Geography Archives: Greece

  Athens, Greece, 11.03.10. — Tens of thousands of trade unionists and anti-capitalists demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government’s austerity measures.  People explain why the have taken to the streets. “Today’s 24-hour general strike was called by GSEE and ADEDY (private and public sector unions).  They are demanding that working people not […]

  Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers, and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.   The vigor of […]

  Economist Heiner Flassbeck holds the German wage policy responsible for the problems of Greece. Neither the drastic Greek austerity program nor the proposed European Monetary Fund can help the euro zone out of its difficulties.  Instead, Heiner Flassbeck calls for higher wages in the Federal Republic of Germany in order to cope with the […]

It is sad and surprising that among the deluge of comments and letters on Greece in the European papers in the last few weeks, not one has gotten the most crucial point about the crisis.  Most commentators treat Greece’s domestic problems and those of other southern members of the European Monetary Union (EMU) as if […]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times, from the Business Section, titled “Patchwork Pension Plan Adds to Greek Woes” is the latest in a series strikingly titled “Payback Time.” A friend of mine used to like to say: “The New York Times is the voice of the enlightened bourgeoisie.”  This article conjures up that phrase. […]

  The austerity measures imposed on Greek workers to reduce the deficits are nothing but a prelude of what may happen to the other European countries.  The Greek crisis demonstrates the divisions in the ruling class on the strategies to adopt. For the second time since December 2008, Greece is at the heart of politics […]

  Michael Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008.  x + 493 pp.  $45.00 U.S. (cl).  ISBN 978- 0691124988. Michael Sonenscher begins, “This is a book about the sans-culottes and the part that they played in the French Revolution” (p. 1).  Actually, there are no revolutionary sans-culottes […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

  A street of Guernica after the fascist bombardment of 26 April 1937 Greece faces a veritable economic Guernica, a massacre, in the face of which the European Left shows an unforgivable passivity.  What is imposed on Athens is meant as an example, to strike terror into Spain, Portugal, and even Italy.  But even France, […]

The nation state is once again proving its special usefulness as a vehicle for managing capitalist crisis.  Partly, this follows from the renewal of Keynesian monetary and fiscal policies.  Other key dimensions of state usefulness include its more direct provision of financial guarantees to private enterprises and its over-priced purchase of “toxic” assets (those that […]

There is now a general crisis in Europe without a visible or credible way out.  It is clearly evidenced by the continuous flare-up of hotspots of tension: from Greece to the Iberian Peninsula and back, and then onto increasingly less veiled allusions to Italy and a dramatic about-face of Paris. Until just over a month […]

  The current Greek economic crisis has an aspect of ancient tragedy (for the Greek people) mixed with a bad theatrical farce (staged on behalf of the European and the Greek bourgeoisie). The farce comes first.  Till very recently the two establishment parties (the center-left PASOK and the center-right ND) preached that their economic policies […]

  The Brazilian expression “Greek Present” (Presente de Grego) means unwelcome gift, an obvious reference to the infamous Trojan Horse.  The current crisis in Greece might show that the euro was just one of those presents.  If the European Union (EU) does not provide sufficient resources to preclude not just a default, but also and […]

Global capitalism imploded in 2007.  The central causes of capitalism’s crisis include: the end of real wage increases in the US and the substitution of rising worker debt far beyond what workers could sustain; the buildup of excess global industrial capacity; the explosion of speculation and excess risk-taking by banks, other financial and non-financial corporations, […]

Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran.  Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards.  The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, […]

10 February 2010 For more information, visit and . | | Print

  “We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us. . . . They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere — and not only in the universities.  We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone […]

Among the many unfortunate features of capitalist history that tend to repeat themselves with depressing regularity is the conversion of crises of private activity in financial markets into fiscal crises of the state.  This is already happening once again, as the very expansion of public expenditure that was necessitated by the financial crisis (which itself […]

Sunday, December 27 — The Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in el-Arish and another group of 8 at the bus station.  They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr al Nil Bridge. At noon on 27 December, Egyptian security forces detained […]

Umut Özkırımlı, Spyros A. Sofos.  Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.  viii + 220 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70052-8. Tormented by History by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos provides a comparative approach to Turkish and Greek nationalisms from the late nineteenth century to the present.  The […]