Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
When I was an undergraduate, I once discussed the future of Europe with a Right-wing Italian student. "Brussels will eventually be brought down by anti-German feeling in the rest of the EU," he said.
I contradicted him sharply: "No: it'll eventually be brought down by anti-EU feeling in Germany."
The EU, as I observed the other day, rests on the sufferance of the German taxpayer. No other country except Britain does so badly out of Brussels.
Germans have been the largest net contributors in almost every year since 1956, even though several other member states have higher incomes. In return, they get the poorest per capita representation in EU institutions.
The old incantations - the assertion, above all, that Europe was an antidote to aggressive nationalism - have lost their power.
The Euro-shamans still chant them, but there is less and less response. The magic is fading. The dream is dissipating.
The British intelligence agency MI5 has established that neo-Nazis in Britain and Europe plan to use the worldwide credit crisis to launch "a summer of rage" at next month's G8 summit in London, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The plans were discussed at a huge rally last month in Dresden.
MI5 officers who infiltrated the secret meetings after the main rally organized by the extreme Democratic Party discovered London was "to be targeted by our people in the way Dresden was attacked," ordered one neo-Nazi speaker.
An MI5 officer said: "Speaker after speaker said the G8 summit should be used to exploit the deepening economic crisis… One speaker said this was a good opportunity to found a Fourth Reich."
Some of us have lived through the 1992 speculative attack that almost sunk the European exchange-rate mechanism.
This is why we are so obsessed with the possibility that a similar event could sink the euro area.
We believe there are some disturbing parallels.
So we are saying that the probability of a speculative attack is much higher than EU leaders are currently prepared to admit.
Given this lack of preparedness, we cannot see how they can defend themselves successfully against such attacks.
This is why we believe the outcome of the March 1 informal EU is extremely disappointing, potentially leading to great danger.
The financial crash is becoming a defining moment for the European Union, an economic shock that is testing the system's political solidarity to the limit.
If they fail, it may end up rather like the League of Nations in the late 1930s, a sad and toothless crone muttering memories of might-have-beens.
No substantive agreements were reached, and behind the scenes it was evident that the nationalist divisions in the EU, increasingly visible in the recent months, are being stretched to the breaking point.
The danger of a meltdown of eastern European economies, leading to a chain reaction of collapses in the entire European banking system, is very real.
The financial crisis threatens cohesion (translated from French)
Fears persist that Western Europe is putting local economic interests ahead of EU unity.
The European Union pledged on Tuesday to bail out any struggling member of the euro-zone before they were forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund.
But it has struggled to find a common response to the growing economic problems in Eastern and Central Europe.
Economic crisis has brought tensions between the 'old' and 'new' EU to boiling point.
So much for a compelling display of European unity. A disastrous summit in Brussels at the weekend laid bare what everyone already knew: the global economic crisis is threatening to tear apart both the continent's single market and the peaceful transition to a prosperous European era after the dissolution of the USSR.
The problem is a serious one. If Europe cannot solve its difficulties, say the doom-mongers, the euro will split, the union's authority will be fatally undermined and member states could find themselves run by xenophobes and extremists, being wooed back into the fold by a wounded but competitive Russia.
(And: Ukraine teeters)
...Netanyah's naysaying (op-ed)
...Brown checks out Obama (cartoon)
...Is Obama eligibility a concern for you? (poll)
...Obama's promises (cartoons)
...AIG: More!!! (cartoon)
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