Vladimir Putin has been the subject of everything from pop songs to Chippendale-like wall calendars. Now his mock-heroics have become comic books, in the dangerous
Politics / The World / Europe
Eurozone crisis: new bailout under half the size of Oz economy
The question for the eurozone in 2012 is the pace of panic: a slow panic still grabs you in the end. Knowing Europe and the various governments there’s something out there with the capacity to bring on that feeling.
The year of the non-lessons of fiscal stimulus
In 2011 we all became monetarists again, despite the lessons of the GFC.
Report on Sri Lanka war crimes exonerates SL government
The Sri Lankan government of Mahinda Rajapaksa has worked out how to get away with murder.
Eurogeddon Watch: honey I shrank the bazooka
Europe’s already-inadequate efforts to ensure it can stabilise its economies has suffered another hit.
Vaclav Havel, a hero for our time
The world is a poorer place this week with the loss of Vaclav Havel.
Is this the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin?
Mikhail Kasyanov, Russian prime minister from 2000-2004, has come out swinging on the weekend with a damning appraisal of Vladimir Putin’s character and political future, claiming Putin is ‘running scared’ and would lose an honest presidential election, reports Andrew Osborn.
The number crunching that is Iraq is finally done
The whole process had been an imaginary projection of US power in any case — removing the Iraqi people from the picture meant that all attention could be focused on American suffering and the meaning of the war in American life.
Steady drip of bad news as the Euro catastrophe unfolds
The deal brokered at last week’s Brussels summit is unravelling as things go from bad to disastrous in Europe.
Guy Rundle: How violence in Europe takes a hard-Right turn
How will the Liberal Right deal with the increasingly violent and racist trajectory of the hard-Right? Not well, one suspects on the evidence.
Memo David Cameron: eurosceptics aren’t really on your side
The EU has its problems. Not just economic, but more deep-seated issues to do with its “democratic deficit” — the way the union has been managed by elites and unaccountable bureaucrats.
Guy Rundle: Rundle: for Cameron, Brussells sprouts a sort of zen veto
The EU could have given the UK kittens, bl-wjobs and Belgium for free, and Cameron, on returning, would have still been portrayed as “the man who sold out to Europe”.
Guy Rundle: An unusual twist in the NotW phone-hacking tale
The Leveson inquiry into the UK print media has taken an unusual turn.
Russian billionaire set to run against Putin
News that Russian billionaire Mikhail D. Prokhorov will challenge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is the latest threat to the political status quo in Russia, reports Ellen Barry and David M Herszenhorn.
UK-less Europe fights the next war — pity about the current one
Europe’s fiscal compact will address the next financial crisis, but leave the current one to get worse and worse. And the Brits have played themselves out of Europe.
What not to expect from the euro summit: a solution
Expectations are low for tonight’s make-or-break summit in Brussels. Europe might reform itself, but fail to address the immediate crisis it faces, write Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane.
Rundle: NotW scandal widens, Mulcaire now has nothing to lose
December 7 — a day of infamy for an empire, its forces tethered and defenceless, the enemy coming out of the sun, laying waste.
Maley: caught short by an EU bank storm
Australian corporate borrowers will feel the pinch as European banks increasingly scale back their lending and dump assets amid the scramble to come up with almost €115 billion ($US154 billion) in fresh capital within the next six months.
The everyday politics of perpetual electioneering
Must Australian politicians work “tirelessly” for their communities or face electoral oblivion? James Panichi of InsideStory looks for the middle ground.
Cameron: the odd man out in Brussels
David Cameron now finds himself stuck between a Eurosceptic cabinet and pressure from Merkozy to head towards a new European Union, writes Keshia Jacotine.
Guy Rundle: Cameron’s bulldog image in danger of losing its balls
The problem for Cameron is that he’s dealing with a triple crisis — party, country and Europe — while his enemies have only one aim, to make the Tories over as a euro sceptic outfit.
Guy Rundle: Janet Albrechtsen on Margaret Thatcher and The Iron Lady
This week, Planet Janet is angry at the new Margaret Thatcher’s film The Iron Lady in which Meryl Streep plays the Tory supremo in her prime. Planet thinks it’s a lefty trick.
Guy Rundle: Rundle: Europe re-engineered on the run, but don’t mention the war
It is extraordinary, unprecedented, the European project that everyone was so solemn about being re-engineered on the run like, well, like the dodgy banks that put us in this mess in the first place.
RBA takes fright at a desperate
eurozone
The RBA has cut rates in anticipation of the impact of the European crisis. Given the news out of the eurozone, it won’t be the last cut.
Is Europe becoming ‘more German?’
Germany’s economy is the envy of many nations in Europe, a sentiment solidified by Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent call to adapt “the German system.” Europe is becoming more German, says The Spiegel, but rejuvenated resentment is also brewing.
