As she was in the beginning (Angela Merkel)

What is the nitty gritty of what precisely is happening with the European Union — the Europe project — in these days?  An answer to that puzzle is set out clearly, shortly and sweetly by Irishman Jason O’Mahony in a blog post today.

O’Mahony rests the matter of Europe’s future squarely on the shoulders of the remarkable Angela, the current Chancellor  of Germany.  Merkel faces a  very clear choice between saving Europe or destroying Europe, O’Mahony argues.  Check out what he has to say here.

My favorite part of the post, though, is this excerpt.

British eurosceptics constantly remark that the euro was a political project, as if that is a killer argument. It was. It was supposed to be, and whilst it is malfunctioning from bad design, the fact with European integration is that it has been the great success story of post-war Europe.

A few days ago in an email conversation with my daughter I mentioned that the political and economic turmoil in Europe had intensified this past two weeks. Writing back, she asked me to send her a few links to news stories that could give her some insight into the situation.

Harrumph, I mumbled to myself, I wish I could ask the same of some wise news guru.

And I suspect I’m not the only one. It’s much more difficult than it should be to find news reports that aren’t simplistic re-cyclings of various prejudicial stereotypes or political ideologies posing as expertise.

As an example, just last week economist Bill Black strongly criticized the mighty New York Times‘s coverage of the European crisis as “overwhelmingly written from the German perspective.”  You can read the post here on the Naked Capitalism website.

So when I found these two videos this morning featuring Harvard University economist Richard Parker talking about Greece, I decided to post them. Parker has a bit of an inside track on Greece especially. He served as an adviser to former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou from 2009 to 2011 (see bio).

In the first video (click on screenshot above), Parker advises against falling for easy answers “about the character or moral values of other people to explain a crisis of the kind we’re seeing in Greece.” He then quickly refutes some of the worst stereotypes against the country that are found in daily news headlines.

I particularly liked Parker’s summing up comment because he calls for citizen activism as part of the resolution. Here it is:

Now in Europe as in the United States there have been attempts to rein in the power of an unregulated financial system. But it’s very difficult to do. So the way forward in the 21st century in the wake of this crisis that we’re still living through is going to require a kind of intelligence and vision that transcends national borders. And that will have to come in part from citizens demanding behavior of public leaders of all sorts that moves us to a new world.

This video is a concise three and a half minutes and was posted online earlier this week (May 14).

The second video I found, via Googling, is a six-minute excerpt of a lecture Parker gave last October to the World Affairs Council of Connecticut. In this video, the economist traces step by step how the Greek economic crisis began some years ago to its current deepening turmoil.

Brilliant, brave, funny and fiercely committed. In a recent talk, Naomi Klein analyzes why we as a society are addicted to risk, and why this is creating so much destruction all around us.

Click on screenshot above to see video. Link here also.

Some joys

Wine Tasting May Be An Art, But There Is Science In The Swirl (Worldcrunch)

 Il giro del mondo in 30 colazioni (dissapore) – photo series - breakfast anyone?

Indottrinamento al cioccolato: esegue Gianluca Franzoni di Domori (dissapore)

Some things political, economic…

Is Germany’s future still European? (Eurozine)

The curious case of German leadership (Centre For European Reform)

Jean Pisani-Ferry video interview on eurobonds (Bruegel TV)

Jacques Delors interview: Euro would still be strong if it had been built to my plan (The Telegraph) – interview with architect of the eurozone

In Translation: Ahmed al-Sawy on the elections – “This isn’t the final bout” (The Arabist)

Some of the thinkers…

Umberto Eco: ‘People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged’ (Guardian)

‘We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to’ (Independent) – Nobel Prize winner for Economics analyzes how we make decisions — I’m going to buy his book.

What does seven billion look like? (Fathom) -  – graphic illustration (saw this on fastcodesign.com)

Good to know

Attempted Malvertising on KrebsOnSecurity.com (KrebsOnSecurity)

One of the heroes

A Video Message from Carlo Petrini (Slow Food) – Italian w/English subtitles – click on screenshot below to see video

It is a brilliant stroke by Romano Prodi in an interview yesterday with Spiegel Online International when he parries a challenge from the interviewer by asking bluntly “Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?”

The interviewer has just referred to German PM Angela Merkel’s stated opposition to eurobonds, and to Germans’ fear that it is primarily Germany that will carry the financial burden for the bonds. Excerpt:

SPIEGEL: …By now, Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be completely isolated, with all partners exerting huge pressure on her. Will that be effective?

Prodi: That is the way politics works. But let’s be rational. Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?

SPIEGEL: With the euro.

In a later section of the interview, the subject of a “two-speed” Europe comes up. Here also, Prodi offers an interesting perspective. And he goes on to talk about a major criticism that he says he hears increasingly voiced about Europe’s power globally.

You can read the full Q&A here, which also includes some discussion of the current and past state of things in Italy.

I do wish Prodi hadn’t retired from Italian politics (and I’m not the only one).

Some joys of life

Is my dog barking? (The Independent)

Born To Smile: New Evidence That Laughing And Smiling Begin In The Womb (Worldcrunch) - photo above

Some of the hard stuff

At Durban, the big emitters will no doubt fail us again on climate change (Guardian)

Why Ms Merkel will blink (Social Europe Journal)

Three examples of disaster capitalism in action (Antony Loewenstein blog)

We Speak on PBS Newshour About Why No Bank Executives Have Gone to Jail (Naked Capitalism) – Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog is one of the most informative there is — she speaks at 4:20 and 10:45 on the video.

Some of the heroes

Van Jones and Democratic Party Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement (october2011.org)

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy (Guardian)

Some news of Italy

Italy’s women look to more equal future after fall of Berlusconi (Guardian)

While Rome was burning: Berlusconi and the politics of Italy’s patronage (openDemocracy)

Paghiamo le picconate tedesche (Epistemes.org) – Italian only

Germany’s Central Bank against the World (Spiegel Online International)

Journalists and the European Project (Huffington Post)

“We teach life, sir” – Palestinian Rafeef Ziadah (Antony Loewenstein blog) – video

Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street (The Nation) – call for police reform from former Seattle Chief of Police

Neutrinos still faster than light in latest version of experiment (Guardian)

From Hemingway to Twitterature: The Short and Shorter of It (Journal of Electronic Publishing, JEP) – highly recommend the section on Twitterature.

Noel Fielding: The Scribblings of a Madcap Shambleton (Guardian) – audio slide show, click on screenshot below

Monti seeks to build new Italian government (Aljazeera) – short news video

The Eurozone Crisis and the Silence of Social Democracy (Social Europe Journal) – excerpt below:

Throughout the 20th century social democrats across Europe had won concessions at national level for workers and citizens. It was here that they forced compromises on business and secured social gains on pensions, wages, health and welfare provisions. It was a settlement that mainstream Christian Democracy accepted after World War Two.  Globalisation has broken that hinge economically, while Thatcherism and neo-liberalism more generally have led the political assault. Currently, across Europe, they have turned a crisis caused by reckless financial globalisation into a crisis of government revenues and demanded a policy of austerity. The European Left has stood open-mouthed and paralysed in response.

“Così ho regalato il web al mondo” (la Repubblica) – interview published today with Tim Berners-Lee in Rome (Italian only)

Wired releases images via Creative Commons, but reopens a debate on what “noncommercial” means (Nieman Journalism Lab)

News24: Sydney papers work round the clock (editorsweblog.org) – a newspaper decides to embrace the pace of the web

Stefanie Posavec On Her Handmade Charts Of Famous Novels (Fast Company’s CoDesign) – data visualisation by hand!?

Dogs, scientists, men: Who needs the leash? (ohmidog!)

La ricetta perfetta: Carbonara (dissapore) – buon appetito! – click on screenshot below for recipe (Italian only)

Surely I’m not the only one to take notice that the bulk of the doomsday talk these days about the imminent fall of the euro is coming either from outside Europe or from eurosceptics.

An underlying assumption of this dire talk, perhaps, may be the idea that eurozone citizens are so discontented that they are demanding return to national currencies. But where is there evidence of this?  Even most Greeks, supposedly mad as hell at EU leadership, reportedly want to stay with the euro (see here, for example).

And, although it’s admittedly an anecdotal report, I can say I’ve not heard or seen either a peep or a scribble of any such San Pietro! let’s return to the lira talk here in Italy either. That is, except for the usual disgruntled voices of the northern far right who, more or less, want to exit everything including the southern half of their own country.

And then this just now in the UK Guardian‘s live blog on the eurozone crisis:

1.47pm: Almost four out of five Germans believe the 17-nation single currency will survive, according to poll for ZDF television. Some 78% of people asked said the euro would survive despite its problems while 56% felt chancellor Angela Merkel was doing a good job of managing the crisis. That’s an improvement on a similar poll in October which had her approval rating at 45%.

How much of a role does the European public play in the rise or fall of the euro? I have no idea really, given the murky fog that constitutes most financial reporting, and the politicians’ backroom political jockeying. But if eurozone voters’ support is needed to drive the currency into collapse, seems to me that’s a non-starter.

Bill Black on the Real News Network on His Three Big, Simple Demands (Naked Capitalism) – another link from Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism, one of the most informative websites about finance and current events.

Ma SuperMario non basta (epistemes.org) – commentary about new ECB chief Mario Draghi (in Italian only).

Laurie Penny: A woman’s opinion is the mini-skirt of the internet (The Independent)

Lindblad Expeditions: Day 12 (Carl Safina blog)

The best of our graphic short story prize (Guardian) – if you like cartoonists, this is a feast.

“United”  (Playing For Change/United Nations Population Fund) – click on screenshot below for music video.