Greece
My reply to Chris Giles celebration of the eurozone bailouts in the Financial Times
, 13/12/2024
@ChrisGiles (Financial Times) decided to have some fun by celebrating “The astonishing success of Eurozone bailouts”, using Greece as the poster girl/boy of that exercise in futility, the EU’s most spectacular failure. With such friendly scribblers, Europe has no need for sworn enemies! His evidence? That Greece, the basket case of the euro crisis, reported […]
Greece, EU elections, Palestine & the International Order – JACOBIN interview with David Broder
, 01/04/2024
Yanis Varoufakis’s new film series explains how elites used the financial crisis to terrorize Europe’s populations into submission. In this interview, he tells Jacobin why the anti-austerity movement failed and why the center is converging with the far right. Debt is to capitalism what hell is to Christianity: unpleasant, and essential.” Speaking in his new documentary […]
The Two Faces of the Euro: Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble – Project Syndicate Long Read
, 03/02/2024
Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble had the greatest impact on Europe. Between them, the two men, who passed away within a day of each other in December, shaped today’s European Union, warts and all. ATHENS – Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang […]
NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD
, 12/01/2024
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]
Alexis Tsipras resigns: lessons for progressives
, 02/07/2023
Following Greece’s latest election, after which Alexis Tsipras announced his resignation, a journalist asked me: “What conclusion do you draw from this situation?” Here is my answer: The crucial conclusion to be drawn is that radicals are never welcomed for long into the club of the powerful, even if they are willing to betray their […]
Our defeat in context: Greece’s Erdogan-isation is almost complete
, 22/05/2023
The people spoke. Unlike in 2019, when MeRA25 won nine seats in Greece’s Parliament, in yesterday’s election we failed to clear the 3% hurdle, thus, electing no MPs. However, this freshly minted Parliament was condemned before it got a chance to convene. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the conservative party leader, who won handsomely, is about to dissolve […]
The Greek Watergate – UNHERD
, 23/09/2022
Nothing surprises me more than politicians professing to be surprised that their phones have been tapped. In the world revealed to us by Edward Snowden almost a decade ago, no phone is beyond the reach of motivated eavesdroppers. This is not to say, however, that phone-tapping political opponents has lost its capacity to poison democracy. […]
“What was the long-term impact on Greece of its economic crisis?”, asked a 12-yr-old Belgian pupil. Here is my answer
, 06/06/2022
Today I received an email that was impossible to ignore: “My name is HK and I am a 12-year-old Belgian student. We have been asked to formulate a question about a topic that interests us and then give a presentation about it in front of the group. The question I chose is: What was, or […]
Lessons from this summer’s calamitous Greek forests inferno – The Guardian
, 31/08/2021
After the second world war, Greece’s countryside experienced two debilitating human surges – an exodus of villagers, then a most peculiar human invasion of its fringes. These two surges, aided by a weak state and abetted by the climate crisis, have turned the low-level drama of naturally redemptive forest fires into this summer’s heart-wrenching catastrophe. […]
From the creation of DiEM25 to Technofeudalism’s takeover during the pandemic – in conversation with The Cambridge Journal of LAW, POLITICS & ART
, 10/07/2021
To read the interview pdf form, click here Click here for the Journal’s site.
Square of hope and glory : On the 6th anniversary of the magnificent OXI rally at Syntagma Square
, 03/07/2021
The night the Demos found its voice, for a brief, wonderful moment On the afternoon of Friday, 3 June, as the working day drew to a close, I breathed a sigh of relief. A week of closed banks was almost over. Despite the long queues at ATMs and the uncertainty of what awaited us the […]
Diary entries on Brexit, defending refugees & writing postcapitalist fiction – THE NEWSTATESMAN
, 28/09/2020
Reading the newspapers last Monday, I was reminded that negotiations with Brussels are always an occasion for second-rate theatre. Ultimatums are usually issued by EU negotiators facing UK governments that talk enthusiastically of red lines and sovereignty. But now, if the Telegraph is to be believed, it is Boris Johnson who has given the EU […]
Capitalism in crisis – Video by Patreon
, 27/07/2020
What comes next? Yanis Varoufakis on capitalism’s crisis and our duty to plan for postcapitalsim ? Support DDN: http://www.patreon.com/DoubleDownNews
Yanis Varoufakis: “Syriza Was a Bigger Blow to the Left Than Thatcher” – JACOBIN
, 11/03/2020
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis told Jacobin why he’s publishing his secret recordings of the critical Eurogroup meetings of 2015 — and why the Left around Europe is struggling to overcome Syriza’s disastrous legacy. Yanis Varoufakis during his speech in Hellenic Parliament. Dimitrios Karvountzis / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty INTERVIEW BY George […]
ΜέΡΑ25: 7+1 Μέτρα Στήριξης 3,6 δις του ΕΣΥ, της εργασίας, των μικρομεσαίων, των ευάλωτων και των υποδομών
, 11/03/2020
Κάθε επιδημία, βιολογική ή οικονομική, απαιτεί άμεση δράση πριν εξαπλωθεί. Την ώρα που κυβέρνηση και Eurogroup ωλιγορούν, το ΜέΡΑ25 κατέθεσε (10-3-2020) συγκεκριμένη, κοστολογημένη πρόταση άμεσης εφαρμοσιμότητας για την αντιμετώπιση της Νέας Ύφεσης που ερχόταν έτσι κι αλλιώς αλλά η οποία, λόγω κορωνοϊού θα έρθει γρηγορότερα και θα είναι βαθύτερη: 510 εκ για το Εθνικό Σύστημα […]
Oligarchy & Xenophobia: The only beneficiaries of Greece’s economic ‘recovery’ – The Guardian
, 04/03/2020
Spring is already in the air across Greece. Even in the bleakest of times, nature’s renaissance renders hope irrepressible. But this one is proving a cruel spring for a people caught up in a decade-old crisis yielding one ritual humiliation after another. Costas runs a small bookshop in my central Athens neighbourhood. Although jovial by […]
DiEM25: Resisting the militarisation of the Greek-Turkish border under a Paneuropean cloud of xenophobic hysteria
, 02/03/2020
DiEM25 condemns the militarisation of the Greek-Turkish border, the European Union’s violation of every principle of Humanism, the instrumentalisation of refugees both by the Turkish regime and Brussels, the abandonment of Greek islanders to their own devices – the list goes on and on. DiEM25 calls for an immediate opening of all borders. The Greek-Turkish […]
Euroleaks: Why release? And why now?
, 16/02/2020
During 2015’s first half, as Greece’s finance minister, I participated in thirteen crucial Eurogroup meetings – before the SYRIZA government (disrespecting the referendum result of 5th July) capitulated. The result of that capitulation was my immediate resignation and a permanent austerity program (until… 2060). From the beginning, the first Eurogroup, it was clear that the […]
How Syriza’s capitulations allowed the Greek right to escape the dustbin of history – The New Statesman
, 09/07/2019
The left-wing party’s embrace of austerity created the conditions for a parasitic and cruel oligarchy to return The Greek right is back: greedier, uglier and more focused than ever. The incoming New Democracy government is determined to reclaim full control of the state on behalf of the most parasitic segment of Greece’s oligarchy and, of course, of […]
MeRA25: Greek progressives’ chance to take the fight against austerity back into Parliament – JACOBIN
, 11/06/2019
Amid the bad results for the Left in the European elections, the Greek outcome was particularly poignant. In the last such contest in 2014, Syriza rode the revolt against austerity to become the largest single party, in its final step toward national office. Five years later, in last month’s election, it finished ten points behind the […]
A Greek Canary in a Global Goldmine – Project Syndicate op-ed 17 May 2019
, 20/05/2019
ATHENS – The eurozone country that has become synonymous with insolvency is today proving to be a treasure-trove for some. Traders who bought Greek assets a few years ago have good reason to celebrate, having banked returns that no other market could have provided. But, as is often the case, an opportunity that seems too […]
EU Court defends the ECB’s right to cover up its illegal closure of Greece’s banks
, 12/03/2019
The European Union Court today delivered its verdict: European citizens cannot be allowed to find out whether the ECB acted legally in closing down Greece’s banks in June 2015. Why? In the wording of the three judges, because such disclosure would affect the ECB’s “space to think in 2015 and also after 2015”. If this sounds […]