Stop the Hogs!

Greek Debt Cancellation Now!

[ http://info-war.gr/2015/02/greek-debt-cancellation-now/ ]

10/02/2015 Ελληνική έκδοση

EXCERPT:

An immediate moratorium on all debt repayments, followed by unilateral debt cancellation in conflict with the creditors is a blow to the IMF, the ECB, the euro states and the funds created (the EFSF and ESM). All new mechanisms and back stop measures created to model the IMF aim to ensure the crisis is paid by the people of Europe and not the elite who created it. It was their choice to re-profile the debt, transforming it from predominantly private sector bondholder debt into over 70% debt held by the official sector. Contrary to what is often maintained, debt cancellation is not a move against other people in Europe. The funds that were directed to all countries in a financial “assistance” programme (Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus) have not been used to ‘save’ populations; but rather, were saving the banks and the elites instead. The people across Europe acted as a human shield used by the EU and the IMF to conceal the backdoor bank bailouts, which in the case of Greece alone cost 211 billion. This is the amount of money that gave to Greek banks since 2008 till 2014. The people of Europe were never asked, nor did they ever agree to participate in mass bank bailouts.

The questioning of the official creditors’ (EU and IMF’s) vested interests which will pay the price of debt cancellation presupposes disobedience and leads to rupture with the euro and the EU.

However:

•The long-term economic gain achieved via unilateral debt cancellation will be bigger than the short-term costs of exit. Grexit’s loser will not be Greece, as it is repeated by current ideological terrorism, but Germany and euro.

•The ability to implement independent industrial policy, through massive investments in crucial sectors of economy, irrespective of EU directives and commitments will allow a speedier recovery and reduction in unemployment together with other measures like reduction of hours of work, abolition of flexible working relations, etc.

•Cancelling the commitment to the EU for permanent austerity, implied through the promises of economic governance and Stability Pact for balanced budgets, will allow for a redistribution of social wealth.

•Overthrowing of the system of restricted sovereignty imposed by Brussels, Frankfurt and the Fourth Reich through the regulation 472/2013 ar. 13 which implies euro-monitoring until the repayment of 75% of loans will create the possibility for the people to regain sovereign and human rights.

The unilateral debt cancellation proposed is in the context of a broader rupture necessitating nationalisation of key industries, including the banks, whilst maintaining a guarantee on deposits, compensation to the pension funds, public sector organisations and small bondholders who lost out due to the PSI+, search for criminal liability to those who participating in the issuing of Greek bonds under foreign law and the cancellation of all private debts to unemployed, subsidies to small and medium enterprises aiming to the fulfilment of social needs, etc.

On the basis of the aforementioned proposal, we the signatories (economists, lawyers, academics, activists), active participants in the struggles of the past few years against debt and austerity, form an initiative of information and struggle whose aim is real Greek debt cancellation, called Debt Cancellation Now! We call to an open founding assembly for the creation of a mass movement aiming to the cancellation of debt.

We call on all groups and organisations to join us and adopt the framework for a common effort to make debt cancellation a demand from everyone!

February 2015
facebook.com/CancelGreekDebtNow

Greek delays IMF payments to June 30 after bailout talks fail

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greek-d ... -1.3099895 ]

Last-minute talks in Brussels fail to produce a deal acceptable to Greek leadership

The Associated Press Posted: Jun 04, 2015 8:47 AM ET Last Updated: Jun 04, 2015 5:28 PM ET

Greece pulled the emergency cord Thursday in its fraught bailout talks, opting to bundle together its four payments due to the International Monetary Fund this month into one on June 30 — a course last followed three decades ago by Zambia.

It will not make the $418 million Cdn. payment due June 5, nor the next two payments, invoking a little-used option to defer them all to the end of the month.

The delay is allowed under IMF rules, but provides a stark sign of how Greece is struggling to make ends meet without the vital rescue loans that have been withheld since last summer, as Athens and its creditors fail to agree on economic reforms.

'Extreme proposals will not be accepted by the Greek government. Everyone must understand that the Greek people have suffered greatly over the last five years and some people must stop playing games at their expense' - Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras

The move follows the failure of radical left Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to break the stalemate with creditors at a late-night meeting with European Commission head Jean Claude Juncker and the top official representing Greece's peers in the eurozone. The talks will resume "within coming days," officials said.

On his return to Athens, Tsipras told government officials that "extreme proposals will not be accepted by the Greek government. Everyone must understand that the Greek people have suffered greatly over the last five years and some people must stop playing games at their expense."

No more cash

Without a deal, Greece will not get the 7.2 billion euros ($10 billion Cdn) remaining from its 240 billion-euro ($337 billion) bailout fund, which it's been relying on for five years. Without the money, it will struggle to pay upcoming debts and the country could soon go bankrupt — a possible preamble to a forced exit from the euro and a return to a financial stone age with a devalued version of its old national currency.

"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," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said. "The decision was intended to address the administrative difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period."

Under an IMF rule from the 1970s, countries can ask to bundle together multiple payments if they fall within a single calendar month. Not since Zambia in the mid-1980s has a country made the request, according to the IMF.

Still, the request buys some time for the Greek government, which has already scraped the barrel of its finances by forcing local authorities, hospitals and universities to lend it their cash reserves. Its first IMF payment of a little more than 300 million euros ($421 million) was due on Friday, part of a total 1.6 billion euros ($2.2 billion) due to the Fund this month.

MORE

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greek-d ... -1.3099895 ]

Greek Debt Committee Just Declared All Debt To The Troika "Illegal, Illegitimate, And Odious"

[ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-1 ... and-odious ]

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/17/2015 22:54 -0400

It was in April when we got a stark reminder of a post we first penned in April of 2011, describing Odious Debt, and why we thought sooner or later this legal term would become applicable for Greece, because two months ago Greek Zoi Konstantopoulou, speaker of the Greek parliament and a SYRIZA member, said she had established a new "Truth Committee on Public Debt" whose purposes was to "investigate how much of the debt is "illegal" with a view to writing it off."

Moments ago, this committee released its preliminary findings, and here is the conclusion from the full report presented below:

All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt first and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troika´s arrangements is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious.

As we predicted over four years ago, Greece has effectively just declared that it will no longer have to default on its IMF (or any other debt - note that the dreaded "Troika" word finally makes an appearance after it was officially banned) simply because that debt was not legal to begin with, i.e. it was "odious."

If so, this has just thrown a very unique wrench in the spokes of not only the Greek debt negotiations, but all other peripheral European nations' Greek negotiations, who will promptly demand that their debt be, likewise, declared odious, and made null and void, thus washing their hands of servicing it again.

And another question: when Greece says the debt was illegal and it no longer has to make the June 30 payment, what will be the Troika's response: confiscate Greek assets a la Argentina, declare involuntary default, sue it in the Hague?

Good luck.

Hellenic Parliament´s Debt Truth Committee Preliminary Findings - Executive Summary of the report:

[ http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/en/Eni ... ba00d8da6a ]

Greek debt crisis is the Iraq War of finance

[ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... nance.html ]

Guardians of financial stability are deliberately provoking a bank run and endangering Europe's system in their zeal to force Greece to its knees

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 6:29PM BST 19 Jun 2015

Rarely in modern times have we witnessed such a display of petulance and bad judgment by those supposed to be in charge of global financial stability, and by those who set the tone for the Western world.

The spectacle is astonishing. The European Central Bank, the EMU bail-out fund, and the International Monetary Fund, among others, are lashing out in fury against an elected government that refuses to do what it is told. They entirely duck their own responsibility for five years of policy blunders that have led to this impasse.

They want to see these rebel Klephts hanged from the columns of the Parthenon – or impaled as Ottoman forces preferred, deeming them bandits - even if they degrade their own institutions in the process.

If we want to date the moment when the Atlantic liberal order lost its authority – and when the European Project ceased to be a motivating historic force – this may well be it. In a sense, the Greek crisis is the financial equivalent of the Iraq War, totemic for the Left, and for Souverainistes on the Right, and replete with its own “sexed up” dossiers.

Does anybody dispute that the ECB – via the Bank of Greece - is actively inciting a bank run in a country where it is also the banking regulator by issuing this report on Wednesday?

It warned of an "uncontrollable crisis" if there is no creditor deal, followed by soaring inflation, "an exponential rise in unemployment", and a "collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership".

The guardian of financial stability is consciously and deliberately accelerating a financial crisis in an EMU member state - with possible risks of pan-EMU and broader global contagion – as a negotiating tactic to force Greece to the table.

It did so days after premier Alexis Tsipras accused the creditors of "laying traps" in the negotiations and acting with a political motive. He more or less accused them of trying to destroy an elected government and bring about regime change by financial coercion.

I leave it to lawyers to decide whether this report is a prima facie violation of the ECB’s primary duty under the EU treaties. It is certainly unusual. The ECB has just had to increase emergency liquidity to the Greek banks by €1.8bn (enough to last to Monday night) to offset the damage from rising deposit flight.

In its report, the Bank of Greece claimed that failure to meet creditor demands would “most likely” lead to the country’s ejection from the European Union. Let us be clear about the meaning of this. It is not the expression of an opinion. It is tantamount to a threat by the ECB to throw the Greeks out of the EU if they resist.

MORE:

[ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... nance.html ]

Greek parliament backs PM Tsipras' bailout referendum

[ http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/g ... 59877.html ]

Lawmakers approve leftist government's decision to put fresh austerity measures proposed by creditors to vote.

28 Jun 2015 09:07 GMT | Business & Economy, Politics, Europe, Greece

The Greek parliament has backed Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' call for a referendum on the country's bailout deal with international creditors.

The referendum planned for Sunday July 5 was approved by at least 179 deputies out of a total of 300 lawmakers.

“The creditors have not sought our approval but have asked for us to abandon our dignity. We must refuse.”

Tsipras' leftist Syriza party and allied lawmakers voted in favour of the referendum that has angered its creditors who earlier rejected the debt-ridden country's request for a bailout extension.

The country needs to make a $1.8bn payment to the International Monetary Fund by Tuesday or risk defaulting on its obligations.

And that would spell disaster for its banking system which is currently relying on emergency cash injections from European Central Bank - one of its foreign creditors.

In a speech prior to the vote, Tsipras said he was confident that "the Greek people will say an emphatic no to the ultimatum" by the country's creditors - the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission.

"The day of truth is coming for the creditors, the time when they will see that Greece will not surrender, that Greece is not a game that has ended," he said in an address to parliament laced with references to democracy and national dignity.

"I am certain that the Greek people will rise to the historical circumstances and issue a resounding 'No' to the ultimatum," he said as he wound up the debate before a vote to authorise the referendum.

MORE:

[ http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/g ... 59877.html ]


+++++++++++++++

Greek PM calls July 5 referendum on bailout deal
[ http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/g ... 58838.html ]
Alexis Tsipras puts onus on people as he accuses creditors of demanding new spending cuts, tax hikes and labour reforms.

+++++++++++++++

Greece crisis deepens as talks end without deal
[ http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/g ... 46641.html ]
Meeting of eurozone finance ministers breaks up, extending standoff between Greece and its creditors into weekend.

Joseph Stiglitz: how I would vote in the Greek referendum

[ http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... are_btn_fb ]

Neither alternative - approval or rejection of the troika's terms - will be easy, and both carry huge risks

Monday 29 June 2015 17.02 BST Last modified on Monday 29 June 2015 18.52 BST

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news ] might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Governments of France, Germany and Italy all warn that Greeks are voting on their eurozone membership on Sunday, as banks remain shut.

Of course, the economics behind the programme that the "troika" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/greece ] resulting in a 25% decline in the country's GDP. I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece's rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60%.

It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe's leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.

- - - SNIP - - -

But why would Europe do this? Why are European Union leaders resisting the referendum and refusing even to extend by a few days the June 30 deadline for Greece's next payment to the IMF? Isn't Europe all about democracy?
[ http://www.theguardian.com/world/eu ]

In January, Greece's citizens voted for a government committed to ending austerity. [ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... is-2015-05 ] If the government were simply fulfilling its campaign promises, it would already have rejected the proposal. But it wanted to give Greeks a chance to weigh in on this issue, so critical for their country's future wellbeing.

That concern for popular legitimacy is incompatible with the politics of the eurozone, which was never a very democratic project. Most of its members' governments did not seek their people's approval to turn over their monetary sovereignty to the ECB. When Sweden's did, Swedes said no. They understood that unemployment would rise if the country's monetary policy were set by a central bank that focused single-mindedly on inflation (and also that there would be insufficient attention to financial stability). The economy would suffer, because the economic model underlying the eurozone was predicated on power relationships that disadvantaged workers.

And, sure enough, what we are seeing now, 16 years after the eurozone institutionalised those relationships, is the antithesis of democracy: many European leaders want to see the end of prime minister Alexis Tsipras' leftist government. After all, it is extremely inconvenient to have in Greece a government that is so opposed to the types of policies that have done so much to increase inequality in so many advanced countries, and that is so committed to curbing the unbridled power of wealth. They seem to believe that they can eventually bring down the Greek government by bullying it into accepting an agreement that contravenes its mandate.

It is hard to advise Greeks how to vote on 5 July. Neither alternative - approval or rejection of the troika's terms - will be easy, and both carry huge risks. A yes vote would mean depression almost without end. Perhaps a depleted country - one that has sold off all of its assets, and whose bright young people have emigrated - might finally get debt forgiveness; perhaps, having shrivelled into a middle-income economy, Greece might finally be able to get assistance from the World Bank. All of this might happen in the next decade, or perhaps in the decade after that.

By contrast, a no vote would at least open the possibility that Greece, with its strong democratic tradition, might grasp its destiny in its own hands. Greeks might gain the opportunity to shape a future that, though perhaps not as prosperous as the past, is far more hopeful than the unconscionable torture of the present. [ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... er-2015-06 ]

I know how I would vote.

Scare-mongering Greeks to Vote “Yes” on Sunday. The Threat of Bail-in “Haircuts” on Bank Deposits

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/scare-mong ... ts/5460399 ]

By Stephen Lendman Global Research, July 04, 2015

The Choice Greeks have in Sunday’s referendum is accepting most Troika austerity demands or all of them – what this writer calls death by hanging or firing squad.

Troika supporters are going all-out to scare Greeks to accept what most harms them – endless austerity until the entire population (except its elites) is forced into impoverished indentured servitude under Western bankster rules.

The latest 11th hour rumor claims “Greek banks prepare plan to raid deposits to avert collapse,” according to the Financial Times.

A so-called “bail-in” would impose at least a 30% haircut on deposits over 8,000 euros, the FT said citing unnamed bankers and businesspeople. It would resemble the 2013 Cyprus plan imposing haircuts on uninsured deposits over 100,000 euros.

An unnamed source said the bail-in “would take place in the context of an overall restructuring of the bank sector once Greece is back in a bailout programme. This is not something that is going to happen immediately.”

It’s not coincidental that rumors like this (true or false) are floated on the referendum’s eve. With a close vote expected, Troika bandits aim to shift enough undecided Greeks to the “yes” camp on Sunday.

Banks are closed. Capital controls remain in place restricting depositor access to maximum 60 euros daily from ATM machines alone. No foreign transactions are allowed.

Greek bankers want people to vote “yes” on Sunday – to protect their bottom line interests. The FT cited two unnamed Athens ones saying only enough cash remains to supply them for a few more days.

MORE:

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/scare-mong ... ts/5460399 ]

Greece – Risk of False-flagging Greece into Submission and Chaos?

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/greece-ris ... os/5460323 ]

By Peter Koenig Global Research, July 03, 2015

As we move closer to the 5 July referendum, it becomes clearer every day – Brussels, Washington and Berlin are waging an open “class war” against Greece, because the Greek people, the citizens of a sovereign country – the first democracy in Europe, the country that gave Europe her name – these people have had the audacity to democratically elect a socialist government. Now they have to suffer. They do not conform to the self-imposed rules of the neoliberal empire of unrestricted globalized privatization of public services and public properties from which the elite is maximizing profits – for themselves, of course – it is outright theft of public property.

The weapon is finance; the instruments are the mega-banksters of Europe and Washington. They are like dehumanized missiles. The fight is no-holds-barred – all out, no scruples. The savages of Brussels have the audacity to call for Mr. Tsipras’' resignation in case the Greek referendum rejects the austerity package. – Can you imagine!

Madame Lagarde, the heartless Iron Lady of the IMF, keeps referring to the Greek government as ‘children’. She keeps asking to talk to ‘adults’ – inferring that what Greece suggests and proposes as an alternative to the killer plan of the troika is mere child’'s talk. – What an abject arrogance.

And that in the face of senior IMF economists who have already months ago declared that austerity doesn'’t work in the case of Greece – and, in fact, in no case. To revive the economy of a country, the economy needs oxygen to breathe, to recover – just the contrary of an austerity program. Austerity is strangulation by debt and suffocation by complete annihilation of a nation’'s social safety net.

MORE:

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/greece-ris ... os/5460323 ]

Argentina's Fernandez celebrates Greece's "No" to creditors

[ http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/ ... 1T20150706 ]

BUENOS AIRES, July 5, 2015 | By Hugh Bronstein

World markets may tremble at Sunday's decision by Greek voters to reject conditions of a rescue deal from creditors, but the leader of Argentina, which suffered a similar crisis more than a decade ago, boldly welcomed the referendum result.

President Cristina Fernandez, known for combatively defending her unorthodox policies, tweeted that Greece's vote marked "a resounding victory for democracy and dignity."

There are stark similarities between Argentina's 2002 financial meltdown and the turmoil in Greece: rigid monetary regimes, creditors battling domestic politics to fix the problem and banking systems at breaking point.

In Greece, 61 percent of voters rejected a deal that would have imposed more austerity on their already ravaged economy.

"The Greek people have said 'NO' ... to the impossible and humiliating conditions that would be imposed for the restructuring of their debt," she tweeted. "We Argentines know what this is about. We hope that Europe and its leaders understand the message ... that you can't force anyone to sign their own death warrant."

MORE:

[ http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/ ... 1T20150706 ]

Paul Krugman: Europe Is Acting Like 'Medieval Doctors Bleeding Their Patients'

[ http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-kr ... 038943&t=1 ]

The voters said "no" to a campaign of bullying and intimidation.

By Janet Allon / AlterNet July 6, 2015

When Greek voters stood up to a campaign of bullying and intimidation by voting "no" to the new round of creditor demands, they were striking a blow both for democracy and for Europe, Paul Krugman writes in today's column. "Even the most ardent supporters of European union should be breathing a sigh of relief," Krugman says.

Of course, that’s not the way the creditors would have you see it. Their story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.

But the campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense.

Greece's creditors have not been making sense for a long time, Krugman suggests. One of them, the International Monetary Fund, has even admitted that Greece could never ever pay off its debt. Krugman reiterates his argument that severe austerity is wreaking so much damage to the Greek economy that the suffering is serving absolutely no purpose. And of course, this suffering would have been inflicted for generations, and on Greeks who had absolutely no hand in the original "crime" of overspending.

MORE:

[ http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-kr ... 038943&t=1 ]

Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite’s war on democracy

[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... t-55279399 ]

George Monbiot | July 7, 2015

"‘No’ to slavery but ‘yes’ to chains". - Investigative journalist Greg Palast on Greece

Greece may be financially bankrupt, but the troika is politically bankrupt. Those who persecute this nation wield illegitimate, undemocratic powers, powers of the kind now afflicting us all. Consider the International Monetary Fund. The distribution of power here was perfectly stitched up: IMF decisions require an 85% majority, and the US holds 17% of the votes.

The IMF is controlled by the rich, and governs the poor on their behalf. It’s now doing to Greece what it has done to one poor nation after another, from Argentina to Zambia. Its structural adjustment programmes have forced scores of elected governments to dismantle public spending, destroying health, education and all the means by which the wretched of the earth might improve their lives.

The same programme is imposed regardless of circumstance: every country the IMF colonises must place the control of inflation ahead of other economic objectives; immediately remove barriers to trade and the flow of capital; liberalise its banking system; reduce government spending on everything bar debt repayments; and privatise assets that can be sold to foreign investors.

Using the threat of its self-fulfilling prophecy (it warns the financial markets that countries that don’t submit to its demands are doomed), it has forced governments to abandon progressive policies. Almost single-handedly, it engineered the 1997 Asian financial crisis: by forcing governments to remove capital controls, it opened currencies to attack by financial speculators. Only countries such as Malaysia and China, which refused to cave in, escaped.

Consider the European Central Bank. Like most other central banks, it enjoys “political independence”. This does not mean that it is free from politics, only that it is free from democracy. It is ruled instead by the financial sector, whose interests it is constitutionally obliged to champion through its inflation target of around 2%. Ever mindful of where power lies, it has exceeded this mandate, inflicting deflation and epic unemployment on poorer members of the eurozone.

The Maastricht treaty, establishing the European Union and the euro, was built on a lethal delusion: a belief that the ECB could provide the only common economic governance that monetary union required. It arose from an extreme version of market fundamentalism: if inflation were kept low, its authors imagined, the magic of the markets would resolve all other social and economic problems, making politics redundant. Those sober, suited, serious people, who now pronounce themselves the only adults in the room, turn out to be demented utopian fantasists, votaries of a fanatical economic cult.

MORE:

[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... t-55279399 ]

US Preparing Coup to Prevent Greece from Falling Under Russian Influence

[ http://www.infowars.com/us-preparing-co ... influence/ ]

Coup master Victoria Nuland dispatched

by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | July 6, 2015

The United States and Germany are prepared to engineer a coup in Greece to keep the country operating as a strategic asset on NATO’s vulnerable southeast European flank.

“A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece – the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church,” writes John Helmer, [ http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13712#more-13712 ] the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia not connected to the corporate media.

The primary tip-off something is brewing can be detected by the presence of Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, in Athens in March.

Nuland, The Guardian reported on March 17, “flew into the capital amid mounting US concerns that the great euro debt crisis has begun to pose a geopolitical threat. Allowed to veer out of control, Greece could end up in the ambit of Russia, financially bereft and without the EU links that keep it bounded to the west. Nato’s south-eastern flank would be immeasurably weakened at a time of mounting global security worries over Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East.” [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/m ... sias-hands ]

Nuland and the United States may be working closely with Greek military to foment a coup following the historic “No” vote in a referendum of the demands of the banksters.

She is notorious for her role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and it now appears she has been assigned for a repeat in Greece. Helmer writes that when Nuland visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game [became] clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow.

Russia to Rescue Greece from Bankers

Russia is reportedly prepared to help Greece as it battles the banksters on Wall Street and Brussels. It is believed a Greek exit from the eurozone will move the country closer to Russia and deepen divisions within NATO.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of the socialist Syriza party said in mid-June an alignment with Russia is possible and hinted Greece was “ready to go to new seas to reach new safe ports.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Russia would consider providing loans to Greece if requested. [ http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la- ... story.html ]

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[ http://www.infowars.com/us-preparing-co ... influence/ ]

4 lessons from Iceland and Greece for movements fighting austerity

[ http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/4- ... austerity/ ]

George Lakey July 8, 2015

EXCERPT:

When Greece´s 1 percent brought the economy to its downward economic spiral in 2010, Europe´s 1 percent stepped in and Greece´s centrist government accepted the imposition of austerity measures. The result of the ensuing five years of austerity? Greece now threatens to beat Iceland´s record as Europe´s worst economic collapse.

When Iceland fell apart, it initially followed the rules, turning to the International Monetary Fund for help. However, the people brought down the ruling government and installed a leftist government that defied the IMF´s prescription. Iceland quickly rebounded, avoiding high unemployment and preventing people´s loss of their mortgaged homes. Iceland´s democracy refused to bow to the IMF´s austerity requirement, and bailed out the people instead of the banks.

In contrast to the results in the United States and Europe of post-2008 austerity, where the wealth gap has widened, Iceland´s solution produced a shrinking of its wealth gap. Iceland increased its social safety net, increased taxes on the rich and reduced taxes on low-income people. In the U.N.´s 2012 World Happiness Report, Iceland came in number 1 in the world.

During a research trip to Iceland in 2014, I interviewed education professor Hanna Ragnarsdottir and asked her about the impact of the collapse on Icelandic education. "We had to tighten our belts, or course," she responded, looking solemn and pausing in thought for a moment. Then, to my surprise, she told me that they avoided laying off teachers or other staff. They did leave vacant some positions and put off new projects, but "now things are looking up again," she said.

While there are many economic differences between Iceland and Greece, I´m struck by the overwhelming determination in both countries to take charge of their own economies. Their popular movements understand that austerity is actually a weapon in the class war. In Iceland, the majority was able to reclaim self-determination and create a left solution to their economic crisis - and it worked. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said, "What Iceland did was right. It would have been wrong to burden future generations with the mistakes of the financial system."

At the moment, the Greek majority is fighting for the same freedom, but the famously undemocratic European Union has no intention of allowing anything except its 1 percent solution.

What does this mean for social movements in the United States and elsewhere?

- Make transparent the costs of the austerity weapon. Health economist David Stuckler´s statistical studies have shown that austerity triggers psychological depression and predictably increases the incidence of heart attacks and suicides.

- Don´t wait: Create crises to expose the role of the economic elite. In both Iceland and Greece the majority allowed the minority to create their crisis through wrecking their economies. The U.S. majority up until now seems willing for the 1 percent to wreck our economy through its climate policies. As strategist Bill Moyer pointed out in his 2002 book "Doing Democracy," the role of social movements is to create a mini-crisis that alerts the majority to what has been going on behind its back.

- Build alternative institutions that build confidence, the skills of cooperation, and teamwork. ( . . . ) Dealing with one´s own compulsion to be competitive is tough, but a useful arena for change is community, and we can create community in our living choices, activist organizations and co-ops.

- Assist the majority to realize that the economic elite plays by different rules. The willingness of national elites in Iceland and Greece to support international muscle to hold on to wealth at the price of the suffering and death of their compatriots can be hard for majorities to wrap their minds around. Nationalism still has its appeal, and it is especially challenging for people raised middle class to be duly cynical about their masters - in the United States, as well as in other countries. Many of us need to learn cynicism. As Aldous Huxley wrote, "It´s good to be cynical, if you know when to stop."

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George Lakey co-founded Earth Quaker Action Group which just won its five-year campaign to force a major U.S. bank to give up financing mountaintop removal coal mining. Along with college teaching, he has led 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national, and international levels. Among many other books and articles, he is author of "Strategizing for a Living Revolution" in David Solnit´s book Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2004). His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in and most recent was with Earth Quaker Action Team while protesting mountain top removal coal mining.

Radical Austerity’s Brutal Lies: How Krugman and Chomsky Saw Through Dehumanizing Neoliberal Spin

[ http://www.alternet.org/radical-austeri ... 039203&t=9 ]

Some saw through the ruse.

By Patrick Smith / Salon July 11, 2015

- - -

QUOTE: "In the space of six months I have surrendered a lot of illusions—the illusions of an American, for I long (and naively) looked to Europe to evince some alternative to America’s military-centered assertion of its ambitions. It does, but the distinction is merely one of means, not ends: In the Greek case, Europe wanted regime change in Athens and probably still does. It prefers to do with bond debt what Washington likes to do with bombs".

- - - - -

The referendum in Greece refuting the European Union’s unbending insistence on radical austerity as the medicine Greeks must continue to swallow is simply not to be missed for its multiple layers of significance. To put the core take-home first, we are all Greeks as they stand against the neoliberal orthodoxy. Their battle is perfectly of a piece with one that needs to be called by its name and waged in our great country.

The Greek crisis has given us an altogether exposing moment, to put the point another way. It is universal in all that it lays bare about the world’s political economy as it has come to be over the last, say, four decades.

Three understandings—recognitions, maybe—were immediately plain as the polling results came in Sunday evening. The Tsipras government, left social democratic in its thinking, won a triumphant 61 percent of the electorate’s support in its stand against the E.U.’s utterly irrational desire to impose more human suffering in the name of market principles. And the magnitude of the victory underscored the truths Greece just gave us:

• Greeks voted courage over fear. They insisted that there is a value higher than market value—this value being the commonweal, the well-being of a society and the people who comprise it. They asked, Does the polity serve the market, or does the market serve the polity? This is one of the essential questions of our time, however rarely it gets asked. Posing it is a very large deed in itself, a favor to all others, and the Greeks’ reply is larger still, of course.

• The European Union, with roots in the too-distant idealism of the early postwar years, has just destroyed any claim it had to stand among humanity’s higher aspirations. The E.U. will remain, obviously, but effectively in form only—a collection of powerful but hollow institutions that inspire little loyalty. Its nakedly corrupt use of power against Greek democracy devastates what may have remained of its original ambition. For now at least, there is no reason to do anything other than oppose it in the name of the very thing it was supposed to stand for: human freedom.

• “What’s going on with the austerity is really class war,” Noam Chomsky said in an interview with the estimable Amy Goodman on this site a few days ago. [ http://www.salon.com/2015/07/05/noam_ch ... r_partner/ ] It is time we got used to this term, which requires that we discredit our densely layered mythologies to the effect that class conflict occurs
elsewhere but never in our Providential land. Greeks ’r’ Us: In what they have just done we must see what must be done in America if this nation is to avoid letting the neoliberal order subvert it altogether.

Alexis Tsipras’ last speech on the eve of the referendum is a remarkable document. [
https://mydesiringmachines.wordpress.co ... d-courage/
] Unless you speak Greek, you have to read it in an English translation of the French translation, but it comes over clearly nonetheless. (And isn’t it interesting that the French would translate it but no one in the Anglo-American world would bother?)

- - - - -SNIP - - - -

How to explain what the E.U. has just done? For months one has had to ask, Why does Europe insist on intensifying the very policies that measurably worsened Greece’s predicament, turning disaster into calamity?

There are a few answers.

One, the E.U. and Germany are ducking responsibility. So long as they insist on more austerity they do not have to acknowledge the strategy’s failure. As Paul Krugman has pointed out repeatedly in his New York Times columns, Greece has done nearly everything demanded in the two previous bailout plans only to find its circumstances worsened. Let Greeks suffer in the cause of our political reputations: This is in essence the position. Disgraceful, of course.

Two, the power of ideological belief and the out-of-hand rejection of all imaginative thinking both derive from the reality Chomsky named: Austerity and the neoliberal orthodoxy it manifests are at bottom forms of class war. When we recognize this, the mystery starts to evaporate.

Failed policies, malnourished Greeks, widespread homelessness, shuttered schools and hospitals—none of it counts as more than collateral damage in the campaign to turn Greece into a low-wage, low-cost, deregulated park wherein global corporations can do more or less what they like.

Third, it is time to put the E.U. in the file with all other supra-national institutions developed in the post-1945 period. The three I have in mind are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. Anyone who does not recognize these as instruments deployed in the West’s campaign to roll the neoliberal order across the globe like linoleum needs to look more objectively at events.

Back in the early 1970s, Shirley Hazzard, the Australian-cum-British-cum-American writer, published a scathing account of the U.N. called “Defeat of an Ideal,” and the title tells you the sad tale this book recounts. An institution founded on hope and aspiration ends up a gross betrayal of its own purpose—not least, in the U.N.’s case, because Washington insisted on waging the Cold War in its corridors.

Hazzard concluded that the U.N. should be dissolved so that the community of nations could begin again and retrieve the original principles written into the charter. I am not quite there yet with the E.U. Tsipras is right to try to keep his country in the eurozone, but I doubt he is looking for fraternal harmony.

I doubt he has any illusions, either, as to the long-term prospects of an enduring accommodation between a social democratic populace and a set of neoliberal institutions answerable to no electorate. Tsipras needs a deal to spare 11 million Greeks more suffering and chaos, full stop. I do not think we should look for more to come of this.

In the space of six months I have surrendered a lot of illusions—the illusions of an American, for I long (and naively) looked to Europe to evince some alternative to America’s military-centered assertion of its ambitions. It does, but the distinction is merely one of means, not ends: In the Greek case, Europe wanted regime change in Athens and probably still does. It prefers to do with bond debt what Washington likes to do with bombs.

Parenthetically, think about the Ukraine crisis in this light. The same very modest distinction applies. Washington and the Europeans continue to bicker about method—how to yank Ukraine westward, violently or otherwise—but no more.

The dream is over. What can I say?

Just one final point, actually.

The term “class war” is powerfully provocative in the American context. You do not use it unless you are willing to put up your dukes, for the myth of America as a middle-class nation with no contesting endowed and deprived extremes is a wide plank in the platform of our claim to exceptionalism. How many times have you heard the trusty, “We’re all in this together”—articulated most frequently when it is perilously obvious that we are not?

We Americans would do very well, then, to reflect on the Greeks’ predicaments for what we may learn about our own. In yet one more context, unless we overcome the exceptionalist narrative we stand little chance of understanding who we are, what is being done to us, and what we must do.

Last Sunday, Greeks told the rest of us they are perfectly clear on all three points. Are they not to be envied in this respect, even amid their sufferings and struggles.

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Patrick Smith is the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote “Letter from Tokyo” for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington
Quarterly, and other publications.

Grexit, Hitting Bank Deposits, “Bail-Ins” and the New Financial Order

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/grexit-hit ... er/5461323 ]

By Global Research July 09, 2015

Has the Greek massive “No” vote to austerity triggered a wave of popular demand for referendums on austerity and exiting the eurozone?

It was reported this week that “[o]ver 260,000 Austrians have signed a petition calling for the EU exit for the country, and now the Austrian parliament must discuss a referendum on the issue.” [ http://www.globalresearch.ca/austrians- ... on/5460701 ]

Inspired by the Greeks, the British population is now asking for a referendum on austerity.

But is the financial world order threatened at all?

Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett discuss “financial cleansing”, or how “bankers and their political cronies will be able to use the bail-in, this weapon of financial destruction, not against the megabanks but against smaller banks, credit unions and independent banks that threaten their monopoly of power.”

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[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/grexit-hit ... er/5461323 ]