Re-reading Richard Pine on Culture

Corfu resident Richard Pine's article in the Irish Times (June 21, 2010) had a lot of good points about culture-

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0621/1224272949529.html


but I can't agree with him when he writes

"And in the case of Greece, the EU – desperate to maintain not only the euro zone but its very raison d’etre, its forward thrust as a superpower – is insisting on assimilation, rather than acknowledging that Greece should never have joined the EU. Balkan Greece has as much in common with the western states as Genghis Khan had with the girl-guide movement, and the fact that it is causing almost as much damage as Genghis is not entirely its own fault" (my italics) .

I am quite unqualified to comment on his views on Ireland:

"And Ireland could be strong again, through its amazing cultural vigour. I don’t necessarily mean the international achievements of Brian Friel, Séamus Heaney, Louis le Brocquy, Gerald Barry or Dorothy Cross, immeasurable though they are. I mean the perceptions that fuel their creativity: Friel looking at the local as global; Heaney caressing memory as the way forward; le Brocquy’s “other” way of seeing; Barry’s intellectual musical brilliance; and Cross’s radical critique of what “art” can be: art as part of the cultural intelligence of a people. Apart from the past, it may be all we have to go on."