Well, in two days Greece will probably default. A truly brilliant move that is!

*goes back and reads quote 43*

*walks away shaking head*

There certainly were harsh cuts for pensions, health care and military spending for example. As well as tax increases.
to be fair though, the eu demands didn't consist only of budget cuts (and even those cuts weren't necessarily all bad).
Things like tax reforms, fighting tax evasions and reforming inefficient public institutions are definitly necessary. And as I said, the greek mostly have to blame their own politicians for not acting in these areas.
however what i think is missing in all those eu proposals is some plan to actually develop the greek economy to a sustainable level. All those reforms to get a proper state budget won't magically lead to a prospering economy.
For that you need for example public investments, or incentives for private investors. Which usually means spending money. Which is basically impossible as long as the greek government needs to deliver a positive budget balance.

bottom line you have lots of austerity measures which mostly hurt the normal people, still no fair taxes for the rich, still high tax evasion and an economy in the dumpster.

(at least thats how the situation appears to me from afar. greek people may feel to correct me)

imo, both german and greek politicians and bankers are massive idiots. call me a horrible tyrant, but i hope they both crash and burn, and disappear into a black hole sun, and EU does not repeat the old bullshit of borrowing endlessly for the sake of GDP!!!!1111 and "endless" growth. it's madness and never going to be sustainable. 1-999999999999999 != ∞

That's my biggest fear: a time span of a week is too short to allow a proper informed (which means free) vote on such a technical and crucial issue. Plus, I believe that many islanders work on the continent, and it may be difficult (on so many levels) to return home to vote.


Actually, that's the part I was most surprised with, and pleasantly too! Tsipras was much much weaker than, say, Renzi, or Hollande, yet he managed to stand still against those unjust demands.
And yes, if he looses, he will hand over the parliament to New Dawn. That's the price of euro (and of the left parties not behaving as the left should behave): fueling the worst nationalism. The irony!

Which is much better than the alternative.

You mean the Golden Dawn. I don't know how much of a genuine possibility this is. It's a party that can channel a lot of bitter people, but I'm certain it has much more people strongly against it, both left-side and right-side.

I was meaning New Democracy. It used to be the right or center-right wing, but it shifted to the right during these last years, since it got joined by a few vocal deputies from Laos (a populist far right party that had kinda split between pro- and anti-austerity). These deputies include actual ancient fascists for realsies, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis_Georgiadis[/url] discourses than the french extreme-right.

Creepy enough in my book.

No, my post is directed at your (and a number of others') attempts as a whole to shift the blame from Greece to the EU.

Not so: You're confusing with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism]nationalism. With or without deliberation but the reason for your choice is that racism is generally considered the worse word and you're simply using the term as an argument amplifier, and lazy one at that. And I'm (repeatedly, because no one else will) pointing this out to you. You might not like the messenger but consider the message and you could benefit.

You can repeat yourself a 100 times and we're slowly getting there if you keep up the rate but no matter how much you wish it to be so, I don't have a political party, sorry to disappoint. It seems hard for you to imagine that someone out there actually votes based on issues and does not doggedly follow any party's program (nor do I attend any meetings, another one of your wild ideas with no base in reality).

Sometimes, my opinion happens to be the same as that of the right wing, sometimes it's the same as that of the left wing. In recent years, my opinion has correlated decidedly more often with the right wing on a range of issues. One of these issues is the wild idea that criminal foreigners have to leave the country, an idea that you irrationally equate to "inhumane extreme right wing" sentiment that in your interesting mind is the exact same as torpedoing refugee ships carrying women & children in the Mediterranean ocean, Silent Service style. Whereas in reality, making criminals leave the country is simply common sense and finds support among anyone using said common sense, whether they're left wingers or right wingers or people with no party affiliation. And before you draw the racist card, last time I checked "criminal" isn't a race, thanks in advance!

You know that I used to be a center leftist in earlier years? (earlier as in elementary/middle school). It's to no small degree thanks to the destructive voting habits of people such as yourself that I could no longer stay the course and in the coming elections this autumn you're going to painfully find out that I'm only one of many who are going to say no thanks to uncontrolled rabid leftist politics. Of course, you'll blame it on those "evil right wing populists" and their inconveniently effective propaganda posters. An easy cop out to call everyone a moron and imbecile who disagrees with you. You're doing it again in your latest post here, saving me the work of having to dig up posts where you use such lovely insults.

Even though I support socialized health care and retiree pensions, gay marriage, abortion and a number of other things, I'm now apparently an "extreme right winger" because I don't support 100% of traditionally leftist issues (some of which are only peddled by the left to get sympathy votes, let's keep it real here) and because I have the audacity to support issues that are right wing.

I already predict (and am willing to bet some gift codes on it) that you'll go into rant mode this fall because the right wing is going to gain a lot of voters in the Swiss elections whereas the left wing will lose voters. You're already in panic mode, I can sense it. And no, there won't be any Golden Dawn fascism stuff happening, people are just fed up with out of control self-destructive far left nonsense.

--part 2 following, thanks for patience... --

Actually funny enough:

One point which was never brought up in all the discussions:

You guys (sorry and ladies) remember the so called re-unification of Germany?

What was needed to get the East up-to-date? Which isn´t even nowadays not yet finished?

If you guessed, pumping BILLIONS into this little area!!! Yes that is the right answer.

And Germans are still paying for (All of us)

Now the same Party, which was responsible for this AND this disaster thinks, that by forcing Greece to surrender they would make it better?

I do agree, that Greece would need to reform a lot. But letting them go bankrupt is IMHO NOT the solution.
One reason why, EU and others would loose a shitload of money, which would bring some other states (AGAIN) into financial trouble.
So no solution....
And instead of giving money, they could have directly cut part of the previous loans. Would have been cheaper. Or they could have done, what Greece ones proposed, change the loans against new ones, with lower rate.

But NO, the big banks, which were helped WITH FAR MORE money are too FUCKING GREEDY!!!!!

I.E. : The arrangement calls for the government to back about $306 billion in loans and securities and directly invest about $20 billion in the company. Regarding citigroup.

An amusingly obvious attempt to "summon" friends of yours because you can't handle me alone. Help me, evil awalterj is hitting me with this evil thing called common sense and it hurts!

You should have thought twice before you called a fellow member in this thread a racist, sure I could have ignored that but it was uncalled for. Someone has to tell you that it's not ok.

Since you don't know whom I know and whom I don't know, it is a non-argument to describe my circles as "stinky Blocherian"... in fact, I know more leftists than rightists so your point was?
Besides, I don't hang out in "circles", I know individual human beings and treat them as such, as individuals.

And again, you still seem unaware of what racism means. It's not a one-word-fits-all tool that you can throw around for everything at discretion, it has a clear meaning tied to ethnic makeup. Biology, not finances. There's no way you can wiggle your way out of that one. Not with any number of fancy words.

The guy you drew the racist card in this thread simply pointed out the unfortunate truth that Greece was living beyond its means and that this no longer works. One can of course debate about the extents of who exactly is at fault to what exact degree regarding the financial situation in Greece but either way, no racist comments were made in this thread.

Are you aware of the old internet rule that whoever resorts to nasty insult words loses by default? If not, now you're now aware.

Regarding hypocrisy, perhaps I'll dig up something interesting after all because the occasion is illustrative: In this post, you wrote "So, you can throw another snowball and yell "run after me run after me", but, frankly. You over-estimate how interesting you are."

Yet you repeatedly fall for these "snowballs", like clockwork. Despite saying that you're not interested in talking to me, you fall for it again and again. Which means that the hypocrite in the room is....? (prize question)

I stand by what I wrote there, it is in fact typical that you prefer to live in comfortable Switzerland, ranting about how Greece is the victim of racism (money problems really) and instead of helping your Greek friends and relatives, you waste your time arguing with an "imbecile right wing extremist". Which is guaranteed to not help anyone.

Good job, Telika, good job!

Oh, yes, sorry, I got a bit confused. Thanks for the update, I didn't know of that party!

You really have issues.

Another thread showing how intolerant of one another we are becoming. Sad and tragic.

On topic, my view on this is - as usual I guess - meta.

On one hand, the situation with Greece is just a symptom, and maybe the straw that breaks the camel's back - I think at this stage it's basically a coin toss what the outcome will be. Long term though (let's say 50 years), I am deeply sad to say I think the EU as passed it's zenith :(

On the other hand the other fascinating aspect of this drama is the democratic tension. You have populaces that want leaders to decide for them, and politicians that want mass opinion to guide them. Whatever decision happens (it would be charitable to say a decision will be made - a decision will happen) it will almost certainly cause deeper divisions and undermine civil ownership - ergo, undermine true democracy.

So there you have it - meta 1 on our community, meta 2 on the instability of a EU community where most members never considered the rest their equals, meta 3 on the so typical European mythos of almost nihilist class struggle.

There's a reason why I don't watch his stuff...
The Russian government all too willingly joined in just to stick it to the EU and their governments, because of the current sanctions in place, because of the conflict in the Ukraine. If they wanted to achieve that, Putin would have handed over the necessary money when Tsipras visited him. Just think about it, a NATO-state as a willing partner / in the hands of Putin..... but Putin didn't. Now guess why and no, not because he feared a reaction from the NATO.

Yes and no. The common greece guys are suffering greatly because of it. We're talking about 40% less income, with higher taxes. Even more so for those, who lost their jobs.
The problem is, about every government promised reforms and structural changes (both seen as a necessity on the EU side), but failed to actually do so.
So the problems still are about the same as when the whole thing started, even though the guys not in the richest top 5% of the population payed a hefty price and still do.

The hate is mostly directed at your governments, not the greece people in general.

Pretty much this.

No, it's a cowardly act.
What has he achieved so far in the last 5 months? Nothing besides wasting precious time. He didn't came up with a solution nor a viable compromise. Apparently, they have gotten very close to a compromise in their latest meeting - until Tsipras threw in additional demands in the last minutes (the article I read today claimed that they came from his right-wing coalition partner), throwing them all back to step 1 and the EU side feeling, once again, deceived.

Now the voting of the people. Why does he do that? No, not to help the greece people - but to save his own ass and not having to take responsibility for his actions so far. No matter what the outcome of the vote, Tsipras is the only winner.