Already facing serious difficulties – both internal and with regard to its EU partners – Greece’s predicament just became substantially worse.

Speaking on national television this evening, the Greek Prime Minister – George Papandreou – lashed out at the European Union (presumably meaning mostly Germany) for creating a “psychology of looming collapse which could be self-fulfilling.” He also implied that Greece was being treated, in some senses, like a “lab animal.” by Simon Johnson

Volunteer workers in Wales, Scotland and England have reported that elderly customers have taken to buying second hand books to fuel their fires and stoves.  

With the European winter being at its coldest in some 20 years and temperatures in the Scottish Highlands plummeting to as low as -13 degrees, people are beginning to become desperate. 

Shoppers are on the look out for large books such as encyclopaedias, dictionaries and the classics to burn as they are considerably cheaper than coal.

Allegedly, a lot of them are buying hardbacks because they can last all night.  

When a 500g book sells for as little as 5p while a 20kg bag of coal costs  £5, it's understandable. Since 2008, gas bills have risen by 40% and electricity 20%.  

When being warm becomes a luxury rather than a necessity there is something seriously wrong.  

The symbolism of people burning literature to stay alive is hardly poetic.  

So the very unknown Belgian PM Herman van Rompuy, has been elected as EU President- taking up a position that could be instrumental in the future of the region and global international relations in general.

Only a day later, on the opposite and non-EU side of Europe, Russian and Ukrainian officials met, with Putin announcing that he would be easing gas supply terms to a neighbour that is crucial for Russia's European pipelines. 

Is it too cynical to think this isn't it a coincidence? 

Is it unreasonable to think that as Putin spins a tighter trade web with Former Soviet Republics that this could be his attempt to stand tall and unthreatened by a stronger EU?

Last night at UNSW, Charlie McCreevy, the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services talked about the amazing lessons that could be taken from Northern Ireland and the Peace Process.

While a lot of what McCreevy spoke about in regards to how peace was achieved wasn't revelatory, there was one point he mentioned that really struck home for me.

McCreevy recounted how impossible it would have been 25 years ago to imagine an Ireland that was as peaceful and prosperous as it is today.

Really makes you wonder which of today's 'impossible problems' will be solved by people who have the vision to never confuse what the world is to what it can be. 

It seems strange for European leaders to be celebrating the capture of a war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, so soon after they were shaking hands with another, who so far has not had to go through the trouble of growing out his hair and selling new-age medicine. "This is a historic moment," German Chancellor Andrea Merkel said of the arrest of the Serbian, whose body count is thought to be upwards of 10,000. "The victims must know: massive human rights violations will not go unpunished."

Two weeks earlier she had "a very interesting exchange of view" with George Bush, whose body count is thought to be upwards of half a million and counting. There was no mention of reassurances for his victims. The Karadzic seizure "underscored Serbia's European calling," Merkel said, just a fortnight after she had a greater criminal by the right hand and let him get away.

But wait a minute, you say. Karadzic killed systematically. He targeted innocent people. He killed people because of their ethnicity. Shouldn't this be factored into our judgment of him? Maybe. Or maybe killing civilians is killing civilians. Maybe the fact that you don't do body counts, that you slaughtered so many people so indiscriminately that there is no way to precisely tabulate the number, should be weighed as well. Whether having people lined up before shooting them should carry a different moral valence from dropping bombs on them is a consideration that might be brought up at the International Criminal Court of the United Nations. [More]

John McCain has no chance. It's like George Bush climbing into the ring with Mike Tyson; one thundering left hook and the Crawford Caligula would be sprawled across the canvas in a pool of his own blood. "No mas"! The same fate awaits the crabby senator from Arizona. The polls are skewed to look like there's a political horse-race going on. There isn't. It's a complete rout. There's one well-toned thoroughbred striding from venue to venue electrifying the ever-increasing throngs, and one doddering, old mare limping towards the glue-factory. Someone should put a stop to it before McCain gets hurt...

At the Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten, Obama extracted Old Glory from the burn-pile and gave Brand America a desperately needed shot of adrenaline. 200,000 ecstatic Germans jammed the streets in what turned out to be the political shindig of the year. Many of them were waving American flags and chanting, "Obama, Obama, Obama". It was like Jack Kennedy had risen from his moldy sepulcher and made his way across the pond for one last rousing ovation. Obama has the very same affect on crowds. Its a gift and he knows how to use it to great advantage...

What can we say about Obama's oratory skills that hasn't already been said? He is one of those unique characters who knows how to tap into the collective psyche and put them under his spell. He is the closest thing to a Pied Piper we've seen in the last half century. Whatever one thinks of his politics, his speeches are a welcome reprieve from the simian blabbering of President Dimwit. [More]

In the midst of a growing economic crisis, Ireland’s urban working class and struggling rural people have united to deliver a blow to Europe’s ruling elite. The defeat of the Lisbon Treaty in the Irish referendum has tossed out years of efforts by the European Union to come up with new, “streamlined” procedures, and to get the increasingly unitary EU an (unelected) president and foreign minister. The Treaty was itself a modest rewrite of the European Constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005...

The X factor in this result was the effect of the prevailing economic catastrophism: would voters take the conservative option of voting Yes to avoid the danger of deepening the crisis with political uncertainty? In the end it was the most at-risk sections of the population who delivered the most decisive No. The problem for the Treaty was that it was all too easy for voters to connect Ireland’s present economic woes to its role in Europe.

As unemployment leaps, it calls attention to all the east-European immigrants working here; as previously astronomic house prices collapse, the president of the European Central Bank announces a coming rise in interest rates; as farmers worry about their futures, the EU negotiates at the WTO to allow more South American beef into European markets; as fishermen despairing of high fuel prices stage protest blockades at key ports, they complain about EU-imposed fishing quotas that force them to dump tons of their catches.

A No vote does nothing to address any of these issues; indeed few of them even figured prominently in the campaign. But voting No was the means at hand to complain about them. [More]