Here is my Saturday Essay in the Irish Daily Mail. It is a
lengthy piece, but then in the countries caught in the eurozone,
interest in what is happening in Cyprus is intense. British readers can
be happy they are not trapped in the single currency. But they are still
trapped in the EU...which is why they may want to read on.
Before
I can explain what this Cyprus crisis means to Ireland, I have to dust
off some Soviet-era vocabulary: nothing else will do.
First, nomenklatura. This was the name given to the self-propagating Communist Party elite who controlled Soviet government, industry, finance and most of the caviar.
Next, apparatchiks. These were the unquestioning loyal subordinates of a Communist apparat or administrative system.
As for other words from the USSR era – transnational, class betrayal and colonialism – you already know those, so now I can get started and explain what Ireland must learn from what the European Union nomenklatura did to Cyprus and its president in the early hours of March 16th.
Picture the scene. We can do that because three reporters from the Wall Street Journal, one in Brussels, the others in Berlin and Nicosia, have managed to piece together an hour by hour account of events leading up to the announcement that eurozone finance ministers would force the Cypriot government to confiscate €5.8bn from bank deposits.
What has happened since that night remain other issues: the rush to Moscow by the Cypriot finance minister desperate for a loan, the attempts by Cypriots to find a Plan B, the possibility of Cyprus leaving the euro.
But above all, there is what happened over the night of the 15th on the sealed-off upper floors of the European Council building. It was the best illustration yet of why a former senior European Commission economist now refers to the EU as the New Soviet Union: the treatment of the President of Cyprus that night showed just how the power over the member states has shifted away from democratic control and into the hands of the unelected elite of a transnational European empire. And what happened to the Cypriot president that night could happen to any Taoiseach.
Berlin propaganda
So, as I say, picture the scene. That night there were ten hours of negotiations trying to put together a deal that would keep the banks in Cyprus solvent. What the Cypriot banks needed was €17.5bn. But the Germans were unwilling to allow such a bail-out. Already the Berlin propaganda machine had been pumping out stories that the Cypriot banks were stuffed with Russian hot money, and decent Germans were not going
Before
I can explain what this Cyprus crisis means to Ireland, I have to dust
off some Soviet-era vocabulary: nothing else will do.First, nomenklatura. This was the name given to the self-propagating Communist Party elite who controlled Soviet government, industry, finance and most of the caviar.
Next, apparatchiks. These were the unquestioning loyal subordinates of a Communist apparat or administrative system.
As for other words from the USSR era – transnational, class betrayal and colonialism – you already know those, so now I can get started and explain what Ireland must learn from what the European Union nomenklatura did to Cyprus and its president in the early hours of March 16th.
Picture the scene. We can do that because three reporters from the Wall Street Journal, one in Brussels, the others in Berlin and Nicosia, have managed to piece together an hour by hour account of events leading up to the announcement that eurozone finance ministers would force the Cypriot government to confiscate €5.8bn from bank deposits.
What has happened since that night remain other issues: the rush to Moscow by the Cypriot finance minister desperate for a loan, the attempts by Cypriots to find a Plan B, the possibility of Cyprus leaving the euro.
But above all, there is what happened over the night of the 15th on the sealed-off upper floors of the European Council building. It was the best illustration yet of why a former senior European Commission economist now refers to the EU as the New Soviet Union: the treatment of the President of Cyprus that night showed just how the power over the member states has shifted away from democratic control and into the hands of the unelected elite of a transnational European empire. And what happened to the Cypriot president that night could happen to any Taoiseach.
Berlin propaganda
So, as I say, picture the scene. That night there were ten hours of negotiations trying to put together a deal that would keep the banks in Cyprus solvent. What the Cypriot banks needed was €17.5bn. But the Germans were unwilling to allow such a bail-out. Already the Berlin propaganda machine had been pumping out stories that the Cypriot banks were stuffed with Russian hot money, and decent Germans were not going
