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MadeinChina: i guess greece will be kinda popular these days
You have always been popular when it comes to Academia ;)

In every class we have to learn about your Ancient history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Athens, Sparta, Thebes etc.
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MadeinChina: i guess greece will be kinda popular these days
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Elmofongo: You have always been popular when it comes to Academia ;)

In every class we have to learn about your Ancient history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Athens, Sparta, Thebes etc.
that's great dude but you know everyone now just remmember the hate and not the great thing we did in past but really i cant blame them
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Breja: Christ... Just... just tell me how does what they are doing sound fair to you? It's as if your neighbour borrowed a 100$ from you to repair his house, repaired nothing and asked you for 200$ next time. And so on and on for years. And yet, because it's countries and not people we are talking about, calling things the way they are makes me the bad guy. It has nothing to do wit whether I like greeks. It's just not fair, or smart. It leads nowhere, and wastes money, and rewards the worst attitude possible.
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immi101: first, calm down. it really doesn't help to bring more anger and rage into the debate.
then you have to remember that we didn't just lend them money. We also demanded a brutal austerity program. Which basically destroyed the greek economy. Obviously that makes it kinda hard to repay your debt.
There is certainly a lot that can be blamed on the greek government. But the EU finally needs to admit that the idea of austerity totally failed.
So the greeks did actually follow the austerity plan then? I was under the impression that not much had changed in Greece, but we get so little news about foreign countries here, so I really wasn't sure how things were there. I'm watching this with great interest because I think in about 10 years a bunch of countries (including the US) will be in the same boat or fairly close to it.
guys if you want i can update you what exactly will happen :D
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Elmofongo: You have always been popular when it comes to Academia ;)

In every class we have to learn about your Ancient history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Athens, Sparta, Thebes etc.
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MadeinChina: that's great dude but you know everyone now just remmember the hate and not the great thing we did in past but really i cant blame them
Not so true, many of us will remember your delicious food :) I don't see much hate from outside of the EU though, the greek economy is just not big enough to bring down the world by itself.
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MadeinChina: that's great dude but you know everyone now just remmember the hate and not the great thing we did in past but really i cant blame them
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vp9156: Not so true, many of us will remember your delicious food :) I don't see much hate from outside of the EU though, the greek economy is just not big enough to bring down the world by itself.
thank you dude and we are waiting guys like you in greece :)
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MadeinChina: i guess greece will be kinda popular these days
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Elmofongo: You have always been popular when it comes to Academia ;)

In every class we have to learn about your Ancient history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Athens, Sparta, Thebes etc.
What some need to know it's that we're discussing another historic period of time. Modern Greece and its terrible situation has almost 0,1% in common with those folks above. Afaik this crisis has to do way more with the orthodox church than with Plato. For example, lots of arab countries have little to do with nowadays astronomy, mathematics etc.

Not sayin' I see crap here; this discussion is interesting. But the things you see on the out the on the wild web are atrocious, like saying swedish people nowadays are vikings (lol), germans are nazis or some crap like that.
If so, mexicans are aztecs and worship quetzálcoatl, salvadorans -and other central americans- are maya and "read" the popol vuh on a daily basis, peruvians and other andine countries are inca, nowadays chinese are linked to confucius and iraqis are mesopotamians... and the list goes on.

It's almost as historically terrible as sayin' that Elmofongo is an arawak cacique who worships zemí and plays batey :P
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Telika:
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Telika:
Telika, that was uncalled for. This is the umpteenth time you're crying racism where there is none but you just can't let a day go by without slandering something or someone regardless of whether there is evidence supporting your claim or not. Wasn't going to say anything if you had left it at post 3 but apparently making a generalized rant aimed at no one specifically wasn't enough for you, you had to push it further and pull the racist card on a fellow member for no reason whatsoever. That's not very socially competent, is it?

It boggles my mind that apparently no one is calling you out on your unfair behavior. Once or twice could be chalked down to having a bad mood and one could excuse that but unfortunately it's a habit of yours. We can disagree and even argue in a slightly unfriendly matter and that's fine but what you're doing is prime grade libel & slander and it's somewhat out of control.

Just to humor your non-argument: What "race" are Greeks anyway, please tell us?

And who exactly are the supposed racists? Other Eurozone countries that are - just like Greece - predominantly inhabited by Caucasian people? Can't you see it's about money? Bringing racism into it makes no sense unless one realizes that you do this all the time to bullet-proof your personal opinion, or so you think ("If I simply call something/someone racist then no one can oppose me because I have the higher moral ground mohohoho".
Sorry but that's not how it works and I've already explained in past conversations why your procedure is harmful as it trivializes real racism which you - as you yourself admitted - never even experienced.

PS: And please don't bother lashing out at me as per usual, you must know that it's futile plus you haven't come up with any new insults in a while so it's repetitive. But if you can't behave more fairly around here, I'll have to link to some of your posts where you use foul insults. (Because unlike you, I don't make any claims and accusations that I can't support with evidence or at the very least a decent argument)
Post edited June 29, 2015 by awalterj
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Elmofongo: You have always been popular when it comes to Academia ;)

In every class we have to learn about your Ancient history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Athens, Sparta, Thebes etc.
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vicklemos: What some need to know it's that we're discussing another historic period of time. Modern Greece and its terrible situation has almost 0,1% in common with those folks above. Afaik this crisis has to do way more with the orthodox church than with Plato. For example, lots of arab countries have little to do with nowadays astronomy, mathematics etc.

Not sayin' I see crap here; this discussion is interesting. But the things you see on the out the on the wild web are atrocious, like saying swedish people nowadays are vikings (lol), germans are nazis or some crap like that.
If so, mexicans are aztecs and worship quetzálcoatl, salvadorans -and other central americans- are maya and "read" the popol vuh on a daily basis, peruvians and other andine countries are inca, nowadays chinese are linked to confucius and iraqis are mesopotamians... and the list goes on.

It's almost as historically terrible as sayin' that Elmofongo is an arawak cacique who worships zemí and plays batey :P
Or in another a Spanish Colonial :P
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immi101: We (Europe) managed to fabricate this clusterfuck all by ourselves.
You're somewhat oversimplifying the situation with the traditional far-left/far-right arguments, which both employ in a vain attempt both to denounce the EU and as a strawman to try and claim that the rational viewpoints are somehow an attack on the average Greek.

The fact remains that while "average Greeks" are far from being lazy, decades of tax evasion, low-level official corruption and political mismanagement have brought Greece to this point. Tax evasion in Greece had actually become a normal fact of daily life as much as taking out the rubbish or buying petrol for your car. It's a situation that is impossible to resolve without a great deal of pain.

I get Tsipras' focus on fighting tax evasion, I really do, but what he's basically trying to do is water a dead plant. This is something that should have been done decades ago, and focusing on it now is pointless. Greece as a country has been living beyond its means all this time, and while it's been running a government on the basis of a fiscal policy that assumed all this tax income, in reality its tax receipts were appallingly low and it was running off borrowed money with little regard for the resultant fiscal deficits.

Where the Euro comes into it lies in the fact that exchange rates are set by the ECB for the Eurozone as a whole, which creates some degree of inflexibility for a region that is rather inflexible. The Fiscal Stability Treaty should have been fairly effective in addressing this flexibility, but the problem lay in the enforcement of it. The EU is not the problem, nor is the Euro. The problem lies in Greece's complete lack of fiscal discipline, so yes, the fault is firmly at their feet.

The necessary measures are harsh, yes, and I really do feel for the Greek people. But ultimately, they are paying the price for decades of rampant mismanagement. What it ultimately boils down to is that the Greeks have been living and operating as if they had the tax revenues of one of the stable Western European economies like Germany or Belgium. And now the reaper is coming to collect.
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awalterj: *usual thought vomit by the resident UDC/SVP representant*
When you stigmatise a whole country's population, you being racist. Whether it's against "swiss" or "pakistani" or "germans" or "portugese". I know that your political party requires the most restrictive definition of racism possible (that is : setting-someone-on-fire-because-of-his-genome) in order to detach its xenophobic propaganda from what is nowadays consensually considered a naughty word, but in reality you can use many grouping elements (passport, culture, religion) to essentialize and discriminate against a group of people who have no ideology/opinion/morals in common, and the principle stays the same.

When you go "i won't feel sorry about greeks because [bullshit propaganda copypasting]", which includes JMich, Grargar, and half my friends and half my family (including humanitarians, xenophobes, leftists, neoliberals, communists, anarchists, progrssives, conservatives, rich, poor, pro-austerity, anti-austerity individuals, all guilty of "being the greeks") then yes, you are guilty of that deshumanisation and essentialisation that we commonly call racism. I do not suppose that you meant to make a honest distinction between technical subcategories such as culturalism, racialism, etc, because your aim is simply to legitimise that sort of general discourse, mindset, and reading of humanity, as a valid political discourse. To which my answer is simply : it is not, outside of your stinky blocherian circles. Which you are more than welcome to crawl back to.

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awalterj: (Because unlike you, I don't make any claims and accusations that I can't support with evidence or at the very least a decent argument)
Wow. I've often mentionned how much of an imbecile you are, I haven't sufficiently stressed out how much of a hypocrite.

Do you stand for/against anything, or aren't you a runner instead? You love Greece but turned your back on it when things went down the hill
^ Exemplary personality-defining awalterj-caliber stab-in-darkness attempt because hey, why not, who knows.
Post edited June 29, 2015 by Telika
Its a disaster regardless of possible last minute rescue (again) or Grexit.
First it was only greedy bankers and their money.
Now those bankers are in save heaven and we (the citizens of Europe) are the looser.
At the moment Greece owes the EFSF/ESM, European countries and the EZB around 450 billion €.....with no way
to pay them back (most loans are due till 2050)

Whats left to do?
Give them more money? And in 6 months they need more again, and again.
And if they get more....what about those countries like Italy, Spain, the Baltic States....they did harsh economic cuts and
would rightful angry about such decision.

Don't forget that the Greek Government refuses to make significant changes.
Oh, stop it. I don't mean shorten small pensions.
What about known tax evaders? The government estimates the value around 150 billion €.
And oh wonder...from over 2.000 known cases 3 (three) were ruled in the last year.
What about the Greek army? Its the biggest in Europe ... not without help from Germany ;-)

My personal opinion is: fare thee well money and kick Greece out of the EG
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JMich: Let me first remind you that in the last 10 years, we had 7 elections.
Hey, I know that our prime ministers aren't exactly long-lasting material, but where did you count 7 legislative elections in the last 10 years?

2007: Karamanlis
2009: Papandreou
2012: Samaras
2014: Tsipras

I suppose that I could theoretically include 2012's re-election and maaaaaaaayyyybe 2004's election (even though we're in the middle of 2015 and more than 10 years have passed since March 2004), but where is the 7th one, then? Are you counting Lucas Papademos? He didn't become a prime minister by elections, you know.
Post edited June 29, 2015 by Grargar
Tsipras move was brilliant, probably the only thing he could have done to save the Greeks.

Both sides were trapped in their lies:
- Tsipras based his own political campaign on the slogan "another Euro(pe) is possible", maybe to not look too "extremist";
- Merkel, on her side, promised that she would claim the loans.

Now Tsipras saved his face forcing the creditors to tell the truth: the referendum about the austerity is a referendum about euro, because euro is the austerity. They're freaking out.

And yes, telling that the Greeks are a bunch of lazy and corrupt people is a racist lie.
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GoatBoy: probably the only thing he could have done to save the Greeks.
Yeah, I don't know if it'll save anyone, as I have no real opinion on the worst course of action between charybdis and scylla, but that referendum was indeed needed, I think. Whatever the government's ultimate decision (oppose the UE to the bitter end, or give up on some promises), it will need to be done with popular legitimacy. It's a collective decision. This aspect (being backed by the population) is as usual completely overlooked by the UE technocrats, but is fundamental here. Not just morally, but very pragmatically.

Too bad the decision will be taken within an impenetrable fog of contradictory lies. But the important thing is, it will be a collective decision, implying a collective (well, at leat a majority's) responsability. And not a hijacked decision by a remote clique (greek or "european") that the whole country could denounce and turn against...

What annoys me a bit is how Tsipras gets involved in the "no" campaign, which would really weaken his position if the "yes" comes up. Staying a bit on the side would have allowed him to go "okay, let's betray our promises together, by common agreement" if the "yes" wins, instead of possibly giving the reigns back to the ND. If these further austerity measures have to be enforced, I still prefer it to be done by people who drag their feet than by enthousiastic zealots.

Plus, the ND really creeps me out since it got invested and radicalized by those Laos transfuges...
Post edited June 29, 2015 by Telika