Grèce: l’effondrement à bas bruit de tout un pays

 Par Martine Orange (Mediapart)*

La crise grecque est toujours là. Les responsables européens et le FMI ont lancé un nouvel ultimatum à Alexis Tsipras. Il a trois semaines pour présenter de nouvelles mesures d’austérité. Épuisé, le pays est au bord de l’effondrement financier, économique et moral. Des responsables de Syriza parlent de sortir de l’euro.

Après avoir repoussé l’idée pendant plus de deux ans, Syriza semble prêt à penser l’impensable : sortir de la zone euro. Même si les responsables gouvernementaux n’en parlent pas ouvertement, des figures éminentes du parti de gauche en évoquent publiquement l’hypothèse. Pour l’ancien ministre des affaires européennes de Syriza, Nikos Xydakis, la question de la sortie de l’euro, en tout cas, ne doit plus être considérée comme « taboue ». « Il ne doit pas y avoir de tabou quand nous parlons du destin de la nation. Nous sommes arrivés au point où le peuple est au bout de son endurance. Je crois que nous avons besoin d’une discussion politique nationale en profondeur. Et cette discussion, naturellement, a besoin de commencer au parlement », a-t-il déclaré mardi 31 janvier.

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961)

by Sean Jacobs

56 years ago today, Congolese prime minister and anticolonial leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated.

Patrice Lumumba was prime minister of a newly independent Congo for only seven months between 1960 and 1961 before he was murdered, fifty-six years ago today. He was thirty-six.

Yet Lumumba’s short political life — as with figures like Thomas Sankara and Steve Biko, who had equally short lives — is still a touchstone for debates about what is politically possible in postcolonial Africa, the role of charismatic leaders, and the fate of progressive politics elsewhere.

Secret IMF Documents on Greece commented by Eric Toussaint (CADTM)

by Eric Toussaint, International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The CADTM draws attention to two IMF documents dating from March and May 2010 that were kept secret. These authentic documents were placed at the disposal of the Truth Committee on Greek Public Debt by Zoe Konstantopoulou, the President of the Hellenic Parliament in office from 6 February to 3 October 2015.

"To persuade the IMF, the French, German and Dutch executive directors lied" Their contents are damning. They clearly show that a large number of IMF Executive Board members expressed severe criticism of the programme the Institution was preparing to implement. Some of them denounced the fact that the programme was aimed at rescuing the private European banks – mainly certain major French and German banks— who were creditors of Greek debt, both public and private. Several of them denounced the selfsame policies that had led to the Asian crisis of 1996-1997 and the Argentine crisis in 2001.

Anger: To “leftist” admirers of Assad’s Syria

by MARDAM-BEY Farouk

As a Syrian who has always identified politically with the left, I am particularly appalled by those men and women who call themselves left-wingers — and are therefore supposed to stand in solidarity with struggles for justice worldwide — and yet openly support the regime of the Assads, father and son, who are chiefly responsible for the Syrian disaster.

Following four months of intense bombardment by the Russian air force, Bashar Al-Assad’s army, along with Shiite militias hailing from everywhere and mobilized by the Iranian mullahs, have now finished ‘liberating’ Eastern Aleppo. Liberated from whom? From its inhabitants. More than 250,000 inhabitants were forced to flee their own city to escape massacres, as had the people of Zabadani and Daraya before them, and as will many more Syrians if systematic social and sectarian ‘cleansing’ continues in their country under the cover of a massive media disinformation campaign.

Grèce : démocratie introuvable !

par Yorgos Mitralias

En matière de déni de démocratie, il y a eu évidemment l’illustre précédent du résultat, jamais respecté, du referendum français de 2005 sur la constitution européenne. Mais quand même, ce qui s’est passé en Grèce en ce funeste mois de juillet 2015 n’a pas son pareil dans l’histoire de l’Europe (anti)démocratique. Jugez-en vous-même…

La foule en délire devant le Parlement grec était en train de fêter l’écrasante victoire du Non à l’austérité, aux memoranda et à la Troïka, quand, à deux pas de là, celui qui était alors ministre des Finances, Yanis Varoufakis, entrait dans le Palais Maximou et… restait figé, bouche bée : le noyau dirigeant de ses collègues, le Premier ministre Tsipras en tête, offrait un spectacle à l’opposé de la liesse populaire de la place Syntagma. Tête baissée et répétant « et maintenant, qu’est-ce qu’on fait ? », les ministres du gouvernement de la « gauche radicale » (Syriza) semblaient désespérés et abattus par la victoire du Non. Un Non qu’ils avaient tant souhaité en public durant toute la semaine précédente ! |1|

You've Been Warned

Hamilton Nolan

If the very worst happens, it won’t be because we didn’t know that it might happen. We have all been amply warned.

- We’ve been warned of the many disturbing parallels between Donald Trump and Hitler.

- We’ve been warned that the rise of Trump resembles the rise of other authoritarian populist demagogues.

- We’ve been warned—by Donald Trump himself—that he plans to implement incredibly broad rules blocking Muslims from entering America, and that he views a Muslim registry or “watch list” as a wise idea.

The Only Way to Stop Climate Change Now May Be Revolution

Fed up with slow (or in some cases, backwards) progress on climate change, environmental advocates are mulling desperate measures. Emerging at the head of this pack is arguably the world’s most prominent climate scientist: James Hansen, a former NASA researcher turned activist.

So it’s come to this.

Last year, a researcher presented a paper on climate change at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting entitled ”Is Earth F**ked?” which advocated “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups.”

Banks are responsible for the crisis in Greece

Debts claimed from Greece are odious

9 January by Eric Toussaint

The present study shows that the Greek crisis that broke out in 2010 originated in private banks, not in excessive public spending. The so-called bail-out was designed to serve the interests of private bankers and those of dominant countries in the Eurozone. Greece adopting the euro played a major role among the various factors that contributed to the crisis. The analysis developed here was first presented in Athens on 6 November 2016 during a meeting of the Truth Committee on Greek Public Debt.

At first sight, between 1996 and 2008, the development of Greece’s economy looked like a success story! The integration of Greece within the EU and from 2001 on within the Eurozone seemed successful. The rate of Greece’s economic growth was higher than that of the stronger economies in Europe.

2011-2016: The Sixth Anniversary of the Start of the Arab Uprisings 

“No one should mourn the old order as if it was a dream rather than a nightmare”

by ACHCAR Gilbert

Six years ago, on 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid. Bouazizi did not know that by this extreme form of protest, he was setting not only himself or his town on fire, nor his province or even his Tunisian homeland alone, but the whole Arab region. Indeed, his protest inspired millions of others—“from the Ocean to the Gulf” as the saying went in the heyday of Arab nationalism—to protest their regimes and the status quo.

The tragedy is that this wave of protests did not bring the renewal that was promised by the branding phrase “Arab Spring,” but rather what followed were more of the old calamities, aggravated to a frightening degree in some cases. It is necessary therefore to emphasize two crucial issues regarding the sad condition under which we commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Arab uprisings.

2011-2013-2016. New Texts Out Now

“Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising”

by ACHCAR Gilbert

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Gilbert Achcar (GA): Two reasons: one general and one practical. The general reason is the need to assess the new counter-revolutionary phase in the Arab upheaval, which started in 2013. Since early on, I have been describing what began in December 2010 in Tunisia and spread to the whole Arab-speaking region in 2011 as a “long-term revolutionary process” that will necessarily go through a succession of contrasting phases. My previous book, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising—which came out in 2013 and was kindly reviewed by Maha Abdelrahman for Jadaliyya—analyzed the economic, social and political roots of the regional upheaval and its dynamics, along with an assessment of its first two years. Morbid Symptoms is a sequel to The People Want, assessing the reactionary phase that has been unfolding since the turning point of 2013.

We weep for Aleppo –

“Aleppo burn, Yemen starve and Palestine cry out for justice”

by DOWLING Felicity, Left Unity

Left Unity Principal Speaker Felicity Dowling writes:

The abomination that is the destruction of Aleppo, of its people and of its buildings and services will be remembered for centuries to come, should humanity have the good fortune to last that long.

War is part and parcel of capitalism, the more so in economic crisis as now.

When the capitalists can’t make enough money by production, or by trade, or by robbing the accumulated wealth of the modern state (they call it austerity or re-structuring or the cuts, or just plain privatisation), by the peaceful use of their power, they decide to rob one another – or other states and peoples – with force of arms. War is part and parcel of capitalism.

Massacres à Alep :

lettre à un « camarade » qui s’obstine à justifier l’injustifiable

par SALINGUE Julien

« Camarade »,

Cela fait plusieurs semaines que je me dis que je vais t’écrire, et ce sont les événements tragiques d’Alep et ta réaction à ces événements, ou parfois ta non-réaction, qui ont fini par me persuader que l’heure était venue de m’adresser à toi. Pas nécessairement dans le but de te convaincre, car je crois que malheureusement il est déjà trop tard. Mais au moins, comme ça, les choses seront dites et tu ne pourras pas dire que tu ne savais pas.