French and Greek elections 'have overthrown Angela Merkel as dominant force'

French and Greek elections have overthrown Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, as the dominant force in European politics, newspapers in Germany have concluded.

"The hour of the extremists," warned Handelsblatt, Germany's financial newspaper, predicting that the defeat of pro-EU austerity parties in Greek elections will bring "an unparalleled political upheaval". … In an editorial, the newspaper warned that Greece could bring "political chaos" to Europe. …

Writing about their French neighbors, Süddeutsche Zeitung says: "Goodbye election campaign—bonjour reality." …

Die Welt sees the French and Greek vote as interlinked, spelling "the rejection of Merkel's system in Europe". In an editorial, the newspaper notes that both elections are a revolt against an EU and eurozone order dominated by the German chancellor. …

In France, Le Figaro defends the record of Nicolas Sarkozy, saying: "History will judge his term in office and will remark that having taken on the worst economic and financial crisis of the past 50 years, he nevertheless enacted essential reforms regarding university, research, pensions, public deficit reduction … He also proudly maintained France's place on the international stage and played a decisive role in saving Europe and the euro." …

but what the French will implement will not help.

Oh we agree on that. It will make things even worse actually. It's kinda like California. For years now California was doomed. They've got perpetual 10-20 billion budget deficits. They play games with the numbers and shuffle some accounts to get by, but the slide continues. The big investment houses pretend to believe the numbers, because to not believe them brings down the system. The media goes along, because they support the goals of the social welfare system. And a majority of the people simply don't care. The people are a combination of folks that are either dependent (and would vote for the current system no matter what), don't care or don't understand. So they play for time. Hoping maybe the next big IT or Real Estate boom fixes the problem. When the collapse comes it will probably even be worse than doomsayers like Zerohedge even imagine because every piece of the system is so corrupted now that there will be no confidence in much of anything - but in my opinion, that could be years off.

That's precisely what Vladimir Bukovsky said six years ago.

Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week, Mr. Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a full-fledged totalitarian state. …
In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home.”

The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats—threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore, the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together, they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market, they would turn it into a federal state. …

It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members, and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations, it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organization which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB—not yet—but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organization will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes—two of which are particularly worrying; one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly. …

It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time. …

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