Greek lives matter

[faultier]

If you are not part of the solution, you are an accomplice.

The Troika’s willingness to turn Greece into a failed state first, as a side effect of its “rescue the French and German banks” operation, and now, as part of its German hegemony protection racket, is killing people and in the longer term will only accelerate the rise of extreme right wing elements in the Eurozone. As Ilargi wrote last week:

In what universe is it a good thing to have over half of the young people in entire countries without work, without prospects, without a future? And then when they stand up and complain, threaten them with worse? How can that possibly be the best we can do? And how much worse would you like to make it? If a flood of suicides and miscarriages, plummeting birth rates and doctors turning tricks is not bad enough yet, what would be?

If you live in Germany or Finland, and it were indeed true that maintaining your present lifestyle depends on squeezing the population of Greece into utter misery, what would your response be? F##k ‘em? You know what, even if that were so, your nations have entered into a union with Greece (and Spain, and Portugal et al), and that means you can’t only reap the riches on your side and leave them with the bitter fruit. That would make that union pointless, even toxic. You understand that, right?

Greece is still an utterly corrupt country. Brussels knows this, but it has kept supporting a government that supports the corrupt elite, tried to steer the Greeks away from voting SYRIZA. Why? How much does Brussels like corrupt elites, exactly? The EU, and its richer member nations, want Greece to cut even more, given the suicides, miscarriages, plummeting birth rates and doctors turning tricks. How blind is that? Again, how much worse does it have to get?

Does the EU have any moral values at all? And if not, why are you, if you live in the EU, part of it? Because you don’t have any, either? And if you do, where’s your voice? There are people suffering and dying who are part of a union that you are part of. That makes you an accomplice. You can’t hide from that just because your media choose to hide your reality from you.

It is time to take action, both here and in Europe. I hope you’ll send this post, and our related posts on the the ECB and Greece (see here for the overview and here on why the Fed is complicit) to people who would be sympathetic to the plight of Greeks, as well as to members of the Greek community themselves. Even if our suggestion is not a fit, it will hopefully spur them to come up with social media and public events to raise the visibility of the damage being done to Greece and other periphery countries in the name of misguided, destructive austerity policies.

more after the jump: http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/0 ... vesmatter/

also, interestingly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seisachtheia

[soronery]

[faultier]

more like "fool your landlord into thinking you're greek by turning tricks to pay your rent"

[soronery]

syrizas idea of can't pay won't pay is just stupid

everyone will expect the same treatment

they have no new policies to make greece competitve

even if their slate was wiped clean they would just rack it up again

sad but true

[Riddles]

arent they working at a -ve anyways?

[soronery]

Greece is still an utterly corrupt country. Brussels knows this, but it has kept supporting a government that supports the corrupt elite, tried to steer the Greeks away from voting SYRIZA. Why? How much does Brussels like corrupt elites, exactly?

my favorite bit of the above retarded diatribe

because brussels was obviously steering them away from voting syriza because it wanted to keep the corrupt people in power

nothing to do with the fact that it was some half baked left wing populist movement whose key idea was to just refuse to pay back anything

[faultier]

syrizas idea of can't pay won't pay is just stupid

a debt that can't be repaid ultimately won't, simple as that
all the suffering is unnecessary

everyone will expect the same treatment

and that's a problem why? it's been 5 years now, situation has become worse in Spain, Greece, Italy, France, arguably UK, etc, austerity just doesn't work, unless the point is to make anti-EU parties like UKIP, FN, Golden dawn et al more popular (its not like all these voters suddenly became racists, its just these parties are unfortunately the only ones addressing issues that were, until recently, traditionnally addressed by "left-wing populists" as you label them)
bout time the EU construction becomes democratically accountable
also, thats the point of a monetary/economic union, all in together for good or bad, northern countries, especially Germany have massively benefitted from being able to price their exports to southern european countries in a common currency

they have no new policies to make greece competitve

or do they? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-0 ... ion-russia

because brussels was obviously steering them away from voting syriza because it wanted to keep the corrupt people in power

ECB knew the books were cooked by said corrupt elites when they first agreed to massively loan money they knew couldn't be repaid, corrupt elites who escaped the austerity measures via tax evasion and foreign companies are now buying all Greek national assets on the cheap from said corrupt elites (see port of pireus), so yeah, corrupt elites are essential to ensure the looting of Greece (and the rest of the "PIIGS") continues in good order

above retarded diatribe

i like the banner in your sig too

[faultier]

its cool tho; you do the american economic neoliberalism tough guy, i'll do the euro left wing populist

it will be fun

[Phigure]

whether or not the debt can/will ultimately be repaid, the solution definitely isnt to further gimp the greek economy with austerity lol

[faultier]

oh and, you guys are on about "repaying"... repaying who? you are aware that money didn't come out of anyone's pocket right? money loaned by banks is conjured out of thin air

let me explain fractional reserve banking to you: when you go to your bank and ask for a loan, the bank doesn't take the money from someone else's bank account, it just changes some digits in a computer and voilà

govt debt is a bit more complicated, but on the principle it sort of works the same, this is the reason why you never hear governments saying stuff like "yeah, we were going to drone strike the shit out of this third world country but all that high tech weaponry costs money, we really can't afford that now"

the mechanisms by which the taxpayers end up having to pay for govt debt are called bailouts (when taxpayers money is used to save banks that have run themselves into insolvency, surely you realise the whole "too big to fail" yadda yadda is a farce) and money printing (which leads to inflation, again, hurting the disposable income of moms and pops)

do your homework

[mIrReN]

debt
Americans shouldn't talk, or if they do talk about China

[AxeD]

The government was bailed out and that's why a significant part of the money came out of the
pockets of European taxpayers. But yeah, most of it is in 'official' hands.

"your nations have entered into a union with Greece (and Spain, and Portugal et al), and that means you can’t only reap the riches on your side and leave them with the bitter fruit."

I think the corrupt officials in the southern European countries are the ones reaping the riches
and leaving the people with the bitter fruit. Just because there is a central controlling power
in Brussels, doesn't mean you can transfer the blame to them for allowing the Greek
government to operate. I personally don't feel like I'm taking advantage of Greece, by operating
in the relatively healthy economy of my home country.

I feel like this article is approaching the bad economic situation of countries like Greece, as
some kind of violent crime committed by Brussels and the ECB and while I don't agree with
all of the decisions myself, this seems like a populist move similar to those of
Syriza. Now that I'm reading it again, whoever wrote this article seems to be very
supporting of that party. Should we be?

[test_recordings]

Everyone amongst the EU governments knows that the Greek government has been crooked since before they joined. The prime minister of the UK actually wanted to block it but didn't because everyone else wanted them in and he would have made the country look bad (and now look at our image). The Greeks are pissed at the Germans for letting their government get away with it for so long and having companies like Siemens get preferential treatment with public works contracts such as the Olympics (there wasn't even an open tender, they just got given it 'somehow').

The UK has actually had a pretty run of keeping its nose out of colluding in that shit until the financial crisis in 2009 when obviously our unregulated banks had their fingers in all the pies and pretty much shitting the results on the Greek public. Our government has pretty consistently protested the state of the EU accounting affairs which is one of the few things I agree with Eurosceptics on, a clear case of 'I told you so'.

[faultier]

@Axed not sure how the situation is in NL politically and economically, i assume the situation is relatively comparable to Germany where the effects of the 2008 crash were relatively painless compared to the rest of EU?

meanwhile elsewhere unemployment is through the roof, public services are cut short etc, this leads to anger and frustration, that if left unaddressed will keep on fueling the rise of anti-EU and nationalistic right-wing parties all over Europe, all jumped on the bandwagon and filled the vacuum left by the complete apathy of "traditional" left-wing parties by sprinkling some anti-EU over their backwards, usually racist opinions, clearly not everything is black and white, but as far as i'm concerned i'd rather support left-wing populists over right-wing populists

all this austerity is imposed by the European Council, the ECB and the IMF, none of which are directly elected. don't get me wrong, i'm not against the idea of Europe, quite the contrary, but it has to become democratically accountable to be viable. so far the European construction has only served the banks and financial markets. there's a long list of "socialist" governments who have been put to power in their respective countries across Europe since 2008, the last one being Hollande's govt in France, all of which on the promises to rein in the EU Troika and to revert the austerity measures and they all bent over. if anything i'm wary that Syriza will only end up joining that list. but so far (and admittedly they've only been in power two weeks) it looks like they're really willing to question the status quo, so yeah, i'm supporting of this party

[OGLemon]

If the KKE was smart, it would abandon Marxism-Leninism. They have a lot of potential as a party, but democratic centralism is not going to work. Direct democracy would be a better system, especially in the information age.

[soronery]

its cool tho; you do the american economic neoliberalism tough guy, i'll do the euro left wing populist

it will be fun

no need to get so defensive just because i poked a few holes in your arguments

also no idea why you felt the need to bring nationalities into it

If the KKE was smart, it would abandon Marxism-Leninism. They have a lot of potential as a party, but democratic centralism is not going to work. Direct democracy would be a better system, especially in the information age.

this i agree with

[faultier]

the comment about nationalities was obviously in jest, sorry it apparently didn't came across as such

genuinely interested if you want to "poke holes" in the arguments i actually made myself (seeing how your post i commented on was aimed at the article i linked, and not my personal opinion on the issue as expressed more in details in following posts)

[soronery]

the comment about nationalities was obviously in jest, sorry it apparently didn't came across as such

no worries man

genuinely interested if you want to "poke holes" in the arguments i actually made myself

sounds good

[_ronzlo_]

"Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan predicts Greece will exit Euro, single currency will eventually collapse"



The American campaign for hegemony via the dollar is well established at this point; they don't even have to try and be subtle anymore.

[faultier]

i doubt they will let Grexit happen tbh, for the same reason EU is not willing to compromise with Greece on debt restucturing because it would set a precedent for other southern EU countries, letting Greece out would have the same "precedent" effect and other countries might also consider leaving the EU if Greece does

damned if they do, damned if they don't

also while EU explosion could be perceived from a certain standpoint has reinforcing $ hegemony, it would also have detrimental effects: Greece has already hinted that if EU is not willing to compromise they'll turn to Russia, which has been busy making trade agreements with China and other Asian countries throughout 2014, effectively setting up a possible alternative to the unipolar petrodollar system which prevailed until now

now if other countries leave EU and, freed from their obligations, start looking east (and note that several EU countries are already openly questioning the benefit of sanctions against Russia) that would possibly end the "Russia is isolated" narrative that proponents of US exceptionalism have been pushing since before the Ukraine crisis