Dimitris Bounias (http://www.thebellforum.com/authors/dimitris-bounias)
After five years of austerity, Greece may be about to elect Europe’s first left-wing government.


More... (http://www.thenation.com/article/195441/syriza-rising)

Dimitris Bounias (http://www.thebellforum.com/authors/dimitris-bounias)
After five years of austerity, Greece may be about to elect Europe’s first left-wing government.


More... (http://www.thenation.com/article/195441/syriza-rising)

Jesus, they could at least put "left-wing" in quotation marks.


It is from this same melting pot that Syriza has emerged as the frontrunner in the election, building its base among those who have suffered the most from austerity, supporting community projects, and speaking the language of protest and the “movement of the squares.”

Read "Indignados". Declassed yearners for reform - a reform they won't get.


Syriza, or the Coalition of the Radical Left, is the product of a turbulent series of realignments on the Greek left outside the ranks of the KKE, the veteran Moscow-oriented Communist Party.

"Moscow-oriented"? Moscow? This author seems to think it is 1975? I think "veteran Communist Party - that is a REAL communist party" would have sufficed. This back-handed code for "Stalinist" just pisses me off. The Nation is showing it colors (as if we didn't already know them). There is no such thing as "Stalinism", it is insulting to Stalin and communists...


Syriza still has many Marxist voices among its active members... But its internal debate about whether to stay in the eurozone was largely settled by 2012; since then, its rhetoric has been both softened and streamlined. The party that once vowed to tear up the bailout agreement and nationalize the banks now speaks in a more unified and conciliatory voice, affirming its commitment to Europe while promising to open tough new negotiations with the lenders

"Marxist voices"? What, is it a choir? Those "Marxist voices" mean squat in this "Euroleft", quisling party. Syriza is committed to the EU and "tough new negotiations"? Yeah, right.


Tsipras laid out his party’s first priority: to alleviate Greece’s humanitarian crisis. A Syriza government would provide free electricity and food stamps for 300,000 poor families, housing subsidies, extra support for pensioners, and access to healthcare for everyone. It would also cancel an outrageous tax on heating oil...these measures are also seen as the bare minimum needed to halt the poorest Greeks’ slide toward destitution.

Tsipras can promise anything he can form the words for, but who will foot this largess - and under the EU's heel, helping the poor is an unaffordable charity. And since when did the Troika give a good goddamn whether the "poorest Greeks" were destitute or not?


Syriza’s economic policies in fact owe more to Keynes than Marx

Wow. Bingo. I guess those "Marxist voices" are a bare whisper, eh?

The Nation might as well be another Robert Reich publication...

Syriza -- and possibly financial "experts" at large -- are apparently going to lobby for Greece to get debt reduction of 50% a la West Germany after the war. Anything else, they say, would be hypocrisy. Ze Germans (no duh) see it rather differently.

you can see the debate playing out (at least in one guys head) here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/economic-history

(its a few years old but still telling)

It also bears noting that things are now happening in the wake of potentially tectonic changes which may or may not have already begun

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swiss-central-bank-stops-swiss-franc-euro-peg-by-markus-brunnermeier-and-harold-james-2015-01

Syriza -- and possibly financial "experts" at large -- are apparently going to lobby for Greece to get debt reduction of 50% a la West Germany after the war. Anything else, they say, would be hypocrisy. Ze Germans (no duh) see it rather differently.

you can see the debate playing out (at least in one guys head) here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/economic-history

(its a few years old but still telling)

It also bears noting that things are now happening in the wake of potentially tectonic changes which may or may not have already begun

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swiss-central-bank-stops-swiss-franc-euro-peg-by-markus-brunnermeier-and-harold-james-2015-01

I had assumed that German reparations to Greece was a pipe-dream (I still think so). I can't see any room in the Troika's stance for accommodating any debt reduction, much less half. And the EU et al is immune to the pinch of hypocrisy.

That second article is pretty interesting. No honor among those thieves.


After years of wondering whether the exit of a small, fiscally weak country like Greece could undermine the euro, policymakers will have to deal with an even bigger shock stemming from the exit of a small, fiscally strong country that is not even a member of the European Union.

This ending line is confusing to me. I thought that the point of the article was that here is Switzerland, not even a member, that withdraws its peg and wreaks havoc on the EU - think how much more a secession of Greece would cause. But the last sentence reverses this: the exit of Greece would be much less of a shock than the Swiss "unpegging". I guess I will have to re-read it...

I had assumed that German reparations to Greece was a pipe-dream (I still think so). I can't see any room in the Troika's stance for accommodating any debt reduction, much less half. And the EU et al is immune to the pinch of hypocrisy.

I agree but that appears to be the platform "the Radicals" are trying to sell to get elected.


But the last sentence reverses this: the exit of Greece would be much less of a shock than the Swiss "unpegging". I guess I will have to re-read it...

I wouldn't take the article as the definitive source, but its argument is that the SNB had no economic reason to decouple, but was forced to do so (involunarily?) by political pressures. So I think the idea is that the bigger shock is that national politics could throw a monkey wrench in things entirely. Up to this point, we'd mostly been seeing complete servility on that front.

The strengthening of the KKE marks a tendency for forces to rally around it again

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/syntagma-sygkentrosi-25.jpg_1302204135.jpg

◦In the elections on the 25th of January, the KKE received 5.5% of the vote, an increase of 1% (+ 60,000 votes) in comparison to the parliamentary elections of 2012, marking a positive trend οf forces to rally around the KKE again, a trend that had also been witnessed in the EU parliamentary elections, the regional and local elections, in the KKE’s initiatives in the labour movement.

◦The KKE achieved third place in 11 electoral regions: 2nd region of Piraeus, Samos, Lesvos, Lefkada, Zakynthos, Kephalonia, Kerkyra, Larisa, Trikala, Prebeza, Boiotia.

◦The KKE had 15 MPs elected ( it had 12)

◦The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, in his statement saluted the thousands of our country’s workers and young people that responded to the KKE’s appeal and contributed today to its strengthening, confirming the positive trend for the rallying of forces around the party again. In particular, he saluted those who voted for the KKE for the first time, because they appreciated its firmness, consistency and selflessness.

◦The election results reflect the great discontent and anger of the people against ND and PASOK, the parties that plunged the people into poverty and unemployment during the economic crisis. They express to a great extent the false hope that the new government of SYRIZA might follow a political line in favour of the people. The formation of a government of SYRIZA –either on its own or in a coalition government- will follow the beaten track: the EU one way street, the tactics of limited demands, retreat and compromise, the commitments to big capital, monopolies, the EU and NATO.

◦It is negative that a Nazi party maintains a high percentage amongst the electorate.

Below you can find a table with the complete results and the full statement of the GS of the CC of the KKE :


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-strengthening-of-the-KKE-marks-a-tendency-for-forces-to-rally-around-it-again/

STATEMENT OF THE GS OF THE CC OF THE KKE DIMITRIS KOUTSOUMPAS ON THE ELECTION RESULTS OF 25th JANUARY 2015


First of all, we would like to salute the thousands of working people in our country, the young people that responded to the appeal of the KKE and contributed to its strengthening today, confirming the positive tendency of forces to rally again around the KKE, the tendency to regain votes. This tendency appeared last year, in the EU parliamentary elections, the regional and municipal elections and continued in all the various struggles of the people, in the labour, trade union and wider people’s movement.

In particular we would like to salute the people who voted for the KKE for the first time, because they appreciated its firmness, consistency and selflessness.

As a whole, the election results reflect the great discontent and anger of the people against ND and PASOK, the parties that plunged the people into poverty and unemployment during the economic crisis.

Of course they express to a great extent the false hope that the new government of SYRIZA might follow a political line in favour of the people.

Based on the official statements and positions of SYRIZA before and during the election campaign, the KKE has assessed that the new composition of the Parliament and the formation of a government of SYRIZA –either on its own or in a coalition government- will follow the beaten track: the EU one way street, the commitments to big capital, monopolies, the EU and NATO with the negative implications for our people and the country. Once again the people will pay the price for these choices.

We consider particular negative the fact that a Nazi party, a party with specific criminal murderous activity, a party that was formed by the mechanisms of the system, a party that is clearly against the interests of the people, has received again a significant percentage of the electorate’s votes.

As whole, we assess that the line of counterattack and rupture with the capitalist path of development, the EU and against the policies that support this path through assimilation and passivity must be strengthened among the people and the movement.

The KKE will increase its efforts and initiatives regarding the acute problems of the workers and the people, with our proposals for the relief of the unemployed, the families fro the popular strata, the self-employed, the farmers and the students.

It will increase its efforts for the regroupment of the labour and people’s movement, the construction of the people’s alliance in order for the people to realize their hopes and expectations and free themselves for the yoke of the monopolies.

We will fight both inside and outside the parliament, with the strength that the people gave to our party so as to reveal the plans that are being concocted against the people.

We will fight dynamically as the militant workers’-people’s opposition, as the organizer and the driving force of the workers’ struggle and the people’s alliance for the survival of the people and also for the prospect of a radical overthrow.

We wish strength to all of you. We continue our struggle! Thank you.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-strengthening-of-the-KKE-marks-a-tendency-for-forces-to-rally-around-it-again/

Interview with KKE's Kostas Papadakis on Why KKE Does Not Support SYRIZA: "We Are Against the EU, NATO, and Chains of Capitalism"
by Andrés Gil

Greek Communist Party (KKE) MEP Kostas Papadakis firmly says: "SYRIZA has made very clear that it is not going to defy the EU or NATO. We say: What kind of left is this?"


"The EU has no fear of SYRIZA. SYRIZA is not the oligarchy's first choice, but it is the new face of social democracy, useful for the system," says Papadakis, whose party is polling above PASOK in some polls.

Is Greece turning left with the expected victory of SYRIZA?

First, it is necessary to clarify that the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) should emerge stronger after the elections because, we believe, there will continue to be concrete facts against the interests of people. The change of government will not change crucial aspects, such as the fact that the country will still be in the EU, the fact that the stability pact and the memorandum will not disappear, the fact that this agenda of the EU will remain the same. All these reactionary measures will continue to exist.

The second factor is that the debt of the country will still be here. We are fighting to exit the EU and to completely cancel the debt. We want to exit the EU, but on the condition that the means of production are socialized. Now people must defy all the power of the oligarchy. The day after the elections, the oligarchy will still be here.

That is why we ask people to keep this in mind, for, after the elections, people will still be on the opposite side. Since SYRIZA in the opposition obtained 27% of the votes, there has been a decline in social conflict. We say that this applies to Spain, too, where the year of PODEMOS's emergence also saw a fall in mobilizations. People think that voting alone can change the conditions of life, but we say it is important for people to convince themselves that there are neither saviors nor messiahs, that people must save themselves by their own struggles, by their own decisions, and by confronting the EU, NATO, and monopolies.

Are you comparing SYRIZA to PASOK or New Democracy?

SYRIZA has made very clear that it is not going to defy the EU or NATO. What kind of left is this? The term Left has concrete criteria: against the EU and NATO, fighting to exit them, to confront entrepreneurs and the oligarchy. Entrepreneurs have already said that they will welcome "SYRIZA's radicalism." The same contradictions apply to the EU, where the talk is about more expansive or restrictive policies, but this doesn't change the lives of people. We have heard about Draghi's program: it has a condition, for the program to exist -- the memorandum. And SYRIZA says that we will follow the European program, with its rules and standards. New Democracy says that we must stick with the debt; so does SYRIZA, albeit with a haircut. But our people have endured the biggest cuts, accompanied with the harshest measures to pay the debt. And there will be more measures to pay the debt, though that is hidden. SYRIZA's Rena Dourou, the governor of the Attica region, has already done the opposite of what she said.

But SYRIZA really says that it will be changing things.

They say that they will get rid of the memoranda, but they have concrete requirements. Which law against the workers will you change? Which one against the pensioners? All those measures taken by New Democracy will still be there. What does SYRIZA propose to do? They say that they offer the Thessaloniki program, which was originally conceived for the first 100 days and to tackle the social emergency. But now it turns out that the program is for four years. But what the program does is charity meals and electricity for the poorest, plus a minimum wage of €750 per month for those covered by collective agreements. Those who have part-time jobs do not benefit from this. That's the reality. People have lost much of their pensions, and SYRIZA's response is to add €1.20 per day to the lowest. This doesn't change life, and we are telling people that it doesn't. New Democracy cultivates fear; and SYRIZA, illusions. But if we want some relief, we have to fight for it, and this is a red line -- [to recover] the loss since 2008.

So, you won't support Tsipras for prime minister.

For all these reasons, given responsibility to the people, having closely examined what SYRIZA said, we cannot take part in a bourgeois capitalist government, under which this barbarity will continue. A week ago SYRIZA implored us to give it our vote to form a government, but it didn't' do so sincerely because they know our long-standing positions; and we will stand opposite this government because it will be in the hands of the oligarchy while staying in the EU. We cannot stain our hands, we cannot take a leap of faith, while the people are on the other side from it. Moreover, the most rotten elements of PASOK have joined the ranks of SYRIZA, including deputies who have voted for the memoranda and boycotted the working-class and trade union movement.

Are you going to take to the streets from day one?

We have a great capacity for mobilization and major presence in the unions. These ideas put forward by SYRIZA are meant to create an alibi for the day after. The Greeks hold the KKE in high esteem, ours is a serious, militant, and cool-headed party, and what SYRIZA wants is to use us as its alibi, to demobilize people, to get rid of struggle. We understand SYRIZA and from the very first moment we will be in the streets, and they hold that against us. But we say: If there really were a government of the Lefts, and, we would hope, if it were a good government for the people, the KKE would not be fighting against it. They are afraid that having the KKE facing their government may unmask the fact that they are going to be responsible for what's happening.

How can you be so sure?

We have experience in the movement of the European communist parties, in Italy, in France, that voted for agreements on wages, pensions, and privatizations in the morning and in the afternoon organized mobilizations against the same agreements they had voted for in the morning. We have come to conclusions based on these negative experiences, and we want a government against the EU and the oligarchy, and we won't be jumping into the void. We will not participate in discussions about what people are going to lose by government decisions -- people need us the day after the elections. SYRIZA and its government are committed to businesspeople in Texas, the Bilderberg Club, the City of London. . . They are already committed to big capital.

That idea about SYRIZA is not very widely shared,

Outside Greece, no. But here we know that they are not a revolutionary party -- quite the opposite. People who vote for SYRIZA do so with cold hearts, without having confidence in them. People are desperate and do not want to continue with New Democracy, but the idea that there can't be a worse government has already been used regarding previous governments. It's clear that what we are saying will happen. The EU has no fear of SYRIZA. SYRIZA is not the oligarchy's first choice, but it is the new face of social democracy, useful for the system, which SYRIZA won't counteract for the sake of the working class. We must organize the struggle to challenge them.

Do you really consider yourselves to be a revolutionary party?

There are concrete facts that demonstrate it: we are fighting against the EU and NATO, we want to break the chains of capitalism, socialize the means of production, centralize all wealth to distribute it, as well as the labor force, so that there won't be problems of unemployment. Our country has wealth and a great strategic location to the north of the Mediterranean. We have technology, science, progress in all the means of production, people should be able to enjoy this progress, but there exists this contradiction. There has not been another period of history that saw people even dying of cold when there were power plants all over the place.

Doesn't the collapse of the USSR generate doubts in your mind?

We have studied it a lot. And we have arrived at the conclusion that there were great benefits in the socialization of the means of production. The key lies in the fact that they sought to solve the emerging problems by capitalist, not socialist, responses. With the reforms in the 60s the market entered and so did antagonism, creating concrete problems that grew over the years and generated negative consequences in the direction of the party.

The main point is that in a socialist country problems cannot be solved by capitalist measures -- we can solve them only by socialist ones. We have learned from these experiences, and it is important to have your own program, and the Communist Party of Greece organizes the struggle not only around daily problems but also with its perspective. People must know which path is the one you propose and do not trust the parties that are not clear. We are very clear. And SYRIZA, New Democracy, and PASOK follow the path of capitalism. We are the only ones who have a completely different political proposal -- a radical path.

We are known for having predicted what was going to happen. In 2010 we said a storm was coming. And we were right. People know that the party reads the reality well and that it is a militant party that tells the truth despite consequences. Notwithstanding the easy paths offered by some, people in Greece are living a very grave crisis with grave consequences and are now aware that life cannot be easily changed by just voting. We do not say that SYRIZA is the same as New Democracy, they are different parties, but when you have a concrete strategy that has the same priority of serving for the benefits of capital and the EU, objectively it takes you to the same place: capitalism, capitalist production, and the EU.

Do SYRIZA and New Democracy have so much in common?

Theirs are different versions of capitalism, but the differences are not crucial when it comes to the essence of what type of policies they will promote. In the 80s PASOK used to talk about exiting the EEC (European Economic Community) and NATO, and they used to also talk about socializing the means of production. . . But, now, SYRIZA doesn't even say that.

In Spain there is a party with which we share the same strategy, the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE), and it is a party fighting to keep the light of the only path that can show people an exit. The rest -- both PODEMOS and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), which has changed since accepting eurocommunism and becoming pro-European Union -- want to prettify the EU, to be able to have a better EU. And this is dangerous for people, for they have support -- illusions captivate with the idea that one way or another it is possible to negotiate with Merkel or the IMF to get the enemy to adopt pro-people positions. This really is a utopia.

We are clear: this high road is difficult, but we have to fight to exit the EU. To cultivate the illusion that a hawk can become a dove -- that's wishful thinking. That is why we say that PODEMOS in our opinion is doing the same thing as SYRIZA, beginning with certain slogans, and, over time, will become the same thing. Iglesias has already said recently that they have listened to financial allies and that there are unrealistic positions. We are talking about the new version of social democracy adapted to the terms of the crisis. This is what capital needs. Since people no longer trust PASOK or PSOE, despite their new leaders, new cards are dealt in the game, and people must be strict when scrutinizing their positions while fighting their own struggle.

Do you think that there can be rifts in the SYRIZA coalition?

In the history of social democracy there has always been a left-wing current that said it would strive to shift the party. But there has been no proof that it could be converted into a revolutionary one. A left-wing current may have a blog, protest from time to time, but then quit doing it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kostas Papadakis is a member of the central committee and the international relations department of the Communist Party of Greece and Member of the European Parliament. Andrés Gil is the editor-in-chief of eldiario.es. The original interview "Entrevista del KKE: 'No apoyaremos a Syriza; estamos contra la UE, la OTAN y las cadenas del capitalismo'" was published by eldiario.es on 24 January 2015. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi. See, also, Sebastian Budgen and Stathis Kouvelakis, "Greece: Phase One" (Jacobin, 22 January 2015); and Stathis Kouvelakis, "After Syriza's victory" (Verso, 26 January 2015).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/papadakis260115.html

EU wins Greek backing to extend Russia sanctions, delays decision on new steps
Thu Jan 29, 2015 4:32pm EST

By Robin Emmott and Pavel Polityuk

BRUSSELS/KIEV (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers extended existing sanctions against Russia on Thursday, holding off on tighter economic measures for now but winning the support of the new left-leaning government of Greece, whose position had been in doubt.

The ministers agreed to extend until September travel bans and asset freezes imposed last year that had been due to expire. They also agreed to list the names of additional people who could be targeted with sanctions when they meet again on Feb. 9.

They dropped language, however, about drawing up "further restrictive measures" that had appeared in a pre-meeting draft. The bloc's foreign policy chief said a decision on such measures would be left to EU leaders meeting next month.

Germany said that decision would depend on the situation on the ground, with any major new rebel advance demanding tougher sanctions.

Thursday's emergency meeting had been called after rebels launched an advance last week, disavowing a five-month-old ceasefire. On Saturday, suspected rebel forces shelled the major port city of Mariupol, killing 30 people. Since then, there has been intense fighting along the frontline, although the rebels appear to have held back from an all-out assault on Mariupol.

Washington, which has coordinated sanctions moves with Brussels in the past year, said it was not planning an immediate new announcement itself.

“Certainly, we welcome it; it's a positive step,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a regular news briefing.

“This is just a further sign that the actions of the last several days and weeks are absolutely unacceptable and that there will be new consequences put in place," she said.

Psaki noted that the EU and the U.S. sanctions lists had not targeted exactly the same people, firms, or sectors, and added: "We'll continue to consider others that we could add, but … I don't think there's anything to expect today.”

The run-up to the Brussels talks was dominated by Greece, whose new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, took power on Monday and complained that his government had not been consulted before tighter sanctions were threatened.

But at the meeting, colleagues said new foreign minister Nikos Kotzias had swiftly dispelled suggestions that Greece would automatically torpedo any sanctions effort.

According to Italy's foreign minister, Kotzias announced to the meeting: "I am not a Russian puppet."

He signed up to a sharply worded statement that declared Moscow responsible for the violence in eastern Ukraine and demanded it halt its backing for the separatists.

CALLS FOR DELAY

While the Greeks did call for the decision on tighter sanctions to be delayed, they were not alone: other countries such as Italy and Austria also favored a delay, diplomats said, while Britain and the Baltic states wanted a clearer commitment to imposing new sanctions quickly.

"We are not against every sanction," Kotzias said later. "We are in the mainstream, we are not the bad boys."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed frustration with the ambiguity of the Greek position before the talks: "It is no secret that the new stance of the Greek government has not made today's debate any easier," he said. After he met Kotzias in private, German officials said he was less concerned.

Britain said it had scrambled fighters after Russia flew long-range bombers near its air space, disrupting civilian aviation. It summoned the Russian ambassador for an explanation.

The incident extended a pattern that began late last year of Moscow flying warplanes close to the territory of NATO states.

A British government source said this was "a significant escalation" since Russian aircraft had previously largely stayed much further north, off Scotland.

"It was very dangerous. Civil aircraft flying to the UK had to be rerouted," the source said. "The Russians were flying with their transponders turned off so could only be seen on military radar. They haven't flown this far south before."

On the ground in eastern Ukraine, there was fighting around Debaltseve, a town of about 26,000 people on a road and rail route linking the two main rebel strongholds. It is held by government troops but surrounded on three sides by rebels. Power and water were cut off and civilians were trapped in cellars.

LIVING IN CELLARS

"People are living full-time in shelters without fresh air," said Natalia Voronkova, a volunteer helping residents escape. "Children are getting sick and there is a great need for medicine."

The rebels say they had no choice but to repudiate the ceasefire and advance, effectively restarting a war that has killed 5,000 people, because government artillery in range of their cities had been shelling civilians.

Kiev says the advance is an attempt, backed by as many as 9,000 Russian soldiers on the ground, to capture more territory. Its biggest fear now is an all-out assault on Mariupol, a government-held port of 500,000 people.

Thursday's meeting was the first big test this year of the hard-won unanimity that European officials, led by Germany, had achieved to punish their biggest energy supplier over its actions in Ukraine, which aspires to join the EU.

EU officials have told Reuters new measures could make it harder for Russian companies to refinance themselves and possibly affect Russian sovereign bonds.

The talks were also Europe's first major contact with Greece's new government, elected on a vow to repudiate the austerity economics championed by Berlin and imposed by Brussels as a condition of a bailout.

Tsipras has not made his position on Ukraine clear in public. His Syriza party has its roots in leftist movements, some of which were sympathetic to Moscow during the Cold War, and Russia's ambassador was the first foreign official Tsipras met after taking office on Monday.

But Greece has also long treasured its membership of the Western NATO alliance. It shares Orthodox Christianity with both Russia and Ukraine, and many Greeks sympathize with both countries.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0L22B720150129?irpc=93

anax
‏@anaxarchos
.@cordeliers @blindpigII @Hatuxka Well, that didn't take long...

(from twitter)

As I understand it, Foreign Minister Kotzias is part of the right sector in coalition with Syriza and he got his position as a way to grease the wheels for the alliance. On twitter Anax talked about "cunning plans". Sometimes it doesn't pay to attribute things to cunning that can be explained by deception.

As I understand it, Foreign Minister Kotzias is part of the right sector in coalition with Syriza and he got his position as a way to grease the wheels for the alliance. On twitter Anax talked about "cunning plans". Sometimes it doesn't pay to attribute things to cunning that can be explained by deception.

And the KKE has been shouting that the deception was coming for a long while. But will their having been right translate into increased support?

And the KKE has been shouting that the deception was coming for a long while. But will their having been right translate into increased support?

The people that supposedly have their thumb on Greek society clearly don't think so, framing the turn to the left as an aberration borne of desperation. But they only want to talk about "voters", "constituencies", "blocs", "traditions", "mindsets" etc. All of which leaves me unconvinced they recognize the social forces at work -- let alone understand them.

All of which leaves me unconvinced they recognize the social forces at work -- let alone understand them.

In all of this "austerity" violence the EU, IMF, US, etc have all seemed clueless as to what they are playing with. I can't decide whether they think they have such an edge over the working masses that there is literally no worries, or whether they just can't grasp the underlings conditions and consciousness.

In all of this "austerity" violence the EU, IMF, US, etc have all seemed clueless as to what they are playing with. I can't decide whether they think they have such an edge over the working masses that there is literally no worries, or whether they just can't grasp the underlings conditions and consciousness.

I think they are protecting/advancing their interests. To them everything else is tertiary.

The rightwing “Independent Greeks” (ANEL) – partners in government with the “radical left” (SYRIZA)



D. Papadimoulis, a leading SYRIZA official, MEP and Vice-president of the EU parliament stated the following in 2012. “There is no possibility of forming a coalition government with Panos Kammenos (note: the head of ANEL). It belongs to the righwing space. The history and positions of Panos Kammenos put him to the right of ND. A leftwing-antimemorandum government that is dependent of Panos kameenos’ vote can not last”.



Some of us remembered these statements when we heard that SYRIZA and the nationalists of ANEL arrived at an agreement and formed a government. The head of ANEL, Panos Kammenos was for many years an official of ND and the Minister of Shipping in ND governments. He contributed, from this very responsible position, to supporting the enormous profitability of the Greek ship-owners. P. Kammenos has been appointed the Minister of Defense in the new government…



Many were surprised. Others “froze”. In particular, many workers abroad, who had accepted the propaganda “storm” of the international mass media about “leftwing SYRIZA” and “danger for the EU”, were justifiably amazed. Especially those, who due to the distorting lens of the mass media, celebrated the formation of the government of the “radical left” in which space was found in the end for the nationalists of ANEL. It has been demonstrated once again that the geographical term “leftwing” can not correctly define in our period the political forces, their goals and alliances. If the workers of Europe, who were called on by the Party of the European Left (PEL) to support SYRIZA, put on their social-class “glasses”, they would then see that “leftwing” SYRIZA is a party in favour of capital, the EU and NATO. So there was no cause for celebration.



But returning to the formation of this specific government, we should note that inside Greece this has not come a particular surprise. In any case, the cooperation between SYRIZA and the “Independent Greeks” is not new. It had been inaugurated in March 2013, when the presidents of the two parties, with the developments in Cyprus as the pretext, held a meeting followed by joint statements, speaking about forming a common “front”.



We should bear in mind that the KKE from the very first moment stressed that there is a political basis for the formation of a government based on SYRIZA, together with ANEL or with other parties. This is what is now being expressed at the level of government. The KKE made it clear that SYRIZA is the new social-democratic party, has a pro-monopoly people line and is in favour of the EU and NATO. A modern social- democratic party in the place of PASOK, a party of bourgeois management that thrusts the burden of paying off the debt onto the people and talks about balanced budgets, supporting capital with funds and providing crumbs to the people. For this reason and on the basis of the above, it does not hesitate to cooperate with nationalists in order to form a bourgeois government.





This is the “adhesive” that welds SYRIZA to a party with nationalist positions, such as ANEL. ANEL is a party that even cooperated with the fascist “Golden Dawn” at a parliamentary level. A characteristic example is that fact that during the vote regarding the waiver of the Golden Dawn MPs’ immunity so that they could be tried for the murders of and attacks against workers and immigrants, they voted …”present”. Of course, the governmental positions are a reward for their stance…



ANEl also has longstanding reactionary positions on immigration and in favour of “hunting illegal immigrants” in this framework, a similar position to Golden Dawn’s. Certain ridiculous proposals that have been promoted by ANEL should not be overlooked:” The revival of the ancient Olympic Games in a place next to Olympia with athletes who are of Greek origin. The events will be conducted in the manner of the ancients and the athletes will also compete in the manner of the ancients.”…





The positions and strategy of ANEL, just as those of SYRIZA, do not dispute the monopolies but on the contrary aim to save them. ANEL decorates this political line with nationalist sloganeering and proclamations about “defending Hellenism” which “is threatened by Merkel” and attempts to conceal and prettify the role of the EU.



This underlying nationalism is the other side of the coin of capital’s cosmopolitanism, which SYRIZA regularly engages in.



Obviously what is being attacked is not of course “Hellenism”. Instead it is the working class and poor popular strata that are being attacked mercilessly and this will continue, regardless of the formula used to manage the capitalist crisis, irrespective of who the managers of bourgeois power are, and will continue even when the recovery that is desired by the bourgeois comes.



Another characteristic example of ANEL’s governmental program is the reference to the creation of an “employment benefit” that will allow the employer “to pay the worker only the section of the net monthly wage not covered by the employment benefit”. Another supporter for the subsidizing of employers. SYRIZA has similar proposals regarding the implementation of the EU’s flexible labour programs that support capital and recycle unemployment.



In addition, ANEL argues in its economic program for the “decriminalization of entrepreneurship”. Of course this position of ANEL is very suited to SYRIZA’s statements about healthy entrepreneurship and the praise heaped on the new government by SEV (the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises). We can see how much the Greek industrialists are trembling due to this government from their recent statement: “The Federation, as the basic representative of the organized Greek businesses, will be at the side of the government and will provide the Prime minister with its positions on industrial policy and its plan for the growth of the Greek economy, as well as the network of relations with European and international business community.”



As regards education, ANEL is a supporter of private universities and wants to legalize their creation. It talks of “The full legal and real abolition of asylum in educational institutions and universities and occupations will be strictly punished in line with the criminal code”, and “Model high schools that will collaborate with businesses”. Of course the fact that SYRIZA has made it clear that both healthcare and education will continue to be open to business activity confirms the cohesion of this government.



We think that other examples are not necessary…



As the CC of the KKE stresses in its statement on the electiοn results: “The change in government and specifically the new SYRIZA government does not constitute a political change in favour of the people. The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government will continue the anti-people commitments of the country to the EU and creditors and of course this will provide breathing space for the bourgeois political system that seeks to assimilate the people more deeply into the system. The bourgeois political system will attempt to achieve this via its recomposition and at a crucial moment for the people and its movement. SYRIZA has already admitted that the next day there will be a program that will be formed in agreement with the creditors. This program, even if it is not called a memorandum or does not have the formal appearance of today’s memorandum, will contain anti-people conditions. (…)

The KKE, consistent with what it said before the elections, is not going to support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the rallying of forces, which it carried out in this phase, to do what it promised the people to do. So that there is a strong workers’-people’s opposition in favour of the people in parliament as well, with its proposals, but above all in the movement in order to strengthen the people’s alliance today and for the future. In order to strengthen the struggles against the EU, the permanent memoranda, the monopolies, capital and its power. So that the workers recover their major losses from the crisis period. So that the monopoly groups and capital, not the salaried workers and unemployed again, pay for whatever crumbs are given to the extremely poor.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-rightwing-Independent-Greeks-ANEL-partners-in-government-with-the-radical-left-SYRIZA-00001/

If the workers of Europe, who were called on by the Party of the European Left (PEL) to support SYRIZA, put on their social-class “glasses”, they would then see that “leftwing” SYRIZA is a party in favour of capital, the EU and NATO. So there was no cause for celebration.

I think we should always refer to the present Greek government as the SYRIZA-ANEL government. Never hide the fascist element. Especially while tweeting.

SYRIZA "dissidence"

http://mao.gr/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/lafazanis.jpg

Much has been the hype, internationally and (far more grotesquely) nationally about supposed "dissidence" within SYRIZA regarding the Eurogroup agreement. First of all, it would be good to establish once and for all what the balance of formally expressed forces is within the party: in the elections held in 2013 for the constitution of SYRIZA's Central Commitee, the forces involved were as follows:

1. The Unity Ballot (that is to say, the "SYRIZA establishment"), 67.61%, 135 members of the CC

2. The "Left Platform" (the alleged "SYRIZA Left Wing", led by Panagiotis Lafazanis -- pictured above winking at us while voting in the aforementioned party elections; this is also the formation of the Jacobin's exceedingly verbose Stathis Kouvelakis) 30.15%, 60 members of the CC

3. The "Non-Allied", 1.03%, 2 members of the CC

4. The Communist Tendency (of which a gigantic amount of hype globally), 0. 74%, 2 members of the CC

5. The "Members' Intervention", 0.27%, 1 member of the CC

6. The "Unity Intervention", 0.21%, 0 members of the CC.


Hence, five groups are represented within the SYRIZA CC, of which three are totally insignificant, amounting to a mere 5 members out of the 200, or 2.5%.

Which is to say, if one is to spare oneself the futile labor of analytically disputing the bizarre and hilarious stories of "dissidence" that have circulated in the global Press: if there is any "dissidence" worth mentioning in SYRIZA, it must be that of the "Left Platform". But the "Left Platform" has never, ever carried a victorious motion within SYRIZA. In the few instances in which it introduced motions alternative to those of the Unity Ballot, it was predictably and summarily defeated and then handled the defeat by enthusiastically hailing the "democracy" and polyphony of the party, ie, by flooding the Press with more SYRIZA cheerleading and self-congratulation.

Which is exactly what the Left Platform's leading figure, the aforementioned Panagiotis Lafazanis, does in his latest interview (28 February 2015), published in the Left Platform's hilariously baptized "Iskra" website. I proceed to translate three questions and answers from the always entertaining SYRIZA MP:
1. You have expressed objections and reservations regarding the four month extension of the loan agreement. Do you think that it doesn't really abolish the Memorandum and that it presents a restriction for the materialization of your electoral promises?
I don't want to make any public reference to my particular personal views on the four month agreement, which I have had the opportunity and the possibility of voicing in government and party organs. What I do want to emphasize is that SYRIZA is a democratic party. We were a democratic party when we had 4%, we remained a democratic party when we were the major opposition party and we will remain a democratic party as a government partner. We always express our views freely in our collective processes. And that is not a weakness, as our opponents allege, but a major advantage and source of strength for the country. The silence of the lambs is not fit for SYRIZA [all this while remaining magnificently silent on what his position actually is...]
2. Must the Eurogroup agreement be ratified by Parliament [as KKE has officially asked]? Given the colorful reactions of government MPs, do you expect differentiations to arise during its voting?
I don't think it is either necessary or compulsory for the agreement with our creditors to receive Parliament approval. The character of the agreement and its content are not of the type that can be encased in the form of law.

3. Is it in the government's interest to have the agreement for extending the loan contract voted on in Parliament, or should that be avoided? Will you vote for the agreement given your expressed objections?

As I already said, i don't consider it either necessary or compulsory for any agreement with creditors to receive Parliament ratification.
In June 2011, of course, when SYRIZA was still in the opposition, Mr. Lafazanis had passionately indicted the deficit of democracy in the procedure used by the then government through a formal Parliamentary question, from which I quote:
It has now been more than a year since the government signed (on May 8, 2010) a Loan Agreement for 80 billion euro with eurozone states as creditors [...] Despite this long period, the government has not yet brought for ratification to the Parliament this crucial loan agreement, despite the fact that the legislation for its ratification is ready and has been published as pending on the relevant Parliament Board. [...] This anticonstitutional and dictatorial stance of the government takes up even more antidemocratic dimensions given the fact that in this loan agreement there are a series of neocolonial commitments against the country, among which is the renunciation, on Greece's part, of any protection as regards its national assets. Given this, the Minister is asked:
1. How is it possible for the government to commit our nation to an agreement based on English law and containing a series of neocolonial terms and the renunciation of national asset protection without the Parliament's agreement? [...]
I think this should suffice.

Any questions?

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/02/syriza-dissidence.html?spref=tw

Syriza: saving capitalism

The Greek elections «earthquake»

The election of Syriza was, according to the European media, an earthquake for Greece and even for Europe. Syriza was systematically coined by the Portuguese (and others) newspapers as being from "extreme left-wing". Thus, not only the specter of "left-wing" emerged in the horizon; it was furthermore an "extreme" specter. Now, at last, troika and "austerity" would be swept away to the dust bin. Now, at last, Syriza would show how to pull out a country from the sucking troika snouts.

Tremendous delusion. With many falling for it. Except the European stock-markets which didn't bother at all with the Greek plans to "renegotiate the debt" of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (YV), and of his plan to swap debt by two types of bonds ([1]): one, to be paid when the Greek economy would grow; the other, to be paid perpetually in modest shares.

The stock markets – therefore, the big capital – didn't bother for two good reasons: because Syriza neither nationalize the banks nor put forward that intent in its program; because they knew that under the "extreme left-wing" cloak Syriza was just a new reincarnation of social-democracy.



Total defeat at the first clash



In its first clash with the Eurogroup (EG) Syriza has showed its fiber. Pull back and defeat on the whole frontline ([2-4]). The corrupt Greek oligarchy (there as here attached to the Empire) has been sucking bailouts and at the same time keeping the investment to a minimum and decapitalizing the banks. Twenty billion euros have flown out of the Greek banks to Switzerland and other places, since December 2014. With empty State vaults, threatened payments to civil servants, and without any control on the banks, Syriza was forced to beg for a new loan. In its first meeting with the EG last Friday, February 20, YV asked, for that purpose, an extension of a previous bailout for a further six months time. In exchange, Athens proposed the following compromise: to maintain a positive budgetary balance, although below the target set by the troika; not undertaking measures that would impair the attainment of EG fiscal goals (e.g., suspension of privatizations); to apply for a "renegotiation of the debt" having in view the economic growth; to abandon the proposal of a debt write-off, and instead apply to a widening of the maturity time span and the lowering of the interest rate.

Briefly, Syriza put forward a proposal that stepped back on all Syriza promises, namely on the suspension of privatizations and the demand for a partial debt write-off. A debt that prominent economists of various political persuasions (including the Keynesian and Nobel prize Paul Krugman) have already told to be impossible to pay. An observation easy to arrive at; surely not demanding a Nobel prize.

In order not to alarm its voters, Syriza stated in February, 20, that Greece "had left behind the austerity, the memorandum and the troika" ([3]).

Well, notwithstanding the pull back, Germany – The Empire pivot in Europe, the country that has most profited with the EU and the Eurozone ([5]) – did not accept YV's plan. Neither Germany nor… its neoliberal lackeys with special mention going to the Portuguese and Spanish Finance Ministers. The EG only granted a further four months of bailout, with YV yielding to all troika demands (under the euphemism of "to honor the financial commitments with its creditors") including the "firm compromise with the process of structural reforms"; that is, to go on dismantling workers' rights and social benefits. After all, Syriza had not left behind the austerity, the memorandum and the troika. The defeat of Syriza was as monumental as to trigger the sarcastic comment of W. Schäuble (German Finance Minister) that now one would see as how Syriza would explain to the Greek people what had happened. The Greek government caring not lose the support of its voters came out with a statement on February, 23, that it agreed with 70% (?) of the bailout measures and that it would not change labor and defaulting debt laws. It also announced such measures as capitalist governments use to announce when they want to show some work: to improve tax collecting and fight corruption. Unimportant details that do not hide the essential: the defeat imposed by the big capital, personified by Germany. Germany that also told Syriza that it refused to discuss the matter of war reparations related to the Nazi occupation and paying back Greek loans to Germany contracted after the Second World War.

The delusion with Syriza (for those who entertained illusions) is complete. A Greek antifascist hero, the 92-year old Manolis Glezos, announced yesterday that he severed ties with Syriza asking for forgiveness to the Greek people "for participating in the illusion" that propelled Syriza to the power, at the same time appealing to action "before it is too late".



The reformist dead-end



Varoufakis is the exemplary face of a today's specific "left-wing" current that claims to be Marxist when it is nothing else than a defender of a sanitized non-revolutionary Marx. A positivist current ("don't bother with theory, only subjectively perceived observations are important), social-democrat, supportive of capitalism. Hence, a non-left current by definition.

This current is called Syriza in Greece. It is called Podemos in Spain. And in Portugal is called Tempo de Avançar. The theoretical poverty is reflected by the eclecticism of all these organizations: patchwork quilts of various sources. Syriza, for instance, is an alliance of social-democrats, democratic socialists, eco-socialists, left-wing patriots, feminists, left-wing greens, Maoists, Trotskyites, Eurocommunists and Eurosceptics. The Tempo de Avançar is a coalition of Free, Communist Renewal, Manifest 3D, Forum Manifest, Citizen and Intervention Movement, small parties where the same "ideas" swarm freely.

All these currents are spreaders of reformist delusions. What these delusions are and why they cannot work have been already discussed by us in the article "A ilusão de uma saída reformista da crise". What is happening with Syriza is after all a confirmation of what we said in that article.

Varoufakis discourse is worth analyzing. What YV has to say is also what our home-made reformists have to say, including the present leadership of the PCP. Thus, what YV has to say has clear repercussions on the analysis that the Portuguese left must carry through.

Varoufakis made a presentation of his ideas at the 6th Subversive Festival of Zagreb in 2013. The Subversive Festival has not that much of subversive ness. This year's edition counts among its participants Slavoj Žižek (Eurocommunist with social-democratic positions), Alexis Tsipras (Eurocommunist), Oliver Stone (Buddhist, a voter on Obama but critical of US foreign policy) and David Harvey (critic of neo-liberalism and divulger of Capital). A Festival of the Left… of the low kind. Of that kind that doesn't bother capitalism — quite the opposite. It is of service to deviate possible adherents of the Left that truly bothers.

The written version of YV presentation at Zagreb is entitled "Confessions of an erratic Marxist in the midst of a repugnant European crisis". Thus, YV is not a Marxist; he is an erratic Marxist, i. e., from time to time. YV raises the question of whether the Left must use the crisis to dismantle an EU based on neo-liberal policies, or instead accept that it is not ready for a radical change and struggle to stabilize the European capitalism. He answers by saying that though it is repugnant to "radicals" (vague designation suiting everything; even Hitler was a radical), the "historical duty" of the Left at the present particular juncture is to stabilize capitalism, "to save European capitalism from itself and from the inane handlers of the Eurozone’s inevitable crisis". See? Capitalists do not know how to be capitalists. They have to be saved from themselves, from their incompetence as capitalists. For that purpose, there is the "Left", which by definition is anticapitalist but whose "historical duty" at this particular juncture is to save them! The "Left" that as you all know is competently capitalist.

YV does quote Marx in his line of argument, admitting that some things that Marx said are correct. Unfortunately, for YV, the theory underlying Marx's analyses is too much deterministic. Keynes' "animal spirits" and that sort of things is more to the liking of YV. On YV idiosyncratic reading of Marx we recommend Yanis Varoufakis: more erratic than Marxist.

But if YV doesn't like Marx's theory, let us at least take a look of what sort his practice is. As soon he became Minister of Finance YV stated that Greece would not suffer a "financial accident" nor would be forced to leave the Eurozone (though, according to YV, it shouldn't have entered either). He also said that Greece wouldn't back from paying the debt to IMF and to private investors. And, furthermore, that Greek economy would be able to grow at a sufficiently high rate to escape from the debt burden. A growth rate to be handled at pan-European level, on the premise that a program for the reactivation of the whole European economy should be launched under German hegemony, such as Roosevelt's New Deal or the Marshall Plan of the fifties! What a dreamer, this reformist!

In what concerns the Greek banks, YV didn't show much preoccupation, though billions of euros have left the country and continue to flow away. YV also said that the new government would not change the running privatization process and that Greece should be kept as an attractive destination for direct foreign investment. Let us now follow the analysis of [6]:

"What sort of program is this one? Truly, it is difficult to say. In what concerns the debt, it reflects no doubt the inescapable reality that the Greek debt cannot be paid […] Everything else looks more as a collection of sentences for the gallery of populism, without much coherence, to put it leniently. What growth is there to be built at a pan-European level? What is that thing of launching an investment program for the whole Europe? Is the Greek government going to convince Merkel, Hollande and Rajoy, or is it going to wait that Podemos wins the elections in order to have an ally? YV says that private investments in Greece will be reactivated as soon as the debt burden is relieved. Really? First, the relief has to be seen, but supposing it does occur, which magic wand will reactivate the investments? Will that take place because Greek salaries will become "attractive" (i. e., the lower the better) for the newly-called investors, in fact the capitalists of other times? Is Syriza going to intent an advance on that direction? Will the investments flow to Greece because the new government will gift them with assurances and guaranties that capital will be respected and will not suffer any pinch on taxes, nationalizations and regulations? But those that own Greek debt aren't they precisely those capitalists? Wouldn't it sound weird to their ears any "discharge", any debt relief, amounting to no other thing than the partial or total loss of their capital?"

On YV's disdain for theory, says the author of [6] (our emphases): "YV told in Zagreb that in none of his political or economic interventions of recent years was he guided by economic models, which to his looking are absolutely irrelevant to understand the real capitalism that exists today. This assertion begs a remark, because if one does not have a model, one is denied the possibility of an idea on how phenomena unfold, in order to act upon. Is it possible to sail from Barcelona to London with no map showing the possible itineraries? Is it possible to understand an electronic circuit with diodes, capacitors and transistors without having in the mind models on how such things work?"

As a matter of fact, it is not possible to have a consistently correct practice without a correct theory. True, a correct theory is not sufficient to have a correct practice. (We may know a lot about diodes, capacitors and transistors and here and there fail on interpreting how an electronic circuit works.) But a correct theory is nevertheless a necessary condition.

The author of [6] concludes as follows: ""The bearded one" as Varoufakis sometimes calls Marx passed is whole life investigating plans and theoretical outlines […] to form with them a general model of the capitalist economy. The general model is surely incomplete, the outlines didn't allow us to predict, e.g., that the US would become in the second half of the 20th century the main country of the world capitalist system, that anticapitalist revolutions would take place in Russia and China (and would fail), and that computers and Internet would completely change the appearance of the world. However, Marx's theoretical outlines, abstract in extreme as they are, allow us to understand why capitalism is a continuous source of social inequality, why it is doomed to crises one time and another, and why the attempts to "save it" or adjust it, be they good or bad intended, can only lead to failure or to convert their protagonists in members of the high-level managers group often named in today's Spain as the "casta". Eliminating capitalism is certainly difficult and many will agree with Varoufakis that "the Left" is not prepared for it. But stating that the real issue today is precisely saving capitalism isn't that denying everything of importance lying behind the cloudy idea of "the Left"? […]"

As to us, we have since the beginning of this blog defended that Portugal has to be saved from the uncivilization of capitalism. And we have attempted to provide sound justifications to the needed measures of a left alternative (see our previous articles). One of them being the nationalization of the banks, not contemplated by Syriza. This and other anticapitalist measures implying exiting the euro and, possibly, the EU, will impose by themselves when the people understand and rise in the struggle for a left solution. A solution on the way to socialism. Quite naturally, with an organization up to the task. Reformist "shortcuts" will only postpone further away that understanding and commitment to the struggle.

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/syriza/

SYRIZA and Golden Dawn: A Parliamentary Chronicle of what the "Global Left" doesn't want you to know

http://www.spd-net-sh.de/dith/jusos/images/user_pages/W_hlt_Sozialdemokraten.jpg

On March 4, 2015, prominent US intellectual Noam Chomsky was reported to have stated in an interview with Democracy Now that the reaction of European elites to SYRIZA, i.e, the pre-emption of its salutary social-democratic function as a means of saving capitalism from itself, "could lead to a right-wing response [...] The alternative to SYRIZA might be Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party."

It wasn't in any way an original formulation of the "Greek dilemma" in terms of a choice between the "carrot" and the "stick", between EU fiscal support for the Social Democratic desire to use a possible slackening of finance capital's stranglehold on the masses in order to curtail working-class militancy and the harsher, far less "attractive" alternative of holding the working class in its place through formal class dictatorship -- fascism. SYRIZA MP, Finance Minister and Anglo media darling Yanis Varoufakis had already put things in the same way in his Press conference with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble a month before, on February 5:

As finance minister in a government facing from day one emergency circumstances caused by a savage debt deflationary crisis, I feel that the German nation is the one nation in Europe that can understand us better than anyone else.

No-one understands better than the people of this land how a severely depressed economy, combined with a ritual national humiliation and unending hopelessness can hatch the serpent’s egg within its society.

When I return home tonight, I will find myself in a parliament in which the third-largest party is not a neo-Nazi party, it is a Nazi party.
But this pretty straightforward form of "blackmail" to the EU oligarchs --"either us or Golden Dawn"-- was not original either; Vafoufakis was merely echoing SYRIZA's leader, Alexis Tsipras, who had already put things this way back in the June 2012 elections, in an interview with Reuters:
Tsipras said Syriza's rapid rise showed how Greeks were channeling their rage at the austerity measures - which have sent the economy into a deep recession and pushed unemployment close to 23 percent - into an alternative political movement.

Given public anger at Greece's long-established parties, he added, "if Syriza didn't exist today the alternative would be extremes, chaos and Golden Dawn," a neo-Nazi party.
The rhetorical effectivity of the mantra depends on a number of structural preconditions, of which one is tantamount: the disappearance of the alternative represented by the Communist Party of Greece from international awareness, in classic Social Democratic fashion: Social Democracy comes to the rescue of a troubled capitalism by supposedly preventing the rise of both fascism and communism, as the classic SPD poster above has it; and it is definitely interesting that in his Reuters interview, Mr. Tsipras spoke of "extremes" in the plural, implying of course that there are two such extremes, as good Social Democrats will always do in times of capitalist crisis, though of course he was cunning enough to name only one: the other is, in his conveniently fuzzy formulation, "chaos" (though one would be tempted to remind one's readers here, that US Secretary George Marshall, responding precisely to the communist threat in Greece, also used this word as a code for "communist danger", in the context of the promulgation of the "Truman Doctrine" in the midst of the Greek Civil War; and of course, that SYRIZA's repeatedly stated ambition is precisely "a new Marshall plan" for Europe).

The "SYRIZA or Golden Dawn" blackmail, then, depends structurally on a vanishing act it is difficult to distinguish from "wishful thinking": on February 18, the staunch supporter of the party in the UK, The Guardian, simply "forgot" about the existence of KKE (5.47% in last elections) and refashioned the Greek political landscape so that ANTARSYA (0.6% in last elections), whose basic line has always been that of "critical support" for SYRIZA, appears as the only "left" opposition in the country. A bout of similar amnesia hit the US magazine Foreign Policy, which obligingly reproduced the FinMin's dilemma on February 19, blissfully forgetting the existence of KKE. Similarly, and since early February, Greek social media were inundated with endless repetitions of the "dilemma", all of them likewise "forgetting" the possibility of a communist resolution of the postmodern version of the "Karamanlis or the tanks" quandary. As I pointed out in my commentary on this "intuitive" trend, the boundary line between "diagnosing" a fascist danger and in fact blackmailing others that if SYRIZA doesn't get the money it wants, you yourself will go for the fascists --the boundary line between "diagnosis" and "threat"-- is pretty blurry. But this isn't the only complication that attends the "dilemma." There is also the directly related question of whether SYRIZA and Golden Dawn really represent a clear, mutually exclusive choice. Is political reality in Greece interpretable in terms of the dilemma "SYRIZA or Golden Dawn" or is it rather that there is no dilemma, that the real formula for how capitalist power exercises itself at present in the country is in fact "SYRIZA and Golden Dawn"?

The remainder of this article will restrict itself to a mere listing of events that pertain to the parliamentary activity of the two parties in response to each other from November 2013 to the present; it isn't the only dimension of their relationship to take into account, as there are equally important ones in the syndicalist and local administration terrain, but these would require a far longer piece to cover.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/03/syriza-and-golden-dawn-parliamentary.html

More at link.

What discussed Ms. Nuland in Athens?
Radio silence maintained by the Greek government , and especially the side SYRIZA, on what was the other day in meetings he had in Athens Assistant US Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland. A local presence here of the US agent for direct consultations due to the strong "interest" US for the development of flea markets in the EU, as the Americans maintain a strong interest in the Eurozone. Meetings dealing and general developments in the region, with open fronts inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts, from the Ukraine, the Black Sea, to the Middle East. The North. Africa. The otherwise lalistato Maximus, who daily sees series " non papers "on any of the sciences and knowledge, the day before yesterday afternoon not" given nothing "about what was said in Nuland meeting with Al. Tsipras . Besides both avoided any statements. A similar line was selected at the State Department, where he had met earlier Nuland Minister N. Kotzia and from which also did not reveal statements.
***
The agreement "voicelessness" kept by Nuland and the Ministry of Defence, where he met with Minister P. Burn . The only one who deviated somewhat from this general direction. In an admittedly brief statement developed the government line that has bet a lot to American support, tazontas US and Share by Greek hydrocarbons , in its effort to improve its position in bargaining with creditors and simultaneously increase the share of domestic capital from the wealth of the wider region: " We had a very constructive discussion upon the issues related to defense and beyond. I explained ( Ed .: of Nuland ) that is a special moment for the alliance, for Greece and for the US, the US help in tough stance upheld by Germany against Greece. There are multiple possibilities for cooperation in the field of energy and in the field of defense . "
***
From the American side were traded only a vague statement from the embassy, ​​which among other things says that the US discussed in Athens " a wide range of bilateral and regional issues , "and described it as" very good "talks with the Greek government. THAT Nuland said that " the US wants to see Greece exiting from the economic crisis stronger and more stable " and "be able to make a good deal with the institutions." That discussed the Greek government and "security issues and defense, the Ukraine, the coalition against ISIL ( Ed .: jihadists ) and energy issues. " That for the Ukrainian crisis stressed that the US is "very satisfied about the progress solidarity between EU and US (see. the common line towards Moscow) and that Greece has played the role of helping to build consensus . "
***
All this and a number of urban centers in Greece and abroad are pushing the government to utilize the paper of the country's geo-strategic value to facilitate the bazaars with creditors. On this basis, moreover, information from the Foreign and Defense ministries indicate that the government is prepared to assist in missions against jihadists seeking to Greece to become outpost of Euro-Atlantic plans, with the smooth action of the base of Souda, critical infrastructure for support aeronautical business straight from Libya to Syria and Iraq. Indeed, and the Council of EU foreign ministers Monday, with the agreement of the representative of the Greek government took decisions that open the way for " military action "in the Middle East under the pretext called" Islamic State ". Furthermore, as regards Ukraine, Nuland saw Tsipra few weeks before he go to Moscow and fresh even recent statements on Greece - Russia relations: " We have no problem and we want Greece to have a normal relationship with Russia (...) A relationship between Greece and Russia were very helpful in the past in regards to transmit clear messages. And I would like to continue "...
Within this framework, where trachanas spread and the whole area stinks detached gunpowder, from what whenever caught fire burned folks, can the government, "left", the "national consensus" with the "new ethos and style ", the" open to dialogue "and so much more yet, to tell the public what the people haggle you ask, what gives and who go to the trouble?

http://www.rizospastis.gr/story.do?id=8362628

Google Translator

The Greek negotiations and the “red lines”

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosh-syntagma-11.jpg_1933531143.jpg

The new Greek government continues its talks with the foreign lenders (EU,ECB,IMF), the well-known Troika, which has now been labeled the “three institutions”. The international mass media, as well as the government itself, are giving the impression that it seeks another kind of management of the crisis in Greece and that the “institutions” at the same time are exerting pressure on it. The government is constantly retreating and claims that it is “maneuvering” because, according to the words of the Prime minister, A. Tsipras, “They had set us a trap in the battle of Europe (…) with aim of the financial suffocation and the government's overthrow(…)They had everything set up to shipwreck us ... and the country.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-Greek-negotiations-and-the-red-lines/

However, at the same time, the Finance Minister, Y. Varoufakis, clarified that the maneuvers and retreats of the Greek government also had some “red lines”, which the Greek government does not intend to cross. It is of interest to examine what these are:



According to the minister, the “red lines” are found in the solution of “three equations and three unknowns”. As he explained:



•A primary surplus must be secured that “does not kill the private sector economy”,
•In connection to the structure of the debt (what must be paid, to whom and when),
•And this is also connected to the aim for there to be more investments than savings (i.e. capital should not lie stagnant but should be invested).


However, the above demonstrate that the only “red line” of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government is the support for the capitalist recovery. Because the three unknowns ”x”, which the government puts in the three equations, have a content:



In relation to the question of investments, it is telling us that without the creation of an environment for investments there will be no improvement. And there will be no investments unless there is a suitable terrain for the capitalists, i.e. there will be no investments if state money is not made available, if there are no tax breaks, if an investment environment is not created that requires more “beneficial” public private partnerships, if the “non-wage labour costs” are not reduced etc.



In the equation regarding the surplus the unknown “x” means, amongst other things, the promotion of measures (by the SYRIZA-ANEL government), which were described in the memoranda signed by the previous “rightwing” government and are related to the reduction of recruitment in local government, cuts in the annual funding for hospitals, the commitment made in the framework of the agreement with the “institutions” for new reductions in state spending on education, health, defense, the municipalities, social benefits, transport etc.



In the equation regarding the debt, the government demands that the people empty their pockets for a debt they are not responsible for.



At the same time, the government presents the following as being “patriotism”: its strengthening in order to promote these axes that do not mention the enormous losses of the popular strata in the crisis period and promise very few crumbs to relieve the extremely destitute, as was demonstrated by the draft law recently tabled by the government.



The government’s program says nothing about the average wage that has been reduced by 25% in recent years, the enormous tax increases, direct and indirect, which the workers are already paying for, about the serious wage and pension reductions, about the increase of living costs. The living standards of the popular strata fell almost 50% during the crisis period.



So, however the negotiation of the SYRIZA-ANEL government with the lenders develops, the program which will be implemented by the government will not lead to the recovery of the enormous losses the popular strata underwent in recent years.



The government’s negotiation is related to how the domestic ruling class will be financed. The reduction of the primary surplus, which is at the centre of the discussions, will be translated into new subsidies for capital, which will be labeled using the fashionable term “productive reconstruction”.



In contrast, the government has promoted the payment of taxes as being a patriotic task. These are the taxes that had been imposed on the workers and other popular strata by the previous governments. Of course the big shareholders of the monopoly groups, with 140 billion euros abroad, continue to remain outside the firing line. The ship-owners will continue to pay minimal taxes. The big industrialists in the name of the “reinforcement of the national economy’s competitiveness” are waiting for new subsidies from the SYRIZA-ANEL government. The result will be that the popular strata will once again shoulder the burden of the capitalist crisis and the return of the economy to capitalist growth.



The government’s “patriotism” is once again the strengthening of the ruling class in its war against the others. The poor people, whether they are with the victors or the losers in this war, will continue to suffer destitution, unemployment, poverty, the violation of their social rights.



A new agreement between the government and the “three institutions” is not a solution for the working people. The new agreement will continue the implementation of the anti-worker anti-people laws, which have already been passed, and will be supplemented with new ones, in line with the commitments made by the coalition government. The solution is not to be found in the negotiations with the EU and IMF (i.e. the USA), which are being conducted to allegedly “end austerity”, but in fact have to do with ensuring greater margins for the state funding of domestic capital, for the state to support the capitalist recovery.



The solution is to be found in empowering the struggle to recover what the workers have lost in recent years, to satisfy the needs of the people today. This is the “red line” for the workers, which requires conflict and rupture with the “partners”, the imperialist unions, like the EU and NATO, as well as with those that possess the real power and the means of production, with capital itself.

That for the Ukrainian crisis stressed that the US is "very satisfied about the progress solidarity between EU and US (see. the common line towards Moscow) and that Greece has played the role of helping to build consensus . "

Praise indeed from Nuland, the chief US Nazi facilitator and coup manager. She probably told Tsippy that if he didn't play ball, she would give Greece to Golden Dawn and then supply them with water boards. Vichy Nuland becoming involved is not a good sign for Greece.

..In the “minefield” of the imperialist competition

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/455028.jpg_1536948737.jpg

While Victoria Nuland, the USA’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs was meeting in Athens with the Greek Prime Minister, A. Tsipras, the Deputy Defense Minister, K. Isychos was traveling to Moscow.

It is becoming obvious that the new Greek government has made a choice to approach as many imperialist centres as possible, playing the card of the country’s strategic value, in order to upgrade the position of the Greek monopolies, of course, with its stable euro-atlantic orientation unchanged and particularly the “strategic cooperation” of Greece with the USA.

The Foreign Minister, N. Kotzias, when he briefed the members of the parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee about the issues under his reposnibility, once again repeated the role that a “stabilized Greece” could play in the fight against the Jihadists and for the protection of “Christian populations in the Middle east”. The EU is paving the way for a new imperialist campaign in the Middle East, using the activity of the Jihadists as a pretext. Characteristic of this were the decisions of the EU Council of Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels. Decisions that bear the signature of the Greek government as well (the deputy Foreign Minister, Nikos Chountis, represented it). The decisions of the EU, which characterize “military action” as “necessary” and are in line with the leaks concerning an impending campaign in the Middle East and North Africa at the initiative of the USA and NATO and EU states, with the “Islamic State” as the pretext.

At the same time, information for the Defense and Foreign Ministries show that the SYRIZA-ANEL government is declaring its readiness (and as some analysts note its wish) to contribute to such missions. Because they want Greece to become a forward base for the Euro-atlantic plans, immediately providing the Suda base, which is a crucial piece of infrastructure in order to support and conduct aerial and naval operations over an area stretching from Libya to Syria and Iraq.

After its first 45 days, the new government confirmed its participation in NATO and all its military missions, stated that it was in favour of strategic cooperation with the USA and Israel, joined forces with the EU in imposing sanctions on Russia and in the preparations for a new imperialist war in the Middle East. The government, aside from the fact that it maintains bases and NATO command centres, also participates in the Euro-atlantic military “Joint Training Exercises”, the “Crisis Management Exercises”, and in the implementation of “NATO's Readiness Action Plan”.

At the same time as all this, the government states that it is “against the militarization of the crisis in Ukraine, against the deterioration of relations, both political and economic, between Europe and Russia” and adds that “we must talk about the future of Euro-Russian and Greco-Russian relations only being conducted without the use of sanctions, only through peaceful dialogue, which will allow us to avoid new conflicts between East and West, a new Cold War, which can only be harmful for the European peoples.”

Of course, no one can overlook, in relation to this, the recent statements of the V. Nuland, the USA’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, on the relations between Greece and Russia: “We have no problem and we want Greece to have a normal relationship with Russia (…) A relationship between Greece and Russia was very useful in the past as regards the transmission of clear messages. And I would like that to continue.”

So the question arises: What are the aims of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government? And the answer is the “geo-strategic enhancement” of the country in the region of Eastern Europe and the South East Mediterranean. This is a region with ongoing inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts from the Ukraine and the Black Sea to the Middle East and North Africa. So the Greek government believes that the so-called “military diplomacy”, the more active and “multi-dimensional foreign policy” can facilitate its negotiations with the creditors for the management of the debt, of course to the benefit of the capitalists and monopolies.

Of course, everyone knows that Greece’s membership of NATO and the EU (a strategic choice of all the Greek governments and of the present one as well) did not safeguard and will not safeguard the country’s sovereign rights. The continuing involvement in the imperialist plans and the international intra-bourgeois competition only creates more dangers for the people.

So, it is crucial that the workers, the popular strata do not support the government’s plans. They must organize their struggle against the imperialist plans and Greece’s participation which is being promoted by the coalition government. So that the people can leave the “minefield” of the imperialist competition, which has been laid on the terrain of capitalist barbarity.

Unacceptable and Dangerous Statements of the Defense Minister

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/kammenos_usa1.jpg_205347674.jpg

The Defense Minister of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, Panos Kammenos, made an official visit to the USA, where he attended the ceremonial parade dedicated to Greece’s Independence Day.
During his visit to the USA, P. Kammenos, met with the Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the USA, with specific responsibility for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland.
According to the statements of Greece’s Defense Minster, he tabled the issue of the joint exploitation by Greece and the USA of the oil and natural gas deposits which are located in Greece. Indeed he presented this cooperation as the way out from the capitalist crisis. He called for closer military cooperation with the USA and Israel. He made assurances that the new Greek government remains stably oriented to close cooperation with the USA. He offered to contribute to NATO and US operations that are being conducted under the pretext of the “war on terror”.
In relation to these statements of the Defense Minister of the coalition government of the “leftwing” SYRIZA with the nationalist party ANEL, the Press Office of the CC of the KKE issued the following statement on the 30th of March:
"The Defense Minister of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, Panos Kammenos, has made a series of unacceptable and dangerous statements during his visit to the USA.
He attempted to present the proposition of sharing of the energy wealth of the Aegean Sea and of the country more broadly with the United States as a panacea for the capitalist crisis. However, life has shown that energy issues, in capitalist conditions and in conditions of the intensification of inter-imperialist competition, not only fail to secure prosperity but are in fact a "magnet" for conflicts and bloody confrontations, the "source" of the dismemberment of states and of other evils.
The government bears grave responsibilities. The invitation to the USA to act as a transatlantic arbiter of the energy wealth of the country, and its presentation as a force guaranteeing stability, are a provocation to our people.
Experience has shown that "solutions" of this nature not only undermine sovereign rights but lead our people to new hazards, as has been shown by a series of developments in other countries, who are close allies of the USA in the region, like Georgia and Ukraine. The shared exploitation of resources, to which the Minister of Defense has invited the USA, relates to the "Feast" which the American energy monopolies along with local businessmen seek to organize on the backs of the working class and of the other popular strata.
Equally dangerous are the Minister's statements regarding an extension of the united defense doctrine of Greece and Cyprus "with the participation of Israel, in combination with tighter co-operation with the USA." For they involve our country even further within inter-imperialist competition, while peace in the Aegean and the Mediterranean cannot be safeguarded by those responsible for dozens of crimes around the world, those who continue to butcher the people of Palestine.
The Minister of Defense has once more offered to have the country support the aggressive plans of NATO and the USA, which are under preparation in the Middle East and Northern Africa with the excuse of "the war against Terror."
The above, as well as the hymns to the USA to which Mr. Kammenos has resorted, and his statement "fear not, Greece is not changing its course", constitute the guarantees offered by the SYRIZA-ANEL government to the USA. These statements come on the heels of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' visit to Moscow. They show the desire of the new government to use risky maneuvers in the geopolitical conflict of capitalist "giants", intending to guarantee the greatest possible benefits for the country's bourgeoisie. However, it is well known that "when the buffalos fight in the swamp, the frogs pay the price!" For this reason, the KKE’s position for disengagement from the imperialist alliances of NATO and the EU, for the unilateral cancellation of debt, for the socialization of the tools of the economy, of the wealth produced by the workers, with people’s power, is necessary and timely. Under this orientation, the mineral wealth of the country, which is in fact the people's property, can be used with the criterion of the people's interests instead of being handed over or sold to the monopolies."

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Unacceptable-and-Dangerous-Statements-of-the-Defense-Minister/

Thursday, April 2, 2015

The SYRIZA infomercial

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An infomercial is a shamefaced commercial, whose shamefacedness compels it to appear as presentation of "information" in order to sell a product more effectively. It is therefore a fusion of two genres of discourse that is at the same time a pseudo-fusion: the discourse of "information" is merely a carapace, whose purpose is to protect and reinforce the discourse of advertising.

Writing on politics, traditionally another genre of discourse than informercials, generally falls under two categories: journalistic writing, whose characteristic is the production of the illusion of a reporting "objectivity", and explicitly political writing, characterized by a more explicit foregrounding of the writer's own political principles and ideas.

Marxist political writing is by its nature the most explicit of the subgenres of political writing: since Marxism is, among other things, a critique of the dominant ideology, ideological presuppositions, both on the side of the writer and on the side of that which the writer discusses and argues for or against, must be visible and consciously expressed.

My argument here is that a great deal of the writing that postures as political writing, and even --implicitly or explicitly-- affiliates itself with Marxist political writing these days is in fact an instance of the extension of the discourse of the infomercial in the arena of political expression. It is, additionally, that, at least when it comes to international writing on Greek politics, this is nowhere more frequent than in writing on SYRIZA, whether as a rising political force, or, since 25 January, as a government partner.

I will here refer to an article that appeared a couple of days ago as a textbook illustration of this argument. The article in question is "Syriza - two months on: where is the hope?" by Kevin Ovenden, as published in Counterfire.

The author begins by posing a rhetorical question that draws upon SYRIZA's electoral slogal ("Hope is on its way") and asks "Is hope even alive?", only to answer immediately with "an unequivocal 'yes'."[1] In the process he repeats a very basic infomercial strategy in SYRIZA's own political discourse: the prominent use of abstract notions, with a positive semantic charge, as substitutes for rational and concretely grounded argumentation. Throughout the period of its rise, SYRIZA turned words like "rupture" [rixi], "hope" [elpida], "red lines" [kokkines grammes] or "solidarity" [allilegyi] into totems, words that were invested with a well-nigh magical power and efficacy in somehow creating a political reality just by being uttered. They could be so invested because they always appeared in isolation from context, just as they do in advertising slogans. SYRIZA's ideologues have deployed "rupture", for instance, in thousands of different instances; but they never bothered to explain either what "rupture" consists in nor from what it is a rupture, nor through what means they expected such a specific "rupture" to become possible. Using phrases like "SYRIZA represents a politics of rupture", they converted the word into an empty signifier on which anyone could project whatever they liked, into a solicitor of individual fantasies and desires, just as a slogan functions in advertising (e.g: "Impossible is nothing" or "Keep walking"). Additionally, this mantra-type deployment of language allowed SYRIZA the ability to change the meaning of all their slogans as they saw fit or to modulate them for different audiences. Recently, for instance, SYRIZA MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis glossed the slogan of "rupture" thus: "Rupture with corruption, solution with Europe" -- a goal no neoliberal would find in principle objectionable, given neoliberalism's own heavy reliance on what Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has lauded (in the context of the 20 February agreement with the EU) as "creative obscurity"-- the generative power of ideological obfuscation, in Marxist parlance, to produce political effects.

Repeating this very characteristic strategy in his own piece, Ovenden then proclaims "hope" to be "alive" without bothering to explain what he means by "hope". "Hope" in what and for what? Instead, he immediately slides into a disclaimer: his is not "facile optimism or self-delusion", he reassures us, though, given the fact that there is absolutely no indication of the content of "hope", judgment on whether it is delusional or falsely optimistic is, in Hegelian terms, "infinite", like judgment on whether the color yellow is "bitter" would be. The grounds of "hope" nominated --"the initiative, courage, struggles and mutual solidarity of the popular masses"-- don't quite resolve the problem: the "popular masses" are not some organic produce of the Greek land; they are politically organized in different and antagonistic camps, with different goals; they are no more characterized by "mutual solidarity" than any human being in the world (Greeks don't have a special "solidarity gene"); their "initiatives" are never simply theirs, whether it is because they respond to NGO funded social media calls or because they respond to a call by their trade union -- they reflect, horror of horrors, successful or less successful initiatives "from above", from organized and planning-conscious decision-making centers. In Ovenden's imagination, on the other hand, politics has reverted to mythical nature: the "popular masses" are a "wellspring" of spontaneous social movements, ex nihilo providers of mobilizational bounty that are magically inexhaustible, because, presumably, Greeks don't have pedantic problems or worries like everyone else, but are somehow committed to ... well, "hope" and "change" as pure emblems of "the good."

It doesn't take long for the infomercial unconscious of this type of writing to erupt on the surface of Ovenden's text explicitly. Here's his political appraisal of the wellspring of political infomercials itself, SYRIZA: "It is worth recalling just how refreshing Syriza's slogan [hope is on its way] was in today's Europe of ironclad consensus between the parties of the centre-right and centre-left over the policies of austerity and neo-liberal capitalism."

Political analysis is here fully equivalent to the appraisal of a slogan; but more impressively, that appraisal comes in the form of another slogan: Syriza's slogan was "refreshing", just as Cool Aid or Gatorade might be (later on, the Greek left is similarly described as "vibrant", with the magical economy of analysis one would expect from the presentation of the effect of Tide detergent on textile colors). What made the slogan "refreshing"? The "ironclad consensus" that dominates "today's Europe". Being out of tune with that consensus, the slogan "refreshes." Who does it 'refresh'? What does this 'refreshment' amount to for a society with 26% official (approximately 40% real) unemployment, a society where one sees --and I have seen-- people searching in the trash for food? Does the "refreshing" quality of the slogan pay school fees? Pay the electricity bill? Put food on the table? Provide elementary health services for those who can't afford private clinics? It does not, but it remains "refreshing" to Ovenden's ears because these are not Ovenden's problems. His problem is that he wants a "refreshing" word because the "ironclad" consensus is boring and unexciting, and these are qualities fundamentally inimical to, well, advertising.

Throughout the piece, a sensibility trained on commodity language has substituted political thought: what Ovenden notes as objectionable about Schaeuble is that he is "a dull, provincial, tax lawyer." If he were an urbane, exciting hipster, it appears, his policies would look a whole lot more appealing -- a hypothesis that is not at all arbitrary, given the fact that image is the basic reason why Yanis Varoufakis is hailed as a "radical", despite the intensely neoliberal character of his proposals -- see his ingenious idea for a "fat tax" on people who have no money to adopt the 60 euros a meal diet he showcases in his Paris-Match photographs.

Those who have had the courage to continue reading Ovenden's piece may well have had the opportunity to observe that all traditional markers of political analysis --analysis of the distribution of wealth and poverty, of social inequalities, of the causes of this or that conflict or problem-- has been substituted with a language of deracinated, free-floating affect. "Hope", Ovenden tells us, is "interwoven" with "indignation", so that "despair" can be fought against with "righteous anger". Later on, Ovendon heads one of his sections "Manifestation of desire" (as always, affect is hypostatized as autonomous, so it would be banal to ask "desire for what"?), and speaks learnedly on "betrayal" (of what, by who, according to who?) and of "confidence" (in what?) I am aware of the image of Greeks as "passionate" and "emotional" people, but this is going a bit far: society has been converted into a therapy group whose daily routine is organized in terms of some claptrap scheme of moving from one band of an emotional rainbow to another; reason has been eclipsed by affect in ways that are eerily reminiscent of fascist irrationalism; class relations have evaporated into thin air, supplanted by some kind of neo-Aristotelian theory of humors in the body politic. Unsurprisingly, there is not a single reference to "capitalism" in the whole piece; in Ovenden's postmodern universe, the critique of political economy has not yet been invented, so the crisis Greece is not alone in experiencing is described, pace Syriza, as "humanitarian", as if it were the result of an earthquake, a draught, or to stay true to the genuinely retrogressive and irrationalist drive of the "postmodern left", of "locusts", of the sort that God sent against Pharaonic Egypt. Equally unsurprisingly, in this arid landscape of abstraction where the only possible salvation lies in shamans and their trade in magical words, "hope" of the Syriza-Ovendon variety proudly exhibits its vapid inanity as a badge of honor:
As I wrote in January, the election campaign did not bring jubilant crowds or joyously hopeful eruptions at rallies or in spontaneous gatherings. There was a considered optimism. People hoped to hope.
The content of hope is hope; or, to put it otherwise, the hope of which Ovendon speaks has no content. It is pure form, just as it is in advertising. This is not a mark of its degeneration and destitution, but of its "considered" nature, though what exactly a denuded form of affect can have possibly "considered" through rational means remains a mystery. But mystery, which shrouds everything in this piece, is of course an old acquaintance, the calling-card of the commodity form itself as it appears in the bourgeois mind:
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
The transformation of political analysis into an infomercial is nothing but a sign of the penetration of commodity fetishism into the language of political analysis; in itself, this is no scandal. Political thought never grows in isolation from the relations of production, so it is quite logical that the commodity relation surfaces within writing that pretends to "explain" or analyze political choices. What is a scandal is the self-designation of politics-as-commodity fetishism as "left" or "radical"; and even more so, its reception in the terms of its bombastic self-presentation. Everything that is critical and reflexive in the Marxist tradition has been eradicated without a trace in what pretends to represent it in spirit in such interventions as Ovendon's. Indeed, reading Adam Smith would be vastly more productive and progressive as a gesture: regressing to what was progressive thought in the late 18th century at least allows one the hope --if I can be allowed a single use of the term-- that one may eventually stumble on to Marx. No such hope exists for those succumbing to the infinite retrogression offered in spades by the pundits of the "postmodern Left."

Notes
[1] Compare with the virtually identical --and identically inane-- strategy in another Anglophone piece entitled "The SYRIZA Moment: A Skeptical Argument". There, the author poses the issue of SYRIZA's self-designation as a radical left party and then concurs that is is radical ("and radical it is"), on the basis of what SYRIZA cadre member Stathis Kouvelakis says in his Jacobin interview. In other words, the proof that the self-description of a party corresponds to reality...is the self-description of the party in question. Adding insult to injury, this fundamental failure to follow basic procedures of empirical logic presents itself as "a skeptical argument."
Posted by Αντωνης at 12:11 AM

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-syriza-infomercial.html?spref=tw

Syriza promises IMF Greece will “meet all obligations to all its creditors”
By Robert Stevens
7 April 2015
On Sunday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis flew to Washington on an unscheduled trip, where he met International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

Varoufakis’ trip was to assure Lagarde that the Syriza-led government will pay a €450 million loan repayment to the IMF due Thursday.

There had been growing speculation that Greece might not make the payment. Greece would have become the first advanced Western country to miss a repayment to the IMF, thus threatening to trigger a default on its debt of more than €315 billion. Figures within the Greek government had warned that Greece could run out of euros as early as April 9. At the weekend, Kostas Chrysogonos, a prominent Syriza member of the European parliament, said that failure to reach an agreement could result in a snap general election being called.

Following two hours of talks, Varoufakis said they had been “extremely productive” and that Greece “intends to meet all obligations to all its creditors, ad infinitum”.

Syriza is “intent upon reforming Greece deeply,” he added.

Even as the IMF, European Union (EU) and European Central Bank (ECB) tighten their financial stranglehold over Greece, cutting its government and banks off from international money markets and standard ECB funding, Syriza’s first priority remains to pay them off.

The upcoming €450 million payment to the IMF was treated in much of the media as critical to a resolution of the entire debt crisis. The reality is this payment is a drop in the ocean, even in terms of the overall debt Greece owes just to the IMF, let alone its other creditors.

More than €9 billion must be paid back to the IMF this year alone. Other debt repayment is imminent. On Wednesday Athens must also refinance €1.4 billion of Treasury bills, (very short-term debt), due for repayment the following week.

On Friday, the Telegraph quoted an unnamed Greek government source who said Athens is drawing up contingency plans for the launch of a new parallel currency. “They want to put us through the ritual of humiliation and force us into sequestration. They are trying to put us in a position where we either have to default to our own people or sign up to a deal that is politically toxic for us. If that is their objective, they will have to do it without us,” said the source.

The newspaper said that the plans were being considered, “even though Syriza would rather reach an amicable accord within EMU [European Monetary Union]”.

Varoufakis discussed with Legarde the latest austerity measures drawn up by the government. Greece must have its proposals accepted by the EU, ECB and IMF as a condition for receiving further loans, including an outstanding €7.2 billion required to make any further debt repayments and satisfy the terms of the four-month austerity extension agreement signed on February 20. Every proposal made since then has been rejected as having not sufficiently accelerated the assault on the living standards of the working class.

Varoufakis stressed his government wants a deal in place by the next meeting of European finance ministers in Riga later this month. On Monday he told Greek daily Naftemporiki, “At the Eurogroup [meeting] of April 24 there must be a preliminary conclusion (of the talks), as per the Eurogroup accord on February 20.”

Legarde said that Varoufakis expressed his “commitment to improve the technical teams’ ability to work with the authorities to conduct the necessary due diligence in Athens, and to enhance the policy discussions with the teams in Brussels, both of which will resume promptly on Monday.”

The role of the technical teams is to lay the basis for an overall austerity deal to be finalised in June.

On Monday, Varoufakis followed up his meeting with Lagarde by holding discussions with US Treasury officials.

Varoufakis’ trip to the US was organised just days before Syriza Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ Wednesday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Prior to February’s agreement, US President Barack Obama expressed his concern that Greece’s ongoing economic crisis was a major destabilising factor in the region. Greece plays a pivotal role as NATO’s southernmost flank in Europe. With NATO ratcheting up its provocations against Russia and China, the US is concerned over Syriza’s declared intention to forge closer ties with both those countries.

On Sunday, the leader of Syriza’s Left Platform, which represents about 30 of its 149 parliamentary deputies, said Greece’s creditors were treating it with “unbelievable prejudice and as a colony”.

Panagiotis Lafazanis, as energy minister, has just returned from a trip to meet high level Russian government and business figures. He added, “A Greek-Russian agreement would help our country greatly in negotiations with lenders.”

Syriza is seeking to use Greece’s geostrategic importance in order to exploit antagonisms between the US, Europe and Russia.

Shortly after Syriza’s election, Tsipras invited a Chinese government delegation to Athens. A Greek government mission was warmly received in China last month, during which a “China-Greece maritime cooperation year” was launched. China has extensive investments in the Greek port of Piraeus, and the deal was the first ever maritime agreement between the two countries.

The talks between Tsipras and Putin are to cover all aspects of policy, particularly Greek-Russian energy cooperation. Tsipras is visiting Moscow again, on May 9, as part of events held to commemorate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Last week, Tsipras said Greece was opposed to a continuation of EU sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Relations between Moscow and the European Union will be discussed in the light of Brussels’ policy of sanctions and Athens’ quite cold attitude to this policy.”

Tsipras’ trip has caused consternation between Greece and the EU. German news magazine Spiegel published a report this weekend citing the comments of German European Parliament President Martin Schulz to a German newspaper. Schulz warned the Greek government that Greece should not jeopardise its ties with the EU by seeking Russian support.

Spiegel also cited the comments of Gunther Kirchbaum, a senior figure in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing Christian Democratic Union who warned, “Whoever needs help should turn to Brussels and not Moscow.”

An article in Monday’s Financial Times, centring on the implications of Greece’s turn to Russia, summed up the concerns in ruling circles. It stated, “The big fear, in the words of one suspicious senior [European] official, is a ‘Trojan horse’ plot, where Russia extends billions in rescue loans in exchange for a Greek veto on sanctions—a move that would kill western unity over Ukraine.”

The FT warned, “No such shock is expected this week. But as Athens nears the brink of insolvency there is growing alarm that Mr Tsipras’s radical left government might turn to Moscow in desperation. It would set off the biggest panic over Greece’s strategic alignment since the 1947 US Marshall Plan, initiated to save the country from communist fighters that Mr Tsipras’ Syriza party lionise to this day.”

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/07/gree-a07.html

Workers move to stop Greece’s Syriza government backsliding
by Panos Garganas


http://socialistworker.co.uk/imageFiles/Image/2015/2453/Pireus.jpg
Dockers walked out at the port of Piraeus on Thursday of last week (Pic: Workers Solidarity)

The Greek government, led by the radical left Syriza party, is backsliding under pressure from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). But workers are not taking this lying down.

The government was in talks with EU finance ministers on Monday of last week, and had to pay £544 million in debt repayments to the IMF on Tuesday.

The EU and IMF are pushing Greece closer to bankruptcy by withholding £5.2 billion of bailout funds in order to force through “reforms”.

Syriza has gone back on its “red line” that there would be no cuts to pensions. It is postponing the promise not to tax the first £8,700 of workers’ wages.

It has also agreed to privatise one of Europe’s largest ports in Piraeus, near Athens, and now the EU wants it to privatise energy too.

But workers at the formerly state-owned Hellenic Petroleum refinery have seen what privatisation means. An explosion there severely injured six workers on Friday of last week. On Saturday the whole refinery went on strike.

And the Piraeus dockers struck on Thursday of last week (see below).

Sacked workers marched into the offices of state broadcaster ERT in Athens on Monday of this week.

Government legislation passed to get their jobs back will take time to implement. Workers were told they would return piecemeal, in alphabetical order.

Implement

So the union decided to implement the legislation itself. Workers also demand the service is fully reinstated. And they are defending their union after harsh criticisms from leading Syriza MPs.

Hospital unions have called a national strike for Wednesday of next week. Their call for money to address understaffing clashes with the EU’s demand for cuts.

The government is asking every public sector body to put their money in the Bank of Greece so it can be used for debt repayments. And when they are out of money unpaid wages are the result.

Syriza isn’t only backsliding on austerity. It is sending fighter planes for exercises with Egypt’s counter-revolutionary president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

And foreign minister Nikos Kotzias invited MPs from the fascist Golden Dawn to a defence select committee—even as they stand trial for their party’s violent attacks.

But there is too much opposition for the government to sign up to a deal that continues austerity.

The last government did, and the result was its collapse.

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras has said he could put a deal to a referendum. But polls suggest that to win it he would have to use the votes of right wingers to defeat opposition from Syriza members.

So it’s not just a question of the government cutting a deal with the EU. The final word will be what people say with their fightback.

Panos Garganas is editor of Workers Solidarity, Socialist Worker’s sister paper in Greece

'We get huge solidarity'
Nikos Georgiou, president of the dockers’ union at Piraeus port, spoke to Socialist Worker.

We are striking to stop the government privatising the ports.

They should be in public control, but they are being given to monopoly capitalists.

Bosses used employment agencies to get in unskilled workers on low wages with no union rights. But we struck together, in the public and private sectors, to win them union recognition.

We are fighting this in court, and building strikes, protests and information campaigns. We get huge solidarity from ordinary people.

If a government that calls itself left continues neoliberal policies then we will resist it.

This crisis is a product of the capitalist system. Rather than sell off the ports, we should turn our fire on that system.

http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/40497/Workers+move+to+stop+Greece%E2%80%99s+Syriza+government+backsliding

And the thing is, it hasn't hit the fan yet.

The moment of truth for SYRIZA
May 18, 2015
The Greek government paid another installment of its debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week, but only by taking desperate measures to scrape together the funds, including tapping a special currency reserve at the IMF itself. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis admitted that the government would run out of money entirely within weeks.

The left-wing government led by SYRIZA has been pushed closer to the brink, when it will have to choose between paying its debt to international lenders and paying wages and pensions--one of the so-called "red lines" that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised would not be crossed. In February, Tsipras and Varoufakis agreed to a deal with leading finance officials of the European Union (EU) and the European Central Bank (ECB) to continue the bailout of the Greek financial system, but the lenders have refused to release any more funds--even money they are obligated to pay to Greece--unless the government continue the drastic austerity measures agreed to by previous governments in the "Memorandums."

Europe is ratcheting up the pressure to get the leaders of the Greek government to capitulate entirely on the pledges made by SYRIZA since its founding and during the election campaign to reverse austerity in Greece. Within the party, the left wing is organizing pressure of its own on Tsipras and other government leaders to remain committed to SYRIZA's pledges, even if that means an open breach with the EU.

Antonis Davanellos, is a member of the Internationalist Workers Left (DEA) that co-founded SYRIZA, and currently a member of SYRIZA's Central Committee and Political Secretariat and one of the party's best-known left voices. In this article for DEA's newspaper Workers' Left, he analyzes the decisive confrontation to come in Greece.

http://socialistworker.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/330/images/16439504916_a991d36517_o.sm_a.jpg
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (right) during the Eurogroup negotiations (Day Donaldson)
MANY OF us didn't accept the rhetoric about SYRIZA's program put forward during the election campaign to gain votes, but which begged a crucial question: Would it be possible to carry out a radical anti-austerity program while accepting the limits of the eurozone and through negotiations with its "institutions"?

Today, we know the answer: No.

The EU and the IMF are trying to crush SYRIZA by forcing it to face a dilemma: Accept all the terms and conditions of integration into the euro system or face the immediate overthrow of the government. Their motive is both economic, because SYRIZA's anti-austerity program is incompatible with the prevailing policy, and also political, because they want to protect Europe against the spread of the SYRIZA-Podemos threat to austerity policies.

The February 20 agreement accepted by the Tsipras government was a major error that resulted from being trapped by SYRIZA's election rhetoric. We made the commitment to repay the debt "in full and on time," and we renounced any "unilateral action" to implement our party's program, which would have built a more solid alliance of workers and popular masses in support of the government. We got nothing. The "creative ambiguity" that Yanis Varoufakis talked about worked--it worked in the interest of the powerful.

After February 20, we tried to defend the "red lines" that the government promised would not be crossed--even though these were far less than the commitments that Tsipras made at the Thessaloniki International Fair in September 2014, which in turn were inferior to the program approved by SYRIZA at its founding conference.

Today, the "red lines" have disappeared. On the subject of privatizations--the emblematic policy of neoliberalism--we talk about the price and the terms of the sale, and which companies will be sold, not whether they will be sold. On the subject of taxes, the unfair ENFIA real estate tax and raising the value-added tax as areas are considered areas where concessions might be made to the lenders, and not measures that must be overturned a matter of improving the life of working people, as we insisted before the elections.

On Social Security and pensions, we guarantee the income of seniors today, while leaving open the possibility of cuts in benefits for future generations. On labor issues, we have moved from the commitment to restore collective agreements toward the nebulous formula of implementing the "best practices of Europe," as defined by the International Labor Organization--with the risk that this means incorporating into those collective agreements neoliberal criteria such as the financial stability of firms and enterprises and their economic competitiveness.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IT IS obvious to anyone who wishes to look that we have been caught in a downward spiral--a negotiation where at each step, we have to defend the demands of working people at ever-lower levels.

It is also obvious where this downhill spiral leads--to compel the government to sign a third Memorandum, the agreement that the lenders were preparing to sign with Samaras and Venizelos [the leaders of the two main pro-austerity parties, New Democracy and PASOK, whose coalition government was defeated by SYRIZA on January 25]. It is also clear when the precise timing of this extortion will take place--when the government is forced to seek loans to pay for salaries and pensions and not merely debt repayments. At this moment, the lenders calculate that the government will not have the political power to express the slightest objection.

The decision to continue every repayment of debt and interest as required by the February 20 agreement--even though the lenders have not given a single penny of the funds they promised, and that are, in fact, due to Greece--has almost exhausted the reserves of public funds, bringing the critical moment very, very near.

The political consequences of this retreat--because it is no longer possible to speak about a "compromise"--will be dire. SYRIZA cannot be transformed into an austerity party. The lenders will not be satisfied to keep the government bound to the agreement they made in February. They will make the Tsipras government pay for its victory on January 25, demanding that the Tsipras government be "broadened" and transformed gradually into a national unity government, or else overthrown.

The media speculation about Yannis Stournaras, the governor of the Bank of Greece, serving as prime minister of a pro-Europe, technocratic government, like the one led by Lucas Papademos from November 2011 and May 2012, should be seen as a warning.

There is a way out of this vicious circle, though it becomes more difficult to achieve with each passing week as repayments are made to the lenders: Stop repaying the debt, which will also require placing controls on capital leaving the country; implement the decisions of the SYRIZA conference for social control of the banks, plus taxing capital and the wealth to fund anti-austerity measures; and defending this policy by any means necessary, including an open conflict with the EU and the euro.

Such a break, which would have been accepted after the January 25 election, today might require a reaffirmation of the government's popular mandate--including new elections, provided that the options going forward are presented clearly by the government and have the support of the whole of SYRIZA.

In any case, the crucial decisions cannot be made by a small and closed circle at the top, even with the best intentions. SYRIZA--from its central committee to its local branches--must be asked to decide. The party must stand against the headwinds that become increasingly menacing.

http://socialistworker.org/2015/05/18/the-moment-of-truth-for-syriza

So, Syriza can save the day by acting like some kind of real socialists....moment of truth, indeed. All that cheap talk comes with a bill.

Greece made ‘difficult concessions’ in new reform plan – Tsipras

http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/40/84/d0/00/tsipras-greece-made-concessions.si.jpg
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis)Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis)

Greece’s left-wing government has made several concessions to the country’s lenders in an updated reform plan that aims to break a five-month deadlock over a new €7.2 billion austerity deal – and stave off bankruptcy.

"We have made concessions, because a negotiation demands concessions, we know these concessions will be difficult… Last night a complete plan was submitted... a realistic plan to take the country out of the crisis," Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Tuesday.

The sides have failed to reach a deal on vital issues as the labor market and the pension system, while making progress on value-added tax reform.

Greek government reportedly submitted a 46-page draft agreement to lenders Monday, a source in Athens told AFP.

Tsipras spoke amid speculation that Greece was about to receive an ultimatum from its lenders after five months of stalemate.

"I am confident, I believe the political leadership of Europe will approach our positions with respect and join the side of realism," the Greek leader said.

The possible thaw in negotiations is connected to the IMF repayment deadline on June 5.

Athens has to repay the lender over €300 million, the first of four tranches totaling €1.6 billion euro due in June.

Greece will be able to pay the €300 million, scraping the cash together from internal resources, Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said last week.

However, it is not yet known how heavy a price the Greek people will have to pay to avoid a government debt default. Last time the government had to pay €750 million, which fell due in May. It managed to pay only by emptying an emergency IMF holding account.

It’s not the first attempt by Greece to agree a reform plan with international creditors. In April, Athens presented a 26-page plan that was criticized by lenders for lacking concrete proposals. The two parties failed to reach a compromise, as Greece says it won’t accept sharp budget cuts, known as the austerity policy, while the creditors want their money back and insist that Greece reform its finances.

There are serious worries that Greece could default, ending up leaving the Eurozone. Last week, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said a Grexit was possible. Later, a spokesman for IMF said her words were misinterpreted.

On Sunday, Tsipras expressed his country’s wish to stay within the euro on his website, but he also accused European lenders of making “absurd proposals” and being indifferent to the Greek people’s fate.

http://rt.com/business/264269-tsipras-greece-made-concessions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

scraping the cash together from internal resources

We know what that means. This is going to get ugly - uglier, I should say.

Forget "Game Theory" - Yanis Varoufakis Introduces "Hope Theory"Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/04/2015 12:06 -0400

Creditors default European Union Eurozone Germany Greece Italy recovery Renaissance Unemployment United Kingdom


Authored by Yanis Varoufakis, originally posted at Project Syndicate,

On September 6, 1946 US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes traveled to Stuttgart to deliver his historic “Speech of Hope.” Byrnes’ address marked America’s post-war change of heart vis-à-vis Germany and gave a fallen nation a chance to imagine recovery, growth, and a return to normalcy. Seven decades later, it is my country, Greece, that needs such a chance.

Until Byrnes’ “Speech of Hope,” the Allies were committed to converting “…Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character.” That was the express intention of the Morgenthau Plan, devised by US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. and co-signed by the United States and Britain two years earlier, in September 1944.

Indeed, when the US, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945, they agreed on the “reduction or destruction of all civilian heavy-industry with war potential” and on “restructuring the German economy toward agriculture and light industry.” By 1946, the Allies had reduced Germany’s steel output to 75% of its pre-war level. Car production plummeted to around 10% of pre-war output. By the end of the decade, 706 industrial plants were destroyed.

Byrnes’ speech signaled to the German people a reversal of that punitive de-industrialization drive. Of course, Germany owes its post-war recovery and wealth to its people and their hard work, innovation, and devotion to a united, democratic Europe. But Germans could not have staged their magnificent post-war renaissance without the support signified by the “Speech of Hope.”

Prior to Byrnes’ speech, and for a while afterwards, America’s allies were not keen to restore hope to the defeated Germans. But once President Harry Truman’s administration decided to rehabilitate Germany, there was no turning back. Its rebirth was underway, facilitated by the Marshall Plan, the US-sponsored 1953 debt write-down, and by the infusion of migrant labor from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece.

Europe could not have united in peace and democracy without that sea change. Someone had to put aside moralistic objections and look dispassionately at a country locked in a set of circumstances that would only reproduce discord and fragmentation across the continent. The US, having emerged from the war as the only creditor country, did precisely that.

Today, it is my country that is locked in such circumstances and in need of hope. Moralistic objections to helping Greece abound, denying its people a shot at achieving their own renaissance. Greater austerity is being demanded from an economy that is on its knees, owing to the heftiest dose of austerity any country has ever had to endure in peacetime. No offer of debt relief. No plan for boosting investment. And certainly, as of yet, no “Speech of Hope” for this fallen people.

It is the mark of ancient societies, like those of Germany and of Greece, that contemporary tribulations revive old fears and foment new discord. So we must be careful. Teenagers should never be told that, due to some “prodigal sin,” they deserve to be educated in cash-strapped schools and weighed down by mass unemployment, whether the scene is Germany in the late 1940s or Greece today.

As I write these lines, the Greek government is presenting the European Union with a set of proposals for deep reforms, debt management, and an investment plan to kick-start the economy. Greece is indeed ready and willing to enter into a compact with Europe that will eliminate the deformities that caused it to be the first domino to fall in 2010.

But, if Greece is to implement these reforms successfully, its citizens need a missing ingredient: Hope. A “Speech of Hope” for Greece would make all the difference now – not only for us, but also for our creditors, as our renaissance would terminate the default risk.

What should such a declaration include? Just as Byrnes’ address was short on detail but long on symbolism, a “Speech of Hope” for Greece does not have to be technical. It should simply mark a sea change, a break with the past five years of adding new loans on top of already unsustainable debt, conditional on further doses of punitive austerity.

Who should deliver it? In my mind, the speaker should be German Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing an audience in Athens or Thessaloniki or any Greek city of her choice. She could use the opportunity to hint at a new approach to European integration, one that starts in the country that has suffered the most, a victim both of the eurozone’s faulty monetary design and of its society’s own failings.

Hope was a force for good in post-war Europe, and it can be a force for positive transformation now. A speech by Germany’s leader in a Greek city could go a long way toward delivering it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-04/forget-game-theory-yanis-varoufakis-introduces-hope-theory

This is the guy who is supposed to be a whizz-bang 'leftist' economist? This is all he's got? Well, he's in the right party.

This is the guy who is supposed to be a whizz-bang 'leftist' economist? This is all he's got? Well, he's in the right party.

He is pitiful. But that is what he is aiming at - pity. Pity the poor Greeks who can't pour piss from a boot. Pity the poor Greeks who are just little children compared to their betters. Pity the poor Greeks who don't even understand the nature of loan sharking. Poor Greeks, this is where you get your legs broken. Poor dumb Greeks, the EU will have to teach them how a crime ring works.

And Varoufakis using the destroyed Germany after WWII as the comparison for Greece today? A "different" kind of Marxist? You bet.

We have bled enough’: Communists in Greece blockade Finance Ministry in austerity protest


Published time: June 11, 2015 11:51
Edited time: June 11, 2015 12:23

http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/41/13/d0/00/greece-protests-pame-tsipras.si.jpg

A protester holds a union flag during a protest of Communist-affiliated trade union PAME outside the Greek Finance Minister in Athens, June 11, 2015 (Reuters / Alkis Konstantinidis)A protester holds a union flag during a protest of Communist-affiliated trade union PAME outside the Greek Finance Minister in Athens, June 11, 2015 (Reuters / Alkis Konstantinidis)

Members of the Greek trade union PAME have occupied the Finance Ministry, blaming the government for its inability to pull the country out of the crisis.

About 200 people invaded the Finance Ministry building in Athens, said Germany’s dpa.

The activists climbed onto the roof and hung a huge anti-government banner at the front of the building.

"We have bled enough, we have paid enough. Take matters in your own hands Greek people! Block the new measures and long-term bailout agreements,” said the giant banner, depicting Greece's last three prime ministers George Papandreou, Antonis Samaras and Alexis Tsipras.


The protest came as Tsipras visited Brussels, trying to persuade the troika of international creditors – the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission - to unlock a €7.2 billion tranche, needed by Athens to avoid a default.

Tsipras will meet EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on 12:00 GMT Thursday to continue the bailout talks.

Later on Thursday Athens will see Greek trade unions hold a rally against the government of Tsipras and the growing unemployment, which increased by 0.5 percent to reach 26.6 percent in the first quarter of this year. The meeting is scheduled for 5:30pm GMT.

Throughout the country, 700 trade unions and other labor organizations will protest in 59 cities.


Athens does not intend to show a primary budget surplus of one percent in 2015, as required by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said earlier Thursday.

Greece initially promised to reach a 0.6 percent surplus this year, then improved the offer to 0.75 percent.

http://rt.com/business/266557-greece-protests-pame-tsipras/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

On our way back from Berlin on Tuesday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis remarked to me that current usage of the word “reform” has its origins in the middle period of the Soviet Union, notably under Khrushchev, when modernizing academics sought to introduce elements of decentralization and market process into a sclerotic planning system. In those years when the American struggle was for rights and some young Europeans still dreamed of revolution, “reform” was not much used in the West. Today, in an odd twist of convergence, it has become the watchword of the ruling class.

The word, reform, has now become central to the tug of war between Greece and its creditors. New debt relief might be possible—but only if the Greeks agree to “reforms.” But what reforms and to what end? The press has generally tossed around the word, reform, in the Greek context, as if there were broad agreement on its meaning.

The specific reforms demanded by Greece's creditors today are a peculiar blend. They aim to reduce the state; in this sense they are “market-oriented”. Yet they are the furthest thing from promoting decentralization and diversity. On the contrary they work to destroy local institutions and to impose a single policy model across Europe, with Greece not at the trailing edge but actually in the vanguard. In this other sense the proposals are totalitarian—though the philosophical father is Friedrich von Hayek the political forebear, to put a crude point on it, is Stalin.

Modern Europe's version of market Stalinism, so far as it affects Greece, has three main prongs. The first concerns pensions, the second labor markets, and the third privatizations. Then there is an overarching question of taxes, austerity and debt sustainability, to which we can come back later.

With respect to pensions, the creditors demand that about one percent of GDP be cut this year from pension payments, in a country where almost half of pensions deliver sums below the poverty line. The specific demand would cut about 120 euros from pensions at the level of 350 euros or less per month. The government replies that while the pension system requires reform—the present early retirement age is unsustainable—that reform can only be done gradually and alongside the introduction of an effective unemployment insurance scheme.

On labor markets, the creditors have already imposed the near-complete elimination of collective bargaining and reduction of minimum wages. The government points out that the effect is to informalize the labor market, so that labor is not registered and pension contributions are not paid, which in turn undermines the pension system. The Greek proposal is to design a new collective bargaining system that meets the standards of the International Labor Organization.

As for privatization, the creditors have demanded the sale of airports, seaports, and electric utilities, among other assets, and that all this be done quickly. Here the Greek objection is not to private or foreign management of certain assets but rather against letting them go for cheap, or without conditions, or without retaining an equity stake. Thus in the ongoing privatization of the port of Piraeus to the Chinese firm Cosco, the government has insisted on an investment plan and on labor rights. (Completing the post-modern turn of language, here a left government in a capitalist country imposes union rights on a multinational corporation from a communist country.)

Turning to taxes, the creditors have demanded a hefty increase in the value-added tax (VAT)—which already has a top rate of 23 percent. Among other things, the burden would fall on medicines (and therefore on the elderly) and on the special rates enjoyed by the Greek islands (about 10 percent of the country by population), where tourism is centered and where costs are higher in any event. The government points out that tax increases on tourism hurt competitiveness, and that the overall effect of the increased tax burden will be to reduce activity, worsening the debt problem. What is needed, instead, is tax enforcement; reducing VAT evasion could, quite readily, permit rates to be lowered.

What is missing from the creditors' demands is, well, reform. Cuts in pensions and VAT increases are not reform; they add nothing to economic activity or to competitiveness. Fire-sale privatization can lead to predatory private monopolies as anyone living in Latin America or Texas knows. Labor market deregulation is in the nature of an unethical experiment, the imposition of pain as therapy, something the internal records of the IMF as far back as 2010 confirm. No one can suggest that wage cuts can bring Greece into effective competition for jobs in traded goods with either Germany or Asia. Instead, what will happen is that anyone with competitive skills will leave.

Reform in any true sense is a process that requires time, patience, planning, and money. Pension reform and social insurance, modern labor rights, sensible privatizations and effective tax collection are reforms. So are measures relating to public administration, the justice system, tax enforcement, statistical integrity and other matters, which are agreed in principle and which the Greeks would implement readily if the creditors would permit it—but for negotiating reasons they do not. So would be an investment program emphasizing the advanced services Greece is well-suited to provide, including in health care, elder-care, higher education, research, and the arts. It requires recognizing that Greece cannot succeed by being the same as other countries; it must be different—a country with small shops, small hotels, high culture, and open beaches. A debt restructuring that would bring Greece back to the markets (and yes, that could be done, and the Greeks have a proposal to do it) would also be, on any reasonable reckoning, a reform.

The plain object of the creditors' program is therefore not reform. It is the doubling-down on debt collection in the face of disaster. Pension cuts, wage cuts, tax increases and fire sales are offered up on the magical thought that the economy will recover despite the burden of higher taxes, lower purchasing power, and external repatriation of profits from privatization. The magic has already been tested for five years, with no success in the Greek case. That is why, instead of recovering as predicted after the bailout of 2010, Greece has suffered a loss of over 25 percent of its income with no end in sight. That is why the debt burden has gone from about 100 percent of GDP to 180 percent, when measured in terms of face values. But to admit this failure, in the case of Greece, would be to undermine the entire European policy project and the authority of those who run it.

So the Greek talks remain at a stalemate. Actually, it is not quite a stalemate, since the Greeks are under extreme pressure. Either they concede to the creditors' positions, or they may find their banks closed and themselves forced out of the euro, with highly disruptive consequences at least in the short run. The creditors know this. So they keep backing the Greeks toward a wall—never changing their own position while complaining that the Greek side isn't working hard enough. And as the Greeks yield ground, inch by inch, the creditors simply press for more.

It is the ugly dynamic of negotiation under duress, between a strong party and a weak one, in this case complicated by the fact that the creditor side has no unified leadership, and hence no one—unless Angela Merkel finally steps forward to take up the role—who can make reasonable concessions and force through an acceptable deal. So the choices narrow. Either the Greek government will concede too much, lose its support and collapse, in which case whether the end result is another receivership or Golden Dawn, democracy is dead in Europe. Or, in the end, the Greeks will be forced to take their fate—at enormous risk and cost—into their own hands, and to hope for help from wherever it might come.

http://prospect.org/article/what-reform-strange-case-greece-and-europe#14343881611371&action=collapse_widget&id=0&data=

Wow! They found a way to blame Stalin for how the Greek people is being treated by the Troika. What convoluted bullshit. How can we explain the undemocratic behavior of imperial capitalism? Is it because "democracy" plays no part in capitalism? No, no! Why, it's Stalin, don't you see? It is communism+libertarianism = the pain in Greece! Simple! Hayek and Stalin - partners, you understand - working to ruin democratic capitalism! Well, at least that is settled! Now Hayek and Stalin can go on to rule the world from beyond the grave!

Syriza is between a rock & a hard place, which was destined from the git. They prove KKE right either way they go.

Seems to me that the current retirement ages are sustainable if everybody got back to work but that won't happen as long as the capitalists call the shots.

Syriza is between a rock & a hard place, which was destined from the git. They prove KKE right either way they go.

Seems to me that the current retirement ages are sustainable if everybody got back to work but that won't happen as long as the capitalists call the shots.

That is a question I have wanted to ask someone. I understand that the capitalist governments want to maintain as large an army of unemployed as possible (for obvious reasons), but how do they manage to keep them "viable" as potential employees, if they are subjected to abject poverty? An auto worker is not threatened by nor replaceable with a bum from skid-row. Can just the specter of finding yourself in that position be enough to keep the worker in check? If people are dying of starvation on the streets, how does that "help" the bourgeoisie government?

That is a question I have wanted to ask someone. I understand that the capitalist governments want to maintain as large an army of unemployed as possible (for obvious reasons), but how do they manage to keep them "viable" as potential employees, if they are subjected to abject poverty? An auto worker is not threatened by nor replaceable with a bum from skid-row. Can just the specter of finding yourself in that position be enough to keep the worker in check? If people are dying of starvation on the streets, how does that "help" the bourgeoisie government?

Let me first try to help you make sense of your question. Your first statement about the "reserve army" is simply wrong. What the capitalist government (more generally, the state) wants to do is never unambiguous since it is an instrument of class struggle and is therefore bound to the needs of the capitalists; those needs in turn are expressions of the contradictions of capital (if it was not riven with fault lines and internal strife it would be ahistorical and would preclude rather than presuppose class struggle)

There are many manifestations of the underlying tensions, including the need to educate/train workers while simultaneously driving to deskill labor as much as possible. More generally, capitalists must seek to exploit labor beyond what it can bear yet simulaneously must assure labor's material reproduction. The state and government are equally a reflection of the strain of capital butting up against its own barriers: total submission to market discipline is mandatory and yet administrative and regulative functions must constantly be introduced and performed.

Why do these fools dance so readily like marionette's on a string you ask? Catch them in a candid moment and they'll tell you: pimpin' ain't easy.

Let me first try to help you make sense of your question. Your first statement about the "reserve army" is simply wrong. What the capitalist government (more generally, the state) wants to do is never unambiguous since it is an instrument of class struggle and is therefore bound to the needs of the capitalists; those needs in turn are expressions of the contradictions of capital (if it was not riven with fault lines and internal strife it would be ahistorical and would preclude rather than presuppose class struggle)

There are many manifestations of the underlying tensions, including the need to educate/train workers while simultaneously driving to deskill labor as much as possible. More generally, capitalists must seek to exploit labor beyond what it can bear yet simulaneously must assure labor's material reproduction. The state and government are equally a reflection of the strain of capital butting up against its own barriers: total submission to market discipline is mandatory and yet administrative and regulative functions must constantly be introduced and performed.

Why do these fools dance so readily like marionette's on a string you ask? Catch them in a candid moment and they'll tell you: pimpin' ain't easy.

Got it. That is clear and does make me rethink the question. One of my problems (only one of them!) is my tendency to view things in two-dimensions, so-to-speak. The power and pervasive strength of capitalism causes me not to "see" it for what it actually is. All the problems in capitalist society are the results of capitalism, itself, and how the capitalist state deals with these "problems" is bounded by the essence of capitalism, itself. So the only "controls" the state has over capitalist society are those controls inherent in the capitalist system. How do you squeeze every last ounce of value out of workers without destroying those workers? How can you use everyone to the maximum, while supporting their lives to the minimum? How can you grind workers and all they love into dust and have them love you, too? "Pimpin' ain't easy" - you bet.

You learn fast

(I am being facetious because it clear you already understood these things and my contribution is merely to draw them out)


So the only "controls" the state has over capitalist society are those controls inherent in the capitalist system.

Its better to say that the "rationality" of the capitalist system contains inherent contradictions which cannot be resolved, only suppressed. The tools that can be brought to bear for the purposes of suppression are limited by the same "rationality". For instance, 'financial regulation" can only be applied to the extent, or provided, that it does not run counter to the function of finance in the first place. Otherwise instead of "regulation" you have "elimination".

http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth

(Speaker for the Dead)

http://left.gr/sites/left.gr/files/zoi_33_2.jpg

Greece makes new offer to creditors ahead of summit

http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2257815.1434908935!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg

Protesters gather in Athens as Tsipras’s government shows willingness to make concessions

Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 18:49
First published:
Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 12:34


Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has made a new offer on a reforms package to foreign creditors, signalling 11th hour concessions to break a deadlock that has pushed Greece to the brink of bankruptcy.

After months of wrangling and with anxious depositors pulling billions of euros out of Greek banks, Mr Tsipras’s leftist government showed a new willingness this weekend to make concessions that would unlock frozen aid to avert default.

French president Francois Hollande, on a visit to Milan, confirmed Greece had submitted new proposals. EU diplomats said the proposal had not arrived but representatives from the country’s European and IMF creditors are meeting this afternoon to discuss it.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis: ‘Regrettably, my presentation was met with deafening silence. Excepting Michael Noonan’s apt remark, all other interventions ignored our proposals.’ Above, Varoufakis and Noonan at the start of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Board of Governors, ahead of the Eurogroup Meeting of Finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear how far the new proposal yielded to creditors’ demands for additional spending cuts and tax hikes, but the offer was a ray of hope that a last-minute deal may yet be wrangled before Athens runs out of cash.

A day before emergency meetings including a summit of euro zone leaders in Brussels, Mr Tsipras was holed up in a marathon cabinet meeting and discussed the new offer with the leaders of Germany, France and the European Commission by phone.

“The prime minister presented the three leaders Greece’s proposal for a mutually beneficial agreement that will give a definitive solution and not a postponement of addressing the problem,” a statement from Mr Tsipras’s office said.

Mr Tsipras, elected on a pledge to end austerity, has defiantly resisted demands to cut pension spending.

But Greek officials have suggested Athens may be willing to consider raising value-added-taxes or other levies to appease the lenders.

“There is no time to lose. Every day counts. Talks and negotiations must continue so that an agreement is reached,” Mr Hollande told a joint news conference with Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.

Locked out of bond markets and with bailout aid frozen since summer last year, Athens is quickly running out of cash. The deputy finance minister on Sunday confirmed Athens had enough money to pay public sector wages and pensions this month.

But Athens also urgently needs access to funds to avoid defaulting on a €1.6 billion IMF loan that falls due at the end of the month. As the crisis gets pushed from one meeting to the next, each side has put the responsibility on the other’s shoulder for finding a deal.

Money has drained out of Greek banks after a breakdown in talks last weekend, and Greece might have to impose capital controls within days if there is no breakthrough.

Sources in Frankfurt and in Brussels said the European Central Bank’s board would discuss the liquidity of Greece’s banking sector at 8.30am on Monday. The sources said Greek pre-orders for deposit withdrawals for Monday had already reached €1 billion after savers pulled over €4 billion out of their banks last week.

European ministers have played down the prospect of a final agreement on Monday but hope a political understanding can be reached in time for a full deal by the end of June.

For a deal to work, Mr Tsipras will need a solution that is acceptable to his party or else may be pushed to call a snap election or a referendum to secure a mandate for an agreement.

His Syriza party was due to hold a rally in Athens on Sunday to send “a loud message of resistance” against demands for more cuts and tax hikes in a country battered by years of recession.

Under the austerity measures imposed by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank in two bailouts, Greece’s economic output has fallen 25 per cent, wages and pensions have been slashed, and one in four Greeks is jobless.

The Greek government has argued the austerity imposed on the southern European country had made the crisis worse. A senior Syriza lawmaker said on Sunday that previous ideas put forward by Juncker would have led to a “social holocaust”.

“Democracy cannot be blackmailed, dignity cannot be bargained,” the Syriza party said in a statement on Sunday, announcing its planned protest.

“Workers, the unemployed, young people, the Greek people and the rest of the peoples of Europe will send a loud message of resistance to the alleged one-way path of austerity, resistance to the blackmail and scare-mongering.”

But the mood has also hardened in Germany, which has contributed more money than any other country to bailing out Greece.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from within her ranks not to give in to Greek demands, even if that means contemplating Greece leaving the euro zone.

Ms Merkel’s Bavarian allies warned against giving in to Greece, with senior Christian Social Union lawmaker Hans Michelbach saying he saw no realistic chance of an agreement on Monday.

“If the EU lets the government in Athens get away with its intransigence, we can bury the euro,” Mr Michelbach said in a statement on Sunday.

“Either Greece declares itself willing for a viable solution or the country must leave the euro. The euro zone could cope with the consequences of a Greek exit,” he said.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/greece-makes-new-offer-to-creditors-ahead-of-summit-1.2257546#utm_sguid=155958,6ac356b5-dd25-3bc0-6957-1dd2593767d6

Syriza Rising, and finding a new low...

Syriza's U-turn on Israel is now complete
Asa Winstanley
Saturday, 28 November 2015 15:28

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/images/article_images/people/alexis-tsipras-2-with-Benjamin-Netanyahu-26-Nov-2015.jpg

Alexis Tsipras with Benjamin NetanyahuAlexis Tsipras with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu at a press briefing on Nov 26, 2015, during Tsipras' visit to IsraelSyriza was a popular leftist political party which was swept to power in Greek elections on its promise to end years of IMF-and EU-imposed austerity.

By now, though, the party's leadership has sold out its principles, implementing the very same austerity it was elected to oppose, even after a massive "No" vote in a summer referendum on a new bailout that came with further severe austerity conditions.

This led to the departure of Yanis Varifakis, the finance minister, and a big split, with many leaving to form a breakaway party. Tsipras did manage to come back to power in new elections though, albeit on a reduced mandate.

As I have written before, in power the Syriza-led government has reneged on other promises too, such as those of its once anti-militarist foreign policy. Their electoral manifestos once included the promise of "abolition of military cooperation with Israel." In power, their government in fact continued the joint military exercises with Israel that began under the conservative government in 2009.

During a visit to Israel in July, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias even said that Greeks needed to "learn to love Israel" and disgracefully called Israel part of a "line of stability" in the region – something that will some as news to the friends and relatives of those 551 Palestinian children murdered by Israeli during its summer 2014 war against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

This was a climb-down by the Syriza-led government on previously decent Syriza policy, much as it has made fundamental reversals of policy in domestic economic matters.

But Syriza as a leftist movement put some distance between itself and its government's contacts with Israel: Defence Minister Panos Kammenos was from the Independent Greeks (a right-wing coalition partner) and Kotzias is an independent.

Or it did put such distance until this week. As of now, the Syriza U-turn on Israel is complete.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras went on his first ever visit to Israel this week. And it constituted far more than what some may argue was necessary diplomatic contact (though I'd disagree with even that, personally). Tsipras went to discuss increasing economic links with Israel, including the export of recently-discovered offshore natural gas to Europe.

Tsipras also reinforced Zionist mythology by claiming that "our peoples are very ancient." In fact, Israel was founded only in 1948, on top of the mass graves of Palestinians killed during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine from its native inhabitants: the Nakba, or Catastrophe. Israel is, in essence, a European settler-colonial state, which latches onto Bible stories to use as foundational myths for its illegitimate state.

Tsipras met with accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, in a jovial press conference, in which both sides gushed about " a natural affinity between the Israelis and the Greeks."

Perhaps most disgustingly of all, Tsipras went even further in his grovelling to Israel than any other European leader by recognising the illegal 1967 Israeli annexation of Jerusalem (which was formalised in 1980). Tsipras signed the guest book of Israeli President Reuben Rivlin saying it was a "great honour to be in your historic capital".

In fact, the annexation of Jerusalem is illegal under international law and no state in the world recognises its legitimacy. Even states that do have diplomatic relations with Israel maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, in recognition of this fact.

That Tsipras went above and beyond in this regard is shameful. Israeli diplomats were quick to recognise this, with one calling it "unprecedented, especially for a European leader."

By now, considering everything that has happened in Greece, perhaps this should come as no surprise. But it is disappointing, nonetheless, for many in Greece and in Europe, who had even a small degree of hope that Tsipras and his party would bring something new and genuine to the world of politicians and parliaments.

The whole sorry story is a precautionary tale for those of us – certainly including myself – who have invested some degree of hope in Jeremy Corbyn and a newly revitalised Labour party. The situations in Britain and in Greece are very different in many ways, and Labour is certainly not a new party like Syriza.

Nonetheless, these matters do bring to the fore fundamental questions and contradictions relating to the influence that popular movements can have governments and mainstream political parties. When politicians and unelected cabals like the EU and the IMF increasing overturn the clearly-expressed democratic will of the people, it is no wonder that people are fundamentally sceptical about their governments and states.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/inquiry/22532-syrizas-u-turn-on-israel-is-now-complete

The bankruptcy of Syriza and of the globalist “Left”*

TAKIS FOTOPOULOS

(28.02.2015)


Abstract: The article aims to show that Syriza’s capitulation in accepting a new memorandum, which includes most of the conditions imposed by the Troika in the last four years, is not accidental, nor is it just the result of treachery by the leadership of Syriza. Whatever future government comes into power, as long as Greece remains a member of the EU and the Eurozone, it will have to implement the same policies. Therefore, the Syriza fiasco simply represents the bankruptcy of the globalist Left, to which Syriza belongs.


A month ago, just before the Greek elections, I stressed the following about the SYRIZA party in Greece (whose victory was widely predicted at the time), and Podemos, its “brother party” in Spain:
Given the commitment (of SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain to the EU and the Euro there is no possibility whatsoever that they will take any of the radical steps required to really alleviate the appalling economic condition of the majority of the population in both countries, and particularly in Greece, within the constraints imposed by the EU and the constitutional Treaties that institutionalized neoliberal globalization at the European level.[1]
Clearly, this conclusion was contrary to the prevailing view among the “globalist” Left and its numerous publications all over the world.[2] This is the Left which explicitly or implicitly takes globalization and its institutions (e.g. the EU) for granted and only aims for their improvement “from within” (we used to call this kind of “Left” reformist in the past to distinguish it from the antisystemic or anticapitalist Left). However, the strong anti-globalization movement that developed in the late 1990s, on both sides of the Atlantic, was largely an antisystemic movement, which was crushed by the combination of state violence (Seattle, Genoa etc.) and the systematic effort of the globalist Left that developed at the time, with indirect support of the mass media controlled by the Transnational Elite (i.e. the elites mainly based in the G7 countries). In fact, the role of globalist Left was crucial in eventually managing to emasculate the anti-globalization movement, from an antisystemic movement into a reformist one.[3] The inevitable result was the demise of the entire antisystemic movement against globalization, to the great delight of Transnational Corporations, which were obviously behind this huge campaign.

The main difference between the globalist Left and the antiglobalization movement, which was not explicit at the time but became evident later on, concerns the very object of social struggle.

Thus, for the antisystemic movement against globalization, the cause of the growing concentration of economic power in a few hands is globalization itself that has led to the present unprecedented inequality, which, on current trends, means that by next year, 1% of the population will own more wealth than the other 99%.[4] Furthermore, globalization, as I tried to show elsewhere,[5] in a capitalist market economy can only be neoliberal. That means that neoliberalism, contrary to the mythology of the globalist Left, is neither a “doctrine,”[6] nor the “bad” policy of some baddies controlling transnational institutions like the EU, as Syriza and Podemos assert, in an obvious attempt to disorient working people. No wonder Tsipras and other Syriza cadres have actually participated in the globalist Left, in the form of the World Social Forum, which was the main organ used to emasculate the antisystemic movement against globalization! No wonder also that Thomas Piketty, the great new star of economics, who is massively promoted by the TE media, like the Financial Times, as a kind of “new Marx” fighting against inequality, is a prominent member of the same globalist Left explicitly stating “if we don’t find a way to convince people that everybody can gain from globalization the risk is that a growing faction of the population will turn away from it, against globalization.”[7] However, at least Piketty, as far as I know, did not have the effrontery to call himself a “Marxist,” unlike the new “pop star” of economics, again massively promoted by the same TE-controlled media, who is also (both in theory and in practice) a prominent member of the globalist Left. I refer of course to Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Syriza, who calls himself a “libertarian marxist,” but, as I shall show below, had no qualms about playing a leading role in breaking the pre-election commitments! In fact, Varoufakis' theory and practice has nothing to do with either Marxist or left libertarian theory and practice, as one could easily conclude from his self-presentation, massively promoted by The Guardian (the well known flagship of the globalist Left which supported all the wars of the TE in the globalization era). In effect, he is a “liberal pseudo-Keynesian” (i.e. the theoretical version of social-liberalism which is of course utterly incompatible with Keynes’ work!) and a fervent globalist, as statements like the following show:
What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the eurozone, of the European Union itself, when European capitalism is doing its utmost to undermine the eurozone, the European Union, indeed itself?[8]
Yet, all this did not prevent Counterpunch, a leading organ of the globalist Left to publish an article under the eloquent title, “Ironman Varoufakis’s Revolutionary Plan for Europe,” clearly showing the utter bankruptcy of this sort of “Left,” which did not have any qualms about concluding that Varoufakis' plan is “Revolution from within. Just don’t tell anyone in Berlin”![9]

Therefore, for the globalist Left, the cause of the economic catastrophe in countries like Greece is the austerity policies applied by neoliberal and social liberal governments, with whom this sort of “Left” has no objection to compromise, as Syriza has just shown in practice, even on the implementation of neoliberal policies! The usual devious argument they use to justify the obvious u-turns that this implies is that this is a matter of some genius strategy, so that a new “good” Europe of the peoples develops which would abolish neoliberals and the relevant policies. This is why they never raise the issue of exiting from the EU and creating instead a new real Europe of the peoples, and not of capital as at present. This is also why what they fight against now is the austerity policies imposed by those neoliberal “baddies,” despite the fact that such policies are of course the inevitable policies that have to be applied by a government which does not control its open and liberalized markets (as a result of the integration into the New World Order of neoliberal globalization) and bases all of its growth strategy on foreign investment and on improving competitiveness, so that foreign imports do not crowd out domestic production, while at the same time it struggles to expand exports.

However, although such policies may indeed lead to a kind of growth resulting in huge inequalities and poverty for most, it surely cannot lead to restructuring of production so that the economy could become competitive. Thus, domestic workers in EU peripheral countries would in effect have to compete with either foreign workers abroad working under almost slavery conditions (e.g. India, Pakistan, China and so on) as well as immigrants from similar countries, or with workers in highly advanced countries in terms of research and development, associated with much higher productivities (e.g. Germany). No wonder in an economic union consisting of countries at unequal levels of development the peripheral countries have no chance to compete with the advanced countries at the center, where the elites controlling the economic policies of the entire union are based.

It is therefore a disorienting myth that a union like the Eurozone could ever be democratic, as Varoufakis shamelessly declared that he is the co-author of the policies imposed on Greece by the EU! A democratic union presupposes members of equal economic power, i.e. sovereign nations, and Greece has neither any economic nor national sovereignty within the Eurozone and under the neo-colonial rules imposed by the troika (read TE). On top of this, only a liberal cretin (or a crook) could assert that a democratic relationship could ever exist between the lender and the borrower, or, alternatively, between those controlling the European Central Bank’s purse and the rest. Systemic writers fully understand this, as when Dominic Lawson wrote that:
“As about a quarter of ECB funds are backed by German taxpayers, Schäuble’s opinions count much more than those of Varoufakis. (…) So it is hardly surprising that Varoufakis has been humiliated. The terms agreed late on Friday involve acceptance that the bailout package continues to be set and monitored by the International Monetary Fund, the ECB and EU finance ministers; and that if this troika is not satisfied with Greek commitment to economic reform, the money will be frozen ― exactly what Syriza swore it would never accept.”[10]
On the basis of such considerations, I concluded in a post election article[11] that:
Τhe two main options available to the new Government were: a) the road of submission to the demands of the Transnational Elite (TE) and the EU, with some concessions granted by the elites in exchange, and b) the road of resistance, which involves the immediate unilateral exit from both the EU and the Eurozone that will allow the introduction of strict capital controls and the re-introduction of the national currency, the nationalization of all banks including the Bank of Greece, the socialization of all key industries covering basic needs, as well as those involving the social wealth (oil, lignite, gold, etc.).[12]
Even at that time, just a week after the elections, on the basis of the first signs then available, I was able to write “it is safe for one to conclude that (a) above is the option chosen by the disorienting reformist Left that took over in Greece! The inevitable result is that none of Syriza’s promises before the election is on the way to be met by the government.” I mentioned then the four major commitments, which were on the way to be “forgotten” at the time and have been transformed as follows in the “list” of structural reforms just agreed with the institutions. Here I will add some more crucial commitments “forgotten” now:
a) The commitment to throw out the Troika (consisting of representatives of the Transnational Elite, i.e. IMF, EU, ECB), which was checking the implementation of the memorandum conditions in the past and actually were involved even in designing the appropriate legislation and then in checking its execution. In fact, far from the Troika being thrown out, it was simply renamed as “the institutions” consisting again of the same institutions (perhaps represented by different personnel. The only (fake) change was that formally decisions will have to be taken in the future by the “institutions” and Greece, as co-authors, according to democratic procedure. Clearly, the Greek Finance Minister wanted us to believe that there could ever be a real democracy (which implies an equal distribution of political power) even without a corresponding equal distribution of economic power, particularly in a capitalist system![13]

b) The commitment to tear down the “memorandum” (as the bailout agreement is known in Greece). Today, the Syriza government implements in fact the existing memorandum (now called a list of structural reforms), which was expanded with some painless to the institutions additions, so that the false impression could be created that this is a new program that was in fact co-authored by Syriza and these institutions, as Varoufakis disorientedly stressed. This is why Syriza took care to change its name by deceptively distinguishing between the main loan contract and its appendix in the memorandum, when everybody knows that the latter was simply describing the conditions under which the loan was granted (as it is also mentioned in the main loan contract). So, what Syriza did was to pretend that the list of structural reforms which was agreed yesterday was not in fact the old memorandum reforms plus some painless (to the institutions) reforms but a new program co-authored by Greece. This, despite the fact that Varoufakis himself admitted that 70 percent of the old memorandum reforms are adopted by Syriza. Furthermore, Greece’s “partners” demanded that it will not get any more financial help from the EU or the IMF unless and until the present list is completed with some further reforms to be agreed by the end of April and only after an assessment by the institutions, will any further funds will be released! Then, once the present program ends in June it could be replaced by a new program (i.e. a new memorandum) provided the government has implemented the present list of reforms to the satisfaction of Greece’s partners.

c) The commitment to have the debt (or most of it) cancelled. This commitment has disappeared completely from the present “bridge program” and was replaced by a vague promise that some sort of debt relief will be introduced in the July memorandum. However whereas the lenders and the institutions refer, at most, to possibly extending the period of the loan and/or lowering interest rates, Varoufakis throws various ideas in his “smart debt engineering” in order to achieve even some sort of virtual reduction of the debt e.g. bond swaps with perpetuity bonds (i.e. bonds of no fixed maturity date yielding only interest), or bonds whose repayment will be linked to GDP growth beyond a certain threshold, etc. ― ideas mostly ignored by the “institutions.”

d) The commitment (the most important, for them, aspect of their “radical” program) to replace austerity with growth, as they consider austerity mainly responsible for the present economic and social catastrophe in Greece. Yet, the entire list of structural reforms just agreed between the “institutions” and the Syriza government is just the usual neoliberal list of measures suggested by OECD, IMF, the World Bank etc. That is reconsideration of public spending (including even spending on social services like health), with the aim to cut the cost of provided services, i.e. to further cut the size of government spending, on top of the massive cuts imposed in the last four years! This is of course an austerity measure under a different name.

e) The commitment to use fiscal policy for growth rather than as a means of austerity as at present. For a country “under a bailout program” like Greece this requires the creation of significant primary budget surpluses of 4 percent per year or so. Here, all that the hard renegotiation by Syriza achieved was some promise to reduce the size of the surplus required. Yet, the lower the primary surplus the less money will be available to cover public spending including interest payments, which in practice usually means a further cut in public spending. That is, more austerity! But, the TE has no alternative. A drastic cut in the budget surplus requires a significant haircut on the debt,[14] which is anathema to the lenders.

f) The commitment to reverse privatizations agreed by the previous crisis governments, which were considered to be a sell out of social wealth by Syriza itself (e.g. energy industries). This commitment has effectively been shelved. The government is now committed not to touch any completed privatizations or even those “in the process” as long as the procedure has begun. No wonder that when the energy minister who belongs to the left wing of Syriza stated that the government would not go ahead with the sale of the main electricity utility PPC or power grid operator ADIME, that drew an angry response from Berlin, where a finance ministry spokesman said Athens could not decide to delay or stop privatisations on its own,[15] implicitly referring to a clause in the agreement signed that no unilateral actions from Greece would be tolerated, implying that any such actions will be met by a cut off in liquidity.

g) The commitment to protect labor and abolish flexible labor relations. This commitment has been abandoned altogether now and replaced by a new commitment to adopt “the best EU practices,” i.e. the best neoliberal practices on the field given that flexible labor conditions have already been introduced almost everywhere in the Eurozone. Even the related commitment to increase immediately after election the minimum wage level to over 700 Euros had now been replaced by a commitment to do so sometime in the future and always in consultation with the “institutions”! This, on top of the usual commitment to further open and liberalize markets “as part of a broader strategy to face established interests” (by which it is usually meant syndicalist interests).

h) The commitment to take care of the humanitarian crisis as a result of the massive impoverishment of the last few years is also emasculated. Thus, the measures to be taken have to be mainly non-monetary (e.g. food vouchers) and, anyway, all this battle against the humanitarian crisis should not have any negative fiscal impact!
It is therefore clear that Syriza has negated all its main commitments which would differentiate it from the previous governments, essentially appointed through the “institutions” (i.e. the TE). This complete about turn by the Greek globalist Left (in Greek, kolotouba) was very simply achieved by the EU through the European Central Bank which used the highly successful “Irish” model for this, which has since been applied in Cyprus as well. Thus, when Ireland was in the brink on 2010 and the TE were pushing the Irish government to seek a bailout which naturally was resisting, it was threatened by a cut in “Emergency Liquidity Assistance” (ELA) to Irish financial institutions, i.e. to cut Ireland off. Last week ECB first made Greek banks entirely dependent on ELA and then it did not approve a request for a 10bn Euros allowing instead an increase of only 3.8bn in full knowledge that with a mini liquidity panic that was developing at the moment the existing cash reserves were going to run out by the mid of this week.[16] With depositors fleeing and markets refusing to do business with them, Greek banks have nowhere else to turn. If the ELA is turned off, they will be unable to meet customer demands and default.

A shrewd BBC liberal economic analyst aptly summarized the bankruptcy of Syriza in an article entitled “Syriza dumps Marx for Blair” describing what he called “the world’s fastest reinvention of what is to be socialist”:
In the reforms proposed by the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to secure a four-month extension of its life-or-death bailout, vanished are the party’s seeming implacable hostility to privatisation, determination to re-hire sacked public-sector workers, and desire for rapid rises in minimum wages. Or to put it another way, the platform on which Syriza won the recent general election has been significantly reconstructed. In its place are what we might see as “New Syriza” measures: commitments to improve the efficiency of the public sector and eliminate waste, to promote competition with a strengthened competition commission, to reform labour markets, to streamline pension schemes, not to reverse privatisations and take a pragmatic approach to future sales of government assets.[17]
However, Peston, sees only the changes in the political “superstructure” and ignores the seismic changes in the economic structure which were the ultimate causes of the changes in the political structure. That is, the emergence of the NWO of neoliberal globalization which makes not only Syriza but also Podemos and any other parts of the globalist Left irrelevant today. But, some may find surprising the fact that even most of the Marxist antisystemic Left make the same mistake, as shown by the following extract from the World Socialist Web Site:
The abject capitulation of the Syriza government exposes the utter political bankruptcy of the myriad petty-bourgeois pseudo-left organizations throughout the world who just a few weeks ago hailed the electoral victory of Tsipras as an earth-shaking event. Far from denouncing Syriza’s betrayal, these groups will work overtime conjuring up excuses and justifications. But broad sections of the Greek working class will see the agreement for what it is: a cynical and cowardly act of political treachery.[18]
Clearly, in view of the above analysis, Syriza’s stand is not a matter of treachery. Any left party not determined to break not only with the EU and the Eurozone but also with the NWO and its institutions (WTO, IMF, NATO, etc.) eventually will be forced to follow the same policies that Syriza adopts presently. Similar arguments apply to the Paleolithic anti-imperialist Left which sees the conflict as one between the “bad” neoliberal Empire and the peoples. Thus, as James Petras stresses,
The election of Syriza on a platform of recovering sovereignty, discarding austerity and redefining its relations with creditors to favour national development has set the stage for a possible continent-wide confrontation[19]
Of course this is another myth usually promoted by the globalist Left. There was never such a choice between, on the one hand, recovering sovereignty and national development and, on the other, capitulation, unless the people are determined to break with this order ― something that this sort of Left cannot understand, as it thinks we still live in the era of nation-states!

On similar grounds one may criticize the “left” minority within the Syriza party (Lafazanis, Lapavitsas et.al.),[20] whose panacea for all problems related with the present Greek catastrophe is Grexit, i.e. the exit from the Eurozone but not also from the EU, let alone a break with the NWO and its economic and political institutions. However, although such a “solution” may in the short term benefit the Greek people, as a result of the associated devaluation of the new currency (the drachma) that will be introduced following Grexit, in the medium to long term Greece will be in a similar crisis to the present one, even if it combines Grexit with a cancellation of part or the whole of the Greek debt. This is because this approach is also globalist, i.e. it takes the NWO of neoliberal globalization for granted and therefore can never lead to the restructuring of production and consumption in Greece that only a policy of self-reliance could secure. But such a policy is ruled out when markets are opened and liberalized, which supporters for Grexit also take for granted.

The conclusion is therefore: unless the antisystemic Left which, mostly, lacks any theory and strategy on globalization, urgently tries to fill the gap left by the globalist Left and the Paleolithic antisystemic Left, it is only the nationalist Right that will succeed in doing so, which lately shows very worrying signs of turning from the old anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, supported on this even by Zionists![21]

http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol11/vol11_no1_The_bankruptcy_of_Syriza_and_of_the_globalist_Left.html

The SYRIZA infomercial
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An infomercial is a shamefaced commercial, whose shamefacedness compels it to appear as presentation of "information" in order to sell a product more effectively. It is therefore a fusion of two genres of discourse that is at the same time a pseudo-fusion: the discourse of "information" is merely a carapace, whose purpose is to protect and reinforce the discourse of advertising.

Writing on politics, traditionally another genre of discourse than informercials, generally falls under two categories: journalistic writing, whose characteristic is the production of the illusion of a reporting "objectivity", and explicitly political writing, characterized by a more explicit foregrounding of the writer's own political principles and ideas.

Marxist political writing is by its nature the most explicit of the subgenres of political writing: since Marxism is, among other things, a critique of the dominant ideology, ideological presuppositions, both on the side of the writer and on the side of that which the writer discusses and argues for or against, must be visible and consciously expressed.

My argument here is that a great deal of the writing that postures as political writing, and even --implicitly or explicitly-- affiliates itself with Marxist political writing these days is in fact an instance of the extension of the discourse of the infomercial in the arena of political expression. It is, additionally, that, at least when it comes to international writing on Greek politics, this is nowhere more frequent than in writing on SYRIZA, whether as a rising political force, or, since 25 January, as a government partner.

I will here refer to an article that appeared a couple of days ago as a textbook illustration of this argument. The article in question is "Syriza - two months on: where is the hope?" by Kevin Ovenden, as published in Counterfire.

The author begins by posing a rhetorical question that draws upon SYRIZA's electoral slogal ("Hope is on its way") and asks "Is hope even alive?", only to answer immediately with "an unequivocal 'yes'."[1] In the process he repeats a very basic infomercial strategy in SYRIZA's own political discourse: the prominent use of abstract notions, with a positive semantic charge, as substitutes for rational and concretely grounded argumentation. Throughout the period of its rise, SYRIZA turned words like "rupture" [rixi], "hope" [elpida], "red lines" [kokkines grammes] or "solidarity" [allilegyi] into totems, words that were invested with a well-nigh magical power and efficacy in somehow creating a political reality just by being uttered. They could be so invested because they always appeared in isolation from context, just as they do in advertising slogans. SYRIZA's ideologues have deployed "rupture", for instance, in thousands of different instances; but they never bothered to explain either what "rupture" consists in nor from what it is a rupture, nor through what means they expected such a specific "rupture" to become possible. Using phrases like "SYRIZA represents a politics of rupture", they converted the word into an empty signifier on which anyone could project whatever they liked, into a solicitor of individual fantasies and desires, just as a slogan functions in advertising (e.g: "Impossible is nothing" or "Keep walking"). Additionally, this mantra-type deployment of language allowed SYRIZA the ability to change the meaning of all their slogans as they saw fit or to modulate them for different audiences. Recently, for instance, SYRIZA MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis glossed the slogan of "rupture" thus: "Rupture with corruption, solution with Europe" -- a goal no neoliberal would find in principle objectionable, given neoliberalism's own heavy reliance on what Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has lauded (in the context of the 20 February agreement with the EU) as "creative obscurity"-- the generative power of ideological obfuscation, in Marxist parlance, to produce political effects.

Repeating this very characteristic strategy in his own piece, Ovenden then proclaims "hope" to be "alive" without bothering to explain what he means by "hope". "Hope" in what and for what? Instead, he immediately slides into a disclaimer: his is not "facile optimism or self-delusion", he reassures us, though, given the fact that there is absolutely no indication of the content of "hope", judgment on whether it is delusional or falsely optimistic is, in Hegelian terms, "infinite", like judgment on whether the color yellow is "bitter" would be. The grounds of "hope" nominated --"the initiative, courage, struggles and mutual solidarity of the popular masses"-- don't quite resolve the problem: the "popular masses" are not some organic produce of the Greek land; they are politically organized in different and antagonistic camps, with different goals; they are no more characterized by "mutual solidarity" than any human being in the world (Greeks don't have a special "solidarity gene"); their "initiatives" are never simply theirs, whether it is because they respond to NGO funded social media calls or because they respond to a call by their trade union -- they reflect, horror of horrors, successful or less successful initiatives "from above", from organized and planning-conscious decision-making centers. In Ovenden's imagination, on the other hand, politics has reverted to mythical nature: the "popular masses" are a "wellspring" of spontaneous social movements, ex nihilo providers of mobilizational bounty that are magically inexhaustible, because, presumably, Greeks don't have pedantic problems or worries like everyone else, but are somehow committed to ... well, "hope" and "change" as pure emblems of "the good."

It doesn't take long for the infomercial unconscious of this type of writing to erupt on the surface of Ovenden's text explicitly. Here's his political appraisal of the wellspring of political infomercials itself, SYRIZA: "It is worth recalling just how refreshing Syriza's slogan [hope is on its way] was in today's Europe of ironclad consensus between the parties of the centre-right and centre-left over the policies of austerity and neo-liberal capitalism."

Political analysis is here fully equivalent to the appraisal of a slogan; but more impressively, that appraisal comes in the form of another slogan: Syriza's slogan was "refreshing", just as Cool Aid or Gatorade might be (later on, the Greek left is similarly described as "vibrant", with the magical economy of analysis one would expect from the presentation of the effect of Tide detergent on textile colors). What made the slogan "refreshing"? The "ironclad consensus" that dominates "today's Europe". Being out of tune with that consensus, the slogan "refreshes." Who does it "refresh"? What does this "refreshment" amount to in a society with 26% official (approximately 40% real) unemployment, a society where one sees --and I have seen-- people searching in the trash for food? Does the "refreshing" quality of the slogan pay school fees? Pay the electricity bill? Put food on the table? Provide elementary health services for those who can't afford private clinics? It does not, but it remains "refreshing" to Ovenden's ears because these are not Ovenden's problems. His problem is that he wants a "refreshing" word because the "ironclad" consensus is boring and unexciting, and these are qualities fundamentally inimical to, well, advertising.

Throughout the piece, a sensibility trained on commodity language has substituted political thought: what Ovenden notes as objectionable about Schaeuble is that he is "a dull, provincial, tax lawyer." If he were an urbane, exciting hipster, it appears, his policies would look a whole lot more appealing -- a hypothesis that is not at all arbitrary, given the fact that image is the basic reason why Yanis Varoufakis is hailed as a "radical", despite the intensely neoliberal character of his proposals -- see his ingenious idea for a "fat tax" on people who have no money to adopt the 60 euros a meal diet he showcases in his Paris-Match photographs.

Those who have had the courage to continue reading Ovenden's piece may well have had the opportunity to observe that all traditional markers of political analysis --analysis of the distribution of wealth and poverty, of social inequalities, of the causes of this or that conflict or problem-- have been substituted with a language of deracinated, free-floating affect. "Hope", Ovenden tells us, is "interwoven" with "indignation", so that "despair" can be fought against with "righteous anger". Later on, Ovendon heads one of his sections "Manifestation of desire" (as always, affect is hypostatized as autonomous, so it would be banal to ask "desire for what"?), and speaks learnedly on "betrayal" (of what, by who, according to who?) and of "confidence" (in what?) I am aware of the image of Greeks as "passionate" and "emotional" people, but this is going a bit far: society has been converted into a therapy group whose daily routine is organized in terms of some claptrap scheme of moving from one band of an emotional rainbow to another; reason has been eclipsed by affect in ways that are eerily reminiscent of fascist irrationalism; class relations have evaporated into thin air, supplanted by some kind of neo-Aristotelian theory of humors in the body politic. Unsurprisingly, there is not a single reference to "capitalism" in the whole piece; in Ovenden's postmodern universe, the critique of political economy has not yet been invented, so the crisis Greece is not alone in experiencing is described, pace Syriza, as "humanitarian", as if it were the result of an earthquake, a draught, or to stay true to the genuinely retrogressive and irrationalist drive of the "postmodern left", of "locusts", of the sort that God sent against Pharaonic Egypt. Equally unsurprisingly, in this arid landscape of abstraction where the only possible salvation lies in shamans and their trade in magical words, "hope" of the Syriza-Ovendon variety proudly exhibits its vapid inanity as a badge of honor:
As I wrote in January, the election campaign did not bring jubilant crowds or joyously hopeful eruptions at rallies or in spontaneous gatherings. There was a considered optimism. People hoped to hope.
The content of hope is hope; or, to put it otherwise, the hope of which Ovendon speaks has no content. It is pure form, just as it is in advertising. This is not a mark of its degeneration and destitution, but of its "considered" nature, though what exactly a denuded form of affect can have possibly "considered" through rational means remains a mystery. But mystery, which shrouds everything in this piece, is of course an old acquaintance, the calling-card of the commodity form itself as it appears in the bourgeois mind:
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
The transformation of political analysis into an infomercial is nothing but a sign of the penetration of commodity fetishism into the language of political analysis; in itself, this is no scandal. Political thought never grows in isolation from the relations of production, so it is quite logical that the commodity relation surfaces within writing that pretends to "explain" or analyze political choices. What is a scandal is the self-designation of politics-as-commodity fetishism as "left" or "radical"; and even more so, its reception in the terms of its bombastic self-presentation. Everything that is critical and reflexive in the Marxist tradition has been eradicated without a trace in what pretends to represent it in spirit in such interventions as Ovendon's. Indeed, reading Adam Smith would be vastly more productive and progressive as a gesture: regressing to what was progressive thought in the late 18th century at least allows one the hope --if I can be allowed a single use of the term-- that one may eventually stumble on to Marx. No such hope exists for those succumbing to the infinite retrogression offered in spades by the pundits of the "postmodern Left."

Note
[1] Compare with the virtually identical --and identically inane-- strategy in another Anglophone piece entitled "The SYRIZA Moment: A Skeptical Argument". There, the author poses the issue of SYRIZA's self-designation as a radical left party and then concurs that it is radical ("and radical it is"), on the basis of what SYRIZA cadre member Stathis Kouvelakis says in his Jacobin interview. In other words, the proof that the self-description of a party corresponds to reality...is the self-description of the party in question. Adding insult to injury, this fundamental failure to follow basic procedures of empirical logic presents itself as "a skeptical argument."
Posted by Αντωνης at 12:11 AM

Former Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis Creates New Party ‘to Change EU’

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Greek Finance Minister Yianis Varoufakis arrives to present his ministry's new secretaries at a press conference in Athens on March 4, 2015.

Former Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis Creates New Party ‘to Change EU’



http://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/images/103270/27/1032702722.jpg
© AFP 2016/ Louisa Gouliamaki

21:05 09.02.2016

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced the creation of a new party in Berlin on Tuesday “in order to change Europe.”


MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The new pro-European left-wing party is called Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DIEM25.

“There is absolutely no doubt that what we are doing with DIEM seems quite Utopian. The alternative is either to keep pretending as the powers…in the European Union are doing that they can maintain this European Union that we now have. They can’t. That’s far more Utopian than what we are doing,” Varoufakis told reporters after a presentation unveiling the new movement.


Yanis Varoufakis

© AFP 2016/ Andreas Solaro

Varoufakis Is Back and Set to Bring ‘Democracy’ Back to Europe

The other alternative, according to Varoufakis, is a “horrible dystopia that is going to punish severely everyone,” with the exclusion of those who are able to “flourish and find ways of profiting from human disasters.”More than 3,000 people have already joined DIEM25, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and English musician Brian Eno, according to the movement’s website.

Varoufakis, previously a key figure in Greece’s negotiations with its creditors over the bailout program, stepped down from the position of finance minister on July 6, stating that he had become aware that his resignation could help the country’s leadership reach an agreement.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160209/1034475129/varoufakis-new-party.html#ixzz3zj4tpN00

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/former-greek-finance-minister-varoufakis-creates-new-party-to-change-eu/

This article could as easily been placed in the 'Philistine' thread.

This article could as easily been placed in the 'Philistine' thread.

What is worse than 'philistine'? Put this crap in that thread. Good god, a top down "movement"? Varoufakis is why we need guillotines.

Zyuganov: 'We do not want to play by someone else's rules'

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CPRF leader Zyuganov stated that Russia is able to feed 500 million people by developing collective farms and should pull of the WTO

ICP, 13 February 2016

The leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation (CPRF) gave a speech at the economic forum in the city of Orel. Gennady Zyuganov, stated that Russia would be able to feed 500 millions of people by developing collective farm system. Zyuganov, also stated by referring the membership of Russia to the World Trade Organization (WTO), that Russia must pull out.

"During three years of our membership in the WTO, the Russian budget has lost 800 billion rubles. Indirect losses are evaluated at four trillion...Russia must take off the strait-jacket of the WTO. We are open to dialogue and trade, but we do not want to play by someone else's rules, playing up to those across the ocean as they set their prices for us," said Gennady Zyuganov.

Apart form the CPRF officials, advisor to the Russian President Sergei Glazyev, governors of Orel and Irkutsk regions, representatives of ministries, departments, regions, local authorities, deputies of different levels, representatives of large and small businesses, experts of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and the Chamber of Commerce attended the forum.

http://icp.sol.org.tr/europe/zyuganov-we-do-not-want-play-someone-elses-rules

The "left traffic cops" of capitalism

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The government of the "leftwing" SYRIZA party that joined together with the nationalist ANEL party in government, has been face to face since the beginning of January 2016 with major popular mobilizations, which have been caused by the unbearable economic situation experienced by the workers and other popular strata.The people in this country are facing the serious consequences of the capitalist crisis for the 7th year running, like unemployment, for example. The SYRIZA-ANEL government is seeking to implement a third memorandum, which it passed together with the votes of the other bourgeois parties, aiming to transfer the new burdens onto the shoulders of the working class, the poor and medium farmers, the self-employed.It is continuing on the path of taxing the people heavily, reducing the gains of the workers and people and is seeking do the same via the new social-security law.
But how can a "left" party manage capitalism in these conditions?
The SYRIZA government claims that there is no other path for the country, other than the path inside the EU, inside capitalism. It accuses the KKE of arguing for "fantastical", "unrealistic" policies, for "things that cannot be implemented" etc.And it even argues that because it is a "left" government it can implement this specific political line much better than the previous "rightwing" and social-democratic governments.
At the same time, they claim, for example in a recent article published in SYRIZA's newspaper, "Avgi", that "globalized capitalism steals the toil of the farmers, not the government." These type of "thoughtful" analyses attempt to justify the government and its political line.
In addition, a few days earlier, the Minister of Labour, Giorgos Katrougalos, in his response to a question tabled by MPs of the KKE that asked what the government will do about the case of the "Softex" company, which decided to close its factory in Greece, laying off hundreds of workers, stated the following:"we exhausted every possibility to exert pressure that a Ministry of Labour in a capitalist country can", however the employers answered that the closure "is a final decision taken by the shareholders".He also said that "There are limits to what a Ministry of Labour can do in a capitalist state."
So the cadres of SYRIZA are implementing the following tactic:When the decision reaches the deeper causes of the problems of the workers and poor farmers, the question of capitalist profit, the role of the European Union, its Common Agricultural Policy, they present themselves as "realists" and as being "in touch with things" and accuse those that highlight the need of coming into rupture with the EU and also with capitalist ownership and power as being stuck in ... 1917 and proposing things "that cannot happen".
And when the discussion focuses on the responsibilities of the government, they discover "globalized capitalism", "the limits that exist in capitalism".But SYRIZA must answer the following question:If globalized capital is to blame, how should one describe those that pass laws that serve this wretched system, those that as a national government serve its functioning and goals, driving the small and medium farmers off the land? How should we label the servants of capitalism? Maybe as its "leftwing traffic cops"?

Popular Unity (LAE) and "good" privatizations
However the other section of SYRIZA, "SYRIZA mark 2", named "Popular Unity", follows step by step the socialdemocratic-reformist line of fostering illusions amongst the workers.So the MEP of Popular Unity N.Chountis, in a question tabled to the European Commission, asked in relation to the privatization of the electricity company (IPTO), "How is the ruling out non-European companies from the tender bids for the 20% of the company that will be awarded to a strategic investor consistent with EU legislation and the need to achieve a better price". A few days earlier, in his speech on the same subject in the plenum of the EU Parliament, he characterized the "Commission's model for privatizations" as being a "failure".
The MEP of Popular Unity seems to have taken on the task of "correcting" the "failed EU model of privatizations", bringing other "players" into the game so that a better price can be achieved for the sale of IPTO.
It is apparent that the cadres of Popular Unity were well trained through their participation in bourgeois management, during the 1st SYRIZA-ANEL government, and have become experts in privatizations and advancing capitalist barbarity.

International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-left-traffic-cops-of-capitalism/

IMF and Troika Want Still More Austerity From Greece–The ‘Wikileaks’ Revelation
by worker


IMF and Troika Want Still More Austerity From Greece–The ‘Wikileaks’ Revelation

April 18, 2016 by jackrasmus

(This article was published by the author in Telesur Media English Edition, April 17, 2016)

Last August 2015, after eight months of intense negotiations with Europe’s Troika financial institutions—the IMF, European Central Bank, and European Commission—the Greek Government capitulated to the Troika’s demands imposing more austerity on Greece and its people in exchange for another $98 billion in additional loans.

The $98 billion did not represent economic assistance to Greece, to stimulate its economy, but was earmarked almost exclusively to pay back interest to the Troika, Europe banks, and Europe investors for prior loans made to Greece in 2012, 2010, and before. But while the Greek people would see little real benefit, they would have to pay the price. In exchange for the $98 billion in new credit, the August 2015 debt restructuring deal required Greece to even further cut pensions, axe more government jobs and cut wages, raise taxes, accelerate the sales of public works (ports, airports, utilities, etc.) to private investors, and to in effect turn over Greek banks to the Troika and its northern Europe banker and investor friends.

To ensure Greece would not renege on the August 2015 deal, it would now also have to submit to vetoes by Troika representatives sent to Greece to oversee virtually all policy decisions made by Greece’s democratically elected Parliament or local governments. The Troika last year thus tightened its grip on Greece both politically and economically to ensure it would receive debt payments from Greece no matter how harsh the austerity terms.

The Greek government may have thought it had a debt deal, albeit a dirty one, last August 2015; but recent developments are now beginning to reveal it was only temporary. Worse is yet to come. The Troika grip on Greece is about to tighten still further, as revelations in recent weeks show Troika plans to renege on last year’s terms and demand even more draconian austerity measures. Leading the Troika attack on Greece once again is the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, one of the Troika’s three institutional partners.

IMF Secret Plans to Impose Further Austerity on Greece

This past April 2, 2016, Wikileaks released transcripts of a secret teleconference among IMF officials that occurred on March 19. In it, leading IMF directors expressed concern that discussions between Greece and the IMF’s Troika partner, the European Commission, on terms of implementing last August’s deal were going too slowly. The Eurozone and Greek economies have been deteriorating since last August. Still more austerity would thus be needed, according to the discussions among the IMF participants in the teleconference. And to get Greece to agree, perhaps a new ‘crisis event’ would have to be provoked.

The original August 2015 deal called for Greece to introduce austerity measures that would result in a 3.5% annual GDP budget surplus obtained from spending cuts, tax hikes, and public works’ sales needed to make the debt repayments to the Troika. But the IMF’s latest forecast for 2016 is that Greece in 2016 would have a -1.5% GDP budget deficit, not a 3.5% budget surplus. And 2015, for which numbers are not yet available, was probably even worse. Getting from -1.5% or worse to 3.5% was thus virtually impossible, according to the IMF discussants on March 19, and therefore additional austerity measures were necessary.

According to the IMF, the additional austerity would have to occur in the form of ‘broadening the tax base’—a phrase typically associated with making households with lower incomes pay more taxes instead of just raising tax rates on the top income households. The IMF thus rejected taxing the rich further, and instead taxing middle and working classes more. In addition, still more pension cuts would also prove necessary, as well as other measures.

The IMF secret teleconference further revealed that the IMF was increasingly concerned that the European Commission, in the midst of discussions with Greece on the details of the implementation of the August deal with Greece, might agree prematurely to grant some kind of ‘debt relief’ to Greece. The IMF was strongly opposed to ‘up front’ debt relief. All talk of debt relief should be postponed for at least another two years, according to the IMF’s secret discussions.

The private teleconference also revealed the IMF was growing increasingly concerned that Greece’s major debt payment to the Troika due this coming July 2016 might not be paid. The default on the payment would come within weeks of a possible United Kingdom exit (Brexit) from the European Union, scheduled for a vote in the UK on June 23, 2016. If the UK exited, and Greece could not pay, it might raise renewed interest—the IMF feared—in a Greek exit (Grexit) as well as a UK ‘Brexit’. The IMF’s March 19 teleconference therefore raised the idea that further austerity should be considered and proposed on Greece and quickly, before the June 23 UK ‘Brexit’ referendum in that country.

The IMF’s April 15, Press Conference

The ‘firestorm’ over the leak of the IMF’s plans for new and more austerity for Greece, prompted public responses by Greece, as well as a clarifying press conference by the IMF’s European directors on April 15, 2016.

Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, publicly replied, noting Greece was already undertaking “an ambitious reform of income tax and a major overhaul of the Greek pension system”—the former providing a revenue of 1% of GDP and the pension reform and even greater 1.5% by 2018. With pensioners carrying the greatest burden of the austerity terms, why should the very rich be given relief with more taxation imposed on the middle and working classes by ‘broadening’ the tax base—i.e. making it less progressive, Tsipras inquired?

Wolfgang Schaueble, hard line German finance minister, who led the forces imposing even more austerity on Greece in August 2015, responded that debt relief was “not necessary” and ruled out any debt relief whatsoever for Greece, in 2018 or at any time. Schauble added that IMF refusal to participate in the August 2015 Greek debt deal unless the terms of the deal were changed to suit the IMF (which did not sign the deal as yet), would collapse the 2015 deal altogether.

In the IMF’s press briefing of April 15, 2016 Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF’s European department, responded that the IMF could not participate in the bailout without debt relief in some form, but left the door open as to what debt relief actually meant. Thomsen repeated his proposal to “broaden the tax base” and not raise taxes further on the rich.

Behind the apparent Schauble vs. IMF disagreement is the implication that ‘debt relief’ would require some kind of what is called ‘haircut’ and reduction in interest and/or principal for those investors holding bonds issued by the Troika on Greek debt. That’s what Schauble and European bankers don’t want. The IMF thus assured that debt relief did not require ‘haircuts’.

The Meaning of the IMF’s New Attack on Greece

What the new developments reveal is that fractures are emerging within the Troika and the Euro elites in general over the Greek debt deal of last August, as Europe’s economy continues to falter. New crises have emerged in Europe, including the cost of refugee settlement and the great economic uncertainty associated with the possible UK ‘Brexit’ this June. Europe’s central bank monetary policies are also clearly failing in the face of a steadily slowing global economy.

At the same time, the IMF itself is facing additional challenges supporting an even worse economic crisis in the Ukraine, which it has also committed to bail out but which is collapsing faster than predicted. Meanwhile, on the horizon are growing stresses in emerging market economies that have accumulated $50 trillion in additional debt since 2009, which threaten to lay claims on the IMF in the not too distant future. The IMF is no doubt looking over its shoulder at even greater potential challenges than Greece.

In short, the deteriorating conditions in the global economy are beginning to converge, and the Troika, Europe, IMF are all feeling the heat as the economic temperature rises. Another debt crisis in Greece is inevitable. But it may occur at a juncture at which it appears the least of the economic problems facing the global economy.

Jack Rasmus is author of the recent book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, Clarity Press, January 2016, and the forthcoming, ‘Looting Greece: The Emerging New Financial Imperialism’, Clarity Press, June 2016. He blogs at jackrasmus.com.

https://jackrasmus.com/2016/04/18/imf-and-troika-want-still-more-austerity-from-greece-the-wikileaks-revelation/

PM Tsipras praises Greek Shipowners, SYRIZA's love-affair with the big Capital goes on

http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-grid-8/public/MediaV2/20160606/tsipras-sta-egkainia-diethnoys-naytiliakhs-ektheshs.jpg?itok=xmMBkFHf
In Defense of Communism, with info from 902.gr.

The Greek shipping industry is a global power in the maritime sector. In 2015, the Greek Merchant Navy controlled the world's largest merchant fleet in terms of tonnage. Shipowners from Greece epitomize the power of the Greek bourgeoisie- according to a 1975 law, they have at least 70 tax breaks (!), while their fortunes are estimated in billions of dollars.

The Greek Prime Minister- and SYRIZA's leader- Alexis Tsipras choosed the Maritime exhibition "Posidonia 2016" in order to express his strong will to serve the interests of the shipping industry. Addressing the event in Athens, Tsipras called the ship-owning billionaires to "trust the government" and praised the Greek shipping capital for it's "plan" and "vision". In his effort to convince the shipping giants that his government is an ally of the bourgeois-class, Alexis Tsipras said: "We feel the need to convince the Greek shipowners to trust us as far as we try to reform the Greek economy".

While Mr.Tsipras and his government extend the harsh, barbaric austerity against people, he invites the big Capital in a common front for the restart of Greece's economy. This is the "development model" that Alexis Tsipras and the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government want. A "development" for the interests of the big Capital; a strong shipping industry with immense profits and no rights for the workers.
At least €140 billion of shipping industry money has gone untaxed since 2002 (Der Spiegel, 2014), while up to €60 billion, mostly belonging to shipping giants, are estimated to be the Greek funds in Switzerland. In first half of 2011, the 16% of the total capital given for ship-building internationally, was belonging to Greek-owned companies - What the Capitalist Economic Crisis has taught us; June 1, 2016.
The "fair development" of Tsipras is the following: huge profitability for the Greek shipping giants which are privileged with numerous tax breaks, low wages and no working rights for the dockworkers and the formation of a market in the tourist sector (ferry links in the Aegean and Ionian Seas) according to the interests of the shipping companies.


Meanwhile, the Shipping Industry seem to be very pleased by the stance of Tsipras' government. Talking to reporters, the President of the Greek Shipowners Union Theodoros Veniamis said that the Prime Minister's remaks were "The best!" and added: "What's best for the Maritime Industry other than that?".

Once again, Alexis Tsipras and his government prove that they are servants of the big Capital. The supposed "radical leftism" of SYRIZA has been proved a total joke; a tragic joke for the Greek working people, for the low-income people and pensioners.

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http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/06/pm-tsipras-praises-greek-shipowners.html

CHRONOLOGY WHAT HAPPENED TO GREECE IN 2016

5 of January.- Greece placed thousand 625 million in Treasury bills to six months at a rate of 2.97 percent, the same rate as in the previous auction a month ago. As reported by the Authority of Public Debt Management (PDMA), demand was 1.30 times the thousand 250 million initial offering.

8 January.- Thousands of people protested in the streets of Athens by the pension reform. The Greek government proposed a reduction in the amount of between 15 percent and 30 percent since 2018.

12 January.- Greece placed 812.5 million euros in Treasury bills to three months at an interest rate of 2.70 percent, the same level as in the previous auction on December 16. As reported by the Authority of Public Debt Management (PDMA), demand was 813 million euros, exceeding 1.30 times the 625 million initial offering.

13 January.- Greece left behind deflation in December after 33 consecutive months of year declines in prices and entering into technical recession in February 2014.

14 January.- At the request of the Bank of Greece, the ECB cut in 3000 800 million euros the ceiling of credits can apply for Greek banks through emergency liquidity mechanism (ELA), after the bank recapitalization.

29 January.- debts of citizens and companies with Greek Finance exceeded 85 billion euros in December 2015, 15 percent higher than it was a year ago, and much of this debt is estimated unrecoverable, they correspond to companies that have gone bankrupt.

4 of February.- The first general strike of the year against pension reform paralyzes Greece, impacts trade and achieves the accession of liberal professionals and taxi drivers. Mass demonstrations were held in Athens and other cities helenas.

12 February.- Greece falls back into recession after stringing two quarters with declines of GDP. The Greek economy shrank 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter, after having made ​​1.4 percent in the third, according to Eurostat data. 18 February.- The European Central Bank cut at the request of the Bank of Greece in 100 million ceiling of credits that can apply the Hellenes banks through the mechanism for providing emergency liquidity (ELA for its acronym in English) to 71 000 400 million.

29 February.- Greek statistics office ELSTAT revised upwards the evolution of the Greek economy in the fourth quarter of 2015. Now estimated to have grown by 0.1 percent from the previous three months, while in its initial forecast MoM expected a contraction of 0.6 percent of GDP. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2014, GDP fell by 0.8 percent, while the initial estimate forecast a contraction of 1.9 percent.

7 March.- The Eurogroup gives green light to return to Athens from Tuesday to representatives of creditors (IMF, EU and ECB) to continue the review of the reforms the Greek government.

17 March.- The European Central Bank reduced at the request of the Bank of Greece in 100 million euros the ceiling of credits that can apply the Hellenes banks through the provision of liquidity mechanism (ELA).

8 April.- Greece sells the country 's largest port -The Piraeus, near Athens - Chinese state giant COSCO Shipping Corporation for 368.5 million euros.

22 April.- Creditors are "very close" to agreement on the first revision of the third bailout for Greece, sine qua non to start "serious debate" about the sustainability of Greek debt.

6 May.- General 48 - hour strike against pension reform and tax increases.

8 May.- The Greek Parliament approves the tax and pension reform, amid strong public protests.

May.- 25 Ministers of Economy and Finance of the euro area had seen political good in the first revision of the third bailout of Greece in the early hours of Wednesday, which 10 thousand 300 million euros are unlocked.

16 June.- Tsipras announced an ambitious investment plan, initiated by European funds, to stimulate the economy and halving unemployment by 2021.

17 June.- green light was given to a new immediate disbursement of 7 000 500 million euros to Greece -from the third heleno- rescue after they close the complex and first review of compliance with the requirements in the country.

23 June.- The European Central Bank (ECB) has reduced, at the request of the Bank of Greece in 7 billion euros, the ceiling of credits that can apply the Hellenes banks through the provision of liquidity mechanism (ELA) .

Greece and the United Kingdom against the establishment
Last June 23 took place in the UK a referendum to decide if they stayed or not within the European Union and to the delight of many and the surprise of others, citizens reaffirmed expressed by Greece a year ago: it has become necessary a change in European policies.

52 percent of citizens he was in favor of leaving the bloc compared to 48 percent who defends the idea of ​​continuing inside.




With the Oxi in Greece and brexit in UK have become even more noticeable the growing social discrediting of EU policies: the failure of the rules and parameters for the reception of refugees in the continent and institutions are increasingly questioned by authoritarianism and lack of democratic legitimacy in their decisions.

Experts say that the EU project is in crisis, so the construction of an alternative plan for the old continent is necessary.

Although most British people bet on the expected change, the Greek experience indicates that the result of a referendum is not always respected, so that the UK is the expectation of what might happen.

Although the current government has pledged to respect the result of the referendum, this process was raised as an advisory, non-binding, therefore the triumph of brexit not necessarily imply that this will have to materialize.

So far the call for new British elections is not ruled out because Prime Minister David Cameron, announced his resignation and the Labour Party there are also many pressures for their leader to step down.

To follow the brexit Parliament must approve the decision, and so far 60 percent of parliamentarians want to stay in the EU. Meanwhile, Cameron does not intend to refer the matter to a vote until after the summer and it is possible that when performed no longer the prime minister, or even general elections were called.

Should this happen the new Parliament may not feel bound by the query.

The question is that, although the regional bloc poses economic and social cooperation among member countries, it is clear that what is claimed is a review and modification of policies and actions of the EU.

more at link

https://social.shorthand.com/teleSURtv/jCPwRPVXk5f/grecia-a-un-ano-del-referendo

Google Translator

Government on defensive after Plan B revelations

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Revelations by American economist James Galbraith about a Plan B for Greece drafted by former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis on Tuesday fueled a political storm, with New Democracy securing approval from Parliament for a discussion on setting up a House investigative committee into last year’s negotiations with creditors and the imposition of capital controls.

In his book “Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe,” Galbraith reveals that Varoufakis’s plan foresaw a state of emergency, the nationalization of the Bank of Greece, the transformation of bank deposits into a New Drachma and emergency public order measures.

Commenting, ND spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos said Galbraith’s revelations made ND’s longstanding demand for an investigation even more pressing. “This dark period must be fully illuminated,” he said. “The future of the country and of the Greek people was gambled.”

Responding to the request, Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis said a discussion would be held at the end of July.
In separate interviews with state television ERT, State Minister Nikos Pappas and Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias defended the government’s record, including its decision to hold a referendum on austerity last summer.

Pappas spoke of “pressures” from eurozone finance ministers last year and said Varoufakis had proposed the continuation of the previous bailout program of former prime minister Antonis Samaras.

“That would have been a painful choice which we fortunately avoided, achieving an extension of the agreement,” Pappas said.

Noting that, “at some point, everything must be said,” Kotzias said Varoufakis had pressed for a quick deal, “warning that that the ATMs were at risk of closing.”

“He said he would take responsibility for the February agreement, which was much worse than the outcome of the second negotiation,” he added.

In comments to Kathimerini, Varoufakis said the government was “confused.” “It can’t be that the different sides of the same status quo accuse me of being a destructive force on the one hand and a supporter of memorandums on the other,” he said.

As for Pappas’s claim that he wanted to continue Samaras’s agreement, Varoufakis said, “Nothing had been agreed by the Samaras government to continue.”

http://www.ekathimerini.com/210177/article/ekathimerini/news/government-on-defensive-after-plan-b-revelations

Varoufakis should be shunned like a plague dog.

In A Mess Of Corruption & Neoliberal Austerity, Syriza Sells Greece Out To The Highest Bidders

Rather than casting off the shackles of the EU, eurozone and IMF, the Syriza-led Greek government favors the ‘oligarchs’ it once vowed to tear down and doubles down on austerity measures, leaving Greek people to suffer through a modern colonial nightmare.
By Michael Nevradakis @dialogosmedia | September 12, 2016


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FILE - In this Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015 file photo, a man walks past street art depicting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens, Greece. Tsipras' decision to sign off on a bailout led to many in his left-wing Syriza party to quit in protest.

ATHENS — (Analysis) Stories of human suffering continue to multiply in present-day Greece, which is loosely governed by the “first time left” government of Syriza and more directly by the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund.

In the city of Patra, an elderly woman whose only source of income is her severely battered pension, from which she supports her two grandchildren, had her electricity service cut in the presence of a police SWAT team, despite her reliance on an oxygen concentrator to live. Her son was arrested for protesting the action and brought before a prosecutor.

Police in the city of Katerini, implementing the government’s crusade against purported “tax evaders” to the letter, arrested a father of three, whose spouse is unemployed, for selling pastries on the street without a license, fining him €5,000 ($5,627) for the infraction. The man is well-known in his community for donating his unsold pastries to local children and a local home for seniors at the end of each day.

I’ve also heard the story of an impoverished cancer patient in Thessaloniki, who, according to the eyes of the law, was another one of those lazy, corrupt Greeks guilty of dipping their hands too deeply into the public trough. Her meal card which allowed her to eat at a local soup kitchen was revoked, simply because she was concurrently receiving state aid for being a cancer patient.

On the island of Samos, a short distance from the Turkish coast, uniformed German police freely patrol the streets of the main town, Vathi, purportedly on the lookout for refugees, while German coast guard boats sit docked in the harbor. A few kilometers away, in the mountain village of Manolates, residents and shopkeepers listen to Turkish music on the radio—as no reception of Greek broadcasters was possible.

Finally, in my own neighborhood in Athens, 17 out of 22 storefronts lie vacant in a three-block stretch, “for rent” signs fading slowly from view. A once-beautiful park and playground lies vacant, entrances chained shut, while overgrown weeds cover this former piece of urban green space.

None of these stories are likely to make it into Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ forthcoming state of the union speech at the Thessaloniki Trade Fair. The prime minister is much more likely to tell us that unemployment has purportedly decreased, that Greece has emerged from recession (just as it supposedly did in 2014), that industrial production has dramatically increased, that the country is returning to economic growth, and that it is pursuing closer defense and military ties with the United States and NATO.

Syriza-led Greek state strips itself of sovereignty
Reality, however, is much more grim. In May, without parliamentary debate, the Syriza-led government passed a 7,500 page omnibus bill that transferred control over Greece’s public assets to a fund controlled by the European Stability Mechanism for the next 99 years.

These assets include airports, harbors, public beaches and coastline, and natural resources.

Earlier this year, 14 profitable regional airports were sold to the German publicly-owned corporation Fraport, while a majority stake in the port of Piraeus, one of the largest ports in Europe, was sold to Chinese-owned Cosco for €365 million—equal to 15 days’ worth of debt repayments—while its facilities alone are valued at more than €5 billion. The national railway, TRAINOSE, including all infrastructure and trains, was sold to Italy’s Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane for a mere €45 million, with the company’s debt was written off as part of the sale. The site of the former international airport of Athens, once slated to become Europe’s largest urban park, was sold to a consortium of investors from Greece, China, and the United Arab Emirates, led by the Latsis family of Greek shipping tycoons, who plan to construct luxury resorts and shopping malls on the site.

In May, Syriza’s cabinet presented plans to sell a 49-percent stake in the water utilities of Athens and Thessaloniki, plus 18 additional privatizations instead of the nine initially agreed to with creditors in the third memorandum. Prior to being elected in January 2015, Syriza promised to put an end to the privatization of public assets, and it vowed not to privatize water in its September 2015 platform.

Nevertheless, the Syriza government has committed to completing the privatization of numerous key assets, including the natural gas utility and the state’s stake in Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos international airport, by November.

Also as part of the omnibus bill, the Greek parliament rendered itself voteless, as the legislation annuls the role of parliament to create a national budget or pass tax legislation. In earlier legislation, the government had agreed to submit all pending bills to the group of lenders known as the “troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank, and the IMF) for approval, reminiscent of the German Reichstag’s willful relinquishment of legislative power to then-Chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1933.



Taxes skyrocket and Greeks are unable to pay
Further illustrating just how much sovereignty has been stripped from the Greek state, the omnibus legislation also foresees the activation of automatic spending cuts, including salaries, without any parliamentary intervention if Greece fails to achieve targets for a primary surplus. In order to attain a primary surplus, spending has already been slashed dramatically, furthering the spiral of austerity Tsipras had once promised to end with “one law and one article.”

Instead of austerity being abolished with one law and one article, Greek citizens have a new, crippling tax avalanche to look forward to beginning this autumn. On Aug. 29, this year’s unified property tax (ENFIA) was sent out to all property owners, with seven in ten businesses facing an increase this year. This is the same tax which members of the Syriza-Independent Greeks coalition government had denounced prior to being elected, claiming it was unconstitutional, promising to repeal it once in office, and instructing citizens on how to avoid paying it.

Once Syriza and the Independent Greeks came to power, however, payment of the ENFIA was described by the government as a “patriotic duty.”

Meanwhile, the Greek government is preparing to introduce a nationwide “asset registry” for taxation purposes, in which citizens will be obliged to declare not only their incomes and real estate, but everything from jewelry to family heirlooms, and even the amount of cash in their possession. This Orwellian measure will be supplemented by a national transaction registry, where essentially every bank transaction and purchase from each citizen will be tracked. Within five years, owners of homes and commercial buildings will be required to hire civil engineers to submit detailed blueprints and videos of their structures in order obtain a “structural identification” certificate—or risk steep fines or demolition.

These new taxes and measures are set to be enforced despite the growing inability of citizens and businesses to pay. The first half of 2016 saw a €1 billion shortfall in the collection of the value-added tax, while €272 million worth of income taxes for this year—about 25 percent of total expected revenue—remains unpaid. This is not due to a purported culture of “tax evasion,” but due to declining incomes and a general inability to pay.

Evidence of citizens’ inability to pay abounds. Deposits in Greece’s shattered banking system declined by €160 million in July alone. The number of employed people not being paid has reached 1 million, and 500,000 Greeks are paid less than €412 per month for their labor.

Eurostat figures from the fourth quarter of 2015 show that just 4.3 percent of the unemployed in Greece were able to find jobs. Greek families, who once took pride in passing property down from generation to generation, leading to the highest rate of homeownership in Europe, now find themselves rejecting inheritances from deceased relatives in record numbers, due to the tremendous tax burden.



Further fueling the oncoming storm, the Syriza government has committed to sweeping home foreclosures and auctions this autumn, while confiscations of funds from ever-dwindling bank accounts for unpaid debts to the state continue unabated. The government estimates it will collect over €2 billion from these confiscations by the end of the year.

In the meantime, the omnibus bill passed in May lowered the basic pension to a paltry €345-384 per month, while the value-added tax on many basic goods, including necessities like soap, was hiked to 24 percent. Following the initial slashing of basic pensions by up to 48 percent in June, aid for poor families and the disabled has been slashed almost in half beginning with this month’s payments.

Supplementary pensions for 150,000 recipients have been cut further, by as much as 38 percent, with further reductions slated for October. In response to the cuts, Giorgos Katrougalos, the labor minister who participated in the 2011 protests of the anti-austerity “indignants,” stated that the new system will “protect all Greeks from poverty,” adding that had pensions not been reduced, they would not be issued at all. Not convinced, pensioners have already begun to protest outside government ministries.

Meanwhile, the number of households which qualify for subsidized heating oil has been cut in half, the fuel and oil tax has once again been hiked, co-payments on prescription drugs covered by public insurance funds have been raised by 25 percent, while suffering small businesses have been further burdened by an increase in their tax rate from 26 percent to 29 percent. In a recent televised interview, Syriza MP Hara Kafantari stated that “the days where a shop owner was his own boss are over.” This perhaps helps explain why Greece’s burgeoning startup scene is being driven out amid Syriza’s excessive and unpredictable taxation.



Broadcasting licensing process rife with corruption
Syriza’s recent licensing bid for national television broadcasters is emblematic of its reign in office thus far. Diaploki is a Greek word which perfectly sums up the triangle of corruption and interplay between major political and business interests and the state. One of Syriza’s numerous pre-election pledges was to rout the “oligarchs” who control the media and much of the economy and put an end to this diaploki.

On Sept. 1, the Syriza-led government triumphantly claimed to have fulfilled this promise through the completion of the auctioning process for four licenses for national “general-interest” television stations. This announcement was accompanied by claims that “fairness” and “rule of law” had been “restored” after 27 years of “lawlessness” on the Greek airwaves (broadcasters have up until now been operating under a framework of provisional legality).

In Greece, the rabbit hole of diaploki runs deep—and this has not changed in the slightest during Syriza’s reign. The bidding process was both farcical and inhuman: The bidders were said to have been locked in isolated rooms in the headquarters of the Greek Secretariat for Press and Media, without any ability to communicate with each other or with the outside world for 70 hours, purportedly to ensure a “clean” bidding process.

In reality, though, the process was rife with illegalities, contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities, and it completely lacked transparency. It has also put six of Greece’s eight largest private television broadcasters in danger of being forced off the airwaves by the year’s end, including the top station in the ratings, Alpha TV.

Most significantly, perhaps, is the fact that the licensing process was conducted by the government itself, instead of by Greece’s independent licensing body for broadcasters, the National Commission for Radio-Television (NCRTV), which has remained defunct for most of the past year. This contradicts both the Greek constitution and European regulations which call for licensing processes to be conducted by independent bodies. The bid was based on the false premise that there were only enough frequencies available to license four national privately-owned broadcasters—two frequencies with two HD outlets each.

This claim is contradicted by the hundreds of digital stations broadcasting in Italian cities and the multiple HD channels per frequency on Britain’s Freeview service.

Further, while the government has repeatedly hinted that licenses for national “thematic” (special-interest stations) will be issued, it has not stated when this will happen, how many licenses will be issued, or through which process.

This immediately contradicts the government’s claim that, aside from technical reasons, the number of national general-interest licenses was limited to four due to the limited size of the Greek advertising market and the purported desire to ensure economically “viable” licensees.

How could bidders gauge their viability and bid accordingly, without knowing what the future marketplace will look like?

Adding to the confusion, upon completion of the licensing process, the government announced that it is pushing back the licensing process for “thematic” stations indefinitely and intends to instead focus next on the licensing of regional broadcasters through a similar process which would put most of Greece’s 100-plus regional stations at risk of being forced off the air. Already having been battered by the economic crisis, these regional stations would be unable to afford the steep cost of participating in the bidding process.

Following this, thematic licenses may be issued on a national basis, while similar licensing procedures for radio have been forewarned.

The licensing process also does not include any criteria whatsoever for the quality of programming, for balanced news presentation, or for public service programming. The only criterion which mattered was money, and with a limited amount of licenses being issued, the cost of each license was artificially driven upward, ensuring only the deepest of deep pockets–oligarchs, in other words–could participate.

It also ensured that should this licensing process be finalized and not legally struck down, Greece might just become the first country where fewer television stations will remain on the air in the digital era, instead of more.



Once out to fight the ‘oligarchs,’ Syriza’s given them TV stations instead
Syriza has repeatedly promised to “clean up” the airwaves and end diaploki. But just who are the oligarchs who successfully bid for licenses? Two of them, Giannis Alafouzos and Theodoros Kyriakou, own incumbent broadcasters Skai TV and Antenna TV, respectively. These two stations led the vociferous “pro-yes” media brigade prior to the July 2015 referendum.

Alafouzos, a shipowner, was found to be in possession of over €50 million in undeclared funds and had his assets frozen last month, pending an investigation for tax evasion. One of Skai’s main commentators, Bambis Papadimitriou, is notorious for having suggested that the previous conservative government of New Democracy could benefit from forming a coalition with a “serious” Golden Dawn, Greece’s far-right party.

Antenna TV, like Skai, is owned by a family of shipping and oil magnates. Antenna Group’s investments span multiple industries and over a dozen countries, while the station’s founder, Minos Kyriakou, has had his share of legal troubles in the past, including a jail sentence for illegal structures constructed in the resort region of Porto Heli (this sentence was later appealed down to a fine). Antenna, like Skai, also vehemently supported the pro-austerity “yes” vote in the 2015 referendum, likening the “yes” versus “no” option to a choice between being like Europe or “becoming Zimbabwe.”

The cases of the other two licensees, neither of whom are currently in possession of a television station, are even more egregious. One of the winning bidders is Vaggelis Marinakis, a shipping mogul and football magnate, who is facing at least five criminal investigations on charges ranging from match-fixing to directing a criminal organization.

Marinakis is also said to have been involved in the case of the “Noor 1,” a ship which Greek authorities found to be transporting 2.1 tons of heroin and which may be linked to Marinakis through close associates of his. Marinakis is a city councilman in Piraeus, while his right-hand man from the Olympiacos football club, Yannis Moralis, is mayor. Together, they exert control over the municipal radio station of Piraeus, Kanali 1. On Tuesday, prosecutors in Greece recommended that Marinakis be jailed pending trial on charges of match-fixing.

But perhaps the most flagrant case of all is that of Christos Kalogritsas, a former publisher-turned-construction magnate, and his son, Ioannis-Vladimiros Kalogritsas. Christos Kalogritsas’ construction firm, Toxotis S.A., is the recipient of numerous state contracts issued by the Syriza-led government for public works projects throughout Greece.

Toxotis S.A. recently purchased Medousa, a competing construction firm. It was formerly known as Tsipras ATE and owned by Pavlos Tsipras, father of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Christos Kalogritsas and his wife are currently facing civil and criminal charges for an alleged €51 million in unpaid taxes, while employees at Toxotis S.A. have previously gone on strike over six months of unpaid wages. The Kalogritsas family also owns significant shares in Attica Bank, one of the banks which has been repeatedly recapitalized by Greek taxpayers.

It is from Attica Bank that Ioannis-Vladimiros Kalogritsas provided a letter of guarantee worth €3 million in order to participate in the television licensing bid. This letter was submitted past the deadline set by the government for participation in the bid, but was nevertheless accepted.

Additionally, Christos Kalogritsas has close ties to current defense minister, Panos Kammenos; the current minister of infrastructure, transport and networks, Christos Spirtzis (whose ministry oversees public works projects and matters pertaining to broadcast frequency allocation); and celebrity television personality Nikos Evaggelatos. Kalogritsas is also said to maintain a “brotherly” friendship with current minister of state, Nikos Pappas, who oversaw the television licensing process. He is also a primary shareholder of polling firm GPO, one of the many Greek polling firms which receives state funding and which has repeatedly produced grossly inaccurate public opinion and exit poll results.

Further adding to the web of corruption, both Marinakis and the Kalogritsas family are represented by the attorney Giannis Mantzouranis. Mantzouranis also happened to represent the Greek state in the recent television licensing process. Clearly, conflicts of interest are not a concern for Syriza. In the late 1980s, Mantzouranis had been jailed as part of the wide-ranging Koskotas money-laundering scandal.

He is also one of the attorneys of investigative journalist-turned-Syriza cheerleader Kostas Vaxevanis, who through his involvement in the HellasNet network of regional television stations, stands to be one of the beneficiaries of any bid for regional TV licenses.



Diaploki is safe with Syriza in power
While Syriza is making triumphant claims of “restoring rule of law” in the television landscape, its own party-owned radio station, Sto Kokkino, went on the air illegally in 2005 after purchasing the frequency of a radio station that went unlicensed during a 2001 bid (when, again, there were claims that there was “no room” for more stations). The station in question, NRG 105.5 FM, which is under the same ownership as Athens’ Kiss FM, had illegally returned to the airwaves.

In 2006 and 2007, Sto Kokkino was shut down by authorities for broadcasting without a license, but the New Democracy government under Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis later passed a law which legalized party-owned broadcast stations, permitting them to operate without a license. Sto Kokkino was therefore “legalized.”

Meanwhile, Syriza continues to enforce a law passed by the previous conservative government which allows broadcast stations classified as “news” stations to switch classifications to “non-news,” but which does not provide the same privilege to “non-news” stations which wish to switch to news programming, thus creating a closed broadcast news marketplace. Sto Kokkino’s subsidiary stations throughout Greece violate this rule, but rather than changing the law and creating a level playing field, as Syriza is claiming to be doing now with the television licensing process, it keeps this blatantly undemocratic law as is and simply violates it for its own ends.

All of this has taken place while the NCRTV remains defunct, with no frequency table having been publicized for television stations, and with 1,000-2,000 employees in the television sector facing unemployment if their stations are forced to close. This would also create a restricted and highly centralized and controlled television market. Prime Minister Tsipras, in a recent speech celebrating the opening of a new stretch of highway (constructed by Toxotis S.A.), promised to turn over the €246 million in revenue from the licensing bid “to the poor.”

Of course, this assumes that money, which would be paid in three annual installments and only if the stations are profitable, is ever paid. Even so, EU officials have already stated that it will go toward Greece’s commitments to its lenders, not to the impoverished. They’ve also questioned the licensing process itself.

Tsipras also omitted from his speech the loss of tax receipts and insurance fund contributions from the six stations slated to shut down, and the combined €700 million in debts they owe to Greek banks, which would likely go unpaid if they go off the air and be thrust upon the shoulders of Greek taxpayers instead via yet another recapitalization.

Make no mistake: Syriza’s “efforts” are not just contained to broadcast licensing. Syriza intends to create a state-run body to allocate advertising across media outlets, retaining a 30-percent commission for the state. Earlier in the year, government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili announced the government’s intention to “restore order to the internet,” beginning with the creation of a registry of online news outlets and blogs. Registration was mandatory for all outlets which wished to be considered for state advertising expenditures—an easy way for any government to pay its way into the hearts of media owners.

Another way is through patronage, as in the case of Giorgos Christoforidis, publisher of the (once) anti-austerity newspaper To Xoni and former candidate for parliament with the Independent Greeks. Christoforidis was appointed to a post in the government’s press office while continuing to publish To Xoni.



Is it the new left or the old right? Who can tell?
In the meantime, the Syriza-led government continues to operate with stunning arrogance and insensitivity. Proclamations are made for the “record” number of tourists visiting Greece—even while most tourist resort towns lay idle during the tourist season. In Samos, patrolled by German police, there were not many refugees in sight—nor many tourists. The vice president of the Syriza government, Giannis Dragasakis, has stated that it was a mistake for Syriza to have “demonized” the word “memorandum.”

Syriza MP Makis Balaouras recently claimed that “austerity is not in Syriza’s DNA.” Economist Rania Antonopoulou, who holds the ironic portfolio of “alternate minister for combating unemployment,” recently wrote in the Syriza-owned Avgi newspaper that “the third memorandum has strengthened Greece’s position.” Nikos Xydakis, the foreign minister, recently said that Greece has renounced much of its national sovereignty. In a “let ‘em eat cake” moment, Deputy Minister for Social Solidarity Theano Fotiou remarked that “stuffed peppers could feed an entire family.” The start of the football season has been postponed, purportedly to stamp out corruption stemming from the same “oligarchs” who received television licenses.

Defense Minister Panos Kammenos has proposed the construction of a NATO base in the southern Aegean island of Karpathos, while German-owned Fraport is preparing to install a new €13 per passenger tax at the regional airports it now controls. Over the summer, the government proudly proclaimed the “loosening” of stifling capital controls—as the restriction on bank withdrawals was changed from a €420 weekly limit, to an €840 cap every two weeks. Do the math. Schools go without janitorial staffs, university restrooms without toilet paper.

All of this while there is nary a thought of departing the eurozone or following the example of British voters and waving goodbye to the EU. The signs were there about Syriza, its neoliberal tendencies, and the ensuing betrayal of its pre-election promises. Some warned about Syriza again, and again, and again, but those warnings fell on deaf ears.

Most of the world celebrated Syriza’s victory in January 2015, while “leftist” media outlets and commentators ranging from Democracy Now! to Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and others, have long forgotten about Greece or have excused away Syriza’s betrayal as simply the result of being “bullied” and “blackmailed” by the EU—which Greece must nevertheless remain a part of at “all costs.”

In this modern-day debt colony the “leftist” government has demonstrated an astonishing arrogance in not only violating its pre-election promises and July 2015 referendum result, and agreeing to a third—and the most onerous to date—austerity program, but also continuing to pretend that it is acting in a “leftist” and “progressive” manner.

All the while, it’s keeping Greece firmly shackled to the chains of the EU, eurozone, and IMF, while the Greek people seemingly have lost their pluck, devoid of any fight, resigned to their EU shackles.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/mess-corruption-neoliberal-austerity-syriza-sells-greece-highest-bidders/220257/

Funny, not a whisper about KKE...nonetheless a damning article.

In A Mess Of Corruption & Neoliberal Austerity, Syriza Sells Greece Out To The Highest Bidders

Rather than casting off the shackles of the EU, eurozone and IMF, the Syriza-led Greek government favors the ‘oligarchs’ it once vowed to tear down and doubles down on austerity measures, leaving Greek people to suffer through a modern colonial nightmare.
By Michael Nevradakis @dialogosmedia | September 12, 2016


http://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/AP_317555125640-001.jpg
FILE - In this Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015 file photo, a man walks past street art depicting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens, Greece. Tsipras' decision to sign off on a bailout led to many in his left-wing Syriza party to quit in protest.

ATHENS — (Analysis) Stories of human suffering continue to multiply in present-day Greece, which is loosely governed by the “first time left” government of Syriza and more directly by the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund.

In the city of Patra, an elderly woman whose only source of income is her severely battered pension, from which she supports her two grandchildren, had her electricity service cut in the presence of a police SWAT team, despite her reliance on an oxygen concentrator to live. Her son was arrested for protesting the action and brought before a prosecutor.

Police in the city of Katerini, implementing the government’s crusade against purported “tax evaders” to the letter, arrested a father of three, whose spouse is unemployed, for selling pastries on the street without a license, fining him €5,000 ($5,627) for the infraction. The man is well-known in his community for donating his unsold pastries to local children and a local home for seniors at the end of each day.

I’ve also heard the story of an impoverished cancer patient in Thessaloniki, who, according to the eyes of the law, was another one of those lazy, corrupt Greeks guilty of dipping their hands too deeply into the public trough. Her meal card which allowed her to eat at a local soup kitchen was revoked, simply because she was concurrently receiving state aid for being a cancer patient.

On the island of Samos, a short distance from the Turkish coast, uniformed German police freely patrol the streets of the main town, Vathi, purportedly on the lookout for refugees, while German coast guard boats sit docked in the harbor. A few kilometers away, in the mountain village of Manolates, residents and shopkeepers listen to Turkish music on the radio—as no reception of Greek broadcasters was possible.

Finally, in my own neighborhood in Athens, 17 out of 22 storefronts lie vacant in a three-block stretch, “for rent” signs fading slowly from view. A once-beautiful park and playground lies vacant, entrances chained shut, while overgrown weeds cover this former piece of urban green space.

None of these stories are likely to make it into Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ forthcoming state of the union speech at the Thessaloniki Trade Fair. The prime minister is much more likely to tell us that unemployment has purportedly decreased, that Greece has emerged from recession (just as it supposedly did in 2014), that industrial production has dramatically increased, that the country is returning to economic growth, and that it is pursuing closer defense and military ties with the United States and NATO.

Syriza-led Greek state strips itself of sovereignty
Reality, however, is much more grim. In May, without parliamentary debate, the Syriza-led government passed a 7,500 page omnibus bill that transferred control over Greece’s public assets to a fund controlled by the European Stability Mechanism for the next 99 years.

These assets include airports, harbors, public beaches and coastline, and natural resources.

Earlier this year, 14 profitable regional airports were sold to the German publicly-owned corporation Fraport, while a majority stake in the port of Piraeus, one of the largest ports in Europe, was sold to Chinese-owned Cosco for €365 million—equal to 15 days’ worth of debt repayments—while its facilities alone are valued at more than €5 billion. The national railway, TRAINOSE, including all infrastructure and trains, was sold to Italy’s Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane for a mere €45 million, with the company’s debt was written off as part of the sale. The site of the former international airport of Athens, once slated to become Europe’s largest urban park, was sold to a consortium of investors from Greece, China, and the United Arab Emirates, led by the Latsis family of Greek shipping tycoons, who plan to construct luxury resorts and shopping malls on the site.

In May, Syriza’s cabinet presented plans to sell a 49-percent stake in the water utilities of Athens and Thessaloniki, plus 18 additional privatizations instead of the nine initially agreed to with creditors in the third memorandum. Prior to being elected in January 2015, Syriza promised to put an end to the privatization of public assets, and it vowed not to privatize water in its September 2015 platform.

Nevertheless, the Syriza government has committed to completing the privatization of numerous key assets, including the natural gas utility and the state’s stake in Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos international airport, by November.

Also as part of the omnibus bill, the Greek parliament rendered itself voteless, as the legislation annuls the role of parliament to create a national budget or pass tax legislation. In earlier legislation, the government had agreed to submit all pending bills to the group of lenders known as the “troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank, and the IMF) for approval, reminiscent of the German Reichstag’s willful relinquishment of legislative power to then-Chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1933.



Taxes skyrocket and Greeks are unable to pay
Further illustrating just how much sovereignty has been stripped from the Greek state, the omnibus legislation also foresees the activation of automatic spending cuts, including salaries, without any parliamentary intervention if Greece fails to achieve targets for a primary surplus. In order to attain a primary surplus, spending has already been slashed dramatically, furthering the spiral of austerity Tsipras had once promised to end with “one law and one article.”

Instead of austerity being abolished with one law and one article, Greek citizens have a new, crippling tax avalanche to look forward to beginning this autumn. On Aug. 29, this year’s unified property tax (ENFIA) was sent out to all property owners, with seven in ten businesses facing an increase this year. This is the same tax which members of the Syriza-Independent Greeks coalition government had denounced prior to being elected, claiming it was unconstitutional, promising to repeal it once in office, and instructing citizens on how to avoid paying it.

Once Syriza and the Independent Greeks came to power, however, payment of the ENFIA was described by the government as a “patriotic duty.”

Meanwhile, the Greek government is preparing to introduce a nationwide “asset registry” for taxation purposes, in which citizens will be obliged to declare not only their incomes and real estate, but everything from jewelry to family heirlooms, and even the amount of cash in their possession. This Orwellian measure will be supplemented by a national transaction registry, where essentially every bank transaction and purchase from each citizen will be tracked. Within five years, owners of homes and commercial buildings will be required to hire civil engineers to submit detailed blueprints and videos of their structures in order obtain a “structural identification” certificate—or risk steep fines or demolition.

These new taxes and measures are set to be enforced despite the growing inability of citizens and businesses to pay. The first half of 2016 saw a €1 billion shortfall in the collection of the value-added tax, while €272 million worth of income taxes for this year—about 25 percent of total expected revenue—remains unpaid. This is not due to a purported culture of “tax evasion,” but due to declining incomes and a general inability to pay.

Evidence of citizens’ inability to pay abounds. Deposits in Greece’s shattered banking system declined by €160 million in July alone. The number of employed people not being paid has reached 1 million, and 500,000 Greeks are paid less than €412 per month for their labor.

Eurostat figures from the fourth quarter of 2015 show that just 4.3 percent of the unemployed in Greece were able to find jobs. Greek families, who once took pride in passing property down from generation to generation, leading to the highest rate of homeownership in Europe, now find themselves rejecting inheritances from deceased relatives in record numbers, due to the tremendous tax burden.



Further fueling the oncoming storm, the Syriza government has committed to sweeping home foreclosures and auctions this autumn, while confiscations of funds from ever-dwindling bank accounts for unpaid debts to the state continue unabated. The government estimates it will collect over €2 billion from these confiscations by the end of the year.

In the meantime, the omnibus bill passed in May lowered the basic pension to a paltry €345-384 per month, while the value-added tax on many basic goods, including necessities like soap, was hiked to 24 percent. Following the initial slashing of basic pensions by up to 48 percent in June, aid for poor families and the disabled has been slashed almost in half beginning with this month’s payments.

Supplementary pensions for 150,000 recipients have been cut further, by as much as 38 percent, with further reductions slated for October. In response to the cuts, Giorgos Katrougalos, the labor minister who participated in the 2011 protests of the anti-austerity “indignants,” stated that the new system will “protect all Greeks from poverty,” adding that had pensions not been reduced, they would not be issued at all. Not convinced, pensioners have already begun to protest outside government ministries.

Meanwhile, the number of households which qualify for subsidized heating oil has been cut in half, the fuel and oil tax has once again been hiked, co-payments on prescription drugs covered by public insurance funds have been raised by 25 percent, while suffering small businesses have been further burdened by an increase in their tax rate from 26 percent to 29 percent. In a recent televised interview, Syriza MP Hara Kafantari stated that “the days where a shop owner was his own boss are over.” This perhaps helps explain why Greece’s burgeoning startup scene is being driven out amid Syriza’s excessive and unpredictable taxation.



Broadcasting licensing process rife with corruption
Syriza’s recent licensing bid for national television broadcasters is emblematic of its reign in office thus far. Diaploki is a Greek word which perfectly sums up the triangle of corruption and interplay between major political and business interests and the state. One of Syriza’s numerous pre-election pledges was to rout the “oligarchs” who control the media and much of the economy and put an end to this diaploki.

On Sept. 1, the Syriza-led government triumphantly claimed to have fulfilled this promise through the completion of the auctioning process for four licenses for national “general-interest” television stations. This announcement was accompanied by claims that “fairness” and “rule of law” had been “restored” after 27 years of “lawlessness” on the Greek airwaves (broadcasters have up until now been operating under a framework of provisional legality).

In Greece, the rabbit hole of diaploki runs deep—and this has not changed in the slightest during Syriza’s reign. The bidding process was both farcical and inhuman: The bidders were said to have been locked in isolated rooms in the headquarters of the Greek Secretariat for Press and Media, without any ability to communicate with each other or with the outside world for 70 hours, purportedly to ensure a “clean” bidding process.

In reality, though, the process was rife with illegalities, contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities, and it completely lacked transparency. It has also put six of Greece’s eight largest private television broadcasters in danger of being forced off the airwaves by the year’s end, including the top station in the ratings, Alpha TV.

Most significantly, perhaps, is the fact that the licensing process was conducted by the government itself, instead of by Greece’s independent licensing body for broadcasters, the National Commission for Radio-Television (NCRTV), which has remained defunct for most of the past year. This contradicts both the Greek constitution and European regulations which call for licensing processes to be conducted by independent bodies. The bid was based on the false premise that there were only enough frequencies available to license four national privately-owned broadcasters—two frequencies with two HD outlets each.

This claim is contradicted by the hundreds of digital stations broadcasting in Italian cities and the multiple HD channels per frequency on Britain’s Freeview service.

Further, while the government has repeatedly hinted that licenses for national “thematic” (special-interest stations) will be issued, it has not stated when this will happen, how many licenses will be issued, or through which process.

This immediately contradicts the government’s claim that, aside from technical reasons, the number of national general-interest licenses was limited to four due to the limited size of the Greek advertising market and the purported desire to ensure economically “viable” licensees.

How could bidders gauge their viability and bid accordingly, without knowing what the future marketplace will look like?

Adding to the confusion, upon completion of the licensing process, the government announced that it is pushing back the licensing process for “thematic” stations indefinitely and intends to instead focus next on the licensing of regional broadcasters through a similar process which would put most of Greece’s 100-plus regional stations at risk of being forced off the air. Already having been battered by the economic crisis, these regional stations would be unable to afford the steep cost of participating in the bidding process.

Following this, thematic licenses may be issued on a national basis, while similar licensing procedures for radio have been forewarned.

The licensing process also does not include any criteria whatsoever for the quality of programming, for balanced news presentation, or for public service programming. The only criterion which mattered was money, and with a limited amount of licenses being issued, the cost of each license was artificially driven upward, ensuring only the deepest of deep pockets–oligarchs, in other words–could participate.

It also ensured that should this licensing process be finalized and not legally struck down, Greece might just become the first country where fewer television stations will remain on the air in the digital era, instead of more.



Once out to fight the ‘oligarchs,’ Syriza’s given them TV stations instead
Syriza has repeatedly promised to “clean up” the airwaves and end diaploki. But just who are the oligarchs who successfully bid for licenses? Two of them, Giannis Alafouzos and Theodoros Kyriakou, own incumbent broadcasters Skai TV and Antenna TV, respectively. These two stations led the vociferous “pro-yes” media brigade prior to the July 2015 referendum.

Alafouzos, a shipowner, was found to be in possession of over €50 million in undeclared funds and had his assets frozen last month, pending an investigation for tax evasion. One of Skai’s main commentators, Bambis Papadimitriou, is notorious for having suggested that the previous conservative government of New Democracy could benefit from forming a coalition with a “serious” Golden Dawn, Greece’s far-right party.

Antenna TV, like Skai, is owned by a family of shipping and oil magnates. Antenna Group’s investments span multiple industries and over a dozen countries, while the station’s founder, Minos Kyriakou, has had his share of legal troubles in the past, including a jail sentence for illegal structures constructed in the resort region of Porto Heli (this sentence was later appealed down to a fine). Antenna, like Skai, also vehemently supported the pro-austerity “yes” vote in the 2015 referendum, likening the “yes” versus “no” option to a choice between being like Europe or “becoming Zimbabwe.”

The cases of the other two licensees, neither of whom are currently in possession of a television station, are even more egregious. One of the winning bidders is Vaggelis Marinakis, a shipping mogul and football magnate, who is facing at least five criminal investigations on charges ranging from match-fixing to directing a criminal organization.

Marinakis is also said to have been involved in the case of the “Noor 1,” a ship which Greek authorities found to be transporting 2.1 tons of heroin and which may be linked to Marinakis through close associates of his. Marinakis is a city councilman in Piraeus, while his right-hand man from the Olympiacos football club, Yannis Moralis, is mayor. Together, they exert control over the municipal radio station of Piraeus, Kanali 1. On Tuesday, prosecutors in Greece recommended that Marinakis be jailed pending trial on charges of match-fixing.

But perhaps the most flagrant case of all is that of Christos Kalogritsas, a former publisher-turned-construction magnate, and his son, Ioannis-Vladimiros Kalogritsas. Christos Kalogritsas’ construction firm, Toxotis S.A., is the recipient of numerous state contracts issued by the Syriza-led government for public works projects throughout Greece.

Toxotis S.A. recently purchased Medousa, a competing construction firm. It was formerly known as Tsipras ATE and owned by Pavlos Tsipras, father of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Christos Kalogritsas and his wife are currently facing civil and criminal charges for an alleged €51 million in unpaid taxes, while employees at Toxotis S.A. have previously gone on strike over six months of unpaid wages. The Kalogritsas family also owns significant shares in Attica Bank, one of the banks which has been repeatedly recapitalized by Greek taxpayers.

It is from Attica Bank that Ioannis-Vladimiros Kalogritsas provided a letter of guarantee worth €3 million in order to participate in the television licensing bid. This letter was submitted past the deadline set by the government for participation in the bid, but was nevertheless accepted.

Additionally, Christos Kalogritsas has close ties to current defense minister, Panos Kammenos; the current minister of infrastructure, transport and networks, Christos Spirtzis (whose ministry oversees public works projects and matters pertaining to broadcast frequency allocation); and celebrity television personality Nikos Evaggelatos. Kalogritsas is also said to maintain a “brotherly” friendship with current minister of state, Nikos Pappas, who oversaw the television licensing process. He is also a primary shareholder of polling firm GPO, one of the many Greek polling firms which receives state funding and which has repeatedly produced grossly inaccurate public opinion and exit poll results.

Further adding to the web of corruption, both Marinakis and the Kalogritsas family are represented by the attorney Giannis Mantzouranis. Mantzouranis also happened to represent the Greek state in the recent television licensing process. Clearly, conflicts of interest are not a concern for Syriza. In the late 1980s, Mantzouranis had been jailed as part of the wide-ranging Koskotas money-laundering scandal.

He is also one of the attorneys of investigative journalist-turned-Syriza cheerleader Kostas Vaxevanis, who through his involvement in the HellasNet network of regional television stations, stands to be one of the beneficiaries of any bid for regional TV licenses.



Diaploki is safe with Syriza in power
While Syriza is making triumphant claims of “restoring rule of law” in the television landscape, its own party-owned radio station, Sto Kokkino, went on the air illegally in 2005 after purchasing the frequency of a radio station that went unlicensed during a 2001 bid (when, again, there were claims that there was “no room” for more stations). The station in question, NRG 105.5 FM, which is under the same ownership as Athens’ Kiss FM, had illegally returned to the airwaves.

In 2006 and 2007, Sto Kokkino was shut down by authorities for broadcasting without a license, but the New Democracy government under Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis later passed a law which legalized party-owned broadcast stations, permitting them to operate without a license. Sto Kokkino was therefore “legalized.”

Meanwhile, Syriza continues to enforce a law passed by the previous conservative government which allows broadcast stations classified as “news” stations to switch classifications to “non-news,” but which does not provide the same privilege to “non-news” stations which wish to switch to news programming, thus creating a closed broadcast news marketplace. Sto Kokkino’s subsidiary stations throughout Greece violate this rule, but rather than changing the law and creating a level playing field, as Syriza is claiming to be doing now with the television licensing process, it keeps this blatantly undemocratic law as is and simply violates it for its own ends.

All of this has taken place while the NCRTV remains defunct, with no frequency table having been publicized for television stations, and with 1,000-2,000 employees in the television sector facing unemployment if their stations are forced to close. This would also create a restricted and highly centralized and controlled television market. Prime Minister Tsipras, in a recent speech celebrating the opening of a new stretch of highway (constructed by Toxotis S.A.), promised to turn over the €246 million in revenue from the licensing bid “to the poor.”

Of course, this assumes that money, which would be paid in three annual installments and only if the stations are profitable, is ever paid. Even so, EU officials have already stated that it will go toward Greece’s commitments to its lenders, not to the impoverished. They’ve also questioned the licensing process itself.

Tsipras also omitted from his speech the loss of tax receipts and insurance fund contributions from the six stations slated to shut down, and the combined €700 million in debts they owe to Greek banks, which would likely go unpaid if they go off the air and be thrust upon the shoulders of Greek taxpayers instead via yet another recapitalization.

Make no mistake: Syriza’s “efforts” are not just contained to broadcast licensing. Syriza intends to create a state-run body to allocate advertising across media outlets, retaining a 30-percent commission for the state. Earlier in the year, government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili announced the government’s intention to “restore order to the internet,” beginning with the creation of a registry of online news outlets and blogs. Registration was mandatory for all outlets which wished to be considered for state advertising expenditures—an easy way for any government to pay its way into the hearts of media owners.

Another way is through patronage, as in the case of Giorgos Christoforidis, publisher of the (once) anti-austerity newspaper To Xoni and former candidate for parliament with the Independent Greeks. Christoforidis was appointed to a post in the government’s press office while continuing to publish To Xoni.



Is it the new left or the old right? Who can tell?
In the meantime, the Syriza-led government continues to operate with stunning arrogance and insensitivity. Proclamations are made for the “record” number of tourists visiting Greece—even while most tourist resort towns lay idle during the tourist season. In Samos, patrolled by German police, there were not many refugees in sight—nor many tourists. The vice president of the Syriza government, Giannis Dragasakis, has stated that it was a mistake for Syriza to have “demonized” the word “memorandum.”

Syriza MP Makis Balaouras recently claimed that “austerity is not in Syriza’s DNA.” Economist Rania Antonopoulou, who holds the ironic portfolio of “alternate minister for combating unemployment,” recently wrote in the Syriza-owned Avgi newspaper that “the third memorandum has strengthened Greece’s position.” Nikos Xydakis, the foreign minister, recently said that Greece has renounced much of its national sovereignty. In a “let ‘em eat cake” moment, Deputy Minister for Social Solidarity Theano Fotiou remarked that “stuffed peppers could feed an entire family.” The start of the football season has been postponed, purportedly to stamp out corruption stemming from the same “oligarchs” who received television licenses.

Defense Minister Panos Kammenos has proposed the construction of a NATO base in the southern Aegean island of Karpathos, while German-owned Fraport is preparing to install a new €13 per passenger tax at the regional airports it now controls. Over the summer, the government proudly proclaimed the “loosening” of stifling capital controls—as the restriction on bank withdrawals was changed from a €420 weekly limit, to an €840 cap every two weeks. Do the math. Schools go without janitorial staffs, university restrooms without toilet paper.

All of this while there is nary a thought of departing the eurozone or following the example of British voters and waving goodbye to the EU. The signs were there about Syriza, its neoliberal tendencies, and the ensuing betrayal of its pre-election promises. Some warned about Syriza again, and again, and again, but those warnings fell on deaf ears.

Most of the world celebrated Syriza’s victory in January 2015, while “leftist” media outlets and commentators ranging from Democracy Now! to Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and others, have long forgotten about Greece or have excused away Syriza’s betrayal as simply the result of being “bullied” and “blackmailed” by the EU—which Greece must nevertheless remain a part of at “all costs.”

In this modern-day debt colony the “leftist” government has demonstrated an astonishing arrogance in not only violating its pre-election promises and July 2015 referendum result, and agreeing to a third—and the most onerous to date—austerity program, but also continuing to pretend that it is acting in a “leftist” and “progressive” manner.

All the while, it’s keeping Greece firmly shackled to the chains of the EU, eurozone, and IMF, while the Greek people seemingly have lost their pluck, devoid of any fight, resigned to their EU shackles.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/mess-corruption-neoliberal-austerity-syriza-sells-greece-highest-bidders/220257/

Funny, not a whisper about KKE...nonetheless a damning article.


To paraphrase Anax... Better leftists concentrate on the science of social revolution rather than concentrating on the illusion of social reform.

Liars and Opportunists: SYRIZA's 180-degree shift on the privatization of Elliniko

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ATHENS (28/9/2016)- Greece's parliament passed new reforms on Tuesday night to cut pension expenditure and transfer control of public utilities to a new asset fund. The reforms seek to unlock 2.8 billion euros ($3.14 billion) in financial loans as part of the country's latest bailout program.

The reforms were passed by a narrow 152-141 majority vote in Greece's 300-seat parliament, after 152 parliamentary members of the ruling SYRIZA-Independent Greeks (ANEL) coalition approved the reform bill. Only one member of the coalition voted against the bill, along with all opposition members. KKE MPs voted against the anti-people package of laws- "It's about time for the Greek people to say: No more sacrifices for the profits of the few" stated in his speech the General Secretary of the CC of Communist Party of Greece Dimitris Koutsoumbas.

Assets include airports and motorways, as well as water and electricity utilities. The holding company groups together these state entities with the country's privatization agency, the bank stability fund and state real estate. It will be led by an official chosen by Greece's creditors, although Greece's Finance Ministry will retain overall control. The reforms sparked significant backlash among demonstrators and public sector workers.

Ahead of the vote, protestors outside of the parliament in Athens chanted, "Next you'll sell the Acropolis!" Greece's public sector union criticized the reforms, saying that the transfer of public assets paved the way for a fire-sale to private investors. "Health, education, electricity and water are not commodities. They belong to the people," the union said in a statement.

Workers at Greece's public water utility companies in Athens and Thessaloniki walked out on Tuesday to protest the reforms. "They are handing over the nation's wealth and sovereignty," George Sinioris, head of the water company workers association said. "We think this is a crime because it involves basic public services. We will respond with court challenges, strikes, building occupations and other forms of protest." (Sources: news/agencies reports).

http://www.newsit.gr/files/Image/2015/07/04/resized/TSIPRASDRAGASAKIS_615_355.jpg
The social democratic "masterminds" of SYRIZA: PM Tsipras and Vice President G.Dragasakis (right).

Now, let's go to a specific case of privatization- the plot of the old Athens airport at Elliniko.

On Wednesday 21 September, the Greek parliament ratified a concession deal (privatization) for the former Athens International airport plot at Elliniko to a real estate consortium which was stalled for a number of years. The bill, described as “a compromise” by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, while State Minister Alekos Flabouraris – who defended the ratification of the agreement by the ruling majority – said that the project will boost the economy significantly.

Except from the MPs of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government, New Democracy, PASOK, To Potami and Enosi Kentroon (Center Union) parties also approved the bill ratifying the concession agreement. The Nazi-fascist Golden Dawn party voted against the ratification of the agreement, not because it was against the privatization but because of the deal's... “low price”. Syriza MPs voted in favor of the deal following a heated debate in parliament, 22 months after the first agreement between the consortium led by Lamda Development (belonging to Latsis business group) and the state was signed.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was the only party which actually opposed the privatization agreement, proposing the creation of a public park open for the people. KKE MP Diamanto Manolakou pointed out that “the privatization of Elliniko highlights the class-based character of the development policy promoted by the leading class which the SYRIZA-ANEL government implements” adding that the whole area is given as “pray” to the business groups and their profitability. “The whole area of Elliniko”, Manolakou said, “must be taken by the State, in order to become a metropolitan park, open to the people, for use, free of charge, by all working families in Attica […] For that, KKE will continue to struggle, showing to the people that there is the capability for another way of development, without monopolies and their alliances”.

KKE's parliamentary representative, MP Thanasis Pafilis, pointed out that “SYRIZA serves the interests of the capital in the most clever way presenting it with a pro-people mandate”. Pafilis also mentioned among other things: “What kind of fair development are you talking about? […] What does fair development mean? Is it the fact that you give the country's natural environment to the monopolies? What do the people of Attica gain from this? Nothing, the situation of the people will get worse”.

As we saw, the government of Alexis Tsipras moved towards the privatization-sell of Elliniko. However, just a few years ago, when Tsipras and SYRIZA were in the opposition they were campaigning against the privatization plans of Elliniko. Let's see some characteristic examples of what Mr.Tsipras was saying as an opposition leader against the privatization of Elliniko:

Athens-Macedonian News Agency, 12.12.2014.

ANA - MPA -- Main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras on Friday met with activists campaigning for the conversion of the former airport site at Elliniko into a metropolitan park and expressed SYRIZA's support "for the struggle of Elliniko residents to avert the sell-off of the former airport and the beach and in support of its conversion into a park."

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Tsipras: "If I sign privatizations like Elliniko, you better vote Samaras (the then Prime Minister)". That is what Alexis Tsipras was saying during a political talk show on Greek TV. The video in Greek:

(see video at link)

* * *
On 28.2.2014, the then leader of the opposition and president of SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras, was the major speaker at a major event called "ELLINIKO IS NOT FOR SALE" organised by his party.

https://www.alfavita.gr/sites/default/files/u47/1011767_13343048_10206783437729545_5272105446732268844_n.jpg
Banner about the event headed "ELLINIKO IS NOT FOR SALE" at the municipal building of Elliniko-Argiroupolis in Athens. Alexis Tsipras and two SYRIZA members were the major speakers.

In his address, Mr.Tsipras was assuring the people of Elliniko that he and SYRIZA will not abandon the fight against the privatization of the plot. Furthermore, he was stating:

"All these years, in Elliniko two worlds are clashing. The one which defends with struggles the public interest and the one which advances the private profit-making interests".

* * *
Two photos showing the then opposition leader Alexis Tsipras participating in anti-privatization campaigns for Elliniko.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-065mk7y-reA/V-r85kML_UI/AAAAAAAABnI/bLQwmV3GW2s34FGqFMlfB3jgDrbdt4spgCLcB/s400/tsipras_elliniko.jpg

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DyLThlG_2a0/V-r9DXS2PYI/AAAAAAAABnM/C4utaLyN_7Utm7NzNL5rc3FfGXzv2JBNwCLcB/s400/Tsipras%2Bellinikon.jpg
Alexis Tsipras (middle) meeting with the Committee for the Metropolitan
Park of Elliniko, against the planned privatization..

Now, you can draw your own conclusions.

http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/09/liars-and-opportunists-syrizas-180.html

Greek industrialists: "SYRIZA and New Democracy converge in their economic strategy"

Info taken from 'Rizospastis', 24/9/2016.

In it's latest weekly report, the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (the union of the Greek industrialists) admit that the SYRIZA government and the right-wing, conservative opposition of New Democracy have no fundamental differences in their strategy for the country's economy. "The development objective is common, the means are different" says the report of SEV* thus openly acknowledging the convergence between SYRIZA and New Democracy in their strategy to serve the antipeople, antiworkers objectives and priorities of the Greek capital.

The industrialists evaluate the interventions of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair earlier this month as "positive", as long as both seem to be fully aligned to the demands of the domestic capital for competitiveness and recovery of profits.

"Despite the ideological differences", states the weekly report of SEV, "the presentations of the political leaders of both major parties in at the Thessaloniki International fair converge in the necessity for a fast exit from the crisis and recession and the transition of economy to a new development model focused on investments and exports, with more planning and greater compliance with the restrictions of the Memorandum".

In a few words, the report of the Greek capitalists acknowledges that Alexis Tsipras and his coalition government do a really good job in serving their interests. It also becomes clear that despite the dog fights between SYRIZA and New Democracy on minor political issues both parties have a common strategy towards the implementation of antipeople, antiworkers measures in favor of the capital's profitability.

* SEV (From the Greek "ΣΕΒ", which is the accronym for the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises).

http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/09/greek-industrialists-syriza-and-new.html

SYRIZA government's police forces fire tear gas at pensioners during protest in Athens

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bAFQr_V4ue8/V_Is34NdVHI/AAAAAAAABo0/Ip61nsMzOAgIGuRIAxCW94QXQ8lrBtYWACLcB/s400/pensioners%2Bgreece%2Btear%2Bgas%2Btsipras.jpg[/iimg]
The police forces of Tsipras' SYRIZA government confronts
elderly people with tear gas/ Athens, 3.10.2016.
Once again, the supposedly "left"- actually social democratic- government of Alexis Tsipras shows it's real face. After imposing numerous harsh, antipeople-antiworkers measures, after signing a third memorandum of austerity and after cutting wages and pensions, the coalition government of SYRIZA decided to enforce law and order against the protesting pensioners!

The pensioners who protested against the complete destruction of their lives got a response from the police forces of Mr.Tsipras' government. That response was the use of pepper spray and tear gas against older people!

[img]https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5dH3ZtZPDss/V_IqPPo56uI/AAAAAAAABoo/Os1lbP5sr_UqPzZQN4bhhHupcBX8-HxcgCLcB/s640/IMG_8097.PNG
http://www.newsbeast.gr/files/1/2016/10/epeisodiasudaxioux21.jpg
http://www.newsbeast.gr/files/1/2016/10/epeisodiasudaxioux19.jpg




The Associated Press reported:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek police have fired pepper spray at retirees taking part in an anti-austerity protest against pension cuts in central Athens near the prime minister’s office.

About 1,000 people, some of them with canes, took part in Monday’s protest. Dozens of protesters at the front of the rally tried to break through a police cordon and chanted “Shame on you, shame on you!”

The protesters were trying to tip over a riot police bus when officers fired the pepper spray.

Greece’s left-wing government has imposed new cuts on pensions this year as part of its bailout commitments to international lenders, with the International Monetary Fund pressing for deeper cuts.


Posted by In Defense of Communism


http://youtu.be/uH7daaF2prM

http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/10/syriza-governments-police-forces-fire.html

Greece’s left-wing government

Bullshit. "Left-wing" my ass. If you have purely bourgeoisie government, dictatorial in its class allegiance, then there might be a faction that is 'to the left' of the main body, but that is as much as can be said. I think SYRIZA should never be designated a "left-wing" anything.

Bullshit. "Left-wing" my ass. If you have purely bourgeoisie government, dictatorial in its class allegiance, then there might be a faction that is 'to the left' of the main body, but that is as much as can be said. I think SYRIZA should never be designated a "left-wing" anything.

This wouldn't happen to a 'left-wing government...


http://youtu.be/b_mui4gX_bY

Bwahaha, geezers of the world unite!

Lieutenant Katina Manitara

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AdBGWXby0fE/V_LgHmFLGRI/AAAAAAAABpE/kVqpRl28v_YAyPstIkx-WiFwD13mCj9qgCLcB/s400/Katina%2BMarinara%252C%2BWW2%2Bresistance%2Bhero.jpg
The elderly lady of the photo was one of those who yesterday participated in a large pensioners' demonstration against the austerity, antipeople measures of the Greek government.

This woman, along with other retirees took the streets of Athens in order to assert their rights; the rights of their children and grandchildren. The Greek police "welcomed" this woman and the other pensioners with violence and tear gas.

The name of the lady is Katina Manitara, a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Greece. As a child, in the beginning of the fascist occupation, Katina was delivering secret messages "under the radar" of the italian police. At the age of 14 she witnessed her father's torture from Greek fascists.

On May 1947, at 15 years old, she joined the heroic Democratic Army of Greece; the KKE-led guerrilla army which fought against the bourgeois military forces and their imperialist allies between 1946-1949. During the war, a bullet fragment stucked in her head where it still remains. At the age of 17, Katina Manitara graduates from the Military School of the Democratic Army with the rank of second lieutenant.

This lady, Katina Manitara, consists a symbol of resistance, of courage and dignity.
Posted by In Defense of Communism

http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/10/lieutenant-katina-marinara.html