After years of pain and humiliation Greece may exit Euro AND EU... PVC says...

[Gilrandir]

I dont know how you read the article, but Finland´s two largest parties of the ruling government coalition are against further bailouts and the majority in our parliament are of same opinion. I think most know already that Finland is pretty like minded with Germany in this issue.

From the article:

The decision to push for a so-called “Grexit” came after the eurosceptic Finns party, the second-largest in parliament, threatened to bring down the government if it backed another rescue deal for Greece, according to public broadcaster Yle.

The word "threatened" presumes that someone influential within the coalition was of a different opinion.

[Kagemusha]

From the article:


The word "threatened" presumes that someone influential within the coalition was of a different opinion.

The third and smallest party of the coalition: National Coalition party is very pro EU to the point of pro federalism, but they are a minority in the coalition and have to bend to the will of the other two, Center party and the aforementioned Finns party who are in favour of Grexit. So the wording of the article is bit uneducated or rather sensationalist like the press tends to be.

In any case now with Greek Parliament saying yes last night. It is pretty much up to German Bundestag, whether the deal with Greece will be approved or not, as they have to ratify it. I am quite sure that Holland, Belgium, Finland, Austria and others will follow the lead of Germany in this affair.

[a completely inoffensive name]

What the hell was the Greek government trying to do. Just leave and rebuild, who is going to look kindly on a party that defied a clear mandate from the people?

[Fragony]

What the hell was the Greek government trying to do. Just leave and rebuild, who is going to look kindly on a party that defied a clear mandate from the people?

Ask the Dutch and French as well as the Greeks. The EU just calls it something else and pushes things through anyway without any democracy involved. The European constitution was renamed to the Lissabon treaty, it's exactly the same thing but French and Dutch referendums could be ignored. Greece is so screwed. They have no choice but lending money to pay their debts, which sucks them down even more. In the meantime the vultures are circling over all their state-owned possesions. Talk about a heist.

[Montmorency]

What the hell was the Greek government trying to do. Just leave and rebuild, who is going to look kindly on a party that defied a clear mandate from the people?

Well, here's a rundown:

1. Greece economy . Germany won't help because Germany doesn't want to pay for its continental empire the way America has historically done.
2. Syriza elected in Greece on basis of maintaining Euro AND avoiding austerity.
3. EU/Euro is predicated on economic and cultural union while (nominally) maintaining national sovereignty.
4. In previous negotiations, it was always government vs. government. Here, Tsipras called out a referendum to make it more explicitly (German) government vs. (Greek) nation - IOW, testing the limits of the sovereignty principle in modern Europe.
5. Germany doesn't want to take sovereign responsibility, but neither does it want Greece to leave the Euro. And as previously-stated, just forgiving the debt is too risky (from a German national perspective).
5.a. Please don't forget that Germany has always had nationalist governments since reunification, even if it was too subtle for some to see (or if they chose to ignore it).
6. Germany takes a chunk out of the sovereignty principle by demanding supra-national (read: German) administrative intervention to guarantee that Greece does what is best for the European community (read: Germany).
7. Hot vote but Greek parliament passes the deal.
8. Germany has to ratify in the next day.

Again, Syriza/Tsipras had no real alternatives. They were between a rock and a hard place.

It's funny, but basically he was playing realpolitik. There was no way he could actually get the people what they wanted, or even anything close to something his own party could endorse (hence the schism in the parliamentary vote), but the idea was just to prompt a new schedule for negotiating negotiations and to get European money flowing back in just in time to make the debt payments in July (20) and August necessary to prevent complete economic collapse and Grexit.

[Crandar]

No, not since Heraclitus at the latest, it was a Greek bureaucracy run by Greeks for a Greek Basileus. The system as it developed increasingly owed more to Hellenistic-era Greek kingdoms than it did to the Latin Roman Emperors.

The emperor was called Heraclius. Anyway, since they identified themslelves as Romaoi, while considering the term "Greek" as an insult, I think that called them Greeks is inaccurate. Let's not allow the propaganda of the modern state to manipulate us.

None of this is relevant - here in the West we read Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Plutarch... we don't read anything from Iran, from any period. So, for the West, Greece and Rome are the model.

We are talking about political not intellectual institutions. None of those chaps played any rome in the structural formation of the modern western states.

what you're basically saying is the Greeks are a people with no pride in their history and no sense of common benefit. That's pretty sad, given that the same area you have being pooing on is the area that spawned both the Mycenaean Kingdoms and the later Classical City-States, as well as being the cradle of Western Philosophy in the wider sense (as opposed to Middle or Far-Eastern philosophy.

The problem is quite the opposite. The Greeks are unfortunately too proud of their history, which is a direct cause for their immaturity, as we witnessed it during the recent referendum and elections. They blame the foreigners for everything that upsets them and they decribe their history as a series of betrayals, made by the west, which has the duty to defend Greece... Their xenophobia against Turks, Albanians and Slavs is almost perfectly reflected in the Macedonia Name dispute and the rise of the Golden Dawn.

Leaving aside the noxious chauvinism, this is simply not correct. The Balkans have always been underdeveloped precisely due to the absence of central authority. The Ottomans did not introduce central authority at all, but simply emphasized and perpetuated the separation of the Balkans from the larger European and Mediterranean economy while establishing a different nominal suzerainty over the region. In other words, the Balkans suffered peripheralization after religious and political schisms left Byzantium standing alone between Moslems and Catholics, and that peripheralization was only exacerbated by the onset of Muslim domination over the area. Ottoman investment was minimal, as the Balkans were a warzone throughout the late Middle Ages, and afterwards stabilized into a mere geographic buffer between Anatolia and Central Europe that was ultimately even less valuable to the sultans than it was to the autokratores. So religious and political divisions compounded the existing lack of infrastructure in the Balkans, making the rise of Northern Europe not just something the region was unable to tap into, but also a shift in continental center-of-gravity that essentially condemned even Greece as fly-over - sail-past? - country.

Montmorency, I'm not Turk, Iranian or Middle-Eastern in general, so what I said couldn't possibly be a product of a chauvinistic mindset. To adress your post, we need to compare the situation of the Balkans with the previous status quo, not with the best examples of the respective era.
The Balkan penninsula has already declined, since the continuous wars between the Byzantines, the Bulgars and the Slavs. The Ottoman Empire, despite being less centralized than France or Spain, was much more reliable than the previous mosaic of Roman, Serbian and Albanian principalities.

[Montmorency]

Montmorency, I'm not Turk, Iranian or Middle-Eastern in general, so what I said couldn't possibly be a product of a chauvinistic mindset.

This being another example of a chauvinistic mindset.

we need to compare the situation of the Balkans with the previous status quo, not with the best examples of the respective era.

That's what I did. While many regions of the Med and Eurasia at-large - Egypt, Greece, Persia, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Rome, France, England, Germany... - have alternated in a Core-Periphery relationship, with one-time peripheries becoming core areas of political and economic power while checking or even subordinating neighbors, including former cores, and then ceding their positions in turn, the Balkans have always been a peripheral area by dint of geography. The centralization of the Ottoman Empire as a whole (at various points in time) is of no relevance when we are specifically discussing an area that was always peripheral to the Ottomans.

[Sarmatian]

That's what I did. While many regions of the Med and Eurasia at-large - Egypt, Greece, Persia, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Rome, France, England, Germany... - have alternated in a Core-Periphery relationship, with one-time peripheries becoming core areas of political and economic power while checking or even subordinating neighbors, including former cores, and then ceding their positions in turn, the Balkans have always been a peripheral area by dint of geography. The centralization of the Ottoman Empire as a whole (at various points in time) is of no relevance when we are specifically discussing an area that was always peripheral to the Ottomans.

Balkans haven't been a peripheral area until 15th century. Constantinople was in the center of the western world at the time.

The problem with the Balkans was that it was a heavily forested hilly region, not suitable for agriculture or trade except the port cities, thus the interior was always sparsely populated and underdeveloped. That was the reason no one really cared about it. It changed somewhat in the late middle ages with rapid development of mining, but not by much.

[Montmorency]

Balkans haven't been a peripheral area until 15th century. Constantinople was in the center of the western world at the time.

This has to be tackled from two places.

First, Catholic Europe and Byzantine/Orthodox Europe were very much their own 'worlds' by the Late Middle Ages (even before the Turkic/Mongol incursions). Broadly speaking, we could count Western Europe and Eastern Europe in this time as two competing "cores", but the Balkans were thus, both due to the continuing migrations into the area, and the fact they provided a good geographic buffer-zone (c.f. "heavily forested hilly region") between Byzantium and the competing powers in modern-day Germany, Italy, and Poland. Indeed, after the Great Schism most conflict between the Byzantines and the Western Europeans was carried out through proxy wars and naval/maritime conflict.

The second is tied to the first and is pretty simple, but I'm at fault for not being more specific. Yes, Constantinople is technically within the geographic region called "Balkans", and so is/was Greece, but that isn't a crutch in the present discussion of how historical processes shaped modern Greece vis-a-vis the Euro crisis. After all, the Adirondack Mountains are contained within New York State, but that doesn't mean "New York State" is a core region or urban area in the USA just because "New York City" is. Constantinople was the seat of the emperor on a strategic strait, but we still realize that beyond the coasts and plains of Thessalonika and Adrianopolis, it was basically a no-man's-land. (Obviously, there were many peoples and statelets existing over time in the area, but in terms of the division between core Western powers and core Byzantium that's beside the point.) Now, tying together the two points, we will point out the increasing peripheralization and stagnation of the Greek peninsula even under Byzantine rule during the late Middle Ages. With Constantinople focusing most of its attention on maintaining its Eastern Mediterranean provinces and competing with various Catholic and Muslim powers over trade routes and such, Greece became little more than a stop-over country while Venetians and Anatolians and so forth sailed around trying to further their commercial enterprises. And since Greece became of relatively-little strategic value and no one was really interested in conquering and holding it...

You see where I'm going?

As for the Ottomans, I just reiterate my point that the situation was only perpetuated under their rule, but even worse since the economic core of Europe began to shift from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, and then the North Atlantic. Plus, heathens are worse than heretics. So once the Ottomans were basically contained behind the Danube in the 17th century, no one was really interested in the Balkans at all.

Another takeaway for the current discussion: The Balkans are still of pretty minor economic importance to Europe and the world, with most economic activity in the Balkans aside from banking/finance being conducted between the states now dividing up the area. So really Europe does not care if the Balkans stagnate and the citizens there suffer - they just don't want political and social unrest creating an untenable situation that threatens wider economic interests and forces a serious international action to stabilize the region. You know what I'm talking about; you can't stop 'reminiscing' about the 90s anyway. :P

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The emperor was called Heraclius. Anyway, since they identified themslelves as Romaoi, while considering the term "Greek" as an insult, I think that called them Greeks is inaccurate. Let's not allow the propaganda of the modern state to manipulate us.

Well, Heraclius is an even more Greek name. The point is, no matter what they called themselves, they were Greek. One might just as reasonably argue that modern Hellenes reject the term "Romaoi" (a Greek word) because of historical revisionism.

We are talking about political not intellectual institutions. None of those chaps played any rome in the structural formation of the modern western states.

Yes they did, because those states were rebuilt using Greek and Roman writings.

The problem is quite the opposite. The Greeks are unfortunately too proud of their history, which is a direct cause for their immaturity, as we witnessed it during the recent referendum and elections. They blame the foreigners for everything that upsets them and they decribe their history as a series of betrayals, made by the west, which has the duty to defend Greece... Their xenophobia against Turks, Albanians and Slavs is almost perfectly reflected in the Macedonia Name dispute and the rise of the Golden Dawn.

If they see their history as no more than a series of Western betrayals then they aren't proud of the right bits.

[Idaho]

I see the EU has generously agreed to pay the German banks Greek people for an extra week.

[Montmorency]

The point is, no matter what they called themselves, they were Greek.

Maybe anachronism is the problem here? They were certainly not "Greek" in the modern sense, but they were heavily influenced by both imperial Roman and classical Greek culture, law, religion, language, texts, etc...

Don't you have a grad degree in Classics? You shouldn't be making these sorts of slips when discussing pre-modern identity.

[Sarmatian]

You see where I'm going?

I do, I just don't agree. Up until Vasco de Gama and discovery of the Americas, eastern Med was the most the most lucrative trading area in the western world. By western, I mean Greco-Roman world.

I just so happened that in the late middle ages, control of those trade routes was in the hands of Venetians mostly. It is also wrong to claim Balkan was just Adrianopolis, Constantinople and Thessaloniki. There were many important cities on the other side, in present day Croatia, Montenegro and Albania, like Split/Spalato, Zadar/Zara, Dubrovnik/Ragusa, Kotor/Cattaro, Drac/Durazzo and so on.

Control of those cities was often the reason of conflict between Franks and Byzantines and later Italians and Byzantines.

It was the hinterlands that was undeveloped and really a periphery (modern day central Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria...), so much that big players of the era didn't find it worthwhile to trouble themselves with it.

That being sad, I don't see how this is connected to present day Greek problems.

Maybe anachronism is the problem here? They were certainly not "Greek" in the modern sense, but they were heavily influenced by both imperial Roman and classical Greek culture, law, religion, language, texts, etc...

Don't you have a grad degree in Classics? You shouldn't be making these sorts of slips when discussing pre-modern identity.

That view is mostly bias as the western Europe wanted to claim Roman legacy for themselves, so much that they invented the term Byzantium out of thin air, ignoring the living, breathing Roman state. The argument "they were Hellenized" is a ridiculous one, as all Romans were Hellenized.

[Brenus]

For the ones who want to know the result on French Newspapers of the German Diktat, help by a French President who choose the Collaboration with Germany.

http://www.marianne.net/sites/defaul...a_11.43.57.png

New injuries blossom on old scars...

[Fragony]

I see the EU has generously agreed to pay the German banks Greek people for an extra week.

That's what's going on no, it's all just a baillout. Greece only gets debts.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Maybe anachronism is the problem here? They were certainly not "Greek" in the modern sense, but they were heavily influenced by both imperial Roman and classical Greek culture, law, religion, language, texts, etc...

Don't you have a grad degree in Classics? You shouldn't be making these sorts of slips when discussing pre-modern identity.

Actually, the Grad degree is medieval.

In any case - I am using the term to refer to the people native to Graecia, the "insulting" term that Crander referred to is actually "Hellene". In any case, there's not a great deal, culturally, between modern Greeks and the medieval Greeks - probably less distance culturally than between the peoples in the same time period in say France, or England. During most of the medieval period the Greeks saw themselves as "Roman" which was a loyalty to the state rather than a "national" identity, because you could also be Sicilian or Armenian and still Roman.

Any, modern Greeks appears to be suffering from a particular psychic disturbance which is modern rather than historically rooted.

[Gilrandir]

Re Ottoman positive vs negative influence on the Balkan infrastructure:
Branislav Nušić in his "Autobiography" (1924) cited a song that Serbian peasants used to sing (or perhaps it was an adage?) that sounded like: "The roads are missing the Turks because no one has repaired them since they left". Not sure in the wording, but the sense was pretty much that. Sarmatian will correct me if I'm inaccurate.

[Sarmatian]

Re Ottoman positive vs negative influence on the Balkan infrastructure:
Branislav Nušić in his "Autobiography" (1924) cited a song that Serbian peasants used to sing (or perhaps it was an adage?) that sounded like: "The roads are missing the Turks because no one has repaired them since they left". Not sure in the wording, but the sense was pretty much that. Sarmatian will correct me if I'm inaccurate.

I can't remember, I read his autobiography some 15-20 years ago. Possibly. But the point of that sentence is usually ignored by a lot of Balkan historians - Ottomans did bring order and organization into a very chaotic region. Unfortunately, Balkans deteriorated as much as the rest of the empire later on.

[Brenus]

I think I remember that in "The Bridge on the Drina" Andric wrote that the unique way to keep the Turks out was not to repair the roads, as the soldiers wouldn't do out of it... Now, I know it is fiction, but...
In Medieval France, to repair the roads was part of the "corvées", unpaid work due to the Landlord, so it was in fact not very well done (as often when unpaid work).

[Kagemusha]

Germany ratified the deal. +- 90 Billion Euros are about to switch hands from tax payers to investment bankers. This have to be the biggest heist known to man. Maybe if Greece wants to stay in Euro so bad. We should leave from it. Bollocks. Like Tribes would say.

[Brenus]

Yeap. Germany & France voted for giving money to themselves. Great democracy and debts relief exercise. Our bankers will have more bonuses and Greece more unemployed and misery.
And in 3 years, if this plan survived that long, after French and Germans banks will have bought all valuables left in Greece, the same will come with the obvious: the debt can't be paid, let's it write it off.
The robbery would have been done, and it is all what it is about.

[Gilrandir]

I can't remember, I read his autobiography some 15-20 years ago. Possibly.

Time to re-read it, don't you think?
I like him, conisder him the Serbian Mark Twain as his humor reminds me the American a lot.

[HopAlongBunny]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinion...e-recover.html

[Fragony]

Oh ouch, in a recent poll that is probably not as bad as things really are more than 60% of the Dutch want out, these polls can't be trusted mindyou, questions are always suggestive. I would love it if the Neds leaves the EU thougn.

[Brenus]

Only question of time before the thing collapse.
EU's gvts don't want democracy, they don't want the best of the populations, they want money.
So the political aim of building EU has now vanished. All the B**** about solidarity and protection and friendship has melted like an ice-cream in front of a flame-thrower thanks to the un-elected Euro-group, ECB and others bullies... If even I can see it...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Only question of time before the thing collapse.
EU's gvts don't want democracy, they don't want the best of the populations, they want money.
So the political aim of building EU has now vanished. All the B**** about solidarity and protection and friendship has melted like an ice-cream in front of a flame-thrower thanks to the un-elected Euro-group, ECB and others bullies... If even I can see it...

...then it's unavoidable?

Well, no. The problem is political integration without popular will. The current self-perpetuating crisis can be explained entirely in terms of the democratic deficit. If integration between Greece and Germany has proceeded at the pace at which Germans and Greeks were both able to fully come to terms with the new reality then the Germans would now be willing to undertake direct transfers to Greece. However, political integration ran ahead of popular will, so the Greek and Germans do not have enough common cause to help each other, let alone trust each other.

This isn't really about money, it's about ideology trumping reality.

[Brenus]

"This isn't really about money, it's about ideology trumping reality" Hmm, yes and no. The European project started to avoid a 4th war between France & Germany, two of the latest 3 being World Wars. So, the start was ideology. It was no love between France & Germany, but a common feeling we couldn't carry on to slaughter each others.
Ideology trumping reality and becoming reality.
The founders believed that little steps by little steps, starting with economies (but not only as Germany and France were trading before WW.2) the 2 nations would come to terms, especially with the abolition (free travel) of borders. But this was not enough. Schools programs saw German as 1st choice in learning foreign language, we exchange pupils, we were explain the WW2 (without really too much details, bad Nazi, good German kind of), commemoration of battle and bad memory without too much emphasis on the German point. Then, yes, ideology created the reality.
One of my last military parades happened when my regiment received a German regiment. Can't say that the local Alsatians were too happy of it, as the noise of the boots are really the same than in 1941...
So European Union was about to put all what is called now the civil European wars behind and built a new future for all Europeans.
That is what I signed for.
We helped Germany to recover in forgetting invasions, slaughters and debts. We helped others as Spain, Portugal and Greece to recover from dictatorships. We help in developing Ireland.
Then some started to think that peace was too costly. No more European political project, be serious man, just let do business. Forgetting of course that is just putting populations against populations. Let have low wages in Romania then we sell in France. Of course, French having lost their jobs to Romanians have no more money to buy the new car, and with their salaries, Romanians can't afford it. Didn't stop the "free-marketeers" who are as blind in their faith than USSR PC politburo was. With the same result.
And Greece is just the first one to take the plunge. And as in USSR, the "elite" will not suffer of it, as they have the money, the jobs, and control media. But because they have media control, they believe in their own made propaganda, being out of touch of reality. As Louis XVI was just a day before the 14 of July 1789. Or Nicolas II before the Russian Revolution.
So, no, it is not unavailable, but to inject democracy in the European Institution is a task that would make the 12 labors of Hercules children play. EU institutions perceive rightly democracy as a danger for free trade. So they prefer to avoid to ask the EU voters their opinions.
But without a voice, the only way to be heard will be found somewhere else. Reject of all parties, vote for extreme nationalist/fascist/nazi parties, or citizens revolutions. However, all these options have their dangers, and carry wars in their clouds like storms carry thunder.

[Fragony]

3 million for silver knives and silver forks why not, fu EU. I also have them but I bought them myself.