Is This Necrophilia?

I know what necrophilia means. But I think the word’s definition needs some rewriting especially, after reading DCNS’ intention to sell FREMM class frigates to Greece:

France wants to deliver two to four new frigates to the Greek navy and to allow the highly indebted nation to postpone payment of the €300 million ($412 million) purchase price per ship for the next five years.

 Under the deal, Greece will have the option of paying up after five years, with a significant discount of €100 million, or returning them to the French navy. The “stealth” frigates are designed to avoid detection by enemy radar and are built by state-owned French defense company DCNS.

Well the French consider themselves as good lovers and an authority on almost everything about l’amour. I didn’t know that this expertise also included loving of the dead. Well any way they are not alone in this business:

The [French] deal is being criticized by German rivals that have been competing for the contract for years.

In a letter to the German government, an executive from the ThyssenKrupp group complained that the vessel purchase will in effect be co-financed by German taxpayers because Greece, reliant on aid from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, may have to restructure its debts.

A Greek debt haircut is looking increasingly likely. If this happens and Greece is rescued again with funds from the European bailout mechanisms, Thyssen’s scenario would come true. German taxpayers would shoulder part of Greece’s government spending and thereby be forced to pay for a portion of the frigate purchase.

“While German naval shipyards aren’t getting any orders, DCNS and Greek shipyards are being subsidized and kept alive, probably with German money in the end,” the ThyssenKrupp executive said.

Uwe Beckmeyer, a member of parliament from the the center-left Social Democrats, says German jobs are at stake and called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to get French President Nicolas Sarkozy to abandon the ship sale. “The Chancellor must stop her friend Sarkozy,” said Beckmeyer.

So the Germans think they can beat the French in “love-making”. This is something I would like to see.

While France and Germany bicker about who is going to make love to the corpse, sell warships to Greece, this is the hard reality:

Greek unions began a 48-hour general strike on Wednesday, the biggest protest in years, as parliament prepares to vote on sweeping new austerity measures designed to stave off a default that could trigger a crisis in the wider euro zone.

The strike shut government departments, businesses, public services and even providers of everyday staples like shops and bakeries and will culminate in mass demonstrations outside parliament, which was the scene of violent clashes in June.

The industrial action comes as European Union leaders scramble to set the outlines of a new rescue package in time for a summit on Sunday that hopes to agree measures to protect the region’s financial system from a potential Greek debt default.

Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou made a final appeal for support late on Tuesday, comparing the situation facing Greece to a war and telling deputies in the ruling PASOK party that it was their duty to support the tough new measures.