Reprint Heaven: Chairman Of The Board, Part I

Gozirra, Then and Now
(From spring, 2014. Part 2 follows)

[NOTE: As the Googlemachine has reminded all of us, this is the 114th birthday of  Eiji Tsuburaya, special-effects designer and the originator of so many hero beings from Japanese science fiction cinema. He also created the concept which we know today as The Big Guy, the Chairman Of The Board; and San Francisco's hometown monster, as we are a Sister City with Tokyo.]

Disgruntled:  Not Allowed On The 'Blue And Gold Fleet'

Arooo, Arooo / Godzilla Sure Likes You
He's Got Big Feet/ And He Smells Real Neat
Arooo, Arooo Arooo; Arooo, Arooo...
>>  Rhyme Started By Friends' Children;  To The Tune Of, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho; It's Off To Work..."

The Big Guy will be making his appearance this week, on a gigantic multiplex screen near you, in another installment of the timeless saga of ambition, terror, sea water, and a 350-foot Lizard who just wants to be the best 350-foot bipedal Lizard ever, and find love in a busy uncaring world -- the 28th (or, depending on who you ask, the 29th) film version of Godzilla.

In Sixty Years, He Has Entered Our Collective Unconscious

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Spoiler Alert, Sort Of

Be Advised: If viewed in reverse, this film shows the Giant Happy Fun Lizard putting out fires and rebuilding a large, urban area for its inhabitants, playfully wrestling with other large alien figures (but none so large as He), then backing away respectfully into the ocean as a grateful nation sends naval vessels and its airforce to join in celebration.  Roll credits; everyone goes home feeling good.
  
According to people who have actually seen the film (the most creative take I found is by illustrator and reviewer, Natalie Nourigat, and can be found at her site, Spoilers !), most classic moments you expect to see in Giant Monster movies are present: The scientist who tries to warn the population and is ignored; the brave warrior; scenes of people chatting about things personal; the happy children, playing at the seaside... and all the while, the audience knows: Gorzirra Out There. Gorzirra Come Soon. U Are All So Scrood.

So Much For 'Suspension Of Disbelief': No Way It's That Overcast On The Bay In August

In fact, it may be that Godzilla 2014 is so much like previous Giant Monster films that it runs the risk of ironic self-parody -- and when The Big Guy appears, he's just in the nick of time to keep us from nodding off.

And still, we don't know: What the hell does he want? Why does he do the stuff he does? Is he just pissed off, twenty-four-seven? About what? Is he sad? Is there a Ms. Godzilla? And the answer always comes back --  It's In The Script! He's Godzilla! It's a monster movie, for crying out loud; it's not 'Prime Suspect'. There is no nuanced, emotional or rational context in the film to provide those kinds of answers.

 We've seen "Earthquake!" and all the Airport movies, and "2012": the earth shakes a lot; planes almost crash; and there's that Mayan, end-of-the-world thing. They're genre films, which build on every previous film of their kind that's gone before.

The best you can expect is that a director is superb at delivering a genre story (M. Night Shyamalan, say, before Lady In The Water). Rarely, a classic appears and redefines a genre (like Chinatown, or Alien) -- but in general, most of these films follow a formula as faithfully as the tides.

Outtake For The Gag Reel: Having Blown His Line, The Big Guy Does Karaoke

And special effects -- showing us what the impossible looks like -- draw us in.  I'm also curious to see what Bryan Cranston does with his role (his first after Breaking Bad), and Ken Watanabe (of 'Letters From Iwo Jima' and Inception), but the CGI treats will be a focus.  And I'm interested to see whether my neighborhood survives; from the stills on the Intertubes, it appears North Beach, the Waterfront and Financial district are Toast, so who knows.

And I'll go to see The Chairman Of The Board, of course. He's been a treat for sixty years.

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1954: Big Guy's Beginnings

(Note: This narrative undoubtedly has holes, inaccuracies, and is incomplete. It won't satisfy a Godzilla, or a film, purist. This is an arc about the evolution of a character from destroyer, to near-slapstick character, and back again. Enjoy.)

Gojira (The Original) Attacks The Tokyo Diet Building, 1954

The Godzilla franchise isn't as old a film character as Dracula or Frankenstein, Batman or Superman -- but the mythos behind all of them has periodically been re-imagined and re-translated on the screen for new generations. There's no doubt about it, though: As a concept, Godzilla is a classic. And in Japan, Gorjira is regarded as one of the two most classic films in its national cinema -- right alongside Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

No joke: when it premiered in 1954, Japanese audiences (who have very different cultural reference points than we here in the West) didn't consider it a cheesy monster flick so much as a serious morality tale about the limits of science, told through the destructive hijinks of a mythic lizard. In fact, there's a bronze statue honoring The Big Guy in downtown Tokyo.

Ray Harryhausen's Stop-Motion Creature, 1953

Godzilla's cinematic roots were Made In The USA: In 1953, Warner Brothers premiered the classic Beast From 20,000 Fathoms -- a giant, prehistoric dinosaur, released from frozen sleep in the Arctic by a nuclear test explosion, swims to New York City and then comes ashore to raise all kinds of ruckus. Sound familiar? The monster was played by a large rubber model with an internal, articulated armature, operated by the master of stop-motion animation, Ray Harryhausen, (the armature designed and built by Ray's father), and the film was distributed around the world.

But Godzilla's real genesis began over a labor dispute: In the spring of 1954, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka of Japan's Toho Film Studios was in a real fix.  Having negotiated making a film for Toho in Indonesia, with everything ready, the Indonesian government refused to grant visas to Japanese actors (one way of saying, "Thanks for the brutal occupation of our country a few years back").  Tanaka, who was just trying to make a movie, was moderately screwed.

Director Honda (Left), Producer Tanaka (Right), Toho Films

Toho Studios had grown out of a theater company which (among other things) managed all Kabuki theatres in the city of Tokyo. It began to make films in the late 1920's, and operated movie houses for a new, domestic Japanese market. After 1945, it was struggling to make and distribute motion pictures in a Japan still trying to define itself after the end of the Second World War. 

Tanaka had funding to complete a film, but suddenly, no project; he had to find one, or else. As he flew back to Japan from Indonesia, that American film he'd seen, Beast From 20,000 Fathoms -- about a monster lizard terrorizing New York -- drifted through his head, and he began getting ideas.

Back in Tokyo, Tanaka made a forceful pitch to the studio heads to make their own version of  20,000 Fathoms. He was given approval to re-direct the budget of his Indonesian picture towards this new film -- but with one catch: he had only six months to get a film in the can, edit it, and produce a Final Cut.

This called for what the Japanese referred to during WWII (some enthusiastically; some with sarcastic derision) as a "Hero Project" -- shortened deadlines, intense work, little sleep, and All Hands On Deck. In short order, Ishirō Honda (who had already completed two domestic films for Toho) was hired to direct what Tanaka called "Project G" (for 'giant'). Shigeru Kayama, a science-fiction author, was engaged to develop a screenplay and the concept of  The Monster -- originally a wild predator which came ashore, ate people, and went back in the water.

A second draft of the screenplay by Honda and Takeo Murata expanded on themes Tanaka wanted to see in the finished film -- fears of radiation and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, real-life monsters unleashed by the United States in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and through continuing nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific.

The Monster in their script -- which had no name, yet -- grew in size, particularly after the studio consulted their special-effects director, Eiji Tsuburaya, who had worked with director Honda on his previous films.
 

Before Godzilla's Visit: Tsubraya's Miniature Tokyo Bay (1954)

Tsuburaya was known at Toho Studios for the realism of miniature model effects he created for a 1942 Toho film dramatizing Japan's attack on at Pearl Harbor. He had been intrigued by stop-motion animation ever since seeing King Kong in the 1930's, and while he was impressed with Harryhausen's work for 20,000 Fathoms,  Tsuburaya advised Honda and Tanaka that a stop-motion Creature would not work for the new project.  That technique was time-intensive, and 'Project G' had no time to spare.

Tsuburaya suggested an actor wearing a large suit would be their Monster, and attack a tiny Tokyo. Some wanted a monster designed with a mushroom-shaped head, reminiscent of a mushroom cloud, but the traditionalists won -- the Creature was dinosaur-like, but still needed a name. Producer Tanaka reportedly overheard colleagues talking about a Toho Studio press agent, nicknamed "Gojira," -- a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla (Gorira) and whale (Kujira). Tanaka decided to use it as both the name for the Creature and the title of the film -- and to Western ears, 'Gorjira' sounds very much like... Godzilla.

(MEHR, Mit Arooo: In response to a question, yes: the sound, "Arooo!" assigned to The Big Guy did originate from its use by 'Nixon's Head' in the animated series, Futurama. 

Here at Before Nine, we've reported Arooo being used by The Zombified Ronald Rayguns, among other things. Oddly, it's a term also applied to conical, clear plastic packaging, and [our favorite] Dog Products.)

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(Part 2 Follows Below; or, Go Here)

Reprint Heaven: Chairman Of The Board, Part II

Gorzirra, Then and Now
(Part One Is above; or, Go Here. From spring, 2014.)

[NOTE: As the Googlemachine has reminded all of us, this is the 114th birthday of  Eiji Tsuburaya, special-effects designer and the originator of so many hero beings from Japanese science fiction cinema. He also created the concept which we know today as The Big Guy, the Chairman Of The Board; and San Francisco's hometown monster, as we are a Sister City with Tokyo.] 

Releasing Gojira: 1954

(The Story Thus Far:  An American film, Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, is released by Warner Brothers in 1953, and gives producer Tomoyuki Tanaka of Toho Film Studios the inspiration he needs to save his job. Allowed to make a Japanese version, he is given roughly six months to complete it.

(Tanaka envisions a Giant Lizard, the mutated product of radioactive fallout or contamination, to serve as a warning about the limits of science and unintended consequences of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

(It's decided the Creature will be named "Gorjira" [a combination of the Japanese words for 'Gorilla' and 'Whale'], and the project's special effects consultant, Eiji Tsuburaya, convinces Tanaka and his team that an actor in a large rubber suit can play the Monster, and will have the fun of ravaging a miniature downtown Tokyo.)

Haruo Nakajima (Left) Served Tea On The Set Of Godzilla (1954) 

One of Toho Studios' principal stunt actors, Haruo Nakajima, volunteered to play Gorjira -- but even with several redesigns, the suit was heavy and difficult to use (its final version required a drain for collected sweat) and only frequent rehydration breaks kept Nakajima from passing out due to heat exhaustion. 

Tsuburaya (Left) Confers With Nakajima, 1956

The film was completed on schedule, released in Japan on November 3, 1954, and was a blockbuster hit.  Overnight, Toho was the film studio in Japan, and Gojira's director, producer and special effects creator hailed as geniuses of the cinema arts.

The film was sold to the American market; producer Joseph E. Levine had it dubbed, cut by twenty minutes, and inserted scenes of Raymond Burr (star of the popular television series, "Perry Mason") as an Edward-R-Murrow-style journalist, broadcasting eyewitness accounts of The Big Guy's trip to Tokyo.

Raymond Burr Contemplates His Fee For This Acting Job

Levine named the film "Godzilla, King of the Monsters", and released it in 1956. It was a smash in the U.S., pulling in $2 million dollars (that's about $40M in 2014 dollars, kids -- not bad for a guy in a rubber suit).

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Toho, and Daikaiju, Go Viral: 1955 - 1961

Tanaka initially considered Godzilla a one-shot morality tale, not the beginning of a 'franchise', and of an entire cinema industry.  However, the movie was so popular (not only in Japan, but worldwide) and making sequels seemed so potentially profitable, that in less than a year Toho shot and released "Godzilla's Counterattack" (later famous for the derisive line, "And you call yourself a scientist").

This was the first film where Godzilla would fight another monster, Anguirus (which became Godzilla's friend in later movies) -- and this established what eventually became the hallmark of the Godzilla 'franchise': Other monsters appear (from inside the earth, from outer space, or the mind of Minolta), wreak havoc, and Earth is defenseless... until Godzilla appears to save the day.

War Of The Rubber Suits: Big Guy And Anguirus Duke It Out

"Counterattack" (released as Gigantis in the U.S.) wasn't as successful in Japan as the original Godzilla, and the movie didn't adapt well to foreign distribution. As a result,  Toho began releasing other daikaiju movies (a term meaning "gigantic, strange monster"), a new genre of films Toho had created and which other Japanese studios began to imitate) -- most notably Rodan; "Varan the Unbelievable"; and Mothra by 1961.

All three of these characters would appear in later Godzilla films. All were solid box-office hits in Japan; Toho Films decided to keep milking the daikaiju cow so long as it kept paying off.

Good, Bad, and Even Worse: 1961 - 1973

"Look, No One Told Me Kyoto Was A World Heritage Site"

... and pay off it did. In 1961, Toho collaborated with American producer John Beck to create "King Kong versus Godzilla", the most box-office popular Godzilla movie of all time in the U.S. and Japan.  On the strength of that success, Toho produced 12 more Godzilla films -- by the end of which Godzilla was transformed from a mutant, destructive Monster created by atomic radiation, to the protector of humankind.

Actually, no one can be certain whether The Big Guy likes humankind enough to fight for it, or is just amazingly pissed off at the violation of his turf by some giant Bug / Dragon / Flying Turtle / et al.

(I'm not adding a list of all Godzilla productions; you can look at the Godzilla Wiki for that. We're just looking at the evolution of an archetype here.)

Unfortunately, over time, several things happened:  Godzilla's character and portrayal began to resemble the formulaic aspects of other daikaiju films and characters, and other Giant Monster films had a certain level of low comedy and moments of near-slapstick action.  Toho adapted its most popular character to fit the genre, not the other way around, and by the early 1970's things were ... goofy.

No longer the chunky-but-trim Terror From Under The Sea who laid waste to large urban areas, Godzilla lost most of his back spines and looked like... your neighbor, in a big rubber suit.

Godzilla (L), Megalon (R), And Other 400-Foot-Tall Beings

In 1971, I thought the bottom of the barrel was Toho Studio's "Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster", which showed human victims chopped up in sections (take that, kiddies), pratfalls, and Godzilla boxing like a human. It's tough to maintain suspension of disbelief under those circumstances.

Unfortunately, it was topped by their 1973 Godzilla vs. Megalon -- I swear to God; the stunt workers in that 89 painful minutes of cinema had to have been higher than Mt. Fuji. And the "film" was shot in only two weeks: Toho was low on funding. The daikaiju cow had gone dry.

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Death And Transfiguration: 1975 - 1995

In 1974 and 1975, Toho tried slightly rebranding their character for its 20th anniversary in MechaGodzilla and The Terror Of MechaGodzilla, but the original magic of the character had been badly diluted; the public wouldn't pay to watch him, and Toho's executives didn't want to risk their money in future Godzilla film projects.  The Big Guy only made a few appearances on Japanese daikaiju science-fiction television into the early 1980's, all moderately ridiculous compared with the menace and destructive power of the original Monster.

In 1984, the 30th anniversary of the character's birth, Toho made a simple and radical decision to save the franchise which had financed the studio's successful expansion for decades:  They started producing a new set of Godzilla films, called the "Heisei Series."

Most were for the Japanese market only -- but through them, Toho Studios simply 'reset' their character -- they ignored every Godzilla film made after the original 1954 release (good pick, that) and started with a new film appropriately titled Godzilla, which starred a Big Lizard who looked almost identical to the one who stepped on Tokyo in 1954.

In it, The Big Guy returns to his amazingly pissed-off former self, indestructible, created by nuclear radiation, a 350-foot-tall Lizard out for your personal ass.  It was released in America as Godzilla 1985, with some added scenes featuring an American played by (wait for it) Raymond Burr.

Ten years later, in 1995, Toho decided to end their franchise by killing it, in Godzilla vs. Destroyer. Toho made Godzilla's death public by adding "Godzilla Dies!" to posters and advertising of the film, and (while leaving a door open for a successor to reappear), The Big Guy dies.

Broderick Gets Up Close And Personal With Roland Emerich's So-Called Lizard (1998)

In 1998, everyone wished his successor had died before the filming started when TriStar Films licensed with Toho to develop their own Godzilla -- a computer-generated Big Lizard which had little relation to the classic Big Lizard. Directed by Roland Emerich and starring Matthew Broderick, it was a financial and artistic flop; the less said about it, the better -- but it was Bad. It was just Bad.

There was, of course, the movie 'Atonement', but Godzilla's appearance in that film was barely mentioned. Probably because we'd all rather look at Keira Knightley.

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So, there are two Godzillas -- the Japanese Monster who came from the sea to destroy things, stayed to become a comedic actor, then returned to his old ways.  That current Godzilla encompasses both the original Destructor, the product of bad science and big bombs, and his daikaiju side, battling other Big Monsters to protect the Earth, his turf, or just for the hell of it.

Godzilla films have continued to be popular in Japan, and a second series was released following The Big Guy's supposed 'death' in 1995 -- again, Toho simply "reset" the story line without reference to the character's end... but this is one side of his existence that American or European audiences don't see. In Asia, Godzilla is timeless and lives on, as pissed-off and irrascible as ever, sometimes defending mankind and occasionally kicking Tokyo's ass.

The second Godzilla is a creature of Hollywood -- less accessible, a  Godzilla "leased" from Toho Studios and who is (aber natürlich) much different for a Western audience. He's more of an animal, nastier, cunning and cold-blooded -- kind of like The Koch Brothers on a good day.  He's all Destructor. No slapstick from this Big Guy.

However, after Emerich's poor showing nearly twenty years ago, no American studio (or whoever owns the conglomerates which make films these days -- Disney; Little Rupert's Fox; Comcast) wanted to risk putting money behind another Godzilla remake -- until now. This new film is supposed to be a "totally new concept" in Godzilladom. We'll see.

It's nice, though, that The Big Guy is getting work. He thinks so, too, I'm sure.

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MEHR: With apologies to Fafnir, Giblets, the ghost of Freddy el Desfibradddor; Mistah Charlie, Phd.; and the Medium Lobster Himself (who is, well... pretty sizable):

Godzilla! There is no Giant Happy Fun Lizard but He - the Living, The Self-subsisting, the Eternal. No slumber can seize Him Nor Sleep. His are all things In the heavens and on earth and under the oceans. Who is there that can intercede In His presence except as He permitteth? He knoweth What (appeareth to All as) Before or After or Behind them. Nor shall they compass Aught of His knowledge Except as He willeth. His throne doth extend Over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth No fatigue in guarding and preserving them, For He is the Most High, The Supreme (in glory). He is Godzilla, King Of The Monsters, the One and Only.

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You Know It's Gonna Get Stranger

Fifty Years Down That Road
Transcendence, and The Experience Of Aging, Go Hand In Hand
(One Dog's Observation)
_____________________________

In the attics of my life
Full of cloudy dreams; unreal
Full of tastes no tongue can know
And lights no eye can see
When there was no ear to hear
You sang to me

I have spent my life
Seeking all that's still unsung
Bent my ear to hear the tune
And closed my eyes to see
When there were no strings to play
You played to me

In the book of love's own dreams
Where all the print is blood
Where all the pages are my days
And all my lights grow old

When I had no wings to fly
You flew to me
You flew to me

In the secret space of dreams
Where I dreaming lay amazed
When the secrets all are told
And the petals all unfold
When there was no dream of mine
You dreamed of me
 

******************************

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Just a box of rain,
Wind and water,
Believe it if you need it,
If you don't just pass it on

Sun and shower,
Wind and rain,
In and out the window
Like a moth before a flame

It's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
Or leave it if you dare

But it's just a box of rain
Or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long long time to be gone
And a short time to be there

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And After All This Time

Still, I feel like a stranger; feel like a stranger.  Well you know -- it's gonna get stranger.  So let's get on with the show.

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Take This Austerity And Shove It

Greece Says No

I Just Really Like This Graphic.

61% of the Greeks who voted on their referendum to accept or reject terms of the EU Troika's latest offer of financial support said No, Thank You to further austerity.

The past several weeks have been an exercise in Brinksmanship between Alex Tsipras (and the Syriza party which controls the Greek government), and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany (and the entire EU-IMF-ECB Troika structure).  It's been a contest between the Troika's demands -- that further economic assistance from the EU will only come with additional Austerity measures -- and the Tsipras government's rejection of those terms as a continuation of Greece's untenable economic condition that began after the Crash of 2008.

You remember the Go-Go, "Lil' Boots" Bush years -- an expansion if the "finance sector", with aggressive lending, leveraging to the max, and no real government oversight. In America, that ended in a financial crisis at least as great as the Wall Street Crash of 1929.  But it also ended with our government bailing out the Banksters.  And that is exactly what happened in other European economies -- and most obviously in Greece.

To say it again, what's at issue is 267 Billion Euros in bailout loans, made by the EU to Greece after the 2008 crash forced their economy to implode. Most of those loans came through German banks.  The Greeks can't meet further payments on the loans -- and the Syriza party's election victory was a bellwether of how ordinary Greeks felt about the austerity terms that came with those loans. 

Yanis Varoufakis -- until yesterday, Greece's finance minister -- said today in a blog post (as noted by Barry Ritholtz in his Bloomberg News column) that " 'the Greek "bailouts" [after 2008] were exercises whose purpose was intentionally to transfer private losses onto the shoulders of the weakest Greeks, before being transferred to other European taxpayers.' "

(It's worth repeating that one of the most serious charges made against the Bush-era TARP program, and the Relief Act under then first-year President Obama, was that it turned private business losses -- the results of stupid, greedy decisions by a handful of men -- into public debt, to be borne by all Americans.

(And that was done in order to ensure that the Casino stayed open, that our Masters Of The Universe could remain BSD's, and be honored, and have Treats. Any number of Loyalists have said Hey, if the government didn't do that, the whole banking system would have collapsed! Everywhere! Game Over!! Others have said America's Investment Houses/Banks should have paid the price for their own greed and been allowed to fail, like any other business.)

Note: Ritholtz also mentions, "This astute (albeit little known) insight has been echoed by a small number of insightful analysts... [such as] Steve Randy Waldman. His take on the Greek bailouts includes an in-depth discussion of the [EU's financial assistance to Greece] as 'largely a bailout of European banks, initiated to prevent a wider banking crisis.' ".

House O' Cards: Primary Exposure To Greek Debt Rests With Five EU Core Economies

A number of payments are due to the IMF/ECB in the month of July -- primarily interest payments on the bailouts, and on maturing Greek bonds.  Tsipras was clear that it wasn't his government's intent to pull a "Grexit" -- Greece would remain a member of the EU and participate in the single-currency Euro; they just wanted to renegotiate and restructure the debt, curbing the austerity measures.

Through at least four rounds of negotiations in June, Merkel and the Troika said no. Greece had to accept its terms without reservation: More funding for your economy? You take more Austerity. If Greece refused, there would be no funding -- and that meant Greece would be forced to leave the EU, abandon the Euro, destabilize the European Union itself and potentially bring down the world economy.

Paul Krugman noted: 

[The Austerian's] story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.

But the campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense. 

Last Tuesday, Greece defaulted on a $1.7 B interest payment on the original bailout loans to the Troika -- which responded by refusing to extend funding to Greek banks.  The Tsipras government had no choice but to close the banks and impose capital controls: No more money could be transferred out of the country (some 2 Billion Euros had been moved out of Greece in the previous week); cash withdrawals at bank ATMs were limited to 60 Euros per account per day.

This was a high-stakes gamble on the part of the EU's financial leadership, and Merkel -- and seemed an act of arrogance, even cruelty. They were willing to make life even harder for ordinary Greeks if it forced the Lefties to accept their demands, or leave office -- no doubt to be replaced by another Center-Right coalition that would humbly accept the Troika's terms.

Modern European politics are rarely played so openly at that level, and it backfired: Tsipras countered by calling for a referendum on the Troika's financing offer = Austerity Yes, or Austerity No.  High Noon on the Acropolis. 

That, too, was a high-stakes' gamble (Tsipras had said if the country voted to accept the Troika's terms, he would resign as Prime Minister and call for new elections). I think Merkel and company were surprised, but expected the Greek population would not only reject Tsipras' position but the Syriza party's coalition government as well.

That didn't happen.  What will happen next?  Well, we'll all get to see, won't we?

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Und Mehr, bei Herr Krugman:

A “yes” vote in Greece would have condemned the country to years more of suffering under policies that haven’t worked and in fact, given the arithmetic, can’t work: austerity probably shrinks the economy faster than it reduces debt, so that all the suffering serves no purpose. The landslide victory of the “no” side offers at least a chance for an escape from this trap.

But how can such an escape be managed? Is there any way for Greece to remain in the euro? And is this desirable in any case?

The most immediate question involves Greek banks. In advance of the referendum, the European Central Bank cut off their access to additional funds, helping to precipitate panic and force the government to impose a bank holiday and capital controls. The [European] central bank now faces an awkward choice: if it resumes normal financing it will as much as admit that the previous freeze was political, but if it doesn’t it will effectively force Greece into introducing a new currency.

Specifically, if the money doesn’t start flowing from Frankfurt (the headquarters of the central bank), Greece will have no choice but to start paying wages and pensions with i.o.u.s, which will de facto be a parallel currency — and which might soon turn into the new drachma.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the central bank does resume normal lending, and the banking crisis eases. That still leaves the question of how to restore economic growth.

In the failed negotiations that led up to Sunday’s referendum, the central sticking point was Greece’s demand for permanent debt relief, to remove the cloud hanging over its economy. The troika — the institutions representing creditor interests — refused, even though we now know that one member of the troika, the International Monetary Fund, had concluded independently that Greece’s debt cannot be paid. But will they reconsider now that the attempt to drive the governing leftist coalition from office has failed?

A Glorious Fourth

 Old Times Not Forgotten

Who won the war? The Union Army obviously won the war... [but] if we're not just talking about the series of battles which finished with the surrender at Appomattox ; but talking instead about the struggle to make something higher and better out of the country -- then the question gets complicated: The slaves won the war, but they lost the war. Because they won 'freedom' -- that is, the removal of slavery -- but they did not win 'freedom' as they understood freedom.

I think what we need to remember most of all is that the Civil War is not over until we, today, have done our part in fighting it... William Faulkner said once that, "History is not was; it's is" -- and what we need to remember is that the Civil War is in the present, not just the past.

The generation that fought the war... also established a standard that will not mean anything until we have finished the work. You can say, "There's no more slavery any longer; we're all citizens." But if we're all citizens -- then we have a task to do to make sure that, too, is not a joke. If some citizens live in houses, and others live on the street, the Civil War is still to be fought -- and regrettably, it can still be lost.

Barbara J. Fields, Historian
In Ken Burns' Documentary, The Civil War, 1990

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Reprint Heaven: Justa Guy From Jersey

At Last Their Love Has Come Along 
(This, from October, 2011. Strange how 2015 all seems like a weird kind of replay of the 2012 season, doesn't it?)

(From October, 2011) In Future, All Presidential Press Conferences Will Be Held

Outside George Washington Hospital's ER. Just In Case.

"Those pushing Mr. Christie to run include the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, Nancy Reagan and the conservative columnist William Kristol. If the odds of a campaign were very low just weeks ago, they are increasing."
("Christie Team Assessing How Fast a 2012 Campaign Could Be Mounted", New York Times)

[In 2011] The Rethug Leadership, and the Big Money behind them, have looked at their pack of GOP presidential candidates:

The Mittens is seen as a mock-pseudo-crypto-quasi christian by Real christians (Read: We Conservative Evangelicals Will Never Allow Some Apostate Cult Member A Mormon To Be Elected), and isn't very exciting;  

Crazy Lady Grand TurtleBear Bachmann of the Church of I Kill You! and Le Gouvernor Placard Mssr. Perry have crashed and burned, because they say manifestly stupid things and are mentally ill;

Newt (" Rockin', No Knockin' ") Gingrich is too overly intellectual for the, uh, average Republican, and is too busy looking for the next Mrs. Gingrich he'll have to marry.

Herman Cain is Waaaaaay Overtime, and John Huntsman might be sane, but that may be why Herman is watched as entertainment and John can't find traction with the, uh, average Republican -- plus, Huntsman is (cough cough) one of Them, too (We mean Mormons. See "Mittens", above);  

Ron Paul looks like Don Knotts in Three's Company and is close to crazy;  

Mike Huckabee is mentally ill too; Crazy Moose Lady Little Sarah, Straight 'n Tall, is crazy, but knows being President would put a stop to her 'Little Sarah Brand'™ Money Machine, once and for all.

And, The Donald can't get the Weasel That Lives On His Head to agree that they should run. So there you are.

We're Whalers On The Moon. We Carry A Harpoon.

Who's left? Who can you "sell" to the Tea Partei brownshirts as well as the Joe Sixpack Average Republicans? Who do The Koch Brothers and Harold Simmons and Addled Sheldon and Little Rupert Murdoch see as the figurehead for their personal agendas? That they will put their personal power (most importantly, huge sums of money) behind?

How about a man who talks like a dock worker -- no-nonsense, spade's-a-spade, You-could-have-a-beer-wit'-this-Guy. Looks just the guy next door. Sweats like you. Got a weight problem like you. Probably whipped like you, too, Bud.

Not like that over-educated uppity illegitimate leader Negra up th' White House what thinks he's the Pres-o-dent. Think you could have a beer with that Socialist Kenyan? No way, pal.

No -- Chris Christie Is One Of You Unwashed Ignorant Peasants. Of course you'll vote for him.

And the sad thing is, politics being what they are -- the members of both parties doing everything they can to provide America's wealthy with The Soft and The Nice, and Treats, and Safety Nets -- and vote-rigging being what it is; The Powers That Be may decide hey; our money's on The Fat Boy.


Because ultimately, elections aren't about reality -- not for these people. For the Rethugs, it's not about adult debate on the directions to take with issues that threaten the species, or about ensuring stability and prosperity for all Americans, as opposed to greed and short-term gains.

It's about selling a product, so that the Gravy Train for the Few can continue without a hiccup. Like Little Rupert, they treat their "political consumers" with contempt: Just give us your Money votes; accept whatever we decide to tell you; shut up, don't talk back; and stay out of our Business. You don't like it? We'll run right over ya.

And, with an Oligarch, two unindicted war criminals, and the widow of the Zombie Candidate For President all saying, Run, Fat Man, Run -- well, if not the Best, why not the Biggest?

Lard Boy will love the idea, I'm sure.

---

MEHR MIT DER DICKE AUS NEUES JERSEY [Again, From 2011]:

Associated Press / MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (AP), [October 2011] — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said Saturday that he is open to sending American troops to Mexico to help battle drug cartels.

Perry, the Texas governor, likened the situation to Colombia, where the government accepted American military support in battling drug trafficking. Mexico's government, however, has been opposed to foreign forces in its territory.

Perry saids the current violence may require similar military action.

"It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and keep them off of our borders," he said.

---

Where Der Elites Meet

More Kulturschande

(Original photo: 2015 Reuters / Michael Kappeler / Pool Photographer)

Reprint Heaven: Kulturschande *

John Derbyshire's Public, Total, And Irreversible Loss
Of Bowel And Bladder Control

(This, from April 2012; "Same As It Ever Was")

John Derbyshire, a conservative pundit and gadfly at the National Review (originally founded by William F. Buckley, and later run by unindicted war criminals), author of several books, including We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, provided us with a spectacle last week: Virtually dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a fantasy match, via this post at the Takimag website: "The Talk: Nonblack Version".

Apparently, John-Boy had read several articles that referenced a "talk" which at least some Black parents purportedly have with their children about living in a society dominated by non-African Americans (I've preserved some of the links to them from Derbyshire's original below):

[Derbyshire quotes:]“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

Yes, talk about the talk is all over.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following...

Herr Derbyshire said, to paraphrase, Blacks are generally less intelligent than Caucasians or Asians, whom Blacks simply lump together as "white"; are more likely to be undeservedly promoted into management positions in the workplace; and are prone to violent behavior against "whites", if only on the basis of statistics. All this, and more like it, is what he tells his own children.

He tells this to his children. And where, pray, do people like him believe that racism comes from? Not only in the images and attitudes children unconsciously absorb from the world around them -- but because someone teaches them.

It's What They Do

Some pundits with a large soapbox to stand on, or their own site -- precisely because they publish lies and drivel, and use the Net to sling their own feces beyond their cages -- deserve to be ignored, vilified; to have their IP addresses blocked and sent to dwell in the land of Little Rupert, East of Podhoretz, with the crying, and the wailing, and the gnashing of mandibles (and the hey hey hey, as Professor Frink might tell us).

A few obvious examples of public masturbation are Drudge, Malkin; Goldberg, Erikson; and Breitbart (a Grand Public Masterdebater); but it's a long list. Thinking human beings recoil from the junk that spills out of their addled minds and into the rinse-cycle whirl of the Intertubes (Or, we laugh our asses off. Or both). They deserve our contempt, and receive it -- but they won't leave. They won't perform a swan song -- a GBCW! post: Good-Bye, Cruel World!.

However, the GBCW doesn't tend to happen in Right Blogostan, where the operative principle is to lie, and outrageously. As (for example) Breitbart and O'Keefe have shown us, don't just strain credulity, piss on it. And, Right bloggers have automatic support among a large community, willing to swallow every wingnut, asshat, echo-chamber fantasy of the moment.

Because, you see, the Right must stand in solidarity. They see a hostile world, dominated by elite Liberals and their Media; Jews; non-white people; and the undeserving poor and undocumented aliens, all supported by the taxes of honest working Americans (Also, there are giant radioactive scorpions being trained by the UN to bring about a one-world government headed by George Soros).

So You Wanna Be One Of The Kool Kidz

Sometimes, the GBCW is purely voluntary. At some level, the Blogosphere -- Left or Right -- mimics high school. Bloggers and regular commentors tend to affiliate, and like any other association of humans can be exclusionary. On occasion someone appears whose style in posting comments is grating, awkward. They insist on being right, on dominating a thread; they just don't express ideas well. They may be off-topic, and are thin-skinned when teased -- as they will be (humans are humans, and anonymous ones even more so).

Usually, these people have a blog of their own. They want to be one of the Kool Kidz, too, and have lots of site traffic -- to be popular. To "be someone". The problem is, they already are someone, and that they've confused the raison d'etre of their blog, or commenting on someone else's post, with wanting to appear on something like the old Gong Show.

So, when no one reads their amazingly important, detailed, lengthy blog posts; and they're ignored when adding to threads on other sites... finally, they may write that GBCW post, clomping off the Internet stage with a final, long soliloquy explaining ad nauseum why they are right and the rest of the world is wrong, wrong, wrong; and also, bad. If they are religious, they may hint darkly that god (somebody's god, anyway) will punish everyone for not eagerly lapping up their vomit.

(For some reason, I'm reminded of R. Crumb's Everyman character, Flakey Foont, constantly looking to Mister Natural for enlightenment, befuddled; angry at his mistreatment in life. In one final panel, Foont weeps as, in a thought bubble, he imagines his tombstone's epitaph: Here Lies Flakey Foont / A Beautiful Soul / Crushed By An Uncaring World..)

Wingnut Self-Immolation

Then, there's the other category of GBCW, almost unique to the Right, where a Rightist pundit's mask slips and the true reptilian horror is shown for all to see and wonder at. This sort of thing happens all the time -- you can't get through a week without a Rightist politician, or self-proclaimed pundit like Lard Boy, saying something insulting or incendiary.

So, when a wingnut pundit like Derbyshire can't maintain the Right's cherished fiction of bipartisan cooperation, or that they believe non-white persons are their equals, for anyone on the Right to take notice their outburst has to cross a line that is damaging for conservatism in general -- particularly in an election year.

A recent example: Lard Boy's public ridicule of a young woman as a slut and a prostitute, over her appearance before Congress on the subject of contraception. After enough heavy-hitters on the Right strongly hinted he'd stepped over a line, El Fathead reluctantly made a self-justifying half-apology -- as good as you'll get from a pathetic bully like Rush.

Trent Lott Flies The Bonny Blue Flag

But an example more to the point is then-Senator Trent Lott's fulsome praise of Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party in 2002: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him," Said Trent. "We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either".

Thurmond had run for president in 1948 as a 'Dixiecrat', expousing what Wikipedia notes as "an explicit States' Rights platform that challenged the Civil Rights Movement and later, the Civil Rights Act as illegally overturning the Separation of powers under the United States Constitution." In other words, Antebellum 'Southern values'.

In the appropriate storm of criticism that followed, Lott was forced to resign as Majority Leader of the Senate in 2003, and blamed the evil nasty Intertubes bloggers for keeping the story alive (Lott resigned from the Senate in 2007, and opened a lobbying firm a block from the Senate offices).

Missy Laura Talks To The Nation

On August 10, 2010, Laura Schlessenger, right-wing radio commentator "Doctor Laura", had an exchange with a Black woman who had called in to her syndicated program to speak about a personal issue: Occasional racial slurs her husband (who is Caucasian) and his friends would make in front of her.

CALLER: I'm having an issue with my husband where I'm starting to grow very resentful of him. I'm black, and he's white. We've been around some of his friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores those comments, and it hurts my feelings. And he acts like --

SCHLESSINGER: Well, can you give me an example of a racist comment? 'Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive. So tell me what's -- give me two good examples of racist comments.

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n----r, n----r, n----r.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

It continued in the same vein after "Doctor Laura" returned. "Yeah," Frau Schlessenger said; "We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious". When the caller disagreed, the good doctor responded, "[You've] got a chip on your shoulder. Can't do much about that."

Frau Schlessenger spent much of the next week trying to defend herself on air, and on August 17, announced on Larry King Live that she was leaving commercial AM radio, moving to subscription-only Sirrus to continue her special brand of joy without "some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

Old School Dog-Whistle

Derbyshire is originally British, a naturalized American citizen; well-educated; his wife is Asian, and his sons are mixed-race Amerasians. You'd think he knew exactlywhat was about to happen as he clicked "Send" to upload his article to 'Takimag', and it did: The National Review terminated Derbyshire; the NROnline's editor, Rich Lowry, posted:

[Derbyshire's] latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.

(I so like Lowry's use of the nickname, "Derb"; it smacks of Groton or Andover, of lacrosse or crew at Yale. Just kind of tone the NR likes to have amongst its own; so "Our Crowd".)

I don't agree with Lowry that Derbyshire's views are such that the NR "would never associate ourselves otherwise". I believe the Right perpetuates racist perspectives, the common assumptions that Derbyshire is so willing to teach his children -- but assumptions only admitted to quietly, between the "right sort" of people.

One Cardinal rule of the wingnut tribe is not to embarrass the Right by admitting to its true shared values, particularly about how icky Blacks and The Poor are (they're so -- well, so Black, and so poor). Derbyshire's irretrievable sin was to say so, openly and in public.

But in calling him 'Derb' (both affectionate and dismissive at once), Lowry showed he didn't repudiate an old friend and member of his class; only that he was uncomfortable with Derb's statements. Lowry will meet Ol' Derb, buy him a drink and say, "What were you thinking, Derb? I mean, we all know about 'Those People'; but you had to go and say it. I had to cut you from the NR; you didn't really give me a choice, old man."

(Think this is a stretch? Possibly. But I doubt it.)

The Right is eager to play the race card with a sitting Black President, but they have to do it through innuendo, metaphors, verbal allusions. I understand that I'm offering no examples, but I believe Lowry and people like him on the Right tacitly support Derbyshire's "views" concerning the comparative intelligence, aggression and "otherness" of Blacks in America. And, so they can't be accused of overt racism, they'll just make oblique references. They'll use the dog whistle.

Race is an issue in America. There's been a tremendous amount of racist garbage, blog posts and comments, crudely-drawn cartoons, aimed not at Obama's policies but at his race (One of the first comments I heard after the 2008 election from someone at work was, "Guess we can't call it the 'White House' anymore!").

And Right blogostan has never stopped baying about the 'conspiracy' around the legitimacy of his birth certificate. Breitbart's last super-secret, stop-the-presses video was about Obama giving someone a hug -- proof of his radicalism, that he is (hint, hint) a Black man first and an American second.

You can barely hear the National Anthem any longer for all the dog-whistling on the Right that's been going on since 2008. And none of the Good Ole Boys repudiates it; I see Sessions, Haley Barbour, and Saxby Chambliss (who crawled into office by calling a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran a traitor) whining on television and want to puke. People like this are a shame on my country.

We're a badly polarized society -- possibly more so than at any time since The Great Depression, certainly since 1965 -- and at a time when we can least afford to be so divided. Asshats like Derbyshire (aber natürlich, only for the purest of reasons) have pushed and escalated our society's divisions and put us at each others' throats. They'd like to keep us there.

Race is an issue in America. Electing Barack Obama as president didn't solve it. I'm not happy with Obama as a president, or a Democrat -- but it would never cross my mind to believe his public policies or decision-making are the product of his being Black.

The Right, on the other hand, seems to think that is the case -- and while Derbyshire will be publicly repudiated by conservatives for his remarks, many of those same people on the Right will attempt to perform a quiet, virtual lynching as they attempt to 'save' America from ... the Justice in Equality, I guess.

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen, Derbyshire, you Lumpenhund nutter.

---

( * "Kulturschande" Is more than just bringing shame upon one's culture, because the concept in German of Kultur encompasses much more than that. But, trust me; it's pejorative.)

---

NOTE: Offered without comment, per Wikipedia: "In early 2012, [Derbyshire] underwent treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia."

Never On Sunday

Greek Odyssey

Εμείς δεν χαμήλωσε το βλέμμα, αλλά έδωσαν τη ζωή μας για να σώσει την Ελλάδα, όταν η μοίρα της κρεμαστεί σε κόψη του ξυραφιού.

We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge.  
--  Cenotaph at the Isthmos

The current Odyssey of the Greek economy and its citizens can be summed up thus: The world's economy was given a 9.0-Richter Scale shock in 2007 - 2008, courtesy of the Bankster class. In the fall of 2009, Greece revealed that it had been understating its annual budget deficit figures for years -- meaning it's National Debt was also large -- then, approximately 175% of its Gross Domestic Product.

Greece was then shut out from borrowing in the financial markets -- and by the spring of 2010, the country looked as if it might have to declare bankruptcy. That could destabilize other EU countries whose internal finances were also shaky -- Portugal, Italy, Spain;  France wasn't far behind. Iceland's economy had already imploded, and Ireland's was preparing to.

The European Union was created as a cooperative structure based on trade, a single currency, and a European Parliament to speak with one voice to the rest of the world. It was the only way Europe could maintain political and economic sovereignty as a whole, against economic juggernauts like the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union (i.e., "Putinlandia").  The Bankster-created financial crisis threatened, by destabilizing the economies of weak members like Greece, to blow the EU apart, and its political leaders (Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel most prominently) were determined not to allow that to happen.

Per the New York Times, "To avert calamity, the so-called [T]roika — the I.M.F., the European Central Bank (ECB), and the European Commission — issued the first of two international bailouts for Greece, which would eventually total more than ... $264 billion." There was other money at stake, too -- loans to Greek businesses and institutions, principally from German, and French, banks.

But taking the Troika's bailout money meant Greece had to accept austerity measures -- deep cuts in government spending (reductions in government pensions, government workers), and steep tax increases. Greece would also have to restructure its economy by reducing the size of its government, curbing tax evasion, and "making Greece an easier place to do business".

This last included such things as maintaining a high VAT rate on business being done in the offshore Greek islands, and selling ownership in the country's electric utility, and its principal port of Piraeus, to Oligarch vultures "investors". The Greeks weren't wild about any of it, needless to say.

Austerity was insisted on by EU leaders like Die Eisen Kanzellerin Angela -- because the "PIGS" (and that's the term which the press in more economically sound, core EU countries referred to them) -- EU members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain -- had been "profligate" and irresponsible spenders during the Go-Go, "Lil' Boots" Bush years of shadow banking and Derivatives fun.  

(Even during this current crisis, it's interesting to note how the English-language media of core EU nations [BBC, Deutsche Welle; Financial Times; France24], portray the Greeks as being the architects of their own misfortune, 'coming back to the ECB with an outstretched hand' for more money, unreasonable in negotiations, with broad hints that they should just take their Austerity medicine and stop whining because it's all their fault.)

And because they had been imprudent and foolish, Austerity was what they would have to accept before their stern, Northern European uncles would give them a loan. Accepting harsh measures would mean a financially stronger EU in future, its proponents said. The problem, of course, is that austerity utterly and completely fails to do what it claims to do -- stimulate private economic growth and lead to a slow return to higher standards of living.

Greek national unemployment rose to 25% (fifty per cent, for people under 25) and stayed there. Pensioners were forced to live with less. Businesses failed. After 2010, there were five separate "crises" when the Greek government might default on payments to the $264 Billion they had been loaned. Each time, the Troika restructured the terms of those repayments -- and each time, demanded further austerity controls be instituted. 

I've barked about this current situation before. Ultimately, the Greek polis revolted, and replaced a succession of Center-Right governments (which had supported Austerity) by electing a majority of Leftist Syriza party representatives to the Greek parliament. Alex Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, and his finance minister, Vanis Varoufakis, have attempted to restructure their $264 B debt with the Troika -- they want to reduce or eliminate the austerity controls; the Troika has said no.

There will be a default on loan payments owed to the ECB today (not so big a deal, but a symbolic, Rubicon-style line crossing). This coming Sunday the Greeks will vote to accept the EU/Troika's terms to restructure their $264 B debt and its austerity controls (a "Yes" vote), or to vote "No", which will most probably lead to the fabled "Grexit". We'll see.

This isn't the harbinger of doom that some believe it to be (I could be wrong; Dogs can be); this isn't Ragnarok or even October of 2008. There will be a sell-off in equities (which I'm sure hedge fund managers are positioning themselves to take advantage of), but people are still partying like it's 1979.

_______________________________________________

MEHR, MIT ANGELA - HOO HOO HOO! AUS GEMACHT:

 As default looms, Merkel rules out more negotiations with Greece

(Reuters)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out new negotiations with Greece until after it votes on a proposal from creditors, leaving virtually no hope left to avert a midnight default despite a plea from Athens for a last-minute bailout extension... euro zone finance ministers called a conference call (1:00 a.m. EDT) to discuss the Greek request.

Merkel said there could be no new negotiations until after a July 5 referendum that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called on an offer made last week by creditors, which Tsipras has told Greek voters to reject. Tsipras, who says the creditors' proposals ... would ruin Greece, responded with a counter-proposal requesting a two-year deal covering funding support and debt restructuring, an issue the lenders have so far been reluctant to tackle.

[Note: The Greek government has requested an emergency disbursement from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), set up after Greece had received the $264 B in bailout loans from the European Central Bank and which, technically, should be available to the country. It's more complicated than that, and would drag all negotiations between the Greeks and the Troika back to square one, but they did ask and now have been told No.]

... one well placed Eurozone official [said] there was "no way" euro zone finance ministers would release funds in time for the IMF payment [today, June 30th]. Merkel, whose country is Greece's biggest creditor, made clear she believed time had run out. "This evening at exactly midnight Central European Time the program expires. And I am not aware of any real indications of anything else," she told a news conference. She later said Athens would be to blame for allowing the bailout program to expire.

_________________________________________ 

MEHR AUCH, MIT "NUN WAS IST AUCH SCHON WIEDER LOS?" HOO HOO HOO!, usw.

(Note: Man, this is like Liveblogging.)

(Reuters) A defiant Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged Greeks on Wednesday to reject an international bailout deal, wrecking any prospect of repairing broken relations with EU partners before a referendum on Sunday that may decide Greece's future in Europe.

Less than 24 hours after he wrote a conciliatory letter to creditors asking for a new bailout that would accept many of their terms, Tsipras abruptly switched back into combative mode in a television address.

Greece was being "blackmailed" ... "A 'No' vote is a decisive step toward a better agreement that we aim to sign right after Sunday's result," he said, rejecting repeated warnings from European partners that the referendum would effectively be a vote on whether Greece stays in the euro or returns to the drachma.

... The head of the currency zone ministers' Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said he saw "little chance" of progress after Tsipras's latest comments ... However even if negotiations do restart after the referendum, Germany and others made clear that any talks on a new program would have to start from scratch with different conditions.

... "[The current Greek] government has done nothing since it came into office," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech in the [Landstag] in which he accused Athens of repeatedly reneging on its commitments.

... [In Greece] Of those polled before the announcement of the bank closures, 57 percent said they would vote "No" against 30 percent who would vote "Yes". However among those polled after, the "No" camp fell to 46 percent against 37 percent for "Yes".
_________________________________________