31 August 2012 1:15 PM
The commission want your 'opinion.' Oh, give it to them.
Okay, you know this already: you've just one way to get this country out of the EU - and yourself out of the hideous shackles called 'citizen of the EU' which David Cameron locked on your ankles when he agreed to let the Lisbon Treaty stand - and that is by an election which throws this lot of euro-true believers out of Government.
Alas that, and an EU referendum, will take some time.
However, just to keep your spirits up, you could have a go at this today. It won't change anything, but like Christmas carols in a prisoner-of-war camp, it might lift your spirits.
The European Commission has been running a propaganda exercise - or as they and their 
multi-billion euro propaganda operation call it, a 'web-based consultation on citizens' rights and the future of Europe.' Today at the midday press briefing, one of the commission spokesmen climbed onto the podium to tell us how well it was going.
multi-billion euro propaganda operation call it, a 'web-based consultation on citizens' rights and the future of Europe.' Today at the midday press briefing, one of the commission spokesmen climbed onto the podium to tell us how well it was going.
The official version is that 'already over 8,404 EU-citizens have already had their say on the future of Europe by participating in the broad web-based consultation on citizen's right and the future of Europe...On May 9, Europe Day, the European Commission called on European citizens to help set the policy agenda for the years to come and shape the future of Europe.'
Now, stop right there for a moment before I go into details of this propaganda 'consultation' and I will call your attention to two things.
First is the repeated use of the word 'citizens.' It has been clear for some time that the memo has gone out around the European institutions that spokesmen are to use the word 'citizens' at every opportunity. None of them ever says 'people' anymore or 'the voters of the different countries' or 'citizens of the various member states.'
Nope, the idea hammered home again and again is 'citizens of the EU.' As in 'Citizens cherish' - yes, 'cherish,' that was the word used - 'their rights under the Schengen Agreement.'
Second is the use of the word 'consultation.' You will be hearing a lot of that word coming out of eurocrats in the coming years. Reason: the euro-elite intend that the use of national elections and national referenda by the peoples of the (once sovereign) nations of this Continent in any matters to do with the EU is to be suppressed.
This is connected with my remark in yesterday's post that I am more and more hearing national decisions made by way of ballot boxes derided in Brussels as 'nationalism' or even 'vulgar nationalism.' Occasionally this goes further into 'dangerous nationalism.'
In place of this democracy is to be substituted 'consultation.' You will no longer have a vote, instead you will have 'the opportunity to voice your opinion.'
Things like this 'on-line consultation' are to get you used to it.
So here's what else you are supposed to get used to: all the questions are loaded. Slanted. Pre-judged. You cannot give a genuine opinion, you must simply agree to one of the already pro-EU possibilities offered. Tiny spaces are allowed in which you are invited, for example, to say how you would like the EU to develop in the future. This question assumes that you want it to develop at all.
Now, normally I'd say just ignore this thing. However anyone answers the thing, the commission will announce that the 'consultation' proves that 'citizens' want 'more Europe.' How do I know that? Years of experience plus the fine print on the disclaimer: 'this consultation does not prejudge the final form of any decision.'
So, even knowing that everyone who logs on will be counted by the progandists as 'citizens, who want to participate in Europe,' it could give you a few minutes of feeling you are taking a swipe at these people.
If you want to see the questions, you can copy and paste this web address:
http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=EUCitizenship3&lang=en
The question that just about sums up this propaganda exercise is number 24: 'What does EU citizenship mean to you? Would you associate it with (one or more of the following):'
Then you have a choice just of these, with no place to write in anything else. You are invited to tick one or more of these ideas to express what your EU citizenship means to you:
'Additional rights. Common values and common history [what??]. Participation in political life. Participation in community/civil life. Sense of belonging to the European Union. Other.'
I emphasise, there is no place to write in what you might mean if you tick 'other.'
Still, there are one or two places in which you can write something. Have a go if you like.
But do keep it perfectly polite and morally superior, because you are British, by God. Show 'em what that means.
PS: Douglas Carter, a reader who was very quick to log on to this commission site and start giving the eurocrats his opinion, has just given me some good news. Apparently when you tick a box 'in a manner which elicits a requirement to "explain" your answer,' some space appears in which you can expand your message. Sounds like an even better opportunity.....
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30 August 2012 7:35 PM
Dumas: 'Without euro exit, Germany will soon be in big trouble'
A new analysis by the totally excellent economist Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research has just dropped into my inbox. It suggests Germany should not, perhaps cannot, afford the euro.
The report is a meaty 35 pages, so for now I'll just give you the summary. I may be able to write more at the weekend.
According to Dumas:
It is a myth that the German economy has gained from euro membership.
Its growth has decelerated. Its growth of productivity has halved.
Its citizens have accepted severe wage restraint without the former benefit of a rising currency, leading to negligible gains in consumer welfare. The undervaluation granted by their wage restraint has benefited producers artificially, and weakened the incentive to cut out waste – hence lower productivity growth.
It is a myth that Germany can hold the euro together simply by subsidising Club Med, while the Mediterranean countries adjust their finances. Their savage fiscal deflation is slashing spending and income, and hence tax revenues, so that budget deficits scarcely improve.
Only with reversal of their excessive relative cost build-up vis-à-vis Germany can growth return. But without depression in Club Med that can only occur within the euro if Germany accepts a wage/price inflationary spiral, as well as prolonged subsidy payments.
Recent recovery, dependent on grotesquely distorted Chinese policies, is subsiding, so overheating and inflation (which Germans anyhow hate) could require large budget deficits.
Alongside major understatement of the unavoidable disasters of keeping the current euro membership goes the myth that leaving the euro would make Germany seriously uncompetitive and unable to grow.
German consumers need the lower import costs that a rising currency would bring, to raise their spending power without wage inflation, and German businesses need the discipline of a higher real exchange rate to enforce productivity gains.
Without euro-exit, Germany will soon be in big trouble. With it, growth can return
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More holidays for European Parliament staff? I say Yes, as many as they want
Hat-tip to my colleague and fellow blogger Marco Zatterin of La Stampa for this:
The European Parliament has announced that next year it wants to do away with two of the long weekends it usually gives its staff.
Problem, as Marco says, 'i sindacati sono furiosi' -- the unions are furious.
Now, Marco doesn't go into this, but just so you know, when a eurocrat talks about a 'long weekend' he is not talking about the Saturday-Sunday-Monday the Anglo-Saxon means.
No, he is talking about what would normally be scheduled for next May -- this is one of the long weekends to be cut -- the holiday marking the Feast of the Ascension. The long weekend would start on Wednesday afternoon, with the sound of wheelie suitcases not being heard again outside the parliament buildings until Monday morning.
For eurocrats have something called 'le pont,' the bridge. That means that when a holiday falls on a Thursday the staff make a bridge across the Friday and just stretch their one day off into a four day holiday.
So what the parliament is suggesting is that the (highly-paid, unsackable) staff might just forget about two of these long weekends next year. This is to 'optimise and rationalise' the work time.
But the staff unions aren't in the mood to optimise and rationalise anything. 'Recessions are for little people' can be translated in Strasbourg into 23 working languages.
In a statement, they said the parliament is showing lack of respect for the family and private life of its staff. 'The union deplores the decision' and 'demands an urgent review.'
Which is where my response to this union attitude and Marco's response differ.
I would like the whole parliament shut down, fat salaries, free travel, fabulous perks and golden pensions for eurocrats and MEPs alike.
But if I can't have that, I'd prefer they took lots of holidays. If they're on a beach, they can't be interfering with our laws and liberties. So, better 'le pont.' The kind of thing the euro-politicians want to 'optimise' is exactly the kind of thing I want to eliminate.
But Marco likes the European project. He thinks that such resistance by the unions is bad for the project: 'In times of rampant Euroscepticism it would be better [for the unions] to renounce the priviliege. The European civil service must be defended from seriously populist and eurosceptic attacks.'
He goes on: 'For the millions of people who live with the difficulties of this crisis, without enough pay to reach the end of the month, and must raise their children with meagre salaries, this represents a punch in the eye that makes them hate Europe.'
Actually, Marco, dear boy, plenty of us will go on hating Europe no matter how many holidays that lot in Strasbourg cancel.
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Our fate is now written in German
This is my piece in Thursday's Eurowatch series in the Irish Daily Mail --
First I have to tell you I resent having to find out about the fate of this country by reading German newspapers. But there it is. Even if I log-on to the website of Mario Draghi, the Italian who heads the European Central Bank, I find he now peppers his comments with words such as Schicksalsgemeinschaft. And I can remember when English was the language of international finance.
Anyway, there it is. What comes out in headlines in Der Speigel is more important to our fate than anything said on the floor of the Dail.
So what was splashed across Der Speigel this week needs to be paid attention: Angela Merkel wants the December European Council meeting to agree to set up a convention to draft a new European treaty.
The treaty will create a full political union. What the Germans mean by ‘political union’ is plenty, but most importantly and dangerously it means full permanent central control over the budgets of all member states.
Or maybe just member states in the eurozone. That is not clear yet. Another German publication, this time Suddeutsche Zeitung, said the Chancellor wants to establish a ‘core Europe,’ a smaller group that will get rid of the weaker states from the single currency.
All we know for sure is that Chancellor Merkel has made it clear that she will expect the December summit to agree to a treaty convention in 2013.
The treaty she wants will ‘prepare a new legal basis for the EU.’ More, the treaty will give the European Court of Justice the power to decide whether the budgets of member states are meeting the new rules, and the court will have the power to impose punishments. No appeal possible. Gott im Himmel.
Not, of course, that anybody in Brussels knows much about it yet. The German Chancellor just announced her plans to Der Speigel earlier this week, and left the rest of the member states and their representatives in Brussels wondering where she was going to push them next.
However, you can reckon that the men who like to call themselves ‘the four presidents’ – 
Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Juncker, and, yes, each of them wants his own presidential jet to prove it – know where she’s going to push the other member states next.
Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Juncker, and, yes, each of them wants his own presidential jet to prove it – know where she’s going to push the other member states next.
That is because the ‘presidents’ have themselves been trying to set up new centralised political powers, too, ever since the eurocrisis gave them an excuse for ‘more Europe.’
The banking union is the first of the ‘more Europe.’ But more of their plans will be published in October, and you can expect ‘more Europe’ in fiscal policies, financial policies, and political policies.
Yet in fact what Mrs Merkel intends is ‘more Germany.’
But why is she doing it now? For several reasons.
The first is that the German constitutional court is going to deliver a ruling on September 12th on the constitutionality, or not, of the ESM, the eurozone’s permanent bail-out fund.
So far the court has let the various bail-out deals go through, but has made it clear that control over the money of German taxpayers must rest ultimately with the German parliament.
Yet Mrs Merkel is now being pushed by EU-insiders such as Mario Monti for full debt-mutualisation, to agree to a common eurozone sovereign debt called eurobonds, in order to ‘save the euro.’
But the court holds that the German constitution forbids the mutualisation of debt. So if Mrs Merkel can get the EU to adopt a new treaty that would agree to a Germanification of the eurozone in return for debt mutualisation, then she can persuade – she thinks – the German people to agree to a new constitution to allow it to happen. This new Basic Law would allow the German government to turn over control of debt to a central European power. The euro would be ‘saved.’
Of course, German democracy would be destroyed, but euro-cult fanatics such as Mrs Merkel say they are willing to do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the euro. Taking away the power of the peoples of each nation to elect their own parliament to control their own taxes and spending is the price the euro-elite are willing to pay: indeed, are longing to pay, because they abhor democracy.
More and more in Brussels, I hear democratic decisions taken by nation states derided as ‘nationalism’ or even ‘vulgar nationalism.’
The point of the new treaty would be to strip away the powers of member states – and these are Mario Draghi’s words – ‘to pursue national policies that can cause economic harm for others.’
And who will decide whether a national policy such as, say, a low rate of corporation tax, is causing harm to other countries? Why, the euro-elite institutions themselves. No appeal possible.
Under the treaty now planned by Mrs Merkel, we will never ‘say goodbye to the troika, and regain our economic sovereignty,’ as the Taoiseach and Finance Minister have promised repeatedly.
Instead we will in effect have the troika here forever, and with powers over far more than just our budgets.
Of course, plenty of the other member states aren’t going to like it. They will certainly oppose the new treaty. But such objections are easily brushed aside.
Remember when the two powerful states of France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution by referenda in 2005?
Exactly. The euro-elite simply replaced the title page with the words Lisbon Treaty, scrambled the text, announced that no more referenda were needed because it wasn’t a constitution, and there it was: the European Constitution in force
Then there is the scare tactic of saying that if the eurozone countries – leave aside the non-eurozone states such as Britain for the moment – don’t agree to surrender to a new German system of euro-government, the Germans will certainly pull back to a core-eurozone of just the strongest northern countries, and the rest will be left outside to perish.
Leaving the euro is a good idea for the weak countries, but the weak countries have governments who are willing to go along with this threat of doom, and frighten their electorates into surrender. That is how the euro-elite will operate again.
And, obviously, the Irish will capitulate to whatever treaty is produced. That is established policy. Our No in the end will always mean Yes. Or from now on, Jawohl.
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24 August 2012 10:45 AM
A footnote on Breivik and his Fascist fantasies
After hearing his murder conviction this morning, Anders Behring Breivik gave a salute which he apparently thought was a Fascist salute. Here he is:
However, what he in fact was giving was a black power salute, famously seen here at the 1968 Olympics:
Or go even further back and you will find Breivik's salute used for Russian's 1922 October Revolution:
The difference is in the hand, which Fascists hold flat. Their salute was based on the cod-Classical Roman pose invented in the last 18th century by the French painter David, for his picture The Oath of the Horatii:
Which tells us nothing more about Breivik, except raises the question: how stupid and vile does a man have to be to fail as both a human being and as a Fascist? I mean, usually you'd reckon that if someone were stupid and vile he'd have the Fascist thing sewn up.
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20 August 2012 11:26 AM
Pussy Riot prosecution: how perfectly European
This is my column from Monday's Irish Daily Mail ---
Pussy Riot: you've read about them, the Russian girl-band convicted last week after 
their protest against President Putin in a Moscow cathedral. Cue outrage from Amnesty International and the rest of the usual protestors.
their protest against President Putin in a Moscow cathedral. Cue outrage from Amnesty International and the rest of the usual protestors.
But try it this way.Try it with three young Irish women instead of three young Russian women.
Imagine they are opposed to present Government policy which allows large-scale Muslim immigration into this country.
Active in their political ‘collective,’ the three young women announce they are a band. They burst into the mosque at Clonskeagh. They rush to the mihrab, the niche indicating the direction of Mecca, and roar out a song that attacks our Government leadership, blasphemes and abuses the Islamic faith, and deeply insults believers.
The Imam calls the police.
Result? Well, the first result is that the same people who are rushing to condemn the prosecution of Pussy Riot for their protest at the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow would be demanding the prosecution of this lot of women in Clonskeagh.
Under Irish law, Clonskeagh Pussy Riot could face criminal prosecution for ‘incitement to hatred.’ The law says they would face trial in a district court, where they would have no right to a jury. On conviction, their punishment could be a sentence of up to two years in prison.
Under Russian law, Moscow Pussy Riot faced criminal prosecution for a charge based on ‘religious hatred.’ The law made them face trial in a court where they had no right to a jury. Following their conviction on Friday, their punishment was a sentence of two years in prison.
Yet immediately politicians across the European Union such as Angela Merkel announced that the judgment was ‘not compatible with the European values of democracy and the rule of law.’
The evidence indicates otherwise. The Moscow judgment is right in line with the judgment Irish law – and the laws of several other EU countries -- would allow in similar circumstances.
Meanwhile Mrs Merkel’s country has a law on its books which allows German courts to sentence someone to prison for up to two years if he argues that significantly fewer than six million Jews perished under Hitler.
It is the law against so-called ‘Holocaust denial,’ and it is well out of line with the principle of the freedom of speech.
Or do I have to go over it again? Possibly so: the freedom of speech has to cover the freedom to be both obnoxious and wrong, or it is no freedom at all.
Which brings us back to Vladimir Putin, Pussy Riot and their trial. President Putin is being attacked because of this trial in an extraordinary way. Here is why it is extraordinary.
Think back to August 9th, when Gu Kailai, the wife of former Chinese Communist big-shot Bo Xilai, appeared at her trial in the city of Hefei, in the east of China. She was accused of the murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman.
I say she ‘appeared’ at her trial, but no foreign news organisations were allowed in the courtroom, so we don’t know if the defendant was actually in the court at all. According to a report in the Financial Times, ‘two security experts familiar with facial recognition software said the person shown in state television footage of the courtroom was not Ms Gu.’
Whoever was in court or not, the trial lasted less than eight hours. But then, before the trial even started, the state-controlled media reported that prosecutors had ‘irrefutable evidence’ against Gu Kailai. Later the state claimed she had confessed to the crime.
All wrapped up, so.
You have to wonder what took the full eight hours in the closed court room. Maybe they all just watched the clock to make up a full working day, so that the state-owned press could then praise the trial as ‘a model of openness.’
The verdict is due to be announced this morning. The chances of an acquittal are, as they say in Texas, ‘slim to zero, and Slim just left town.’ Madame Gu will be imprisoned for life if she’s lucky, executed if she’s not.
Yet somehow the same people who are howling about the conviction and two-year sentencing of Pussy Riot aren’t out there protesting that Madame Gu is being lynched by the totalitarian thugs of the Chinese Communist state.
Why not? Because Mr Putin is the unfashionable sort of totalitarian thug and the Chinese Communists are not.
Except of course Mr Putin had to stand for election before he became president. Was the election bent? Of course. But no one doubts he has huge popular support in Russia.
Anyway, the European leaders who are so ‘shocked’ by the Pussy Riot prosecution are perfectly comfortable dealing with dictatorial regimes – Saudi Arabia, for example -- that make Russia look like a Jeffersonian republic.
As for the Chinese dictatorial regime in particular, one only has to recall the fawning our Taoiseach did during the visit to Ireland in February of Xi Jinping, the so-called ‘supreme leader-in-waiting’ (or to be precise, unelected single-party oligarch-in-waiting), to see how comfortable our Government is with totalitarian thugs.
Just offer Fine Gael and Labour the chance of some Chinese investment, and they will overlook rigged Chinese courts and the way prisoners in Chinese jails are executed for purposes of organ harvesting.
Meanwhile, the protestors in Ireland who are attacking the Pussy Riot prosecution are perfectly comfortable looking away from show trials in dictatorial regimes – Cuba, for example – where the leadership has a history of calling around to the Havana prison to enjoy the execution of political prisoners first hand.
So why doesn’t Vladimir Putin get that sort of pass? Because he’s not using his thuggish power in fashionable directions.
Most recently, he has refused to let the United Nations Security Council back the Syrian rebels against the Assad regime.
Now however people are realising Mr Putin may well have been right all along to try to keep the West’s nose out of the fight in Syria. Those ‘rebels’ are looking more and more like a dangerous breed of Islamic fundamentalist. Mr Putin, who has had plenty of murderous experience with Islamic terrorists within his own borders, doesn’t want to push the national mass-butcher Assad out just so Islamic international mass-butchers can take over.
But the usual Irish protestors want to attack Mr Putin for more reasons than just his position on Syria, which by the way is just like Communist China’s position on Syria, but it’s Russia that is getting most kicked for resisting any kind of intervention.
What really puts Mr Putin out alone as a hate figure is his support for Orthodox Christianity 
in Russia, and his love of his Motherland. He declares he is a believer and a patriot, and he wants the church to regain its place in Russian life and culture. He stands with millions of Russian believers who are enraged by the blasphemy of what Pussy Riot did in the cathedral.
in Russia, and his love of his Motherland. He declares he is a believer and a patriot, and he wants the church to regain its place in Russian life and culture. He stands with millions of Russian believers who are enraged by the blasphemy of what Pussy Riot did in the cathedral.
More, Mr Putin wants Russia to regain its status as an influential international power. I’m with him on that one. We need Russia back in the first rank of countries for our own protection.
Yet three forces want to keep Russia isolated and diplomatically weak.
First, the American politicians who really ought to know better. They still can’t see that Russians and Soviets are not the same thing, so they still try to present Russia as a threat. It isn’t. More, it is only a strong Russia in Asia which can prevent eventual Chinese military hegemony over all of Eastern Asia—and, ultimately, over India. President Obama has been shifting US forces to Asia. America needs to make Russia an ally in that.
Second, the EU elite who want to pretend that they represent ‘Europe,’ so they want to denigrate the vast European state and culture of independent Russia as ‘not European.’
Third, China wants to keep Russia internationally weak. The Chinese calculate that one day they will want to spill their exploding population over their north-eastern border into the near-empty vastness of Russia’s eastern territory. If Russia stays militarily weak, the Chinese can get away with it.
And just to go back and finish with Pussy Riot: what’s wrong with the Russian prosecution is that it was prosecution for what the three women said.
But the fact that they did it in the Russian Orthodox cathedral was itself wrong. Political protestors have no right to crash onto other people’s altars. Or mihrabs.
So, a fine for disorder and trespass by Pussy Riot, yes. A prison sentence for ‘hatred,’ no. That would be far too Irish.
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15 August 2012 4:54 PM
US Homeland Security officials get the okay to amass a vast ammo cache
If even half of what we read in the Daily Mail today about the US Department of Homeland Security is true, the department is being run by people who shouldn't be trusted with an office stapler, much less with controlling the massed ranks of armed DHS agents.
You can go back and check the story on the news web page, but here are the highlights: Suzanne Barr, seen at the left, the chief of staff of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement for Homeland security, is 'on leave' following sworn affidavits made by two male employees.
The men allege that Barr and another top official engaged in 'lewd' behavior. They said that the boss of the department, Janet Napolitiano, turned DHS into a female-run 'frat house' in which male staff were routinely humiliated and on the receiving end of 'sexually charged games.'
More, it is alleged that Napolitiano gave a promotion to Dora Schriro over the heads of more qualified men due to Napolitiano and Schriro's long standing, err, 'relationship.' (Napolitiano says she's not gay, but questions are being asked.)
And on and on. As I say, if only half of it is true, the highly sensitive and dangerous DHS is being run by sexually-aggresive dingbats. Which makes a story I've picked up about the DHS even more worrying:
In between questioning male employees about their crotches, the dingbats have apparently been building a stockpile of ammunition sufficient to fight a full-scale war.
According to a report on infowars.com: 'Back in March, Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of .40-calibre hollow point bullets that are designed to expand upon entry and cause maximum organ damage, prompting questions as to why the DHS needed such a large amount of powerful bullets merely for training purposes.'
This phenomenal cache of ammunition must be intended for use against Americans, because I understand that hollow point bullets have been illegal in international warfare since 1899.The department ain't shipping this stuff to Syrian rebels.
'The DHS is also planning to purchase a further 750 million rounds of different types of ammo in a separate solicitation...including 357 mag rounds that are able to penetrate walls.'
Is this what's happening -- heavily armed sexual predators on the US federal payroll?
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The Kraut-Micks: what made America great?
In my comments earlier this week on the Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, I mentioned the tangle of Irish and German immigrants in America. Among them is the Ryan family, with five generations in the German-American heartland of Wisconsin.
One of my readers sent me this in response. I'd say Mario Puzo rather summed up the situation in America in these lines from The Godfather, where the Corleone lawyer Hagen confronts the film producer Woltz:
Jack Woltz: Now you listen to me, you smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch, let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is! Johnny Fontane will never get that movie! I don't care how many dago guinea wop greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!
Tom Hagen: I'm German-Irish.
Jack Woltz: Well, let me tell you something, my kraut-mick friend, I'm gonna make so much trouble for you, you won t know what hit you!
More on all this in a later post.....
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A chapter in genuine European culture: or what the eurocrats won't mention
Today in Brussels, as in many of the cities across the Catholic countries of the Continent, everything has gone quiet. August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption, the principle feast of the Virgin Mary.
To be more specific -- Professor Dawkins, look away now -- the feast commemorates not just the death of the Mother of God, but the assumption by God of her uncorrupted body into heaven. The belief is based on a tradition traced back to the Apostles.
And when feast days were really celebrated across Christendom as an expression of fundamental culture, and not merely as civil holidays as now, the day was marked by big church occasions. One of the most splendid was the ceremony in Rome's Pantheon, arguably the greatest building on earth.
By 'arguably,' I mean I'm likely to get into a fight with anyone who says it isn't.
The Pantheon was built by the Emperor Hadrian as a temple to all the gods. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was saved from destruction when Pope Boniface IV consecrated it as a church early in the 7th century and dedicated it to the Mother of God.
First, you have to know the design of the Pantheon. Here is an 18th century picture of the interior. Note the great circular opening in the dome, the 'oculus,' the sole opening for light in the entire vast structure.
Now, as one of my conservative friends puts it, 'In the days when wehad a Church,' there was a great ceremony in the Pantheon to mark the Feast of the Assumption.
A life-sized statue of Mary was placed under the dome. When the point came in the service when her assumption by God into heaven was commemorated -- at that moment, the statue began to rise slowly from its place in the centre of the worshippers, towards the heavens framed by the oculus.
Here's how: the statue had fine wires or ropes attached to it, and men were placed on the roof at the opening of the oculus. At the right moment, bells and incense going like mad below, they would start to hoist the Mother of God.
Now, before I tell you what happened next, take a look at the picture below, of the exterior of the Pantheon.
How great would your faith have to be to climb up on that roof and peer over the edge of the oculus to the marble floor 142 feet below in order to honour the Virgin Mary? Hardly bears thinking about.
But the men did. And as Mary approached the heavens, the men tipped baskets full of thousands of rose petals over the edge, to fall like the blessings of God on the hundreds of worshippers below.
It might not have been theology, but by heck it was showbiz.
And nothing wrong with that.
You wonder why so many churches are empty on Sundays? No mystery, no beauty. No showbiz.
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13 August 2012 7:02 PM
The Italian Olympic team: armed and ready for a euro exit
Dario Perkins and Melissa Bell, two economists at Lombard Street Research, have been enjoying the Olympics as only dismal scientists can: by examining the medals table according to gold medals per capita and comparing medals by major economic regions.
Look, really, it's not sad, this is what passes for a good time among economic researchers. As they themselves admit, there is nothing economists like more than 'taking the fun out of things by over-analysing them.'
Still, they've come up with some points the rest of us have missed.
First, of course, they find that the United States did not win the Olympics. Granada, the Bahamas and Jamaica ranked as the top three. Britain finished 10th, ahead of the US in 28th and China in 47th.
And by major economic region, using the catagories created by the OECD (no economist can have a good time without a bit of OECD): 'Asia ex-China took the gold, thanks largely to New Zealand.'
'As might have been expected, the euro area underperformed -- a familiar picture to economists.'
'We tried to find parallels with the euro crisis but were largely disappointed. For example, in per-capita terms, economically stagnant France finished ahead of buoyant Germany. And periphery Ireland finished ahead of the entire "core."'
But here is something that might have quite a lot of significance. At the urging of one of their Italian clients, the LSR economists considered the composition of Italy's medal haul in more detail.
Here it is: 'Eight gold medals --including three in fencing, two in shooting, one in Taekwondo and one in archery.'
'You have to wonder what the Italians are preparing for -- if Italy does decide to quit the euro, they seem well-placed to handle the fallout.'
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