Will Syriza take power in Greece?

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Why stop there?  Expropriate the property, sell it, then expropriate it from the chump who bought it.  Repeat until financially solvent or until nobody cares to buy stolen property any more.

In fact, to NOT do so would be peculiarly inconsistent, wouldn't it?  You take Bob's property from him, sell it to Jim, and allow Jim to keep and enjoy it??

This reminds me of the old definition of an honest cop: one who stays bought.

 

epaulo13 wrote:

"The choice is between rupture and capitulation. There is no third way"

(audio)

In this talk, Stathis Kouvélakis of the Central Committee of SYRIZA speaks about the situation that SYRIZA finds itself in more than 100 days after being elected.

https://soundcloud.com/mdbergfeld/stathis-kouvelakis-greece-and-syriza-a...

That is the choice. The sooner Syriza's leadership realizes it, the better.

Greece Unable to Pay June IMF Installments: Minister

http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/05/25/412686/Greece-Installment-IMF-N...

"I am not going to pay the IMF and not pay pensions in the next few weeks,' he added."

Greek Govt Backs Down on Red Lines to Secure Deal

The Greek government has been forced to back down on several of its pre-election campaign pledges as negotiations continue at a slow pace while state coffers are emptying at an alarming rate.

The so-called “Thessaloniki program” that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had announced in September 2014 and boosted his popularity is now subject to negotiation with creditors while many items have been abandoned altogether. In other words, the “red lines” the government has set in negotiations are already partially crossed.

The impasse in deliberations over the reforms that need to be implemented in order to secure further financial aid for Greece has forced Tsipras to push back several of his pledges. Government spokesperson Gavriil Sakellaridis indirectly admitted that several of the items of the Thessaloniki program cannot be implemented saying that they will be pushed back to a four-year time frame.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/05/25/greek-govt-backs-down-on-red-...

Once all the back taxes were paid back by the Greek aristocracy, the game stops.

Austerity is the Only Deal-Breaker  -  by Yanis Varoufakis

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41970.htm

"Our government cannot - and will not - accept a cure that has proven itself over five long years to be worse than the disease."

May hope prevail in Greece and Europe': SYRIZA CC statement

May 28, 2015 -- The following is the resolution of the central committee of SYRIZA, published on May 24 and is binding for the party collectively. The resolution is a product of consensus and has been voted for. It is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal for the information of the international left....

 

 

Athens Defies Washington: Greece to Join Russia’s Turkish Stream Pipeline ProjectBy Stephen LendmanGlobal Research, June 02, 2015

.....beneath all the headlines re finance capital negotiations, GREXIT or no, this is info in the real world!

Greece will not make scheduled payment for tomorrow.  Plans to "bundle" payments at the end of the month.

 

The delayed payment came as the negotiating stances of the Greek government and its creditors were leaked. These showed differences still remain in key areas such as VAT and pensions.

Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, told Sky News, “objectively speaking, we have until the 30 June because this is when the extension of the agreement with our creditors expires.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/04/greece-delays-300m-payment-to-imf

from Zerohedge

Tsipras Plays Putin Pivot Card; Tests Parliament's Patience On Troika Proposal Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/05/2015 07:45 -0400...

...so expect an announcement later today re their gasline project...and with the Greek default expect further crises in the European bond markets...and with the doctored US employment figures just released, forcing the US Fed to raise their rates? The US dollar will soar for sure...

these extreme gyrations in the major indices is a sure sign of imminent serious threats to the stability of the global finances!

Greece refuses to make €305m IMF payment in show of defiance

Greece will skip its €305m (£218m) payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday in a show of defiance as a deal between Athens and its creditors remains out of reach.

The country invoked a rule created by the IMF in the 1970s that allows it to bundle all of its €1.6bn payments due this month into one.

In a statement, Gerry Rice, the IMF's chief spokesman, said: “The Greek authorities have informed the Fund today that they plan to bundle the country’s four June payments into one, which is now due on June 30....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11652623/Greece-refuses-to-...

GREEK OPTIONS: SURRENDER OR DEFAULT

Five months after Syriza’s victory in Greece, Tariq Ali talks to Stathis Kouvelakis, a leading intellectual on Syriza, about the options now facing the new Government. Will they default on the existing debt, or face surrender to the EU

..your welcome geoff. this is interesting.

'Scottish Syriza' gains support from left in Greece, Spain and Canada

The new electoral pact, anchored around the Scottish Socialist Party and the grassroots Scottish Left Project, will meet representatives of Greece's ruling party Syriza in Edinburgh today, as well as members of Spain's left-wing Podemos movement.

The gathering is expected to discuss tactics for the 2016 election, when the new Scottish anti-austerity coalition hopes to return Socialist MSPs through the regional list system.

The development comes just days after Quebec Solidaire, the radical coalition in Quebec's National Assembly, agreed to give its support to the Scottish alliance.

Delegates unanimously backed the move at their conference in Montreal last week, at which Scottish trade union activist Cat Boyd spoke on the Left's post-referendum revival.

Amir Khadir, a Quebec Solidaire National Assembly member, said: "Austerity, whether British or Canadian, has left the vulnerable behind and impoverished ordinary people.

"But there is hope, as Cat Boyd reminded us about the struggle of ordinary people in Scotland and how Yes voters said Yes to a new and different country.

"The rising momentum behind the Scottish Left Project gives us hope and courage to fight for justice at home and solidarity abroad."...

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/scottish-syriza...

IMF walks out of Greece bailout talks

The International Monetary Fund dramatically pulled out of talks with debt-stricken Greece on Thursday after it accused Athens of failing to compromise over labour market and pension reforms.

The Washington-based lender of last resort said its team of negotiators had quit talks in Brussels after reaching a stalemate and would be returning to Washington.

The move left the Greek negotiating team with no option but to say it would also be leaving the talks and heading home to Athens.

“The ball is very much in Greece’s court,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said. “There are major differences between us in most key areas. There has been no progress in narrowing these differences recently.”

quote:

Until this week Greece had insisted it could not accept further austerity measures being imposed by Brussels as the price for more loans. But in recent days Greek negotiators have offered some concessions after settling on a limited number of “red lines” – EU/IMF proposals for tough labour market reforms, cuts in state pensions costs and a 1% budget surplus.

On Thursday, the Greek national economy minister, Giorgos Stathakis, revealed that any new deal would include higher taxes

Speaking to state-run TV’s newly relaunched channel, ERT, Stathakis said the government would give the green light to privatisations and emergency levies on middle-income salaries.

Publicly owned assets put up for sale would range from the port of Piraeus to the railway network, TrainOSE and regional airports nationwide, he said.

Analysts said the measures would mean Tsipras rolling back on a raft of pre-election pledges, leaving the leader to count on his unrivalled popularity ratings and the widespread support for his Syriza party to carry him through....

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/11/imf-walks-out-of-greece-...

thread drift...

Honduras: 6,500 Gov't Workers Fired in Wake of Agreement with IMF

In the wake of an agreement between the International Monetary Fund and the Honduran government signed last November, 6,500 public employees have been laid off. The public institutions where they worked are being slowly privatized. These include companies that provide water, electricity, and phone services. Labor rights are already weak in Honduras, where 80% of workers do not have a formal contract or collective bargaining agreement and unemployment is on the rise.

http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/web/telesur/#!en/video/honduras-6500-gov...

...end thread drift

Greece against Europe: a war of narratives—Christian Salmon

When Yanis Varoufakis announced on Tuesday that Greece's creditors have turned the negotiations "into a war", he's no doubt right, although it's perhaps becoming clear as to who constitute the opposing sides. But for Christian Salmon, author of Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, this war also takes place on the narrative terrain, with mixed metaphors and statistical ambiguities as its weapons. As he reminds us, '"You start by ceding words,' said Freud, 'and you end up ceding on the thing.'" Translated by David Broder; read the original French article here.

...

The battle over numbers, the quarrel over words, the fight over images and the dispute over values: these are the four ingredients of the war of narratives, seeking to transform the economic and financial compromise Syriza landed in Brussels into a political defeat.

quote:

2. The quarrel over words

“We have agreed to disagree”, Wolfgang Schäuble stated in the press conference he held together with Yanis Varoufakis. “We didn’t even agree to disagree from where I’m standing,” the Greek finance minister replied, with a broad grin on his face. This left the door open to misunderstanding, but all commentators presented Varoufakis’s comment as a provocation. One of the points of disagreement between Greece and Germany concerns the role of the “Troika”, the harness formed in February 2010 by the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF to supervise the realisation of the plans to save Greece. Strongly criticised as undemocratic in character, the Troika has become the symbol of Greece’s subjection to a protectorate run by a clutch of international functionaries, some of whom were not even European. And getting rid of this Lernaean Hydra was one of Syriza’s campaign promises!

At the end of the negotiations Athens had to accept four further months of supervision, but in exchange it insisted that the term “Troika” be replaced in all official documents by the words “the institutions”. Similarly, the Greeks did not want any talk of the “extension of the aid programme” but rather a “temporary framework” or “modified programme”.

Manolis Glezos MEP, hero of the Greek Resistance to Nazism, mocked these semantic changes: “Changing the Troika’s name to ‘the institutions’, renaming the memorandum an ‘agreement’ and the lenders as ‘partners’ in reality changes nothing, as compared to the previous situation.” But is that so certain? “Wars are conducted for words on a semantic terrain,” the novelist and essayist Arthur Koestler once said. And diplomats are very well aware of the importance of words to international negotiations. “You start by ceding words,” said Freud, “and you end up ceding on the thing.” If you want to change things, you have to start by changing words. Getting rid of the term “Troika” is a prerequisite of breaking the symbolic domination established by the arbitrary fusion of these three illegitimate bodies, just as Alexis Tsipras told his voters in the aftermath of his victory.

Faced with the encryption hiding what issues are at stake in the European crisis, creating a new political lingua franca is no simple task. Caught in the rhetorical webs that the neoliberal revolution has been weaving for more than thirty years, Greece had been kept in the same situation as the colonial élites compelled to translate their own experience into the coloniser’s language: a form of neoliberal acculturation. The Greek government has tried to put an end to that, with this semantic guerrilla operation. That’s a struggle of no little significance....

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs