Smoke Signals

The Slog

by John Ward 

Turkish Delight. Customs officers at Thessaloniki Airport report increasing numbers of Turks flying out of Greece towards Austria, declaring huge amounts of physical gold, then flying in again with more. Further investigation has uncovered many cases of Turkish citizens buying huge plots of land throughout Western Thrace, around a core Muslim minority there numbering some 150,000. Greek authorities now allegedly fear that there is a plan to  establish a Turkish “Protectorate” there when the time seems right – backed by gold using land-claims bought with gold. The customs men are wondering if, perhaps, this is the slice of Turkish Delight given to Ankara as part of the Cyprus deal. To the victors the spoils, and all that.

To me, I have to say it looks like something being done covertly with German help: a large percentage of Merkel’s pro-euro proles are based in Austria….and the country’s banking system has long been used to test-market gold-buying restrictions.

Erdogan’s purge. Meanwhile, back at the core of the Greater Ottoman Empire Turkish Islamist Recep Erdogan is encountering fierce resistance to his policy of maximising the population of the country’s prisons. A few days ago,  Turkish police fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators outside a courthouse near Istanbul where three hundred purged officers are on trial.  The crowd tried to tear down police barriers in front of the courthouse in Silivri, waving Turkish flags and chanting anti-government slogans.

But Erdogan the Mad continues to challenge the independence of judiciary, culture conspiracy theories to provide a basis for jailing his opponents, imprison countless journalists, and issue fines against unfriendly media companies. Turkey now has – officially – a larger population of political prisoners per citizen than any EU member: nothing like getting a return on your investment. But this is the regime that some Eunatics want in the EU, and this is the man whom David Cameron would rather do business with than Israel. For a while last week, it also became the place that Netanyhahu would rather do business with than Greece or Cyprus: but word reaches me that Benny in Tel Aviv is already getting restive about Obama’s rapprochement plans.

Mario Draghicula’s wage repression starts to take shape. I’ve had many emails and articles sent to me since revealing the ECB Director’s Midnight Mass sermon about EU productivity recently. They all add up to one obvious outcome: Draghi’s neocon pauperisation scam is being rolled out.

Internal Member State agreements linking wages to inflation are now asserted officially by the ECB as being ‘incompatible with monetary union’ and off-limits, I hear. Cyprus has such a wage indexation system, called the ‘Cost of Living Adjustment (‘COLA’), but it won’t for long. The Troika has already drafted legislation for the scheme to be abandoned. To do so does make some economic sense, but the level of undemocratic and illegal interference in the affairs of those being groomed for rape in the new dawn of  FiskalUnion is now so overt it is no longer funny. The Troika has prepared a memorandum helpfully explaining to Cypriot legislators that wage indexation must ‘not to be applied in the private sector until 2014, whereas it is suspended in the wider public sector for the next three years’.

Spain was bullied out of its collective bargaining clauses three years ago. Now it seems that next on the list for dictation are Belgium, Luxembourg and Malta. I’m as big a critic of block-vote Union power as anyone, but I don’t see the alternative as Arbeit macht frei. Clearly, Mario does: the Pact of Steel between the fascisti of Europe is reborn. Golden Dawn must be creaming their jeans.