Is the Far-Right due another [sic] millenarian rebirth?

The steady rise in fascist attacks will make us face up to our past, present and future.

The election of two far-right parties in Austria should have been a wake-up call to us all, but it's only on the pages of innit24 that it seems to be getting the coverage it deserves. It can be said that every country gets the Government it deserves, we have to hope this is far from the truth. There have been various recent elections where the right have made significant gains. None was more bitterly opposed than when Jean-Marie Le Pen (slightly right of Attila the Hun) won enough votes to contest Chirac for French Presidency in 2002. The fact it merely tipped the balance it the National Assembly from centre-left to centre-right we can now see was telling of a darker problem looming.

Stories of racist attacks throughout the EU have been reaching the British media for years. They all tell of increasing violence against immigrants and the slow march towards aggressive Nationalism. The worst stories appear the be centred around Moscow, France, Germany and now Austria. All countries that one would have hoped, in the strongest possible terms, WOULD KNOW BETTER.

If we all follow France's lead and bury our heads in the sands of our colonial pasts there is no hope. Perhaps the most shocking stories were those of the Paris riots in 2005, where France's repression of it's colleagues in arms in the Algerian war reared it's ugly head. The mistreatment and alienation, as France has perfected, creating virtual ghettos for it's immigrants breeding hatred and bitter recriminations.

Until we can bring together all elements of society to form dynamic and sacrificial (on both parts) solutions to our clearly desperate problems the march of the far-right will continue. These aren't men in jackboots with Chaplineqsue moustaches, these are people with suits, facts and disarming rhetoric. The solutions aren't simply rooted in control of the population but go down the the very core of society: Our town planning, the way our services are provided, our attitude to ourselves and others but most importantly, the way we deal with the issues. Frank openness is the only way.

It's time we accepted our pasts, dealt with the present and plan for a better future. Franklin

No-one saw the hole issue....

Despite some valiant attempts no-one including those in the 'mainstream' media saw the link between Senator and President-in-waiting Obama and Mr Stevenson.

The simple link, that both have been shown with holes in their shoes! Due to the many hours spent pounding the beat in Congress and on the Campaign trail; Obama has been photographed (possibly off-guard) and Adlai Stevenson's statue in Chicago airport is depicted with holes in the soles of his shoes. Franklin

Old News; Quote of the Week

Proof that politicians are the greatest recyclers of all. Nothing new's been said since Plato.

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." Adlai E Stevenson (20th Cenury Democratic Presidential candidate.)

10 points for the first person who emails the innit24 newsroom with details about how the idea in the picture above has been recycled very recently. Franklin

Geography 101

Where is Moldova? And where is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia?
I like to think of myself as someone who knows European geography quite well. Fortunately I found this fun quiz on the interweb, where you can check you knowledge of our neighboring countries. Check it out here! It's truly entertaining.
Schreiber

Good night, Austria!

A cri du cœur went through Europe: 30% for the far right! The devastating, shocking and truly disgusting result of the Austrian general election astonished Europe, once again.
Here the result of the election in detail:

This means that, in order to prevent one of the far right parties (BZÖ and FPÖ) to be part of a coalition government, the unloved and unsuccessful “grand coalition” (not really grand anymore!) of SPÖ and ÖVP has to continue.
Let us have a look at BZÖ and FPÖ. The BZÖ is headed by Jörg Haider, the former FPÖ leader. The FPÖ is lead by Herr Haider’s former protégé Heinz-Christian Strache. Both man strongly hate each other.
Herr Strache’s party ran with slogans such as: “Vienna must not become Istanbul” and he promised to stop Austrian girls from “being fondled by hordes of immigrants.” Herr Strache has also connections to the neo-Nazi scene in Austria and was seen holding a gun while wearing a German army uniform.
Jörg Haider’s background is equally disturbing. He one described Nazi concentration camps as "punishment camps" and claimed Nazi-Germany’s SS were "a part of the German army which should be honoured." How can a man who says things like that get the vote of every 10th Austrian?!
Both men’s weltanschauung is, obviosly, rather disgusting. The worst is that I am quite convinced that, if SPÖ and ÖVP continue to work together (which is the only way to prevent any of the Nazi-parties to join the government, as the Greens did surprisingly bad in this election), the political frustration of the average Austrians might increase and help the far right in the next election. It might even happen that SPÖ and ÖVP decide not to go back to a grand coallition, which will lead to one of the Nazi-parties joining the government.
Schreiber

Conservative Party Conference; Precursor

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve has warned British multiculturalism has left a "terrible" legacy which has allowed extremists to flourish. Just what does he mean?

Are the Conservatives racing to the right as Comrade Brown is huffing and puffing to the left? Franklin

The debate

The media says it was a draw. But was it? The widely anticipated US presidential debate was, and to some extend that surprised me, rather interesting. Still, I’m not too sure whether or not it was a draw between Mr McCain and Mr Obama. From an American point of view, I suppose I could understand why one would say it was a draw. Both seemed to bring their point across quite well, Obama seemed more involved, but McCain more like a statesman. But I think from a European point of view, many have realised that McCain is actually a man with some not too unimportant opinions and solutions for the US. This was quite surprising for many people over here, as many people in Europe love Obama as much as creationists love God. I personally am not a McCain supporter, but I do think that he was able to show quite a few people in the Old World, that he has quite some good ideas. He also, as I said earlier, came across more like a statesman, and not as a candidate. His answers weren’t as short and pregnant as those of Obama, but on the other hand he was not standing there, shaking his hand and simply saying something like “this is not true,” whenever he felt treated wrongly. Instead, he was able to actually explain where Obama was wrong, which made him appear, to a certain extend, more competent.
Nevertheless, both seem a bit like the macher, and that certainly is what America needs. They had grand ideas and both wanted to break with all the meshuga politics of Mr Bush. Here, naturally, McCain had more problems convincing the audience than Senator Obama. I think, from a European point of view, McCain surprised with some sort of sharpness people did not expect him to have. Whereas Mr Obama was just like we expected him to be, remembering his words at the Siegessäule in Berlin. But, even though I just said a few positive things about McCain, somehow his Gordon Brownness, his old-fashioned slowliness, his awkward shiftlessness just annoyed me, especially towards the end of the debate… It was quite long after all – but still worth watching. Schreiber.

America's Most Hated

1. Bankers
2. Osama bin Laden
3. Lawyers

The change from bowler hatted city gentlemen to ill-educated ruthless swine is finally complete. What financial scandals as large as Credit Suisse First Boston and the Citigroup/ Salomon couldn't achieve, it took the relatively unknown world of derivatives trading just a matter of months.

Derivatives are the financial instruments made when simple company issues are transformed by brokers and investment banks into 'exotic' tradable instruments. The returns of these are linked to many different benchmarks including mortgages, interest rates and stock indexes.

The upside gain is as fantastic as the downside loss. The problems have arisen because no money actually changes hands between the two parties meaning they are leveraged to the hilt. The parties have entered into agreements where they can't cover the downside, this is fine, until the markets fail.

The derivatives market has many thousands of players, is global and worth trillions of dollars. Many of the individual contracts need computers to understand them. Therefore we cannot even begin to unravel the millions of derivative trades out there.

Once the markets to which the returns are linked begin, one-by-one to fail then people lose faith in these institutions and the cash flow they so desperately need dries up. And institutions begin to topple. So falls the house of cards.

The then Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan said that the risk of such a meltdown is negligible but also that “The rapid growth and increasing importance of derivative instruments in the risk profile of many large banks has been a particular concern,” This coupled with his later quote “We will never have a perfect model of risk“, he argued “We will never be able to anticipate all discontinuities in financial markets.” All this is true, derivatives are risky, as are all financial instruments. What makes them unique is that the risk is not understood, even slightly.

If you take instruments you don't understand, use them recklessly and add a large pinch of bad luck, you get Recession 2008. Franklin

Campus Europa

Italians live at home and Portuguese are super-multilingual. One of the most interesting international studies ever, reveals how life is like on Campus Europa.
Eurostudent, as the study is called, analysed several different aspects of studying in Europe. The study shows, for example, that it is much easier for students with a non-academic background to get into university in the Netherlands, whereas there are close to no students with a non-academic background to be found in Bulgarian or German universities.
The report, which is due to be published tomorrow, and will certainly lead to some debate in the education supplements in national papers across EU countries and beyond. Innit24 can already present some of the most interesting facts the study will reveal.
Students without a normal university-entrance diploma (such as the British A-Levels, the American High School Diploma, the Swiss Matura, and so on) find it much easier to get into university in England and Wales, whereas it is nearly impossible to do so in Lithuania and Germany, says Eurostudent.
Many students these days study a year abroad, but which county’s students do so the most? Here we see Norway, Germany and Finland scoring the best, Italy, Lithuania and Turkey can be found at the bottom of the list.
One very interesting fact that the study will reveal tomorrow, concerns the ability of students to speak two languages fluently. Here we see Portugal’s students to score best, followed by Slovenian and Swiss students. Again, it is the Turkish, which score worst of all participating countries.
For those of our reader who are still looking for a partner, the following fact might be rather interesting: Italy has the most single students, followed by Portugal and Scotland.
In contrast, the country with the most students already married is Norway, followed by Slovakia and Sweden.
Most Italians live with Mum and Dad (73%) (Could that be the reason why they are all single??). This love of living at home seems to be a Mediterranean thing though, as Spanish (64%) and Portuguese (55%) students do the same. On the other hand, students from more northern European countries can’t wait to get away from home. 79% of the Norwegian students live in rented/private flats/houses without their parents, as do 68% of the Finnish students and 65% of those studying in Germany and Austria. (This excludes students living in university halls.)
As I mentioned earlier, the full study will be published tomorrow. You may also want to check out Eurostudnet’s website for more details.
Schreiber

Comrade Brown: Onward!

The near schizophrenic ramblings of a certain free 'urban national newspaper' today actually showed our esteemed Dear Leader in a rather favourable light, follow the running score to see how they did it!


The front cover (well, front behind a desperate BA, "Honestly we're not completely useless" ad) had a large, almost flattering portrait backed by a rather un-ambiguous red background. The article freely quoting Comrade Brown was pretty much mirroring the BA slogan (see above) but still had CB coming out on top. (CB score total +1)

The next article attacked his pointless policy of suspending stamp duty for houses that cost about the same as a tin of beans. Unless of course he predicted that house prices would fall so far that it would apply to houses in areas people actually want to live. (CB score total 0)

A rather pithy (euphemism for crap) cartoon follows with a couple picture walking away from a curiously Evening Standard billboard (subliminal advertising by Associated Newspapers perhaps?). The billboard reads, "I'm the right man for the job," Brown. The couple comment, "Just as I feared his judgment's completely gone." (CB score total -1)

'Treasury to borrow £90bn' screams headline. Follows provisos on the government 'coffers' collapsing and ridiculous speculation. Still us heading towards the largest budget deficit in the West must fall at the ex-chancellors feet. (CB score total -2)

Turning to page 5, we see a raft of cliched socialist policies bought out, and supported!

'Volunteer force to tackle yobs.' (CB score total -1)

'Tax rich at 45%, says left winger.' Quite why the feel the need to point out it was a left-winger or even quote it at all is a little odd. It was hardly going to be Mr Vacuous was it? It also describes the policy as radical, how on earth is it radical, who writes this stuff. It does provide a possible unattributed quote of the week though, 'The Labour conference would seek new policies, not a new leader.' Sense at last! (CB score total 0)

'Free nurseries for two-year old.' The editor's decision to put this below the tax story made about as much sense as a McCain speech, but there it is. It's this sort of liberal policy that the Scandinavian countries have long been famed for. This definitely gets a point. (CB score total +1)

If we're going to deduct points for his countless mistakes as Chancellor, I feel we must also give credit where it's due. It a turn that is so refreshingly un-Cherie, Sarah Brown has called for greater action on deaths in childbirth. You go Sarah. (CB score total +2)

As always predicted in the secretive HQ of innit24 the tide of public opinion is turning back in favour of our Dear Comrade. If the sister paper for The Mail can have a day of positive opinions then the world is once again the rational persons oyster. (Premature perhaps but we can hope.)

This can conclusively prove my much voiced conviction that no-one really wants to vote Conservative and certainly no-one wants to vote for Mr Vacuous himself. However people find themselves unable to support CB in his near fit of bad polices. With only the un-electable Libs to turn to instead, the choice, which was not a choice but a lack of options, was a done deal. Now CB's stopped having an aneurysm or whatever it was, people are going to jump on the rational person's bandwagon faster than you can say, "In Brown we trust." Franklin

The apocalypse is experiencing severe delays, please arrange alternative transport, see: Global warming, natural disaster or financial meltdown.

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has been put off line for at least two months following a 'quench'. Helium liquid had leaked out meaning that the large electro-magnets were not being cooled, subsequently they heated up to nearly 100 degrees. Fortunately none of the magnets were irreversibly damaged, however due the the nature of the environment even relatively minor repairs are extremely time consuming. The collider tube has be to brought up to ambient temperature from it's maintained near absolute zero to allow workers in.

However this is the latest blow to the initially spectacularly successful project. On the start-up day protons completed a full circuit of the 27km is much less than predicted time. Shortly after a 30-ton transformer broke and had to be replaced, no mean feat for something buried under mountains of EU farming subsidies.

Here at the innit24 newsroom we wish them all the best for the future (if there is one) and would like to extend our thanks for most-kindly delaying the end of the world so we can all watch the new season of House.

Britain needs to join Euroland!

“The tragedy for Britain has been that politicians of both parties have consistently failed to appreciate the emerging reality of European integration,” Tony Blair said some time long ago. And he was right.
However, I do not want to write about European integration in general, but about the Euro, the currency that unites our Union.
Let us firstly ask ourselves: Why do we need the Pound Sterling? We need it, because (at the moment) the Pound is falling (compared to the Euro), which is great for UK exports. (But then, Britain does not export too much anyway).
This, however, also means that if you travel to Euroland, your Frappuccino will cost more, which will make your fun holidays in the wonderful South of France less great.
Joining the Euro does not mean that export will be impossible, only fairer. (And, we cannot just hope that the Pound keeps devaluating itself!) Let us have a look at the Thatcherite argument that the Pound is a part of national sovereignty. That’s just rubbish! The Pound is great, I love paying with it, but I have also paid with the Swiss Frank, with the Israeli New Sheqel, with the Turkish Lira, the US Dollar, etc, and I never had a problem with it. The “sovereignty” a national currency represents exists only in the heads of the burghers.
I remember how politicians in all countries in our fine Union had massive problems, as they tried to introduce the Euro and therewith EMU; Germans, for example, certainly did not like to give up their Deutschmark, as it seemed to them to be the only German thing (apart from maybe cars) that actually turned out to be a success (ignoring Heidi Klum). But they survived it, as will this wonderful Kingdom.
Even the Danes, who are known for being as reserved (to say the least!) about the EU will have a referendum soon on joining the Eurozone, and it looks as though the Yes-campaigners will win.
So far Britain always joint EU-European projects a few years too late in order to truly profit from them. As Britain joint the EEC, the money of the regional trust (to just name one of several) went to Greece, Spain and Portugal, whereas Britain could have profited from it, had it joint a bit earlier. As Britain joint EEC, policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy were already formed and Britain was unable to make them any more Britain-friendly (I will at this point not go into the entire debate on the BBQ). As Britain joint the Exchange Rate Mechanism (or in fact even the EMS), it was too late to be advantages for Britain. This list seems never ending, but Mr Franklin will complain if this post is too long, therefore I shall stop here.
However, it is not quite too late to join the Euro! Yes, by committing earlier to the Euro, Britain could have had more influence on how to set up the European Central Bank (which became some sort of bigger version of the Bundesbank), but the Euro is still evolving (and on the best way to becoming the world’s most important currency) and Britain can participate in this progress.
We need to end this annoying (and politically as well as economically dangerous) eurosclerosis and finally commit to the Euro, one of the greatest achievements of EU-European politics ever!
Schreiber

The biggest scientific deception since global warming….

The scaremongering continues even on the sober pages on innit24

The world’s largest particle accelerator (LHC) is going to destroy us all, it’s a fact. Well, at least this is the only logical conclusion we can draw from the scientific community’s deception of the media and public at large. If it wasn’t true, why would they lie to us?

Anyone reading the papers on the morning of September 10th will have breathed a sigh of relief, the slim-to-none chance of the apocalypse happening had been avoided, phew. The protons had been made, fed into the linear particle accelerator and then guided by giant magnets round the 27km collider and then it was turned off. What the popular media and scientists seemed unwilling to tell us was that simply accelerating protons to 99.99991% the speed of light won’t tear a whole in the space time continuum or create a super-massive (or even small) black hole. To create said dastardly apocalyptic tool you need to smash the protons together, at great speed, which they will do, but haven’t yet. So there was really no risk, at all, zero-risk you could say.

You must ask yourself the question, why were we not corrected, surely the doomsday predictions would have made better news when they were actually possible, couldn’t the Metro and London Lite wait just a few more weeks. It must be because the scientists themselves are more than a little unsure about what will happen. Will we find Higgs Boson or will we destroy the planet as we know it. I reckon H. Boson is probably underground but not on the Franco-Swiss border but chillin’ with Osama in a Pakistani cave till the heat dies down.

If you’re reading this blog, about the middle of October when the first collisions take place, then we can all breath a collective sigh of relief. Until then, keep reading. Franklin

Is it Cameron's time?

“Clever, articulate, well educated, socially adept, politically astute, photogenic, charming, charismatic.” This is how this week’s Time magazine Europe describes David Cameron in its cover story.
The great-great-great-great-great-greatson (that is six times great) of King William IV, will enjoy reading this story, as Time magazine seems to like him a bit too much. The entire story in this sometimes not too bad weekly, is a disgusting sanctification of the boring joke, who tries to become Prime Minister.
And yes, Cameron seems to attract many voters. That is problematic. This constantly self-exposing elitist tries so hard to hide his lack of a concept, by saying things that just don’t mean anything. His slogan for example is “It’s time for change, change you can trust.” What?? What change?! Is he talking about the economy? The education system? His mobile phone contract? And how is this change going to look like?
You think you might be used to this kind of nice but empty words, as Blair used to do the same thing, but no, Cameron is much worse. Very much he says just does not quite mean anything.
And also his slogan (“It’s time for change, change you can trust.”) does sound a bit like Barack Obama’s “The change we can believe in, the change we need.” That’s just pathetic!
Anyway, just don’t pick up this week’s Time magazine Europe, as this little pro-Cameron PR article is simply rubbish. Its not investigative, not enlightening and definitively not worth reading.
Schreiber

Fear and black holes

Everyone is scared. All the time. We wake up and ask us: ‘Will there be water left at the end of today?’, ‘Will terrorists bomb my tube later?’, ‘Will China and Russia attack as this evening?’, ‘Could Amy Winehouse make my kids start being addicted to drugs?’, ‘Does Gordon Brown try to put the bird flu virus in our tap water?’, ‘Will Sarah Palin really become vice president?’, and so on.
But what everyone seemed to have feared the most these days was a massive black hole that would first destroy Switzerland, then Europe and then the rest of our little world.
Crazy scientists from all over Europe were gathering near Switzerland’s Geneva somewhere under the earth to build the kill-the-world machine, was what the media told us.
Yeah, whatever. Even though scientists explained that this machine would not create black holes, or at least no black holes that could be harmful to our “peaceful” planet, the public and the media seem to have been attracted by the fear. The possibility that some mad scientists could destroy the world was just too good to not be written about. Even though the danger was not real.
Yesterday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, a left-ish daily from Munich, called the Large Hadron Collider the Urknallmachine, the big-bang-machine. I liked the title and immediately thought of a funny conversation I had, the other day.
I was in a train from somewhere in Switzerland to Milan, as a probably 70-year-old man from Denmark sat opposite me and saw me reading something about the LHC in the Guardian. He looked at me and, after a while, warned me (in very bad English) of the danger of this scientific experiment.
Funny enough, he was not talking about the actual machine (“the closest men ever got to God,” as he put it) but about the damage the computer that calculated all the data could cause. The man said that to calculate all the data from the LHC, a new über-computer had to be developed.
This “super computer” is a network of many computers from all over the world. This massive system will (hopefully) be able to find out how our world came into existence. But, he said, if a hacker would hack into the system, it could be used to disconnect certain regions, maybe even an entire continent!!, from the inter-web.
See, that is something to fear, not a self-made black hole!! But then, the old man could have been a liar and not, as he claimed, a former professor from Copenhagen... Interesting story though, I think.
Schreiber

The dictator's Freud

Dictators are interesting. They are fascinating. Now imagine, it is your job to psychologically analyse them. You would have a lot to tell, no doubt. And indeed, this job exists.
Psychiatrist Jerrold M. Post analysed dictators for many years for the CIA and still does so, as an external advisor for the US administration. Luckily for us, Mr Post broke his silence and spoke to one of Switzerland’s most well known weeklies, the Weltwoche.
The paper that is internationally remembered for being the first German-language magazine to reprint the Danish Muhammad cartoons published a fantastic interview with the psychiatrist. Mr Post analysed people such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden and Fidel Castro. However, he calls North Korea’s Kim Jong Il “the biggest enigma of them all.” In the interview (by Urs Gehriger) he revels some truly interesting facts about the North Korean dictator.
He says that Kim Jong Il has always been in his father’s huge shadow and can therefore only be understood through his father. Considering that his father, Kim Il Sung, has been declared God (!), it is even harder for Kim Jong Il to emerge from his father’s almighty shadow.
His inferiority complex is also boosted by his own ugliness, says Mr. Post. He is (as many dictators seem to have been) rather short. And fat. Mr Post does not only inform us about the dictator’s inferiority complex, he also tells us interesting facts about the Dear Leader:

• He spends between $450,000 - $600,000 on cognac, per year. That is five hundred (!) times the yearly average income of a North Korean.
• He has a film collection with up to 20,000 films, mainly from the US.
• He kidnapped a South Korean actress and her husband (a film director) and kept them for eight years, hoping that at some point they could revitalise the North Korean film industry.

If you want to find out what Mr Post says about other dictators you should certainly have a look at this week’s Weltwoche. It is worth it! (This is probably the first time that I say something like that about this paper, as the Weltwoche normally gets on my nerves with all it’s anti-welfare-state editorials).
Schreiber