The last days of socialism
“A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.” An allusion to Marx's Communist manifesto opens the front page article in today’s International Herald Tribune. Fresh after the “clobbering” the SPD received in this weekend’s German elections, the august American daily has revived the debate as to whether the European left is dead or not. “Where the left holds power as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack," it notes. "Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.” This is ironic given that the world is in the midst of one of “the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system”. The reasons puts forward for such a decline are due to the centre-right’s recent embrace of traditionally social-democratic ideas – “generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union.” Says Tony Judt of New York’s Remarque Institute on European issues – “I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus, that’s bad news."
The new Eurogroup meeting on February 9 is not enough to banish the spectre of a Greek bankruptcy. While Athens may largely be responsible for the crisis, the EU and its partners are not blameless themselves. La Stampa argues that their confused messages and the absence of any strategy have transformed a resolvable problem into an explosive chaos. 
In a time of crisis with high unemployment, young Lithuanians are following in the footsteps of their emigrant ancestors. Tens of thousands have left the country in search of a better life, mainly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. The weekly Veidas reports: 
Two camps, two theories, and two visions of France: 18 years after the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis, the precise role played by Paris is still the subject of heated debate, fueled by the findings of successive criminal investigations.