Random Rant Thread

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American Sniper, a Clint Eastwood film about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle who fought in the Iraq campaign four times, caused a bit of a controversy.  Actually, not just a bit, but a big controversy, because it appears to glorify war and killings while whitewashing the ugly faces of those wars.  And many say that the film incites hatred toward Arabs and Muslims.

Well, it should come as no surprise that Clint Eastwood liked the original memoir enough to direct the film version, as he's always been a right-wing old man.  I haven't watched the film yet, but I'm sure I will loathe it and at the same time be impressed by how beautifully crafted and shot it is.  That's usually how Eastwood films are.  Politically loathsome, but highly cinematically appealing.  And he's no John Milius.  Unlike that talentless right-wing director, he's too intelligent to make his politics too obvious on the screen.

The problem, I guess, is that people, particularly the ones who have never been to war, will see the film as nonfiction just because it is based on the memoir written by an actual late SEAL sniper.  But it is fiction.  You can't take seriously what a good SEAL sniper says about war and his life.

There are some things about America that I understand much better than the average American does, and the life of war veterans is one of them.  I know the SEAL type very well.  To put it bluntly and simply, many of them are sick individuals.  Not all, but many.  The better they are in war, the sicker, in fact.  They tend to have atrocious political views (like Nazism, for real) even if they don't express it openly in public (but they do among themselves), and enormous chips on their shoulders.  They tend to be incredibly narcissistic and delusional.  They hate the layman society in general.  Some are fanatically religious, as if to match their enemies' fundamentalist views.  In other words, they tend to be - well, psychos.

So, I suspect that reading American Sniper is kind of like looking into the fantasy world of one sick man.  That's a very interesting thing to do as long as you are aware that his story is most likely one narcissistic ego trip to portray himself as an existential hero struggling in life.  A cool anti-hero, that is.  The SEAL/elite Marines type likes to see himself that way, not exactly as a squeaky clean Captain America.

War is a dirty business where psychos truly shine.  One study argues that roughly 5% of soldiers do most of the work (= killing) in war, and that the members of that 5% group tend to have serious psychological issues.  It seems to me that even after countless wars, the average person can't handle the reality of it.  Yet they continue to allow their government to wage wars for a variety of reasons, send those troubled young men and women to the battle fields, troubling their minds even further, and hope that they will just fit right back into the peaceful society when they finished their duties.  And they willfully ignore the fact that the suicide rate of veterans is currently at all-time high.  Top Republicans just recently voted down the proposal to increase the fund to tackle the PTSD issue of the veterans, after all.  The elite in particular want to hide the reality from the general public, because they know the average person wouldn't be able to handle it if they had to seriously face it.  They still remember the horrible days after the Vietnam War, when American film directors produced anti-war films left and right.  The horror!  That was extremely bad for the war business.

I sometimes wonder if the veterans will rise up and bring about a revolution of a sort. They are enormously pissed off, about everything, as far as I know. The police may feel invincible with those cool gears and gadgets, as you saw in Ferguson and elsewhere, but the veterans know insurgency tactics inside out.  The over-armed cops would be anything but invincible if the veterans - there are almost a million of them now - decided to bring their real shit to the jocks in uniform who've never been to war.  Even with those expensive weapons, the police can never be better at actual fighting than the fearsome Chechen fighters that the veterans had to deal with in Iraq/Afghanistan.

Anyway, thus the society's needs and one sick man's fantasy merged well to whitewash the reality of the war, and you have a blockbuster hit in American Sniper.  It took Hollywood a long time to start producing war rehabilitation films after the Vietnam War (e.g. Rambo I), but I guess this time, Iraq/Afghanistan feels much less real than Vietnam did back then (there was the draft then, after all), which makes it easier for them.

So, I will probably enjoy the film as an interesting look into the mind of a typical SEAL, while shaking my head to the fact that the war business will go on and on and on, with the reliable help of such films to give a distorted idea about war to the regular Joe, who will continue to think light of the actual meaning of sending young people into another country to kill a lot of foreigners.

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Well, well, well.  The Greek general election is over, and the winner is SYRIZA, a so-called "radical left" party.  As far as I can see or read, there is absolutely nothing "radical" about SYRIZA's position, as it's pretty standard left-wing stuff, but it seems that in today's "centrist" (= yesterday's right-wing) world where the Left all but died a while ago, anyone who disagrees with the infinite wisdom of Brussels/Frankfurt/Berlin is called "radical".

Not only that, but the new Finance Minister is Yanis Varoufakis, whose name appeared in this thread more than a couple of times before.  That usually means that I regard him as an absolute moron, especially since he's an economist, but it doesn't in his case.  I quoted him mostly approvingly here.  He's already being denounced by the status-quo types in and outside Greece as a "radical, anti-orthodox economist" in the most condescending tone of voice possible, which naturally means I have to like him.

This is getting interesting.  Like I said, there is nothing "radical" about SYRIZA's position, but obviously it's sharply against the official EU stance.  Its manifesto practically calls the current EU elite a bunch of economically illiterate morons/fanatics, bankers' friends or intellectually dishonest charlatans.  It practically calls Wolfgang Schaeuble an old, cynical Dr. Strangelove, too.  OK, not quite, but that's what it is about.  And I think the EU guys can read between the lines.  Schaeuble certainly can.  Shots fired.  It's a war fought in nice language.

I know for a fact that there are quite a few EU (or German) officials who have been trying to device a good scheme to kick Greece out of the eurozone with no negative impact on themselves.  The way they badmouth Greece in private is unreal, and they are all dying to get rid of the country once and for all.  I wish I could just wipe it off the map, one guy said to me back in 2010.  We'll teach those lazy bastards a lesson is another phrase you would have heard frequently from them.  Many of those idiots seriously and honestly believe that Greece got them into the trouble, believe it or not.  Talk about being conveniently clueless.

Bad (=good) news is that as far as I know, they have come up with approximately zero ideas. Every single scenario they can think of ends up with the collapse of the euro - the grandest European suicide attempt since WWII - in their simulation.  Oh, the agony.

I don't even know exactly what kind of people SYRIZA is composed of, but I'm so rooting for the new Greek government now.  A sane voice should be given a chance to at least put up a fight in this insane world, don't you think?  Well done, Greece.  Congrats on having guts to say NO to the morons.

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Watching and reading what is being said in Germany regarding Greece, the loudest opinions anyhow, you can't help but fear that this won't end well.  You get the impression that they don't quite live in the reality where the rest of us do.  It's just disastrous.  Everything is upside down, the other way around, inside out.  Failure is success, poverty is prosperity.  Loss is gain, misery is hope.  Sadism is kindness, torture is affection.

In other words, they don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

Even if we are allowed to assume that there are some pragmatic German politicians who understand what's at stake here, and are ready to negotiate with the Greeks, how the hell could they sell that to German people, the majority of whom seem to completely and totally and utterly misunderstand the situation?  They still believe that only the German generosity is keeping Greece alive, when the situation is almost exactly the opposite in reality: Germany is killing Greece and others with its "generosity", while benefiting immensely from their misery.  Of course the politicians had it coming as they are the very ones who sold the false narrative to German people from Day One, but it seems to me politically near impossible for them to back down now when the people who put them in power are so sure of their righteousness on this matter.  Any compromise to Greece (and eventually all the rest of the Periphery) would be regarded as a serious betrayal, and the ones responsible for the decision would be severely punished by the voters basically for being sensible Europeans.  They want their government to squash the uppity Greeks, to "teach them a lesson", without understanding that would pretty much spell the end of the euro, dragging the German economy down with it.

I mean, this is nothing new, but it's certainly a major downer to see the political situation getting worse rather than better at such an important juncture.  I really don't know how this will pan out.  Only Germany can save Europe, and only Germany can fuck up Europe.  And unfortunately, the ship is still sailing zigzag toward the latter destination. 

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So, I've read some excerpts from American Sniper, including very long parts, and this guy Chris Kyle was indeed one narcissistic, fanatically religious, self-righteous psycho, as I assumed.  Such a typical headcase who thrives in wars.  And very boring and painful read it was.  The worst thing about it is that he talks rather endlessly about geopolitics and the "big picture" so to speak, trying to give you a lecture on his super-retarded pseudo-geopolitical views, and some obligatory God talks about shallow cartoon-level spirituality.  Most of the war memoirs out there written by veterans, pro-war or anti-war, tend to have a little more modesty, meaning that they would rather focus on their own tragi-heroic stories than pontificate too much about that kind of big stuff.  Not this guy, unfortunately.  He just doesn't shut the fuck up.  It's like having to listen to an incurably ego-inflated 14-year-old boy. 

I must say it's even worse than I thought.  I expected a little more nuances, but it's pretty much right in your face, exposing his dick swinging in front of your eyes.  You bet that if he had been born in a Muslim culture, he would've visited a local ISIS recruiting office in no time.  I even personally know a far more interesting right-wing racist asshole veteran.  But then, this is pretty much the intellectual level where the American Right has dwelt for the last decades, so I guess it's all right.

And most importantly, you certainly need thousands of Chris Kyles to justify and execute such a ridiculous war.  Whoever benefited from that war owes a lot to them.  It's probably fitting that Clint Eastwood made an American Hero out of them.

Veterans: Thank you, America, for making our bro Chris Kyle famous, even though you actually keep treating us like shit!
America: Well, that's the least I could do!

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Thumbs up to Yanis Varoufakis, the new Greek Finance Minister, who called the so-called Troika "flimsily-constructed committee we have no aim to cooperate" in the conference.  I loved the face of Jeroen Dijsselbloem after he listened to the English translation of that.  Varoufakis should've just said it into his ear in English too to make the message clearer, though.  I don't know why Dijsselbloem, merely the head of the Eurogroup, which should be completely separate from the Troika, was so upset by that comment.  He looked like he was personally offended.  Reportedly he said to Varoufakis as they shook hands and left the podium, "You killed the Troika."  Weird people.  I guess they think they are part of Team EU vs. Uppity Greeks, playing football in a stadium where Mrs. Merkel is cheering for them from the stands.  Yikes.

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In case you already forgot, when the then Greek government and the Troika reached the agreement back in 2010, they published the predictions based on their theories.  According to them, Greece would have a recession for a year, and start recovering afterwards to catch up with the previous peak GDP by the end of 2012.  The debt-GDP ratio would stabilize and improve at the same pace.  The unemployment rate would go as high as 15.0% unfortunately - "bitter medicine", and all that - but come back down in a year or two to the "optimal" level.

Back to reality: Greece didn't have a recession; it did a depression.  Greece's GDP not only hasn't been back to the pre-crisis level yet, but has collapsed to about 75% of it, and still stays down there.  The debt-GDP ratio has shot up too, naturally.  And the unemployment rate didn't exactly "go as high as 15.0%"; you have to double the number.  It's still much higher than 25% today.

And they quoted the likes of Alesina, Rogoff, Reinhardt etc. to "strengthen" their arguments.  Those wonderful, credible economists, you know.

These are the people who now call SYRIZA's policies "radical" and "far-left" while calling themselves "orthodox".  What's better, these are the people who are telling the Greeks to be - wait for it - "realistic".

*** canned laughter ***

They are now even lying that Greece didn't cut enough.  It's like telling Germans (or even Russians) in 1945 that they didn't die enough.

So, the only thing left in their arsenal to explain/excuse this enormous cock-up is the ethnic stereotype argument.  Apparently, Greeks are "lazy" and "deceitful" to such an unreal degree that they can't be considered normal people; economic theories/models assume normal people, so you should blame Greeks, and not the theories; etc.  You know, gigantic bullshit like that.  They don't quite explicitly say that in public since that would clearly sound too childish and even racist, but obviously that kind of crap is what they've been trying to sell to us in so many different indirect ways for months now.

You just have to understand my frustration: in this world, crazies and wrongs call themselves the "orthodox" and "realistic", and the media world totally goes along with that.  People like Olli Rehn keep showing their faces in public to represent Europe, to speak for all good Europeans, acting as if they were something other than the total failure and fraud that they are.

When I say that Germany is the true radical, for example, I'm not trying to be provocative or contrarian; I just literally mean that.  They are the radical who cling to radical fringe theories in defiance of the reality that keeps disproving them.  Anyone who still believes in tooth fairy when they are 40 is quite "radical".  Obviously I don't speak for everyone, but that's how I feel.

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Obama on the Greek issue:

edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/01/31/exp-gps-obama-sot-greece-austerity.cnn

This is yet another half-assed answer that we've come to expect from Obama.  Now, he had to mention "competitiveness" and "structural reforms", on very broad terms without ever specifying what they are of course, to soften the edge of his answer, especially since only a few years ago he was an idiotic neoliberal deficit hawk himself, only marginally more reasonable than the Germans.  Remember all the talks about the deficit and spending cuts in America?  The man even said that it was his top political priority at one point.  Yet no one talks about it anymore, not even the Republicans who predicted the collapse of the US Treasury bonds and raging high inflation coming to wreck the US economy any minute.  Nothing of that sort has ever happened even though at least on the national level, the US government actually didn't cut shit despite all the big talk.  Most of the mindless cuts took place on more local levels, such as counties and municipalities, and that will come back to haunt the US in the future.  But that's another topic for another day.

With that being said, Obama's message is still very clear.  He wouldn't have allowed Zakaria to ask him about it if he didn't want to make it clear.  In case you are not familiar with the polite diplomatic language, what he's saying is basically this: You fucked up Europe, Angela, you mindless idiot.

Now, if the Germans and their allies are idiotic enough to coerce the EU and ECB into diabolically cutting off Greece's banking system and forcing the country to go, out of the eurozone and possibly out of the EU altogether, leading to political chaos in various parts of Europe well beyond Portugal, Spain, Italy and so on, and eventually to the end of the euro and the state of utter political disunion in Europe, the US will be able to say, "We warned ya." The US doesn't want Europe to mess with Greece.  The biggest reason is that the Americans are very concerned about the geopolitical consequences of such an outcome.  Greece may not be that important in terms of size, but it is in terms of its location.

All the talks about "This is not 2010, and we would be able to withstand the Grexit" are utterly, utterly foolish.  It's not only economically foolish, but most importantly, politically idiotic.  Only those who are utterly blind to the political reality in Europe today can say such a thing with a straight face.  Half of young people are still jobless and income-less in Spain and Italy, two of the biggest countries in Europe.  Do they not understand what that means politically?

Astonishingly irresponsible people are playing with fire in front of our eyes.  I've been saying for a long time that the real crisis will take place in the political arena.  The economy is merely what triggers it.  Politics moves much more slowly than the markets, but what is bound to happen, will happen.  And it will be devastating.  They might soon realize that SYRIZA was the last chance where they could deal with a decent party, and that they have lost it due to sheer arrogance and complacency.  And when they figured that out, it will be all too late, with all the demons out of Pandora's box setting the clock back to - let's hope not - 1914.  Or 1933.

Either way, fucked.

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I often talk about "Brussels", but that place is not quite one monolithic entity.  There are various kinds of people with various ideas.  And my ground-level impression is that an increasing number of the officials are getting sick and tired of Germany.  And some of those voices seem to come from Germany's supposed allies too.  I know some Finns and Austrians whose biggest question is not "What to do with the Periphery?" anymore, but "What to do with Germany?"

I don't know, this subtle shift may not be much in terms of political weight, but I definitely felt it in the air while suffering from overpriced dinners and wine when I visited Brussels last time.

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I think I need to refresh your memory on what the Greek issue is all about.  Even after all these year, surprisingly few people seems to have any idea about what has been really going on, and what the "Greek rescue package" was all about.

First of all, Europe has never bailed out Greece.  Many of the people in the creditor countries probably fail the exam at this point already, as they would probably check "YES" if the first question was "Did Europe bail out Greece?".   No, it's the banks, primarily the French/German ones, who lent Greece gigantic sums of money so recklessly before the crisis, that has been bailed out by Europe.  Remember the "haircut"?  They had to take some losses, sure, but most of the debt has been bought up by the European public institutions at reduced prices.  Greece now owes almost entirely to those public institutions, which means you if you are a taxpayer anywhere in the EU.  If the Greek debt turns out to be worthless, which it pretty much is since Greece will never be even close to fully repaying it, it's you that will have to take the hit.

That's a textbook bank bailout.  If you believed that your money was spent on "rescuing Greeks" instead of bailing out the wealthy banks, you've been simply misinformed by the elite in your country.  Greeks are basically forced to pay for the mistakes that those banks made, but so are you in the long run.  Greek citizens belong in the lowest layer of the pyramid, the debt pecking order so to speak, but yours isn't much higher either.

Meanwhile, Greece hasn't enjoyed such generosity from Europe.  Yes, Greece receives a significant sum of money as loans, but most of it goes back immediately to the European institutions as interest and principal debt payment.  In a way, Greece is just a sorry middleman in that ridiculous debt recycling mechanism.  I don't know why they even bother to send it to Athens.  They could save the money transfer cost.

And the Greek government already has a primary surplus, meaning that it spends less than it makes.  But whatever amount of surplus it makes, it can't spend it on investment, health care, and so on, because Europe takes that money away pronto as debt payment.  The living standard of Greek citizens has been reduced by more than 30% because of that, on top of the devastating effects of austerity imposed upon the country by the creditors.  And like I said, Greece will never, ever be able to fully repay such a huge amount of debt anyway.  Therefore, this vicious cycle will never end unless Europe (= primarily Germany and its sidekicks) stops ridiculous, sadistic moralizing bullshit and does what it has to do, meaning a significant reduction/write-down of the debt.  That is what the new Greek government is asking for, and what the creditor countries are refusing to give, as we speak.

It's very simple.  And it should be rather clear to you which one is the irrational party here.

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Meanwhile in America, everyone is piling on Pete Carroll over his decision to go for the pass at the end, but they don't get it.  I told you it's all about faith.  I would blame Wilson, for his lack of faith this time.  He should've prayed more, praised God more.  If he had, that pass would've been only nearly intercepted, bounced miraculously off his arms, taken another bounce, landed into Wilson's own arms somehow, and there would've been a free path for a TD in front of him opening up like the fucking Exodus.  And everyone would be praising Pete Carroll as a god of football tactics.

Anyway, I watched Republicans talking about various things, and apparently, Chris Christie, supposedly one of the "intellectual" conservatives today, has his doubts on vaccines.  Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if we get a Republican candidate in 2020 who argues the world is actually flat, and the stars revolve around us.  The Republican anti-intellectualism/anti-science-ism is fucking escalating like crazy.  It's pretty scary stuff.  At this rate, we will be culturally back to the 13th century in no time.  America is truly turning into a half-crazy nation.

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I saw a Fox News segment on vaccination, with three doctors as guests, and it went like this:

Host: "Do you think kids should be vaccinated?"
Dr. A: "Yes."
Dr. B: "Of course."
Dr. C: "Definitely, yes."
Host: "But the doctors are divided on this issue, aren't they?"
Dr. A: "Er, not really, no."
Dr. B: "I don't think we are."
Dr. C: "No."
Host: "But according to blah, blah blah blah blah blah..."
Dr. A: "Well, I'm not sure how they reach that conclusion from such small samples, but blah blah blah..."
Dr. B: "Yeah, blah blah blah, maybe yeah, blah blah, but no, blah blah blah..."
Host: "So, what would you say to parents in America?"
Dr. A: "Get your kids vaccinated."
Dr. B: "Yup."
Dr. C: "I would tell them to do it for their kids."

Fox News must've been fully aware of the three doctors' opinion on the issue, and invited them anyway.  So this is probably not a case of the doctors embarrassing Fox News, but a case of even Fox News - the producer at least - embarrassed about pretending to listen to the anti-vaxx crowd.  This is a roundabout way to tell the Fox News viewers to pull their empty heads out of the know-nothing conspiracy-theory shithole and just get their kids to be vaccinated for fuck's sakes.  They just can't explicitly say that, because that would be bad for the Republicans.

It's so embarrassing in every possible way.  Anti-intellectualism is a peculiarly American disease, and it seems there is no vaccine for that.

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The negotiation between the EU/Germany and Greece doesn't seem to be going well, as I feared. 

Greece's proposal is reasonable.  In fact, it's too reasonable for my liking.  In an ideal world, the Greeks should have a right to demand more, much more.  But I guess that's where being "realistic", in the true sense of the word, comes into it.  What Greece needs the most now is time, and Tsipras and Varoufakis are dealing with irrationally stubborn people there.

The Greek proposal wouldn't hurt Germany and other creditors in any shape or form, at least economically and financially speaking.  It would rather benefit German taxpayers in the long run.  If Germany is going to outright reject even such a mild proposal, and continues to threaten Greece mafia-like by pressuring the ECB, through their Finnish/Dutch lackeys in the org, to be ready to shut down the liquidity for the Greek banking system any minute, any hope for the euro problem being solved any time in the foreseeable future will have to be thrown away.  The Germans are so stubborn and so utterly unrealistic that many people outside (or inside, for that matter) Europe even stopped fearing them; they are making fun of them now.  They are making jokes about "Gläubiger" and "Schuld": Did you know that the German word for "debt" also means "guilt", and the word for "creditor" also means "believer"!?  Now, THAT explains everything!

But I don't like that kind of cultural explanations.  I'm not saying that there is no intrinsically German thinking involved there that makes them gravitated toward austerity and all that.  But Germans are not stupid.  Some of the elite may be in total denial, covering their ears and eyes and going WAAWAAWAA I CAN'T HEAR OR SEE ANYTHING, but the others know.  They know that they have fucked up spectacularly, on a historic scale.  Or worse, many of them probably knew from the beginning that their policy would probably completely mess up the economies in the Periphery and beyond.  There is nothing cultural about it.  The latter kind of people only care about Germany and its economy - in a totally myopic way, of course - and simply couldn't care less about Greeks and Spaniards and those "Mediterranean apes" (not my words, but a German banker's).  As far as they are concerned, Greece doesn't have any right to talk to Germany as an equal partner to begin with.  And as for the former kind of people, well, they would rather destroy Europe than admit that they have been complete idiots and unfunny clowns all along.  The "welfare of all Europeans" goes right out the window in the face of human hubris and petty pride.

In other words, it's just politics, and also about how difficult it is for various peoples who don't even see each other as their equals to form a union.  There is nothing particularly German about it.

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Zacarias Moussaoui, a former Al Qaeda operative, said in his testimony that Saudi Princes were the main patrons for Al Qaeda:

In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

I can assure you that at least Prince Turki al-Faisal and Prince al-Waleed bin Talal were (and most likely still are) substantially involved in funding the AQ and others.  Prince Bandar bin Sultan is so idiotic that he would probably fund you if you just told him that you need some money to invent a machine to brainwash a person into becoming a Wahhabi Muslim.

The problem, of course, is that the US government knew that all along, too.  This testimony will be buried in no time again.

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Yanis Varoufakis is going to meet Wolfgang Schaeuble tomorrow.  I hope that idiot Dijsselbloem will carry the German's briefcase around so that everyone can see the sad state of affairs in Northern Europe right now, that pathetic theater of Germany and its toy poodles.

Anyway, here's Wolfie's brief comment on Syriza's victory from several days ago:

We want Greece to continue going down this successful path in the interests of Greece and the Greeks but we will not accept one-sided changes to the programme.

"Successful" means 26% collapse of the economic output, I take it.  Germany had lost the same amount of output (26.4%, to be precise) through rigorous austerity after the Great Crash of 1929.  So, that was "successful" too, right?  But then, why did German people kick out the very politicians who had achieved that "success" and let in the Nazi thugs instead?

For fuck's sakes.  Germans elected the Nazis then, Greeks elected Syriza now, and in both cases, people desperately tried to run away from that horrific "success".

Hearing such a comment from a German, of all people, is quite something.  Talk about the lack of self-awareness.  I know Schaeuble couldn't afford to say anything else, but you would think he would at least refrain from using such direct words as "successful".  The nerve, that revolting I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude.  I don't know how Yanis will be able to handle this monumentally arrogant ex-lawyer sophist asshole.  He's really a politician from hell who can argue that the sky is yellow and blood is green all day long.

I hope he is a politician from hell also in terms of double-face, and is capable of saying completely different things when he actually meets Yanis.  I doubt it in this case, though.  After all, he's someone who also believes that the East German policies after the unification, in which he was involved back then, has been uber-success, and there is no evidence that it's just political posturing.  He is most likely a hopeless case when it comes to economics, and truly world-class at self-serving denial.

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Yanis Varoufakis said this in an official conference: Look, my country is bankrupt.  Showering a bankrupt country like mine with more mindless loans makes no economic sense whatsoever.

You don't often get to hear a finance minister of a country stating clearly and loudly that his or her country is broke.  There is a clear contrast between him and Ireland's Enda Kenny, who refused to admit that the Irish government was anywhere near bankrupt, even though it was.

Kenny blinked quicker than light and had to cave in under the pressure from the ECB and Germany.  But Yanis is no Kenny.  I've been following him for more than five years now as you probably know if you have been reading this thread since its early days -- it's kind of incredible that he, a relatively unknown "unorthodox" economist, has become such a rock star on the world stage now... -- and I'm sure he's prepared to fight predictable threats from Frankfurt and Berlin.  He's a game-theorist, after all.

The ECB announced yesterday that it won't accept the Greek government bonds owned by Greek banks as collateral anymore.  That sounds like devastating news for Greece, but Yanis had talked about that scenario on his blog time and time again over the years.  He should be well prepared for this move.  This is just a first shot from the ECB, and at this point on the timeline, Greece can deal with it as there is no immediate implications for bank liquidity.

Like I said, Reason is on Greece's side in this case.  If this was a clear, objective game of chess, Germany should lose this one.  But reality doesn't work that way.  What I'm most concerned about is not even exactly Greece's future, but Germany's.  If it "successfully" beats the uppity Greeks with sheer brute force, tantamount to sneaking an additional queen onto the chessboard, what would become of the "European project"?  There wouldn't be any illusion left about the United Europe.  Germany would be justifiably regarded as an international pariah.

Germany must back down at some point in some way, in any way.  But like I said, I don't know how it is politically feasible.  The Germans are so high up in the tree, and as far as I can see, they already kicked the ladder away a long time ago.  The only option is jump, but could they do that?