greece

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jan 2015 – Syrizas new govt plan:

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01/28/greece-this-is-syrizas-new-government-plan-in-detail/

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jan 2015 –

From minimum wage to prescriptions, Alexis Tsipras is making good his promises to voters in startling fashion

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/alexis-tsipras-athens-lightning-speed-anti-austerity-policies

“A new era has begun, a government of national salvation has arrived,” he declared as cameras rolled and the cabinet session began. “We will continue with our plan. We don’t have the right to disappoint our voters.”

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Ikaria, (Greece)

Yanis Varoufakis

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Greece (Greek: Ελλάδα, Elláda, pronounced [eˈlaða], officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία [eliniˈci ðimokraˈti.a] Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía) and known since ancient times as Hellas (/ˈhɛləs/;Greek: Ελλάς), is a country in Southern Europe and Balkans. According to the 2011 census, Greece’s population is around 11 million. Athens is the nation’s capital and largest city.

Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa. It shares land borders withAlbania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north and Turkey to the northeast.

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http://jubileedebt.org.uk/news/imf-made-e2-5-billion-profit-greece-loans

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govern\ment

scotland yet

podemos

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july 2015 – tweet

This is the best thing I’ve read on Greece. So good. “Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.” http://t.co/tmDXCbLdNm

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/617175067441672192

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eece’s anti-austerity murals: street art expresses a nation’s frustration http://t.co/T7z4rzzzVK

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/thischanges/status/617299101407924224

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Charles convo with Maria Scordialos, an activist in Greece:

http://charleseisenstein.net/project/reconnecting-to-the-strength-we-have-an-interview-with-maria-scordialos/

3 min – charles – on likeness to scotland and being based on fear

8 min – maria on commons ness… much based on squatting

10 min – charles – commons ness – solidarity building – insulates us against fear.. more important than the referendum

13 min – maria – worst nightmare – people hearing fear – this is what will hold us back

16 min – maria – answer to the fear is solidarity..

authenticity and attachment

17 min – maria  – on how individualistic and tribal we are – thinking of only our own family…

18 min – maria: greek word – philopemo – i can only see myself in your eyes.. if i harm you i harm myself .. charles – in southern africa: ubuntu – our well-being is not fundamentally separate

i know you ness

28 min – charles – documents leaked – showing fear of all

34 min – maria – if we’re not willing to change the questions.. and how we sit together.. we’re going to get the same old same old…

35 min – maria – why is there no mediation.. why have they not brought someone in to mediate this conversation

36 min – charles – on outcome already being defined by the structure… to change one thing you must change everything ness

42 min – charles – on power – starting out as a means ends up as an ends.. orwellian

46 min – maria – on why do we import – we have all we need – there is no need to be afraid… the only thing we should be afraid of – is to continue with the debt.. we have to unshackle ourselves from the money.. and wealth equaling money

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plan c – commons

http://roarmag.org/2015/07/greece-plan-c-commons-solidarity/

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july 2015 – from interfluidity – greece:

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html

written by https://twitter.com/interfluidity

These people were not naïfs. They knew the Greek state was sketchy. But precisely because it was sketchy, prior to the financial crisis its debt paid slightly higher interest rates than that of safer Eurozone sovereigns. European banking regulations attached zero risk weights to all EU sovereigns, rendering it nearly costless for banks to simply manufacture deposits to purchase sovereign debt. Eurozone sovereigns were default-risk-free as a regulatory matter and currency-risk-free from the perspective of Eurozone banks. The European financial system was architected to make lending to Greece — and Spain and Portugal and Italy — a money machine for bankers with little career risk over a medium term

[..]

Sketchy credits tend to punch above their weight in terms of volume of issuance, so there was a lot of nice paper to buy. The bankers who lent to these states understood perfectly well that there was in fact a long-term risk, an uncertainty, a constructive ambiguity. They lent anyway, and took home very nice salaries and bonuses for doing so.

[..]

But “bank restructuring” is a euphemism for imposing losses on wealthy creditors. And explicit bank bailouts are humiliations of elites, moments when the mask comes off and the usually tacit means by which states preserve and enhance the comfort of the comfortable must give way to very visible, very unpopular, direct cash flows.

[..]

The choice Europe’s leaders faced was to preserve the union or preserve the wealth, prestige, and status of the community of people who were their acquaintances and friends and selves but who are entirely unrepresentative of the European public. They chose themselves. The formal institutions of the EU endure, but European community is now failing fast.

[..]

It is difficult to overstate how deeply Europe’s leaders betrayed the ideals of European integration in their handing of the Greek crisis. The first and most fundamental goal of European integration was to blur the lines of national feeling and interest through commerce and interdependence, in order to prevent the fractures along ethnonational lines that made a charnel house of the continent, twice. That is the first thing, the main rule, that anyone who claims to represent the European project must abide: We solve problems as Europeans together, not as nations in conflict.

[..]

But they were European problems that festered while the continent’s leaders gloated and took credit for a phantom prosperity. When the levee broke, instead of acknowledging errors and working to address them as a community, Europe’s elites — its politicians and civil servants, its bankers and financiers — deflected the blame in the worst possible way. They turned a systemic problem of financial architecture into a dispute between European nations. They brought back the very ghosts their predecessors spent half a century trying to dispell. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.

[..]

The nerve. The fucking nerve. Lenders, having been made nearly whole on their ill-conceived, profit-motivated punts, now fear that if anybody is nice to somebody who doesn’t deserve it, where will it end? I’d resort to that cliché about chutspa, the kid who murders his parents then seeks leniency ‘cuz he’s an orphan. But it’s really too cute for the occasion.

[..]

But don’t the Greeks want to borrow more? Isn’t that what all the fuss is about right now? No. The Greeks need to borrow money now only because old loans are coming due that they have to pay, and they have been trying to come to an agreement about that, rather than raise a middle finger and walk away. The Greek state itself is not trying to expand its borrowing.

[..]

what is the justification for a Greek schoolteacher losing her savings that wouldn’t have applied just as strongly to a French schoolteacher five years ago? Because Greeks are responsible, as individuals, for what the governments they elect do? Well, then I deserve to be killed for what my government has done in Iraq and elsewhere. Is that where we want to go?

[..]

Blaming victims for having insufficiently perfect leaders is standard fare for apologists of predation. Unfortunately, understanding this may be of little comfort to the disemboweled prey.

[..]

Greece’s creditors are not nervous lenders panicked over their own financial situation, but public sector institutions representing primarily governments that are in no financial distress at all. They really shouldn’t be behaving like this.

Setting the stage for a pivotal deal with Europe, the Greek Parliament early Saturday approved Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s proposal for a three-year, $59 billion rescue package with harsh austerity terms that was remarkably similar to the one Greek voters rejected in a referendum less than a week ago.

With a Sunday deadline looming for a decision on the bailout, a crunch point that all sides see as Greece’s last chance to avoid bankruptcy and stay in the euro currency zone, the plan passed by an overwhelming margin.

It was not entirely clear what a temporary exit or “Grexit” would entail, but the threat put intense pressure on Tsipras to swallow politically unpalatable austerity measures, as his people overwhelmingly want to stay in the eurozone.

[..]

The leaders are discussing Greece’s request for a three-year, 53.5 billion-euro ($59.5 billion) financial package. But other leaders in Brussels say Greece needs even more funding and are demanding tough austerity measures in exchange. It would be Greece’s third bailout in five years.