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Arabica Robusta

After Greece: Can the Left Change Europe? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Na... - 0 views

  • The public consciousness is, at last, aware of the issues of financial regulation, wealth distribution and the means of production. But questions relating to religion regularly push these into the background (1).
  • Nikos Filis, editor of Avgi, a newspaper with, as main shareholder, the radical left coalition Syriza (2), came to a different conclusion: “The attack may orientate Europe’s future: either towards Le Pen and the far right, or towards a more reasoned approach to the problem. Because security needs cannot be met by the police alone.”
  • “If Syriza had been less intransigent on standing for the rights of immigrants, we would already have 50% of the votes. But this choice is one of the few points on which we all agree.”
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  • They scarcely existed five years ago but now they look like credible candidates to exercise power; and they may be able to relegate their countries’ socialist parties — which share responsibility for the general financial disaster since 2008 — to a supporting role, just as Britain’s Labour Party supplanted the Liberal Party, and France’s Socialist Party supplanted the Radical Party (3). Those changes were permanent.
  • In Athens, that nowhere is all too clear. But austerity’s cruelty, with social and health consequences extending to hunger, cold and increases in infectious diseases and suicides, does not necessarily mean a change of policy (4). Austerity’s architects are well paid to have nerves of steel.
  • Syriza has calculated precisely that free electricity, public transport, emergency food for the poorest and vaccines for children could be financed through more aggressive anti-corruption and anti-fraud measures. The outgoing conservative government admitted that these deprived the public coffers of at least €10bn a year.
  • These measures are not up for negotiation with other parties or the country’s creditors, Milios insists: “They are questions of national sovereignty; they won’t add anything to our deficit. We are therefore intending to implement this policy whatever the outcome of debt renegotiations.”
  • In these circumstances, the European conference on debt that Tsipras called for two years ago in this publication (6) could become a realistic prospect. Ireland’s finance minister backs the idea, and it has a historical precedent in the 1953 conference that cancelled Germany’s war debts, including what it owed to Greece. Syriza hopes the conference it is calling for will provide “the alternative solution which will bury austerity for good.”
  • Merkel has threatened Greece with expulsion from the euro if its government breaks the budgetary or financial disciplines to which Germany is so attached. The Greeks want both to loosen austerity policies and to remain in the single currency. Those wishes are shared by Syriza (8), because a small, exhausted country cannot fight on all fronts at once. “We’ve been the troika’s guinea pigs. We don’t want to become the guinea pigs for a euro exit,” says Valia Kaimaki, a journalist with links to Syriza. “Let a bigger country, such as Spain or France, go first.”
  • Moulopoulos believes that “without European support, it will not be possible to do anything at all.” That is why Syriza accords importance to support from forces beyond the radical left and the Greens, in particular the Socialists. Yet the Greeks have had experience of the surrenders made by social democracy since Andreas Papandreou forced his party to make a major shift towards neoliberalism 30 years ago. “If he had stayed on the left, there would have been no Syriza,” says Moulopoulos. “In Germany too, when Oskar Lafontaine resigned from the government [in 1999], he expressed regret that social democracy had become incapable of even the most insignificant reforms. Globalisation and neoliberalism with a human face completely destroyed it.”
  • Electoral victory for Syriza, or for Podemos in Spain, could demonstrate, contrary to what Hollande or Matteo Renzi in Italy say, the viability of a European politics that rejected austerity. That would challenge more than the German right.
  • Now the threat is much greater. “If we don’t change Europe, the far right will do it for us,” Tsipras has warned. It has become even more urgent to be bold.
  • The task for the left in Greece and Spain, on which much depends, is hard enough without adding onto their shoulders the heavy responsibility of defending Europe’s democratic destiny, and averting a “clash of civilisations”. But that is what is at stake.
Arabica Robusta

Analyzing the failures of Syriza « Systemic Disorder - 0 views

  • If we are serious about analyzing Syriza’s spectacular failure — including those who expected this outcome in advance — digging through the rubble is unavoidable.
  • The international Left saw hope in Syriza, and Syriza economists worked on solutions. There was much political seriousness as Syriza was seen as the last hope; that fascism might well be next given the growing menace of Golden Dawn focused minds.
  • no success in a single European country will be sustainable unless it is followed by similar successes in other countries.“Yiannis Tolios, an economist, also elected to the [Syriza] central committee, articulated the problem starkly, but with a different stress: ‘If having socialism in a single country is considered hard, having socialism in all countries at the same time is nearly impossible.’ Greece needed to forge ahead, whether the rest were ready or not, but it was perilous path.” [page 59]
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  • Greeks responded by heavily voting “no” to further austerity. The Syriza government then did a remarkable about-face. Eight days later, Prime Minister Tsipras signed an agreement even more unfavorable that what had been demanded by the troika. More than half of Syriza’s central committee signed an opposition letter and most Syriza members were furious. This was ignored.
  • You cannot build a left when you trash the very basis of our beliefs. It came from a mix of blatant opportunism, genuine confusion, psychological distress, and postmodernist sophistry.
  • That this is a “you are there” document from a personalized standpoint does not at all mean that The Syriza Wave is anything other than a serious political analysis. The work could have been strengthened in two ways: one, a deeper discussion of the economic issues, including the ramifications of staying in (or exiting) the eurozone, and, two, a discussion of how virtually every euro of the troika loans are going to creditors and banks rather than to the Greek people, a topic barely mentioned in passing only once. These are topics that would have added to the narrative.
Arabica Robusta

Syriza: The radical left's Greek Spring? | openDemocracy - 0 views

  • The phenomenon of Syriza has captured the hearts and minds of European intellectuals. For many informed observers Greece is the prelude of tectonic changes that would shape future European politics, as there is a wave of elections in in 2015 countries facing similar challenges, including Portugal and Spain. The rising popularity of the Spanish ‘Podemos’ movement makes it plausible to see another party of the radical left gaining electoral support in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis.
  • addressed the audience together promising ‘Syriza, Podemos, Venceremos’ (literally “Syriza, we can, we’ll win”).  So, should we expect a ‘spill-over’ of governing radical left parties in Europe or is, this, another Greek exceptionalism?
  • The tight external conditionality attached to the bailout is coupled with a limited timeframe within which crucial decisions need to be taken.
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  • Similarly, Greece is the only country in the Eurozone where the economic recession triggered a political crisis, marked by governmental instability, electoral rise of the far right and mass MP defections. A unique feature of the Greek political system since the beginning of the recession in 2009 is the high number of MP defections who crossed the floor. In our study we found that the period between 2010-2012 approximately 75 MPs defected; since then this number has increased.  
  • Syriza participated in the parliament even before the crisis, even though as a party with minimal electoral support. Hence, power structures were already present, while it could also draw on experienced mainstream politicians.
  • Europe's radical left will have to go through a harsh winter before its 'Greek spring.' More importantly, punishing Syriza to prevent the rise of Podemos will add another catastrophic decision in the management of Europe's debt crisis. Instead the humanitarian crisis in Greece should be dealt on its own right taking into consideration Greece's particularities.
Arabica Robusta

Greek activists welcome much needed breathing space | ROAR Magazine - 0 views

  • Further reforms of the police apparatus are announced, but the relief is palpable. “For the first time in years I can move around freely in my own city without being frightened,” says Fereniki, who is part of the struggle against the privatization of the former international airport of Athens in Hellinikon.
  • But SYRIZA is not a revolutionary party — at best they can be labelled progressive social-democratic. Those who are now accusing the Greek population or even more so the Greek left to be reformist, are ignoring the consequences of the disastrous economic situation at hand. “To denounce SYRIZA as social-democratic was a luxury we couldn’t afford at that time,” Makis notes referring to aforementioned criticism.
  • Many activists assume that apart from the changes for refugees and the easing of the excessive repression the prospect of success for the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition is minor. The Troika’s influence on Greek economic policies is enormous and the options at hand limited: a continuation of austerity measurements as required by the EU would be disastrous – an exit from the eurozone probably would have even more devastating social and economic effects.
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  • As long as SYRIZA is able to confront the Troika — even at tremendous costs — they would maintain their credibility and secure support of their voters. An apparent slippage in the government’s position on the other hand, would have fatal consequences. It would damage the reputation of the Left in Greece heavily and the Right, maybe even the fascist Golden Dawn party, would see its popularity surge.
  • Besides some impressive initiatives which combat the direct effects of austerity policies like foodbanks and solidarity clinics, there is another remarkable development. People are talking about the creation and extension of alternative economic networks – and they already started working on it. In the last years, many cooperatives were born, producer-consumer networks and producer markets were established. Some were established out of pure necessity, but there is also a realization of the fact that there won’t be any fundamental change without alternative economic institutions.
Arabica Robusta

Destroying the Greek Economy in Order to Save It | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

  • But blackmail is actually an understatement of what the troika is doing to Greece. It has become increasingly clear that it is trying to harm the Greek economy in order to increase pressure on the new Greek government to agree to its demands.
  • The first sign that this was the European authorities’ strategy came on Feb. 4 — just 10 days after the Syriza government was elected — when the ECB cut off the main source of financing for Greek banks. This move was clearly made in bad faith, since there was no bureaucratic or other reason to do this; it was more than three weeks before the deadline for the decision. Predictably, the cutoff spurred a huge outflow of capital from the Greek banking system, destabilizing the economy and sending financial markets plummeting. More intimidation followed, including a slightly veiled threat that emergency liquidity assistance, Greece’s last credit lifeline from the ECB, could also be cut. The European authorities appeared to be hoping that a shock-and-awe assault on the Greek economy would force the new government to immediately capitulate.
  • Remaining issues were to be negotiated by April 20, so that the final installment of IMF money — some 7.2 billion euros — could be released. One might assume that the Feb. 20 agreement would allow these negotiations to take place without European officials causing further immediate and unnecessary damage to the Greek economy. One would be wrong: A gun to the head of Syriza was not enough for these “benefactors.” They wanted fingers in a vise too. And they got it. The ECB refused to renew the Greek banks’ access to its main, cheapest source of credit that they had before the Jan. 25 elections. And it refused to lift the cap on the amount that Greek banks could lend to the Greek government — something that it did not do to the previous government. As a result, a serious cash flow problem has struck both the government and the banks. Because of the ECB’s credit squeeze, the government could soon find itself in a situation that the 2012 government faced when it delayed payments to hospitals and other contractors in order to make debt payments, and it could even face default at the end of April.
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  • It could hardly be more obvious that this is not about money or fiscal sustainability, but about politics. This is a government that European authorities didn’t want, and they wish to show who is boss. And they really don’t want this government to succeed, which would encourage Spanish voters to opt for a democratic alternative — Podemos — later this year.
  • If carried too far, European officials’ actions could inadvertently force Greece out of the euro — a dangerous strategy for all concerned. They should stop undermining the economic recovery that Greece will need if it is to achieve fiscal sustainability. 
Arabica Robusta

Greece: ECB Kicks Syriza in the Face; Syriza Turns the Other Cheek | Mark Wei... - 0 views

  • Clarity is important here because the European authorities, or the troika, as they are commonly called, plunged the eurozone into at least two additional years of unnecessary recession that began in 2011 because they were playing a similar game of chicken.
Arabica Robusta

The Collectivist, debt colonialism and the real Alexis Tsipras | openDemocracy - 0 views

  • The first of many clashes between Alexis Tsipras and the status-quo powers concerns not debt restructuring and structural reforms but EU-Russian relations. A statement published on the January 27, 2015, claimed all twenty-eight leaders of the EU agreed that Russia bears responsibility for the rocket attack on Mariupol. The attack killed thirty people.
  • In this context, Alexis Tsipras’ expression of “discontent” at not having been consulted may have been justified. “The aforementioned statement was released without the prescribed procedure to obtain consent by the member states and particularly without ensuring the consent of Greece” the Greek government noted. “It is underlined that Greece does not consent to this statement”. Whether the oversight was intentional or a mix-up resulting from the transition of power in Greece remains unclear. That the new government of Greece will exert pressure in order to realign EU policies towards Russia should not however be in doubt.
  • What is more, EU pressure contributed to the failure in the privatisation process of one of Greece’s state-owned energy companies to a Russian-backed consortium. Subsequent criticism to the effect that Greece is not privatising assets at sufficient speed have sounded hollow as a result. EU sanctions on Russia are thus directly affecting some of the few dynamic segments of the Greek economy and have contributed, albeit indirectly, to SYRIZA’s victory in these elections.
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  • All things considered, Alexis Tsipras is wrong on Ukraine. The fact that EU policies have had such a destabilising effect on the country, and that even today the EU is not offering anything like adequate aid, are not sufficient to justify Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and its support for separatists in the East.
  • Whatever one’s take on dependency theory, it should be self-evident that no democratic country can support running primary surpluses of up to 5% of GDP over decades, as called for by the Memorandum, when over 25% of its population is unemployed, poverty is endemic and the productive base of the country has been ravaged. Given similarities to economic conditions during the Great Depression, the EU should consider the victory of a democratic party like SYRIZA a relief. Still, it remains a source of surprise that the EU did not move to link debt reduction to GDP growth before April of 2014, in other words before the Euro elections, when such a move might more easily have been coupled with accelerating the pace of the structural reforms that are needed to strengthen Greece’s private and public sectors. 
  • It is already exposing Greece to criticism. But can Greece’s economy – in particular its banking sector – survive such brinkmanship on all fronts for even a short period of time?
Arabica Robusta

A Blow for Peace and Democracy: Why the British Said No to Europe - 0 views

  • The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.
  • A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain’s ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.
  • The most effective propagandists of the “European ideal” have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even “cool”. What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as “neoliberalism”.
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  • The Guardian once described Blair as “mystical” and has been true to his “project” of rapacious war.
  • Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and  political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought “better terms” with a venal status quo in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.
  • On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering “peace and security” if they voted to leave the EU.  The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.
Arabica Robusta

Now can Podemos win in Spain? - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition - 0 views

  • Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators — whom the world press refer to as los indignados — gathered in the square of Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011, protesting against the banks’ stranglehold on the economy and a democracy they felt no longer represented them. They outlawed flags, insignia and speeches on behalf of organisations and parties, and soon had a slogan: “United, the people do not need parties.”
  • Podemos’s creation stemmed from the realisation that “15-M [15 May] was locked in a social movement-based conception of politics,” said sociologist Jorge Lago, a member of Podemos’s citizens’ council, part of its wider leadership structure. “The idea that a progressive build-up of strength among the demonstrators would inevitably produce political results proved to be false.” Associations to fight tenant evictions and resistance networks against health sector cuts were established, but the movement ran out of steam and fell apart.
  • But what should happen when a government that social movements regard as over-timid comes under fire from conservatives? Should they play into their enemy’s hands by joining the criticism, or keep silent, betraying their cause? There is no easy answer to this.
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  • Half of Spain’s unemployed no longer receive benefits, while 33 of the 35 biggest companies avoid tax through subsidiaries in tax havens (6). Half a million children have been plunged into poverty since 2009, but the wealth of Spain’s super-rich has increased by 67% since Rajoy came to power (7). To avoid the wrath of a fractious population, last December’s “citizen security” law outlawed everything that made the 2011 mobilisation possible, including meetings in public places and distributing leaflets.
  • Spain’s situation may be risky. It makes the far right, Iglesias has pointed out, “as happy as a fish in water” (8). Yet the Spanish left has an advantage over its French counterpart: a large fringe element of the nationalist far right is formally integrated into the PP, which makes it difficult for them to push an anti-system platform, unlike France’s Front National, which has only ever run local councils.
  • “To be specific,” Lago said, “we don’t talk about capitalism. We defend the idea of economic democracy.” Nor is the left-right dichotomy discussed: “The divide,” Iglesias has said, “now separates those, like us, who defend democracy ... and those who are on the side of the elites, the banks, the markets. There are people at the bottom and people at the top ... an elite and the majority.”
  • People looked at them like they were from another planet, and my students went home discouraged ... That’s what the enemy is expecting us to do: use words no one understands, remain a minority, fall back on our traditional symbols. And they know that as long as we do that, we pose no threat to them.”
  • Shaped by Gramscian thought, Podemos leaders believe that the political struggle should not be limited to overthrowing existing social and economic structures, but should also be against the hegemony that legitimises the domination of the powerful in the eyes of those they dominate. In this cultural area, the enemy imposes its codes, language and narrative. And one tool stands out for its ability to shape “common sense” — television.
  • “There’s nothing extremist about Podemos’s programme” (10), Iglesias has said: a constituent assembly on coming to power, tax reforms, debt restructuring, opposition to raising the retirement age to 67, the introduction of a 35-hour week (40 at present), a referendum on the monarchy, a kick-start for industry, the recovery of powers ceded to Brussels, self-determination for Spanish regions. Foreseeing an alliance with similar movements in southern Europe (Syriza in Greece, which has come to power in the 25 January election), Podemos’s plans do threaten financial powers, what Iglesias calls “German Europe” and “the caste”.
  • And those powers are already baring their teeth. A piece by journalist Salvador Sostres in El Mundo in December compared Iglesias to the former Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, and claimed he had only one idea: “to make the blood of the poorest flow, to the very last drop.” A PP politician was even more direct:  “Someone should put a bullet in the back of his head.”
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