as well as, in the case of Greece, of the statesman, Antonis Samaras. But obviously, it is not the task that can be consummated by Professor Varoufakis. Although one must admit that in his Modest Proposal, (MP) with Jonathan Swift’s title, co-authored with Stuart Holland, surprisingly, he takes a positive and optimistic view how to resolve the European crisis. Regrettably, however, economically and politically the MP was found to be flawed and it was demolished by Andreas Koutras’s sharp and acute critique.

 

In the Thunderous Sky of Greece a Lightning Bolt of Creative Destruction is about to Strike the Country

By Con George-Kotzabasis April 27, 2012
History has shown that at critical moments, in countries of advanced and high culture, men of stupendous ability, imagination, foresight, and fortitude, sprang, like phoenixes from the ashes, to salvage their countries from mortal threats. Themistocles at the battle of Salamis that saved Greece from the barbarian Persian invasion, is one example, the other is Charles Martel, who at the battle of Poitiers stopped the barbarian Muslim invasion from conquering Europe. In our modern contemporaneous times, Greece, on the verge of being devoured and crashed by the ‘hungry fangs’ of default and economic poverty, is just as promptly to be saved by a modern-day Periclean statesman, Antonis Samaras.

In the early 1980’s, with the advent of Andreas Papandreou’s socialist government in power, which proved to be the destructive force that brought Greece to its present catastrophe, that immediately started implementing the serial economic crime of a policy of deficits, the country entered the vicious circle of government spending without economic development. By the early 90’s it was glaringly clear that the debt of the country was reaching astronomical heights that would lead it to the precipice of default and bankruptcy. In 1994, Constantinos Mitsotakis, the former prime minister of Greece, in a prophetic speech in Parliament, predicted that the economically crass and thoughtless policies of Pasok would send Greece as a mendicant to the International Monetary Fund to spare it from pauperism. Andreas Papandreou himself was shocked when at a sober moment glanced at the unfathomable debt that the country was in, as a result of his dirigisme economic policies. It was in his presence when his minister of finance Kostas Simitis remarked, in an accusatory and pungent phrase, that this was “the revenge of the economy.”

The false prosperity that had engulfed Greece turned a sizable part of its population to indulge in the charms and seductions of dolce vita at the expense of government largesse. A whole generation of Greeks had been spoiled and became kaloperasakides (the easy life of prodigally good-timers) under the perpetual munificence of the State. In such a social situation the New Democracy party, though imbued with the precepts of The Austrian School of economics versus Keynesianism, and realising, as its leader Constantinos Mitsotakis did, that the country was approaching in a rapid pace the edge of insolvency, had its hands politically manacled and could not implement decisively and with celerity, and with the necessary degree required, policies of economic restraint that would have prevented the transformation of Greece into a mendicant status, since there did not exist even a small constituency on the political landscape of Greece that would contemplate, least of all accept, policies of austerity. The Greeks had been ‘pathologically’ conditioned to the ‘benefits’ accruing from big government, introduced by Andreas Papandreou, and any attempt to small government by any party in power or any opposition propagating such an idea, could neither hold or win government. Who would give up the ‘free tans’ in sunny Greece that so profusely and generously the State was providing? And who would give up the cushy and loafing jobs in the public sector that the party boys and girls of Pasok and New Democracy were enjoying and relishing? This is the point from which the economic tragedy of Greece had started and would continue to its tragic end.

Thirty years of frivolous public spending brought debt-to-GDP ratio of 120%. Since October 2009 when the son of Andreas Papandreou, George, became prime minister and implemented measures of severe austerity as directed from Brussels in the first memorandum, debt reached 168% of GDP. With the continued recession of the country for the fifth year, Greece lost 16%–18% of its GDP since 2009.
From early 2010 the Opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, few months after his election as leader of the New Democracy party, was warning the Papandreou government of the danger that the austerity measures without economic recovery would lead the country into recession. But his was a lone voice in the wilderness. And for his bold and insightful decision to oppose and vote against the first memorandum replete with the leaden heaviness of austerity that would sink the Greek economy as it did, he was vehemently reprimanded both from within and outside the country. The Economist magazine severely criticised him for his stand against the memorandum but only to lament its critique two years later and concede that Samaras was right. Likewise, Chancellor Merkel and many European ministers with whom Samaras had quarrelled and pointed out to them that austerity measures without rekindling the economy would not resolve Greece’s problem but would make it more abstruse and harder to crack. It took two years for the top brains of Europe to realize that the austerity pills that they were forcing into Greece’s mouth to remedy its ills would have the effect of poisoning its body. (In two years of the severe austerity of the Memorandum, as we indicated above, Greece increased its debt to GDP by a great amount and lost a substantial part of its Gross Domestic Product as enterprises closed and unemployment ravaged the country.) And in turn, like The Economist, admitting that Samaras had won the argument, as all Europeans now are calling for economic recovery and development, supplemented by austerity measures that are necessary, as the way to restore a country’s economic strength.

The May 6 Elections of Greece Crucial for the Future of the Country

The impending election that has been called by the interim government of Lucas Papademos for May 6 is of momentous significance for the future course of the country. Greeks will be called to be partisans of the hard climb to the peak of Mt Olympus from where the sun of hope will rise once again over Greece or be partisans to a free fall in a long twilight of despair. The first is the thunderous call of the New Democracy Party under the Gulliverian and imaginative political leadership of Antonis Samaras, and the second is the deathlike mute call of a congeries of small parties from the left and the right led by Lilliputian politicians. These politically ‘pigmy’ parties, among which is the Communist Party, have no policies of rescuing Greece from its woes, except policies that would lead to the exiting from the European Union and return to the drachma that would lead in turn to the absolute poverty of the country, deliberately drop the curtain on all hope on Greece as their sole aim is to sordidly profit politically by their investment in hopelessness.

The socialist party, Pasok, the main opponent of New Democracy, although on the side of hope, even under the new leadership of Evangelos Venizelos, is totally discredited, as it has been the party that led Greece to its present catastrophe by a bout of unbelievable and unprecedented economic and political mistakes, that Venizelos himself was involved in and responsible, during the last two years that was in government. Moreover, the latest decision of the High Court of Greece to apprehend and charge a former luminary of Pasok and right-hand man of Andreas Papandreou, the founding father of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, Akes Tsohatzopoulos, his wife and daughter, and some of his relatives, with bribery and corruption and with being the receiver and beneficiary of millions of dollars as paid commissions, during his tenure as minister of defence, from German and Russian companies to which he had authorized major assignments and projects of his department, has indelibly marked Pasok as venally corrupt; particularly when its present leader Venizelos, at the initial investigations of Tsohatzopoulos, with the stentorian voice of the lawyer, that he is, was defending and exculpating from any knave dealings, and with the usual catch-all alibi of the typical politician, that the “accusation against Tsohatzopoulos was politically motivated.” Hence, inconceivable political incompetence and culpability, and unfathomable corruption on the part of Pasok, will be two major themes that will dominate the elections and which will ineluctably lead to new lows in the polls for the socialists.

In this critical economic and political setting that the country is in and the looming threat of the breaking of social cohesion, Samaras is asking the Greek people to give New Democracy the “auto-dynamism,” by a majority of votes in the elections, so he can have his hands untied to govern the country with decisiveness and clear uncompromised policies that would put Greece on the trajectory of economic recovery and development. He argues cogently, that in the present political situation of Greece when consensus about the necessary economic policies among parties of how to regenerate the economy of the country is absent, a coalition government–which is the designated position of Pasok and according to the polls at this moment the desire of a majority of the electorate–will be politically impracticable, and more importantly, would not drag out the country from its peril but would further engulf it into profounder depths; as one could not govern effectively a country in a crisis and gradually bring it out of it by being compelled to make compromises to one’s political partners, but only by a well-defined plan and decisive and prompt action to implement it without compromises, by a leader who has a strong mandate from the electorate.

Samaras believes, and reasonably hopes with the confidence of a statesman, that during the electoral period and closer to election date, there will be a dramatic shift of voters toward polarized positions, once the crucial issues of the country are spelled out clearly and without lies to the people by New Democracy and by foreshadowing the practical economic policies backed by real numbers that would put Greece on the track of economic recovery, there is a great chance that the majority of Greeks will give New Democracy a strong mandate to govern on its own for the benefit of all Greeks and for the salvation of the country.

Samaras contended long ago, that only through a clear strong authorization given to him by a majority of the people he would be able to radically change Greece. For real economic development entails not only good policies and incentives but a transformation in the views and customs of people toward such development. He puts great emphasis on the value of human capital and entrepreneurship as the prerequisites for the economic recovery of the country. That is why he has promised to re-legitimize private enterprise and effort that for many years now has been delegitimized in the country by communist-led unions, to whom profit has been, as always, the devil-incarnate of the capitalist free market.

The present high unemployment of more than 20% Samaras contends, will not be reduced by mere lower labour costs which already have been decreased by 15% in the private sector while the tax burden on the latter has increased by 50% and energy costs by 450%. Even if Greeks worked for free no one would hire them with such high taxes and energy costs. Samaras in his Zappeio III speech few days ago declared that he would cut corporate tax to a flat rate of 15%, sharply cut pay-roll tax, lower personal income-tax to 32% maximum, and reduce taxes substantially on fuel and tourism. This would harden rampant tax evasion and would unleash the creativity of the private sector and hence commence the gradual reduction in unemployment. He also announced, that he would increase the lowest pensions to 700 euros per month–that were reduced drastically by the second Memorandum under the austerity measures–and would increase the endowment of families with many children which would not only correct an injustice inflicted upon these two weak sections of society but would also have favourable economic consequence as they would increase consumer demand, which is so important in rekindling the economy, as both recipients of this government assistance spend their money in consumer goods. He would do these two things without increasing public expenditure and hence worsening the deficit, but by cutting government wastage that is so massive and profligate in the State’s spending. Further, he will provide incentives to private enterprise in areas where Greece has almost unchallengeable comparative advantage, i.e., in the merchant marine sector, ship building, and tourism; and in the production and merchandise of olive oil and other agricultural goods by the local producers themselves, not by foreign ones as is the case presently, whose development in all the above sectors will vitally affect the resurgence of the economy. He also proposes to provide incentives to entrepreneurs to exploit the rich mineral resources of the country and to give priority to find and tap the vast natural gas deposits under the Aegean Sea, by declaring the Greek AOZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) that could transform the export dynamic of Greece. He intends further, to reverse the present dryness of liquidity in the country by proffering amnesty from any legal penalties to those who withdrew their cash holdings from Greek banks during the height of the crisis and deposited them overseas once they bring them back to the country; and also by immediately paying back the 6.5 billion euros that the government owes to domestic enterprises; these two measures would increase the liquidity of the banks and hence their ability to provide loans to the private sector, especially to small businesses, that are the backbone of the country’s economy. Moreover, the re-capitalization of the banks, Samaras argues, will enable them to borrow funds at low interest rates from the European Central Bank, that were set up by it last December, which would be used to put Greece on the track of recovery and economic development.

It is by this method of supply-side economics, as that wunderkind Alders Borg the Swedish Finance Minister illustrated for his own country that Greece’s economy will rise again. The necessary austerity measures stipulated in the new Memorandum that Greece has to implement must be accompanied by the rejuvenated “animal spirits” of private enterprise. Samaras, consistently has been saying for the last two years that “we need a recovery to jump-start the economy,” and in conditions of recession austerity measures cannot stimulate the economy but on the contrary sink it deeper into stagnation.

The vision and plan of Samaras is to plant radical changes on the whole landscape of Greece. In his Zappeio speech he adumbrates constitutional changes that would separate the three branches of government the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary and thus prevent a member of parliament from being a minister, which has been in the past a malignant link of political corruption and has bestowed ‘asylum’ to members of parliament for their malfeasances. He pledges to bring changes to educational institutions that would reclaim the proud heritage of Greece that tragically has been eroded by the cultural relativists of a left coterie of pseudo-intellectuals and led to the disconnection of many young Greeks from their great cultural origins. He also promises to take drastic measures against illegal migrants, whom he calls “unarmed invaders” of Greece that under the soft immigration policies of Pasok they have occupied the main centres of cities, and remove them to provincial hostels until their eventual expulsion. Another important commitment of Samaras is to transform the bon vivant ethos of many Greeks, which up till now its tab has been picked up by the government, into a creatively productive one. On the new green tree planted by New Democracy, the singing cicadas will be replaced by fecund working bees. As Samaras is fully aware that sustainable economic development cannot be accomplished without transformative changes in the thinking and the mores of the people, especially of the younger generation.

Samaras is “framed in the prodigality of nature,” to quote Shakespeare. He is endowed charismatically both with a high intellect and remarkable moral strength along with the will and determination—all the stuff out of which statesmen are made–to change all things in Greece. But whether this lightning bolt of creative destruction will strike Greece or not depends on the strong mandate that he needs from the people. If Greeks do not fail, at this critical juncture, from fulfilling their historical duty to render to New Democracy a majority of seats in Parliament, then Antonis Samaras, in turn, will consummate the cultural political and economic Renaissance of Greece.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

Gareth Evan’s Doctrine of Bonhomie in International Affairs

By Con George-Kotzabasis—January 24, 2012

Gareth Evans the former minister of Foreign Affairs and presently Chancellor of the National University in Canberra, in an article published in The Australian, on December 26, 2011, under the title Peaceful Way in a World of Grey, argues that a confrontational approach is rarely the best means of tackling serious issues. He contends “that Manichaean good vs evil typecasting, to which George W. Bush and Tony Blair were famously prone…carries two big risks for international policymakers.” The first risk is that such thinking restricts the options of dealing optimally “with those who are cast as irredeemably evil,” and the second is by seen the world By Con George-Kotzabasis—January 24, 2012

Gareth Evans the former minister of Foreign Affairs and presently Chancellor of the National University in Canberra, in an article published in The Australian, on December 26, 2011, under the title Peaceful Way in a World of Grey, argues that a confrontational approach is rarely the best means of tackling serious issues. He contends “that Manichaean good vs evil typecasting, to which George W. Bush and Tony Blair were famously prone…carries two big risks for international policymakers.” The first risk is that such thinking restricts the options of dealing optimally “with those who are cast as irredeemably evil,” and the second is by seen the world in “black-and-white terms” engenders “greater public cynicism, thereby making ideals-based policymaking even harder.” To strengthen these two points he uses the “debacle,” according to him, “of the US-led invasion of Iraq…should have taught us the peril of talking only through the barrel of a gun to those whose behaviour disgusts us” (M.E.), while conceding that “sometimes threats to civilian population will be so acute as to make coercive military intervention the only option, ( M.E.) as with Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya.” Conversely, as a non-confrontational smart benign diplomacy he uses his own negotiations “with the genocidal butchers of the Khmer Rouse,” that were “acutely troubling, personally and politically, for those of us involved,” but which “secured a lasting peace in Cambodia.” He caps his argument by saying that one must see the world beyond the “two dimensions, economic and geostrategic,” and add a third: “every country’s interest in being, and being seen to be, a good international citizen.” (M.E.)

This is not Fukyama’s The End of History but the re-writing of history, and distorting it to boot, on a grand scale. Evans by a divinely made eraser rubs out all evil from the pages of history. But let us respond to his points in sequence. It is obviously true that for a policymaker to see the world in black-and-white terms would be utterly wrong. But likewise, to see the world solely in grey colours without the colour of blackness casting its evil shadow in most human affairs is to paint the world in the colours of wishful thinking. The task of statesmanship is to see the world not with the eyes of the ‘good citizen’ but with the piercing eyes of the political scientist who perceives the nucleus of evil that potentially exists in all human action motivated by ideology or extra mundane religious beliefs. It is to identify and separate the irreconcilable from the inconsolable enemy and act commensurably to the dangers issuing from these two substantially different foes.

The attacks on 9/11 were not the attacks of “good international citizens” but of evil ones driven by eschatological divinely directed goals. Bush and Blair promptly and insightfully recognized that they were facing a deadly irreconcilable enemy that could not be mollified by any ‘benevolent’ actions they could take toward him—they were already depicted by this foe as “Great Satans”—but had to be completely defeated in the battlefield. Further, astute strategy would not allow such an irreconcilable foe to become stronger but to defeat him while he was still weak and hence at less expense in human loses and materiel. The invasion of Iraq had this aim, to prevent the nexus of fanatic terrorists with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear ones supplied deliberately or inadvertently by rogue states rigidly belligerent against America and generally the West. In the aftermath of 9/11 no statesman could underestimate the possibility of such a great threat consummated by nuclear weapons that would annihilate their people. As the success of one such attack against a western metropolis would be the ultimate incentive for Alahu Akbar terrorists to become serial users of WMD and nuclear ones against the West and its Great Satan America. And this can be illustrated comparatively and plainly by the success of the first car bomb that brought in its wake a succession of innumerable car bombs used by the terrorists against their enemies.

Indubitably, the invasion of Iraq would have been a “debacle,” due to serious tactical errors American strategists committed during the initial stages of the occupation, such as the disbanding of the Iraqi army that fuelled the yet to come insurgency, if it was not for the Surge that under the savvy new strategy implemented by General Petraeus, had not turned a potential defeat into real victory. A victory, moreover, that planted the seeds of democracy in Iraq and by establishing a nascent democratic state there soon became the catalyst that disseminated the ethos of freedom and democracy among the masses in the region and the great potential this entails for all the countries in captivity to brutal and authoritarian regimes. And one must bear in mind that the Arab Spring is the legitimate offspring of the American gate crashing of the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein and the transplanting of democracy in Iraq made in the U.S. However, one must not be unaware of the great dangers that could lie in wait in this transformation of democracy among those countries whose peoples in considerable numbers are imbued with the religious fervour of Islam, that Islamists, like Hamas in Gaza, could attain political power through the ballot box. And developments in Egypt after the fall of President Mubarak with the Muslim Brotherhood and extreme Salafists gaining a majority of seats in Parliament at last week’s election, are not encouraging for those sections of Egyptian society that believe in individual freedom and democracy.

There is, moreover, a fundamental inconsistency in Gareth Evans’s argument when he supports military intervention in the case when civilians are killed or threatened to be killed by an authoritarian regime, like Muammar Gaddafi’s, but not when civilians are killed and are threatened to be killed in their hundreds of thousands in the future by fanatic Islamists as it happened in New York and Washington. Lastly, his mentioning of Cambodia and the negotiations with the Khmer Rouse, in which he was directly involved, that brought a “secured a lasting peace” with the backing of “good old-fashioned containment and deterrence,” as a triumph of reason over bellicosity, he overlooks the fact that the Pol Pot regime by the time of the negotiations was already removed from power as a result of being defeated by Vietnam militarily in 1979, and existing as a weak resistance movement in West Cambodia.

It is by such a collage of diplomatic misapprehensions and awkward inconsistencies that the former minister of foreign affairs attempts to breathe life into his narrative of “a good international citizen” and the “cause of human decency” and insert it into the maelstrom of human conflicts often ensuing from Caesaro-Papist sinister ideologies. The doctrine of bonhomie in international relations can only be indulged over a café latte.

I rest on my oars: your turn now…
 

Antonis Samaras the Phoenix of the Greek Renaissance

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

With the advent of the Pasok socialist government in Greece with its profligacy of over spending against its revenue for nearly thirty years, and the enforced imitation of conservative governments to do the same, due to the spoliation of the populace by this lavish over spending, so they too would have a chance to be elected, the present crisis, which is the result of those economically irresponsible policies, has given rise to a Greek Statesman of Periclean dimensions, Antonis Samaras. Only under his politically and morally strong and sagacious leadership will the phoenix of the ‘Renaissance’ of Greece will rise from its present economic ‘ashes.’

Iron Ladies Never Die they Just Continue to Show the Way

By Con George-Kotzabasis—January 9, 2012

In a hostile world only the strong have the right to indulge in hope. Thucydides

Ah, that memorable, fascinating, admirable, and politically insightful and intrepid subject, Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, that challenges almost all of contemporaneous political leadership that is scrambling on all its fours–with some notable exceptions such as Lee Kuan Yu, of Singapore and Antonis Samaras, of Greece–from Obama to Zapatero to Merkel and Sarkozy, who instead of standing on the shoulders of political giants, like Thatcher, to command events, they have been overwhelmed and overcome by them.

The characteristic spending profligacy of Labour socialist governments over a number of years, and the excessive borrowing and inflation that resulted by the latter’s policies that brought the UK into economic stagnation gave Margaret Thatcher the opportunity to win the election in 1979 with a sizable majority. Her victory would bring not only the transformation of British politics but would also spawn, with a small astute coterie of others, the seeds of a profound change on the political landscape of the world. Further, by re-introducing forcefully the idea of privatization as a dynamic concept among the economic detritus left by Labour’s deficit-laden nationalization of industries, she would place the country on the trajectory of economic efficiency and generation of wealth for the benefit of all Britons. To open markets to the world she abolished all exchange controls on foreign currency five months after coming to power. The UK from being the poorest of the four major European economies in 1979 became by the end of ten years under Thatcher’s stewardship the richest among them. In a series of economic policies packaged by Milton Friedman’s and Frederick Hayek’s monetarist theories, Britain’s GDP grew by 23.3% during this period outpacing that of Germany, France, and Italy.

However, to accomplish the latter goal, she would have to confront the power of unions decisively, which, in a ceaseless campaign of strikes and imprudent and irrational demands were ruining the British economy. In 1979, at the apex of union power, Britain had lost 29.5 million working days to strikes, whereas at its nadir, under the robust stand of Thatcher and her strong blows against it that led to the defeat of unions, in 1986, the figure of lost working days was 1.9 million. The Moscow trained communist Arthur Scargill, secretary of the Mining Unions, had unleashed in 1984-85 a myriad of strikes with the aim to obstruct the Thatcherite pro-market reforms that would put Britain on the roller skates of economic prosperity. By the end of that year that shook the foundations of British industry and broke the morale of some of her Cabinet members–that prompted Thatcher in a memorable quip to say to them, “You turn if you want to. The lady is not for turning.”—the red flag became a trophy alongside the Argentinian flag in her collection of victories, as Arthur Scargill conceded his defeat.

In international affairs she questioned Kissinger’s policy of détente toward the Soviet Union as she believed strongly that Communism should not be accommodated but overcome. For this implacable stand the Soviet Army’s newspaper Red Star christened her the “Iron Lady.” Together with President Reagan, she planted the diplomatic dynamite under the foundations of the Soviet empire that would eventually bring the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Lenin’s benign Marxist dream that had turned back to its true nature as a nightmare of Gulags and Killing Fields.

Thatcher in the 1980’s fiercely opposed the European economic and monetary integration. To her the European construction was “infused with the spirit of yesterday’s future.” In the kernel of this construction laid the central “intellectual mistake” of assuming that “the model for future government was that of a centralized bureaucracy.” And she was prophetic to the current events and crisis of Europe when she argued that German taxpayers would provide “ever greater subsidies for failed regions of foreign countries,” while condemning south European countries to debilitating dependency on handouts from German taxpayers.” She concluded, “The day of the artificially constructed mega-state is gone.”

However, no statesmanship is without its warts. In 1986 prohibition of proprietary trading went out; the separation between commercial and investment banks was abrogated; and ‘casino banking’ took off, which without these changes would not have happened. Her critics accused her of promoting greed which she personally abhorred. Also, the introduction of the poll tax on adult residents was most unpopular among Britons and sparked the Poll Tax Riots on March 31, 1990, that instigated an internal coup against her that ousted her from her premiership.

Margaret Thatcher entered number 10 Downing Street with her strong character and astute political perceptiveness with panache that destined her, like all great statesmen, to “walk beneath heaven as if she was placed above it,” to quote the seventeenth-century French political philosopher, Gabriel Naude. She will enter the ‘gate of heaven’ not as the frail distracted old woman, as she was depicted in the film made by Phillida Lloyd, but as the iron lady who will never die and continue to show the way.

I rest on my oars: your turn now…

Radical Leftists are all Millenarian

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Historically and by definition all from the left are millenarians who being terrified with their capitalist nightmares are countervailing them with their millenarian dreams. And if you don’t dream Marxist ‘dialectical’ nightmares but only Kant’s dream of “Eternal Peace,” der Ewige Friede, then that still makes you a millenarian.

All men/women of reason abhor war. But sometimes war is necessary to prevent a greater catastrophe. And it is through war and strife against the enemies of humanity and freedom that mankind can achieve relative stability and peace. “Nothing for nothing,” to quote the economic historian David Landes. I, like him, “prefer truth to goodthink.”

High Court’s Ruling Triumph of Legal Activism at the Cost of Australia

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shovelling smoke. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

The High Court’s decision that the Gillard Government’s deportation of asylum seekers to Malaysia is unlawful is a devastating blow to Labour’s immigration policy and a lethal hit on Australian border protection. It’s ostensibly clear that a majority of the honourable justices of the court are not immune to the deadly pestilential virus of legal activism whose source has been a number of admirable but impractical human rights enactments by the United Nations which can only be implemented by the abrogation of the national sovereignty of nations. But in the context of this judicial activism the immigration policy of Labour would stand its trial before judges who already had the sentence of death in their pockets. The majority of the justices argued that Malaysia not being a signatory of the UN Convention to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol is not legally obliged to protect refugees and therefore is not a suitable country to deport refugees. Moreover, according to refugee advocate Julian Burnside, QC, the justices reminded the government that “Australia is signatory to a number of human rights conventions” and is legally bound to abide by them. However, “Commonwealth Solicitor–General Stephen Gageler argued that the government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic nor international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.” But while lawyers may ‘shovel smoke’ at each other on this issue, the repercussions of the High Court’s decision on immigration policy and border protection are of a serious nature and may cause great harm to Australia.

Zabiullah Ahmadi, an Afghan who lives in Kuala Lumpur, predicts than “within weeks there will be lots of boats…many people have been waiting to see this decision.” Hence, the High Court’s decision will encourage asylum seekers to risk their lives in unseaworthy boats with the hope of reaching the shores of Australia of which to many of them, in the context of this decision, has become the refugees nirvana. Another refugee observer, Abdul Rahma, a leader of the Rohingga Community in Malaysia, said, the “Australia-Malaysia deal has been a useful bulwark to stop the tide of asylum seekers risking their lives travelling to Australia. Now they would return to the boats.” With the great probability therefore of an increase in boat smuggling and the attached physical and psychological risks that asylum seekers will have to take, the judges of the High Court have unwittingly, and must I add, foolishly, become accessories before the fact of this great danger to the lives of refugees on board of unseaworthy vessels. Furthermore, the honourable justices by ‘signing on’ the UN Convention on refugees, they have written off the long term interests of Australia in regard to its immigration policy that is of such paramount importance to its future balanced demographic mix. A mix that will not threaten its Western based values and the harmony of its democratic society  as it has on many European countries due to an unwise and completely flawed immigration policy that so acrimoniously and precariously has divided the indigenous population and immigrants, as exemplified by the massacre in Norway and the riots in the cities of Britain.

But one must be reminded that the decision of the High Court is a direct outcome of the foolish dismantling by the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the successful “Pacific Solution” of Howard’s government that in fact had stopped the refugee boats coming to the shores of Australia. And the serially incompetent and politically effete Julia Gillard who succeeded him to the Lodge had to pick up this can of worms, i.e., this confused new Labour policy that was kicked by Rudd to his successor with his ousting from the Lodge.

In the context of the decision of the High Court the Gillard government has no alternative other than to change by legislation the immigration laws. And it is good to see that in this task to protect the borders of Australia, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has stated that the Liberal/National Coalition would support such legislation if the Government would consider Nauru as an offshore refugee centre. It is imperative that this offshore solution must not be replaced by the cretinous stupid proposal of the Greens and their sundry ‘paramours’ of human rights lawyers and refugee advocates that asylum seekers should be held in onshore centres such as on Christmas Island. Such a short sighted harebrained proposal would lead to a stampede of smuggler’s boats hitting the shores of Australia and would be an incentive for ruffians of all kinds to continue entering in greater numbers such a lucrative business.

Finally, the High Court’s decision is a portentous illustration of what is in store for nations who injudiciously and facilely sign international conventions without considering the serious and injurious repercussions such covenants could have on national sovereignty. No wise political leadership would be ‘outsourcing’ the sovereignty of one’s nation. 

I rest on my oars: your turn now…

Obama Doctrine of Leading from Behind Leads to the Demise of American Preponderance

History teaches that weakness is provocative. Time and again weakness has invited adventures which strength might well have deterred. Donald Rumsfeld 

By Con George-Kotzabasis

One of Obama’s advisers described oxymoronically the actions of the president in Libya as “leading from behind.” At a historic moment for the people of North Africa and the Middle East when the winds of change are sweeping away a caste of authoritarian regimes, the USA under President Obama, has chosen not to be the avant-garde promoter and backer of this change but its rearguard.

Not since Rome was saved by the cackling of the geese from a barbaric invasion has there been a great event happening as an outcome of a humdrum ‘insignificant’ action. But in Tunisia, in February 2011, a street vendor would save the Arab peoples from the rapacious and brutal clutches of a conglomeration of despotic leaders. In such graphic terms historians write about the fates of people: the catalysts of great events are often the most ordinary of people; and the abortionists and ‘stiflers’ of great events are often those who have power but who are too timorous and abhor to use it due to their  Lilliputian leadership. Hence, we see the ‘abortionist’ Obama contra Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who by self-immolating himself in protest against the officials of a corrupt regime sparked the Arab revolt. President Obama as the leader of the most powerful nation of the world that is engaged in war with a mortal enemy, as Commander-in-Chief, instead of decisively helping and making sure that the Arab revolt against their oppressors succeeds, timidly decides, on so called pragmatic grounds, not to commit the necessary resources for such strategic, grandiose, and humane goal.

Furthermore, Obama’s strategic shift to “remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer,” irrespective of conditions on the ground, which was his previous position, and not heeding and rejecting all his military commanders, from Admiral Mike Mullen to General David Petraeus, who cautioned him that an unconditional withdrawal from the country could imperil all the advantages that the Coalition had won over the Taliban with last year’s military surge, and indeed, could increase the danger to the remaining U.S. and allied forces and hence augment the number of casualties among them. President Obama, however, who presumably is deeply concerned about American lives lost in the war, totally disregarded this pre-cautionary and prudent advice coming from his top commanders and stuck doggedly to his schedule of withdrawal, which proved as some commentators said, his pulling out the troops had more to do with his prospects of being re-elected as president in 2012 than with the strategic and security interests of the United States.  The sage commentator of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer poses the question: so why the choice of the end of summer 2012. The budget savings are trivial but the increased risk of mission failure in Afghanistan is great. The obvious answer is that domestic political considerations motivated President Obama to adopt this profoundly flawed strategy that will embolden its fanatic enemies to open new fields of battles against the U.S., and indeed attack it once again directly. Thus President Obama by disengaging from his implacable and irreconcilable foe externally he will be ‘inviting’ this sinister and deadly enemy to attack America internally.  

 

Afghanistan Remains Pivotal In The War Against Global Terror

The commanders on the ground aimed to consolidating the gains in southern Afghanistan and begin the major operations to secure the east, as their campaign plan had envisioned. With the announced ill-conceived withdrawal that will now be impossible. Moreover, as the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has warned, Obama’s decision will increase the risks to the troops and increase the chance that the mission will not succeed.

The Ivy League law professor, combined with the simplistic tasks of community organizer, who by the mere hateful animus a majority of Americans had against the Bush administration, and by association against Republicans, was pushed into the White House without anyone being genuinely concerned to scrutinize his political astuteness, mettle, experience , and ability to become  the Commander-in- Chief  in these most dangerous of times, does not comprehend the high stakes involved in a pre-mature withdrawal of U.S. forces from the battlefield of Afghanistan. He is incapable of seeing or unwilling to face the stark reality that America perforce after 9/11 put the flower of its youth in the frontlines of Afghanistan and Iraq for the purpose of defeating a dangerous and irreconcilable enemy, who would continuously threaten the security and well being of Americans until the day when he was totally disabled and beaten. Does the President seriously contemplate that by withdrawing his troops from Afghanistan, pulling them out of harm’s way, as he puts it, he will not be harming inevitably the vital geopolitical interests of the United States and the security and economic interests of its own people? Does he sincerely believe that by the cessation of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan against the Taliban and the ‘compound’ of Islamist fanatics that are concentrated in the Pak/Afghan region, he will not confronting them again in the near future in the same areas or in other Muslim countries, and indeed, within the heartland of America itself, and that like King Canute he will stop the tidal wave of fanatic terrorism from advancing to the shores of America, especially when the withdrawal will be seen by the combatants of Islam as a decisive defeat, like the Soviet’s, of  the American Satan? Does he not understand the Rumsfeldian principle that “weakness is provocative?”

No serious political thinker sees the war against Islamist extremists as a mistake or as an exercise of American expansion and domination. On the contrary, it is seen as a rational and urgent pre-emptive defensive response to the greatest threat that Western civilization will be facing in the twentieth-first century with the possible coupling of terrorists with rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction. And by its nature, this will be a long war that cannot be shortened by Obamanesque makeshift political contrivances that will satisfy the polloi, and by attitudinal changes toward this fanatical implacable foe.  The war can only be shortened, as was shown in Iraq, only when the enemy realizes that he is confronting an unflappable determined opponent who demonstrates his willingness to use his firepower relentlessly and remorselessly against him. It is by instilling the terror of annihilation into the hearts and minds of the terrorists that one can decisively subdue them.

The politically diffident and strategically un-savvy and poll-driven Obama is incapable of carrying on his politically rickety feet the heavy weight of statesmanship on his shoulders and thus protect America and the civilized world from the future ravages that the Islamist witches are concocting against the ‘infidels’. His rearguard presidency of “leading from behind,” saps the political oak of America of all its strength and makes it defenseless against the winds that are stirred up by Allah’s holy warriors. Obama’s unwillingness to engage the Gorgon of terror and its sponsors whenever and wherever it raises its head and cut it off, makes his presidency alien to the greatest danger the world is facing while at the same time enervates America’s preponderance in world affairs.  Only the removal of this totally inept and weak president will once again strengthen the United States against this infernal foe who threatens civilized life on a universal scale; only a new president with the daring and vitality of a Perseus to cut off the Gorgon’s head will rescue the ‘unbelievers’ from being decapitated by the scimitar of fanatic Islam.

I rest on my oars:your turn now…