Thoughts about the European Union.

[inked]

And the proof that it was a printing ERROR is located where?

Pretty big error for the home of the GREGORIAN calendar - !

[Valandil]

Also hard for me to swallow that it's a complete oversight.

On the other hand, I think it's probably a decision by a low-level official, rather than EU policy.

Still though - a cautionary note for those in Europe who wish to hold onto Christianity. Whether as an actual faith or just a heritage of traditions.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by inked

And the proof that it was a printing ERROR is located where?

Where's the proof that it's a deliberate ommission? Saying this is a premeditated attack on Christianity is in the same League of Silly as accusing Israel of deliberatedly training sharks to go attack tourists off the coast in Egypt. Let's stay reasonable. It's not like christians are a poor widdle suppressed group in the EU either.

But if anyone wants to feel prosecuted over a misprinted agenda, be my guest. Personally I think there are better matters to feel suppressed by, but hey.

[Mari]

Originally Posted by inked

Ummm, Mari,

"A new 2011-2012 school calendar for children published by a branch of the European Union has omitted references to Christian holidays but has kept its references to prominent Jewish, Hindu, and even Muslims holidays, according to a Catholic news outlet."

Fact.


French politician makes statement.

Remark on the politician, ignore the fact = strain at gnat, swallow camel.

Does that help?

No. It was to my mind presented as a fact at first and later in the article it was suggested that this fact had been gotten from that French lady. It's not a fact unless the writer actually saw those calendars and could see for himself that they were missing. By the way they quoted that lady it suggested to me that not the writer, but the French lady had seen the calendars.

If you read it differently that's fine too.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

It was not immediately clear how car valets and driving instructors, also taxed for the first time, would react.

I bet it won't be anywhere near as impressive.

[inked]

"But now they have been classified as self-employed, as part of the cash-strapped government's push to collect more revenue and crack down on tax evasion."

Hey, do they list prostitution as a taxable employment? Sixteen per cent per client X number of sex workers (male/female/AC/DC) ought to bring in a chunk of change. Why limit taxes to witches, valets, and taxi drivers? Let's see some intense prosecution of taxation.

After all, this ISN'T kindergarden. It's Romania. EU!

[GrayMouser]

You know what other holiday they didn't mention? Mayday!

The Christmas and Easter thing is obviously just a cover for evil right-wing EU elements to deny European schoolchildren knowledge of their heritage of the struggle for workers' rights- it's probably directed by conservative groups in the US and Canada, two of the few places on the planet that don't acknowledge International Labour Day.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Sanity, some EU bureaucrat, feeling all multi-kulti, said to the calendar designer, "you know, since Christmas and Easter are holidays everywhere in the EU [the only religion whose holy days are public holidays, and like Labour Day and New Year's Day presumably marked as such in red on a school calendar] why don't we include some holy days of some of the millions of children in the EU who aren't Christian?"

The designer then dutifully looked up religious days for Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists etc. and put them in without even thinking of Christmas and Easter, which are already marked as holidays.

from Wiki:

This is a list of holidays in the European Union. The European Union does not have any official holidays. These are under the control of the member states. Most of the major holidays are mentioned although some are not public holidays.

Union-wide (at least mostly)

January 1 - New Year's Day
May 1 - Labour Day (excludes UK(First Monday in May) and the Netherlands) (note: while this day is observed in Poland it is intentionally not called Labour Day, but State Holiday (Polish Święto Państwowe) see Holidays in Poland; in Bavaria, it's called May Holiday (German Maifeiertag, see Holidays in Bavaria)
December 25 - Christmas Day
December 26 - Boxing Day / St. Stephen's Day / Second Day of Christmas (excludes Belgium, France, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia (Independence and Unity Day celebrated on that day) and Spain, except Catalonia and Balearic Islands)
various dates - Good Friday (excludes Belgium,Czech Republic, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia)
various dates - Easter Sunday
various dates - Easter Monday (excludes Estonia, Malta, Portugal, Scotland and most of Spanish regions

[The Gaffer]

LOL. Well done GM.

[Draken]

I always take shock-horror stories about the EU with a pinch of salt. So many of them turn out to have originated from some tabloid hack who has seized on half a story and spun it according to editorial policy, quoted it out of context or just plain made things up.

As to the EU itself, I have mixed views. It seems a pretty poor way to govern half a continent. Until you look at the alternatives.

[inked]

Excellent job, GM. Wonder why the EU couldn't have done it?

[inked]

Another bang-up political correctness scorer! Baroness Ashton

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Christian.html

"Baroness Ashton is under fire after the EU failed to agree on a statement condemning attacks on religious minorities in the Islamic world because it is not politically correct to use the word "Christian". " ...


No Christian holidays on the calendar....

Don't defend Christians by name....

No pattern here, none! Move along!

I re-iterate, EU!!!

[The Gaffer]

Why are you so obsessed with Islam?

(Edit: serious question)

[inked]

(serious answer)

Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Russia, Africa, ... .

[Jonathan]

(serious incomprehension)

Wut?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

(serious answer)

Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Russia, Africa, ... .

Not to mention Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Afghanistan, and in the latest atrocity, Indonesia

– Indonesia's president ordered an investigation Monday into an attack on members of a minority Muslim sect after a gruesome video emerged of a mob beating several victims to death with machetes, sticks and rocks.

About 1,500 people stormed a house in Banten province on Sunday to stop 20 Ahmadiyah followers from worshipping.

They killed three men and badly wounded six others, while destroying the house and setting fire to several cars and motorbikes.

Following repeated attacks on Christians, in a country that was always fairly tolerant (religiously, anyways).

These days I'm feeling somewhat inkish about our Muslim brethren myself.

[Valandil]

As many of you would know, the economy in Europe is struggling right now (along with the rest of us), but the EU has some peculiar situations stemming from its nature as a union of sovereign states. And now some very interesting things are developing, with the economy of Greece in particularly bad shape, an EU plan to assist in place, requiring 'austerity measures' for Greece, the apparent rejection of these austerity measures by the Greek populace at large, and now, today - the announcement by the Greek Prime Minister that he will seek a referendum on the implementation of this plan, with its austerity measures.

What do you folks think of this?

Do you think the long-term outlook of the EU as an entity is precarious, or do you think it will last a long time? Do you think Greece might get kicked out of the EU if they continue to struggle economically and do not accept the conditions for assistance required by the other EU members?

What do you see the future of the EU to be?

[GrayMouser]

Best 'short' summary I found on the whole thing.

Here's a cleaned-up version of a conversation I just had about Greece's sudden U-turn on the rescue deal negotiated just last week. Enjoy.


Are the Greeks crazy?

No, they're just at the end of their tether. Europe is asking them to adopt more austerity than they're willing to bear.

OK, but they're spending too much money. Surely they know they have to cut back?

Sure, but the deals on offer are pretty unattractive. Europe wants to forgive half of Greece's debt and put them on a brutal austerity plan. The problem is that this is unrealistic. Greece would be broke even if all its debt were forgiven, and if their economy tanks they'll be even broker.

But that's the prospect they're being offered: a little bit of debt forgiveness and a lot of austerity.

Well, them's the breaks.

But it puts Greece into a death spiral. They can't pay their debts, so they cut back, which hurts their economy, which makes them even broker, so they cut back some more, rinse and repeat. There's virtually no hope that they'll recover anytime in the near future. It's just endless pain. What they need is total debt forgiveness and lots of aid going forward.

That doesn't sound like a very attractive option for the rest of Europe

No, it's not.

So maybe they should just let Greece default and wash their hands of them.

Here's the thing, though: Greek debt is largely held by German banks that made the loans. [See update below.] If Greece has been irresponsible, so were the German banks that happily loaned out the money. So if Greece defaults, the banks go kablooey. But they're too big to fail, which means the German government would be forced to bail them out. And guess where the bailout money comes from? Tax dollars.

This means that German taxpayers have a bleak choice. They can shovel lots of money to Greece to keep them from defaulting, or they can refuse, and then shovel lots of money into German banks to keep them from collapsing. Either way, German taxpayers are going to foot the bill. They just haven't quite accepted this in their gut yet, and it's hard to blame them. They're pretty badly screwed no matter what.

Hmmm. Given that choice, they might decide they'd rather give their money to German banks than to Greek civil servants. What happens then?

Greece defaults. And that almost certainly means that Greece exits the euro.

Why?

It's the growth thing again. If Greece defaults, nobody will loan them any money. That means huge cutbacks, which means the economy will tank, which means even more cutbacks, etc. The traditional way out of this spiral is a massive devaluation of your currency. But Greece doesn't have a currency. It has the euro.

So if they want their economy to grow again, they have to (a) default, (b) exit the euro and re-adopt the drachma, and (c) devalue the drachma. This will cause massive amounts of pain, but it will also make Greek exports super cheap, which will eventually revive their economy.

So why not just let that happen?

It's just too catastrophic to consider. German banks, of course, would collapse and have to be bailed out. Ditto for banks in other countries that have lots of exposure to Greek debt. But that's not the worst of it. If Greece exits the euro, it will become terrifyingly obvious that other weak countries might exit too. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are the obvious candidates. Investors, spooked at the thought of their money being stuck in a country that might exit the euro and devalue all its bank deposits, would start huge runs on banks in those countries. The ECB would have to intervene and provide liquidity without limit. It would be a disaster.

So exiting the euro can't be allowed?

Right.

But if there's no exit, there's no devaluation, and Greece is pretty much screwed forever.

Right.

So who wins?

It depends on who blinks. Exiting the euro would be no picnic for Greece. But they could decide it's better than endless indenture, and threaten exit in order to get a better deal from the Germans. Then the Germans have to decide whether to call their bluff.

Wow.

Exactly. Wow. Everyone knows that somebody's going to lose a huge pile of money over this. What's really happening right now is a very high-stakes negotiation to figure out just how the losses are going to be parceled out. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: It's actually a little unclear just which country has the biggest exposure to Greek debt. Maybe Germany, maybe France, maybe Switzerland. See here, here, and here. And the ECB owns a lot of Greek debt these days too. But the general principle doesn't change much. One way or another, Europe's big countries have to decide whether to bail out Greece or whether to let them default and then bail out their own banking systems.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum

For the long term, there's basically two options. Either the southern tier drops out and the Euro essentially becomes a Deutsch-mark zone-plus-France, or Europe has to do what the U.S. did at their Constitutional Convention: decide to become the United States of Europe.

After all, nobody panics when there's a massive deficit in Alabama, right?

However, the citizens of Europe have been pulled into this by their elites, and are understandably disgruntled about what is happening, and so there is no way they are going to accept the second solution at the moment.

[Serenoli]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Not to mention Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Afghanistan, and in the latest atrocity, Indonesia

Following repeated attacks on Christians, in a country that was always fairly tolerant (religiously, anyways).

These days I'm feeling somewhat inkish about our Muslim brethren myself.

Seriously, saying the name of a line of Muslim countries followed by one incident automatically counts as answering why you are feeling inkish about your Muslim brethren?

I didn't hear any such remarks about Christians from any of my Muslim friends after the London riots, or the Greek strikes or even after a famous 'killer' (not terrorist, hah) went amok in Norway. Drawing the conclusion that such atrocities are a result of religion alone and not other factors is downright silly. Especially when you can't even spell the names properly its hard for me to believe you know anything about these countries except a few lines read in a newspaper.

[BeardofPants]

(serious giggle)

LOL

[Lief Erikson]

Lol!