Sure they should. Anti-corruption laws held everywhere. But of course this is only a part of the whole corruption going on in Greece. And also for the top-managers of Siemens and Thyssen-Krupp, somebody in Greece actually took that money. These guys should be responsible too.

I think fighting corruption is very important but I agree that it would not solve the whole problem. But without it solving the problem gets much harder, so you need to fight the corruption anyway. It makes me angry that for five years this problems still exists in a country that has no money and no time for such practices.

Personally I like it too. Great history, good food, blue and clear water. I was there 10 years ago when all was still fine and people were extremely nice. Prices were high. Road signs said that a highway is built by EU money but it ended after 10 kilometres. A running joke was that there existed no land-registry, so nobody knew which land belongs to whom. And all the buildings were unfisnihed. Maybe these were signs but nobody from outside saw what was coming.

I really think that inflation in the eurozone should have been higher in the last 3-4 years and the interest rate hike of Trichet (ECB president) in 2011 was a very stupid mistake (thank God we have Draghi or the eurozone would have been blown to pieces by now).

It would have made many things better (especially for Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy,..) but Greece would still be among the least performers in any case. The problems of Greece are too bad, competitiveness is too low, they need to lower wages and cut expenditures too much. Basically they should left the euro in 2010 (or not joined in 2002). But since this did not happen, they might consider the option now.

I think leaving the euro is doable and better for all, so it should be done.

You don't really think that gays are some kind of monsters running around penetrating everything that doesn't hide (or bends down in the shower), do you? :)

What you have described is still corruption (at least in my books). The Greeks sold the future of their youngsters for temporary happiness. That's the saddest part of this story. They can't even show their kids (or to the rest of the world) that they build something nice for their future (a good health system or some nice education facilities).

I'm glad the only people here not using invectives are idiots calling me "racist" (buy a fucking dictionary) because I think countries and people should bear the responsibility for their actions, and a country that cooked the books to join the eurozone should be kicked out of it, instead of wasting billions of euros that get us nowhere and are effectively wasted every year (this thread would not exist and there would be nothing going on now, if that was not the case), while tax evasion remains a giant preblem costing the country billions every year.

Now you are free to disagree with me, I don't really much care. But the nonsense of calling me racist or saying I'm demonizing anyone is just stupid and disgusting. I've already explained how I hold everyone, including my own country, up to the same standard (of course that post also got low rated, because fuck me I guess).

Now, this I hope really was the last time I speak in this ignorance and hate filled thread, please feel free to keep downvoting me and calling me names.

I'm back to reading American Gods.

It's true, people not agreeing with something often use defamatory language in an attempt to hurt the other sides by insults.

The non-defamatory version would be here: "Greek government spent too much for a very long time, most probably willingly and without much hope of paying everything back ever, therefore effectively living on the expense of others." Content-wise it doesn't sound so much better for Greece than the other version.

fair enough, Greece should have offered some plan by themselves.
But the point is that all these bailout packages should have never been given out without some idea how to achieve a sustainable economy in the long-term. And i am not aware of any such ideas going along with the previous rescue packages. Any voices saying that just addressing the budget inbalance won't solve the issue, were ignored. And are still being ignored if you look at the latest proposals.

nope, nope, thats not what i'm saying. let's try this again:
So i think we agree that the start of the problem was that the greek expenses were way to high (due to inefficent taxes, high pensions, inflated public institutions, etc). Mostly made possible because of cheap credits( which were happily given to them by irresponsible banks) and some lying about the actual budget numbers (if I remember correctly).
At the same time we are still in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the economy is in recession, companies holding of investments, wage cuts etc.
So you get a credit from the friendly EU institutions and start addressing your structural issues: cut wages, cut benefits, cut pensions, fire workers, cut public investments, increase taxes etc.
With the side effects that people have less money and consequently will spend less money -> local companies who are already not doing great because of the recession now have even more problems to earn enough -> cutting wages, firing staff,etc. Lacking contracts from reduced public investments(infrastructure, maintenance, public services,etc) contributes again to a shrinking economey.
So in the next year's budget you are looking at reduced expenses, but also a reduced income due to sinking taxes cause by the shrinking economy.
Now if your income has shrunken the same amount(or more) as your expenses you have a problem. Because you have achieved nothing. You are still running a deficit, plus you need to pay back that credit + interest.
Which is exactly what happened in Greece.
What do we do now?
Well, let's try this again, right? Get another credit and start cutting expenses again. surely it will work this time ...

Now where in this cycle of budget cuts and contracting economy do you see the chance of developing a sustainable economy?
The unemployment is now at 25%, youth unemployment at 60%, a large number of people are living in poverty. Pensions in a lot of cases have to sustain a whole family because the younger generation has nothing.
And we are still running with the idea of cutting expenses and raising taxes?
Don't you think it is time to at least entertain the idea that our plan isn't exactly working?
Can you blame the greek people for wanting some new perspective ?

I don't want to go on too much about the issues with Germany, as it probably doesn't really belong here in this thread.
but just a short answer
i remember some report saying that 20% of the Autobahnen and 40% of the other long-distance roads are in critical condition. Mostly due to neglected maintenance. There was a study this year that we would need to invest 90billion€(in road,railway&waterways) to get over that. Which just shows that short-sighted austerity to show off a positiv budget isn't necessarily a good long-term solution. oh, and try not to get hospitalized while in Germany.

I don't want to read 10 pages of discussion, but I just want to post this.

I totally support democracy and therefore the referendum. I my best wishes for the greek people and I hope Syriza could find the best way to do what they try to do (which is to solve the greeks problems), either is to make a better agreement or leave Eurozone.

Fuck the Troika, fuck FMI, fuck ECB and fuck Merkel.

No, nations are not a race. Stigmatizing a whole country is being a bigot. Or a douchebag. Unless it's against Belgians, everyone knows they're assholes. :P Racist is a very specific thing.

Racists feat/hate/loathe people no matter where they are from, it is never a question of that, but of the color of their skin.

There is no big difference, actually. Even in Germany people understand it.
http://www.1913intel.com/2013/02/14/uncle-sam-poops-out-germanys-angela-merkel/

But seriously, there are real racists out there, actual fucking racists who *do* believe there are races, and that term is made to describe them. We need that term for that specific purpose. The KKK doesn't care one iota where a black person is from, they'll hate just because of the color of the skin, because they're RACIST.

There's plenty of terms for xenophobes, bigots, etc. which describe exactly what you're so pig-headedly calling "racist", but all you're doing is devaluing actual racism.

You should meet some actual racists and discuss this with them, because whether or not *you* think races exist, *they* do and they're serious about it. Because they're fucking RACISTS.

You are mixing up two issues there. Racialism as a (indirectly nocive) pseudo-scientific belief, and the issue of discrimination.

- Racialism is present in common sense, and even in (especially US) administration : it is the belief that there are different biological races (in the most popular model, 4 "races", basically black/white/yellow/red, other beliefs use 8 categories, etc). It is scientifically wrong and intellectually misleading, as it implies on one hand several discreets categories (defined on independant traits, as if phenotypical continuity wasn't enough to debunk it) and some biological determinism ready to be rhetorically mobilized through arbitrary nature/culture claims. At this point, note how people who do not express any particular hostility to any phenotypical category can still be using this fake "race" category, or believe it to be objectively valid. That is : be "racialist" (as in believing in this outdated scientifical fallacy) without being particularly "racist" in the popular sense (hostile to a physical category of people).

- Discrimination, here, is the fact of hierarchizing the value of humans depending on some "ethnic" category that is attributed to them (the notion of "ethnicity" would take quite a bit to explain, but it's mostly define by a self-sense of collective "belonging", although the category can get sometimes imposed by the outside, which bring up other issues). It used to be very much based on the convenient belief in "races", which is a notion that has been used in many contexts (global like the "aryan" race, or sometimes more national - the notion of "français de souche", and various representations upon which "jus sanguinis" is based, are racialist). The issue with such discriminations is moral and intellectual : they are the problems of essentialization (one "group" is designated as homogeneous and immutable), stigmatization, prejudice, assumptions, etc. Nowadays, as the knowledge that "races" are not a reality gets more and more whitespread, it's main technical form (if you want to nitpick) is "culturalism". That is : the belief that, within one culture (imagined as more homogeneous the more socially remote it is percieved), people are the same, and can be expected to behave like some paradigm supposed to represent them. You can recognize here exactly what is commonly called "racism", for a good reason : it is functionally completely equivalent. Deep down, it is the exact same belief on people, rationalized differently. And it has the absolute exact consequence, morally and politically. It is the same fallacy of essentialism and determinism. It serves the same purpose.

For instance : Whatever the current wave of migrants (italians, portugese, tamouls, kurds, malians, pakistani, etc), you will have xenophobes sprouting the exact same discourse, hopping from one target to the other depending on the epoch. "Oh, these [insert current migrant wave label], they are no good, all of them lazy thieves rapists backwards wellfare leeches." Everytime, this has been rightfully judged as a "racist" attitude : explicitely or not it "racializes" a category of people, attaching to them, collectively, negative traits that define its individual members. The arbitrary unfairness (and falshood) of these bigotted discourses has itself been increasingly stigmatized, as society evolved on these points, to the point that such discourses are nowadays considered shameful. And that discourses of that type, wherever it comes from (oneself, news, politicans) ring the alarm bell of racialist/culturalist fallacies. This is what is being called "racism" in a broad sense. And this is why "racism" is now so morally charged. But what makes racism bad is less the incorrect racialist belief itself than the essentialist and determinist attitude that it represents, not the specific way it is being rationalized. A racist guy will show the same hostility and unfairness towards the ethnic category he judges inferior, whatever his rationalization for this categorization. Whether "bah it's their genes" or "bah it's their culture", the function is the same : "culture" is here merely a "race" proxy. The issue, the discourse content, its usage, have not changed.

So, to designate that cognitive issue, and that type of rhetorics, we have the broad term "racisms". As races do not exist, it doesn't designate the discrimination of a "race". As these discourses are independant from the "grouping's rationalization", it is irrelevant that the utterer of such discourses refers to "race", or "culture", or whatever. It is the mere flavor of it, but "racism", in that broad sense, is a reasoning structure. In front of racist discourses, you can then, depending on how relevant to the specific context it is, refine the description into subcategories, get more specific, descriptive at a more detailed level, and check which beliefs are used. But the main belief that "these people re wrthless" is the issue, and the reason for the moral stigma on these discourses.

When you say things such as "but then it benefits the real racialists people", you imply that the racialist subcategory is worse than the culturalist one. You disregard the fact that they are exactly equivalent (all consequences apply to both), and also -if you want to get into the details- how often the culturalist excuse is just a word swapping by people who, deep down, mean "races" (that is, who believe that "cultures" would function like these "races"). By considering that racialism is much worse, you offer to people who hold all sorts of essentialist discriminatory discourses the excuse of "at least i did not use the word race". That is the first effect of ditching the general (morally charged) "racism" term in favor of more technical, less directly charged notions.

The second effect of it is to suppress one global term descriptive of these essentialist discourses. Because you cannot have ready-made words for every each one of their targets. Here, "nationalism" does not cut it, because it signifies something else (an extreme exclusive form of patriotism) and skips the consensual moral stigma that racist discourses (in the broadest sense) have acquired for a reason. You could -which I do sometimes- speak of culturalism instead of racism, which is more accurate. But then, most people wouldn't see immediately why it is bad (wouldn't relate "culturalist" discourses to their causes and effects that are now directly attached to the more familiar "racist" rhetoric), and would have to be explained what "culturalism" is. Explanation being : "it is, as it is also called, cultural racism. - aaah (but but how can it be both cultural and racial".

My point is, this current trend of neutral-ization of racism discourses through a cleaner terminology is pure manipulative rhetorics. In this sort of context, focuses on the irrelevant implicit of "racism" (its narrowest definition) in order to keep at bay its relevant content (an old old dusty and familiar essentialist sort of reasoning, that we know the everyday effects of, and are fucking tired of).

Tl;dr.

a) Racism (racialism) is a subcategory of racism (ethnic-based essentialist determinist discrimination). Hopping semantically from one level to the other, in such contexts, serves to attach a less consensually critical word to a statement of the "i hate italians" or "mexicans are assholes" type.

b) Racism is not an action. It's a cognitive bias. A worldview structure.

c) It's a reflex world interpretation (because of how our brains function : lazily, or i should say : economically), that we should recognize on our own, self-punching our nose when we slip towards it ("fuck these yankees, hm, wait, i'm being a bit of a moron there").

Wow, so many words to justify your usage of the word 'racist'.
Do you have a Tumblr? Can i donate to your Patreon?

Thanks.

The distress of political parties who still get bad rep for their old racist statements is heartbreaking. Wouldn't want to break their shiny new "i am not racist but __" toy.