Greece to the lions

'Among [European] policymakers, there is a mounting sense of resignation that Greece is unable to meet its side of the bargain to facilitate the bailout, as well as a growing confidence that the eurozone is now in a much stronger position to weather a Greek default than when the crisis erupted two years ago.'

'But European exasperation has been fuelled by the consistent failure of Greek leaders to supply details on how a €325m funding gap is to be closed and by the same politicians, particularly the centre-right leader, Antonis Samaras, refusing to guarantee in writing that the deal cannot be revised following elections in April.'

The age of Belphegor

In demonology, Belphegor (or Beelphegor, Hebrew: בַּעַל-פְּעוֹר‎ baʿal-pəʿōr) is a demon, and one of the seven princes of Hell, who helps people to make discoveries. He seduces people by suggesting to them ingenious inventions that will make them rich. According to some 16th century demonologists, his power is stronger in April. Bishop and witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld believed that Belphegor tempts by means of laziness.[1] Also, according to Peter Binsfeld's Binsfeld's Classification of Demons, Belphegor is the chief demon of the deadly sin known as Sloth in Christian tradition.

Belphegor originated as the Assyrian Baal-Peor, the Moabitish god to whom the Israelites became attached in Shittim (Numbers 25:3), which was associated with licentiousness and orgies. It was worshipped in the form of a phallus. As a demon, he is described in Kabbalistic writings as the "disputer", an enemy of the sixth Sephiroth "beauty". When summoned, he can grant riches, the power of discovery and ingenious invention. His role as a demon was to sow discord among men and seduce them to evil through the apportionment of wealth.

Belphegor (Lord of the Opening) was pictured in two different fashions: as a beautiful young woman or as a monstrous, bearded demon with horns and sharply pointed nails; the former form, according to most sources, was his earthly disguise when invoked by mortals. According to De Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, he was Hell's ambassador to France. Belphegor also figures in Milton's Paradise Lost and in Victor Hugo's The Toilers of the Sea.

According to legend, Belphegor was sent from Hell by Pluto to find out if there really was such a thing on earth as married happiness. Rumor of such had reached the demons but they knew that people were not designed to live in harmony. Belphegor's experiences in the world soon convinced him that the rumor was groundless. The story is found in various works of early modern literature, hence the use of the name to apply to a misanthrope or a licentious person.

Getting it straight

Shock Horror!

Does Richard Dawkins exist?

Following the non-divine revelation that Richard Dawkins cannot recite the full title of Darwin's Origin of Species whilst standing on his left leg and rubbing his stomach (or even from a sedentary position), research has revealed that 96 per cent of those who claim to believe in the scientific method and scientific, non-religious explanations of the universe read their horoscopes at least once a month.

Commenting that non-believers clearly do not know what they believe, the Archbishop of Canterbury has denounced the 'monstrous regiment of sham rationalists', the waste of divine resources, and called for the 'dismantling of the tyrannical apparatus of the scientific state', the expulsion of 'so-called scientists' from the House of Lords, the compulsory baptism of all infants, and a change in the judicial rubric from 'beyond reasonable doubt' to 'beyond divine displeasure'.

Professor Dawkins was unavailable for comment.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for the Public Understanding of Insignificant Facts about Religious Experience has discovered that a truly shocking number of Professing Christians (we are all Professors now, whether we will or no - at least when sat down before the Office of the Unholy Inquisition) is unable to distinguish between Beelzebub and Lucifer, and, worse still, cannot name the first book of the New Testament. Had they, like me, been sent by their parents to Sunday school for a few years in their impressionable youth (Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man' Baltasar.) they might have learnt the little rhyme 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Acts and Romans follow on,' and thus been assured of eternal salvation (or at least the eternal ministrations of Professor Dawkins) from then on.


Lucifer - the bearer of light

Fear not! I have faith the miraculous Mr Gove is on the case. Perhaps Addison and Steele would have done it better. In his old age, one of the favourite books of Edward Lear, who knew a thing or two about nonsense, was Addison and Steele's Spectator.

Laundry

Edward Lear to Thomas Baring, First Earl of Northbrook, Viceroy of India, 1872:

Does your Excellency know that in various places in your Empire the Dobies fill shirts, drawers, socks, etc. with stones, and then, tying up the necks, bang them furiously on rocks at the water's edge until they are supposed to be washed? Surely, no country can prosper where such irregularities prevail.

Lear was a personal friend of Thomas Baring and travelling in India as his guest.

Greece confronts its nemesis

We are all Greece's inheritors

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/13/greece-bankrupt-ablaze-cradle-democracy

Greece turns a corner



A society poised for recovery?


The Greek parliament has accepted the terms of the further austerity package on which the next European bail-out depends.

There are still other hurdles to be passed before the funds are actually made available. the eurogroup of finance ministers must approve; the Bundestag must approve; an agreement must be concluded with the private creditors.

Additionally the Greek government has to give an undertaking to its European saviours that the measures will be irreversible and implemented by any future elected (or unelected) Greek government. A general election is scheduled for April.

If those hurdles are cleared the great bulk of the 130 billion Euros of funds will be held in an account to which no Greek has any access and used directly to pay interest on Greece's international loans.

Unsurprisingly international markets are rallying despite growing violence, anarchy and suffering on the Greek streets. The new package will be insufficient to free the economy from the debt burden and enable it to escape from economic shrinkage.


Light at the end of the tunnel

Everyone knows that, but in the meantime, until the next crisis is reached, international interests will continue to profit, whilst the Greek economy and Greek society is cordonned off in a kind of ghetto. Greece is, in international or even European terms, a small economy (and 'Europe as a whole is in external balance and should be able to solve its own internal problems'), but wealth can still be extracted from Greece, and the radical failure of its finances could unravel the knitted sleeve of international banking and finance.

Knowledge shall set you free

What can be at once more gratifying and more frustrating than viewing a book online?

There on your screen is some book from a distant library that for reasons of remoteness, rarity and cost one would probably never be able to hold as a physical copy. The pages turn, floating across your screen, in an unreal, cinematic fashion, remote, efficient. There is an electronic equivalent for flipping through the pages and the finger stuck in page twenty-seven. Now this page, now that; never quite convenient.

The screen is both a window on vast possibilities and a cruel restriction: always a window, never a door. There is somewhere, unseen, ungraspable, a logical step-by-step equivalent of the tottering pile of books on your desk.

We have recreated our own - far superior - version of the medieval chained library.

Hereford Cathedral library