Beneath the headlines on Greece’s upcoming elections and its ongoing crisis, there’s a quieter story happening. Across the country, hundreds of groups of regular people are stepping in where the system is failing, forming volunteer initiatives to tackle problems like healthcare shortages and education cutbacks, experimenting with alternative micro-economies and looking at new ways of addressing discrimination.
Over the course of the past couple weeks, the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism has been reinforced. With the sickening treatment of Greece by the EU, which saw neoliberal capitalist austerity forced on a people democratically against that very course of policy, there is no wonder why frustration and even hopelessness pervades the psyche of progressives throughout the world.
When my short essay on Greece after the referendum “The Courage of Hopelessness” was republished by In These Times, its title was changed into “How Alexis Tsipras and Syriza Outmaneuvered Angela Merkel and the Eurocrats”. Although I effectively think that accepting the EU terms was not a simple defeat, I am far from such an optimist view. The reversal of the NO of referendum to the YES to Brussels was a genuine devastating shock, a shattering painful catastrophe. More precisely, it was an apocalypse in both senses of the term, the usual one (catastrophe) and the original literal one (disclosure, revelation): the basic antagonism, deadlock, of the situation was clearly disclosed.
20 July 2015 Helliniko A very important update has come to us from Belgium: MCCH and its volunteers have worked hard using every outlet available to increase awareness about the situation of the G...
Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, talks about the situation in Greece and how it affects his parents. He analyses the Greek situation and balks ...
Excerpted from Olivier Tickell: “While its important for Greece to get the money side of things sorted out, what really matters in the long term is getting its ecology right too. To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville: “It’s the ecology, stupid!” And rather than using ‘bailout’ funds to move money around the banking …
Jim discusses the current financial crisis in Greece, how state governments are quietly raising gas taxes to take advantage of the currently low prices, what ...
Just a few hours after the Greek government announced a referendum over the fate of Greece’s bailout programmes, banks are shut in the country and capital controls have been set to only 60 € a day. ATM lines are growing throughout Greece, with an estimated €2bn bank run in just 48 hours. With banks to remain closed until July 7th, two days after the referendum, Greek society seems to be polarised around swift decisions that will define the fate of the country for decades to come.
The question that shook the world was a choice between a Plan A – more of the same, evidently failed austerity policies that made the country lose 25 percent of its GDP in five years – and a Plan B – a poorly designed Grexit, with unpredictable consequences that could mean the country’s sudden death.
Pavlos Georgiadis is an ethnobotanist and food author. He worked as a researcher in 11 countries in Europe, Asia and America before returning to Greece in 2012, where he focuses on agrifood innovation, participatory rural development and food politics.
From laissez-faire economics in 18th-century India to neoliberalism in today’s Europe the subordination of human welfare to power is a brutal tradition
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, Necessity is the mother of invention. When Christos Papaioannou noticed his car needed new tires, the Greek computer engineer bought them with...
Necessity is the mother of invention. When Christos Papaioannou noticed his car needed new tires, the Greek computer engineer bought them with euros—but used an alternative currency, called TEM, to...
This Sunday the Greek people face a pivotal moment of truth, a “krisis”[1], regarding "the issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later [which] is the people versus the banks." [2] Contrary to corporate media propaganda, citizens throughout Europe stand with the Greek people[3] in their struggle against a corporate takeover of the governance of the world, otherwise known as austerity[4].As I small contribution, I want to share some informati
AND so do we all ... This article is a reply to Malcolm Rutherford’s comment to “"A Nation’s Treasury can issue its own money".[i] (1) Recovering the original noble purpose of banking and financeMalcolm, for all the reasons you gave, it is true that the crisis in Greece, which is part of a global multifaceted systemic crisis (social, economic, ecological), cannot be resolved within the architecture and ethos of the incumbent international monetary system. We need to think outside the
The left, unions, and social movements should keep pushing their agenda even if the NDP is elected. An electoral party should serve the people and movements that elect it, not the other way around.
"By adopting an action research methodology, I inquire into how far the responses of citizens to the global economic crisis of 2008 lead to the emergence of a new economic culture in Spain and Greece. Since Southern European states follow austerity directives and do not offer sufficient support for their population, communities organise to provide for each other through cooperation and solidarity. Decentralised political and economic movements are building structures to challenge and replace established centralised institutions. As people drop out of the formal economy, they find material relief, ideological support and a sense of belonging in networks of alternative economic practices."
Greece's economic woes will never be solved by merely moving money around the banking system, writes Oliver Tickell. The lasting solution is to restore native forests to her barren hills and mountains, invest in large-scale solar power to energise Europe, and create an examplar of sustainable development for our global future.
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