On 15 November 2015 US President Barack Obama in a deeply resonant address to an audience of mainly young Greeks in Athens, reminding us of the challenges of democracy in this troubled century, calling for a “course correction” on globalization that has left populations afraid for an uncertain future.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
To what extent can a “temporarily elected government” dispose at their will of large swaths of the natural, historical, environmental, cultural, social, economic, etc. , patrimony — “The Commons”, as it is well known — in order to put some pennies (or billions) into the government coffers, or those of their contractual partners, to do with what they want during their short time in office.
Click HERE for 2 minute video with captions
Dear Gatnet Friends
Before we get to the content of what the eminent Saudi Historian has to say on this relevant topic of women who want to be raped, let me take you quickly to our Gatnet 2.0 site and show you how you can put to work one of the special tools we have developed to support the collaborative work at Gatnet. Happily, these rather simple tools are also more generally to anyone anywhere who happens to share our interest in the complex topic of women, transport and equity in our oh so different societies.
The particular tool I would like to draw to your attention today is our so-call KNOOGLE (yes, an ugly word) combined search engine, to which you can go directly here – – https://gatnet.wordpress.com/links-sources-2/searching-all-links/.
Now, to show you a sample of how this works, this morning I wanted to know more about the site of the local elections in Saudi Arabia where for the first time 130,000 women registered to vote and when the ballots were counted more than a dozen of these heroes have been elected to local office — for the first time.
So I scrolled down on the right menu here where it indicates KNOOLGE, and popped in the single key word “Saudi” which called up a very large number of entries, with coverage of the latest developments in the voting situation right up top. With the eminent Saudi historian’s remarks toward the end of the first page of entries.
And now if you wish, let’s take a look at that article and see if we can understand what the good gentleman has in mind:
These first excerpts from an article by Adam Davidson published in The New York Times Magazine on 28 July 2015 deserves the closest attention of anyone who wishes to have a balanced understanding of the events shaping what we call here the “Greek crisis”.
There is definitive proof, for anyone willing to look, that Greece is not solely or even primarily responsible for its own financial crisis. The proof is not especially exciting: It is a single bond, with the identification code GR0133004177. But a consideration of this bond should end, permanently, any discussion of Greece’s crisis as a moral failing on the part of the Greeks.
GR0133004177 is the technical name for a bond the Greek government sold on Nov. 10, 2009, in a public auction. Every business day, governments and companies hold auctions like this; it is how they borrow money. Bond auctions, though, are not at all…
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In the following op-ed, thirteen prominent economists of Greek origin from around the world call on Greece to sign a credible agreement with the Europeans immediately.
What would be crucial elements of a good agreement?
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The following listing provides links to selected references from international sources of high quality and with quite different points of view. Access to these sources are, as might be expected, quite uneven. About half of them require that you pay or subscribe to access full text of particles. But over these last weeks we have done fairly well with these addresses, offering as they do some quite different perspectives on these unfolding events.
* The Guardian on Greece – http://www.theguardian.com/world/greece
* Der Spiegel on Greece – http://goo.gl/PgxiPs
* Le Monde on Grèce – http://www.lemonde.fr/crise-grecque/
* Financial Times on Greece – https://goo.gl/2lGPNu
* Krugman on Greece – http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=Greece
* The Economist on Greece – http://goo.gl/LjGsf7
Other SDED coverage here:
* SDED on the Greek Crisis – here.
* SDED Facebook Coverage: – here.
Essential reading from Wikipedia on this subject:
This article contains the timeline of events for the Greek government-debt crisis which began in 2009 and is ongoing. During this period many changes have occurred in Greece. The income of many Greeks has declined, levels of unemployment have increased, elections and resignations of politicians have altered the country’s political landscape radically, the Greek parliament has passed many austerity bills, and protests have become common sights throughout the country. A brief summary follows highlighting some key events since the Greek elections of October 2009.
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8 July 2015. – http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/07/europes-future-federal/
Numerous Europeans view Europe as a one-way street: they appreciate its advantages but are little inclined to accept common rules. An increasing number throughout the Union are handing their vote to populist parties – Front National, Syriza, Podemos – that surf on this Eurosceptic wave and rise up against “foreign”- imported constraints.
Embroiled with the Greek crisis, European policymakers will soon have to step back and reflect on the broader issue of the Eurozone’s future. Before envisaging an exit or, on the contrary, more sustained integration, it’s right to reflect upon the consequences of each option.
Oversimplifying, there are three strategies for the Eurozone: (a) a minimalist approach that would see a return to national currencies, while keeping Europe perhaps as a free trade area and retaining a few institutions that have made a real difference such…
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Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.
Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.
Can anything pull Europe back from the brink?
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The present discussions in the media more often than not give us the sense that within the various countries concerned the thinking and positions are basically uniform and widely shared. (See our posting that looks into this,”Why all the Bitter Accusations from the North” – https://goo.gl/wD6Ct6. ) But the truth is that in country after country there is considerable division of views on these topics, and particularly among economists who are in most cases deeply divided on the issues. Here you have an example of how one German economist reports on “How German Economists Really Think”. (The following article is reprinted here in its entirety. The original was published yesterday by the Institute of New Economic Thinking, and below you will find full references, links and credits.)
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Hans Werner-Sinn, a noted German economist and Professor of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich. He is also President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and serves on the German economy ministry’s advisory council. In this interview he talks about a disciplined but also radical and flexible pro-Europe path out of the present impasse, for Greece and for Europe as an idea worth cherishing and taking into the future.
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There is a remarkable information source on this brand new, fast breaking topic which was first put on line on 26 June by Wikipedia collaborator Dimboukas
Here is how it looked on the morning of the 27th of June when the official announcement was made by Prime Mister Alexis Tsipras calling for the referendum:
And here is how it looks today (with ca.5000+ words, 50 references, 10 external links):
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For a more complete view of our discussions and coverage of these improtant events, you are invited to click to https://goo.gl/P4oWJw
If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. – F. Nietzsche
On the early morning of 27 June when reading that the leader of the Greek coalition government, Alexis Tsipras, called for a national referendum to get the views of Greece’s population on the bitter on-going disputes with Europe and the IMF, and in particular whether or not to accept the Troika’s uncompromising bailout conditions to settle the country’s government-debt crisis, I decided to see if we might do our bit by providing selective daily summary and international commentary on this unfolding the topic – and, more importantly, the uncertain evolving process behind it.
This quickly took the form of a series of daily summaries of a certain number of what I regard as the key points, issues, ideas, attitudes and players shaping this debate. You will find just below the dozen-plus articles that were posted in the pages of World Streets since the 27th. They appear here in the order written, and each is hot-linked to facilitate your access.
The core of this story is the huge gap between the level of understanding of leading members of the economics and policy community and that of the troika members. The ever combatative Paul Krugman put it like this in a 5 July article in the New York Times.
– By Paul Krugman, NYT JULY 5, 2015. Full text here.
Europe dodged a bullet on Sunday. Confounding many predictions, Greek voters strongly supported their government’s rejection of creditor demands. And even the most ardent supporters of European union should be breathing a sigh of relief.
Of course, that’s not the way the creditors would have you see it. Their story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.
18:00, Sunday 5 July 2015 in Greece and the polls have just closed on this momentous day for democracy. The outcome of the unexpected but oh so important referendum will not be known for several hours yet. So what better time to pour a glass of cool retsina white, sit down with some friends, and sort through the accumulated evidence of these last ten days in which the eyes of the world have turned to Greece.
Here are a few observations and thoughts about the future which come most immediately to mind to this ever-curious observer:
It has been hard slogging over the last two weeks of what we hope has been balanced discussions about the economic and political crisis that is currently racking Greece, Europe and in fact the world, so before we move into our final stage of closing comment with the urns now open but before the votes are counted in Greece, what about taking a step back and seeing what would happen if we take this conflict to another, higher level? Check it out here:
Forgetting the Germans (not that this is ever possible of course) and the more prissy lipped representatives of European institutions, why might we reasonably ask ourselves are there so many angry accusations coming in from Eastern and Northern Europe? It’s a bit complicated, so let us consider this in several stages.
First and most reassuring to those of us who care about the economy and democracy, these are not universally shared positions in those countries. And this is what you are not hearing from the media, as much as anything else because the real message is so complicated: namely that there are substantial portions of the populations and political alliances in each of these countries who are in fact NOT AT ALL IN AGREEMENT with the orchestrated media pronouncements of certain government representatives, including national delegations to the various European institutions. For those of us who are concerned not only with matters of the well working of the economy but also that of democracy, this multiplicity of views is reassuring news.
The roots of Greece’s crisis are simple. Before Greece joined the Eurozone, investors treated it as a middle-income country with poor governance — which is to say, a credit risk. After Greece joined the Eurozone, investors thought that Greece was no longer a credit risk — they figured, if push came to shove, other Eurozone members like Germany would bail Greece out. They were wrong.
If you had to pick one chart that encapsulates Greece’s crisis, it would be this one:
Signing of Versailles Treaty imposing ruinous economic sanctions on the defeated Germany
Last night I dreamt I was wandering the stacks of the great Butler Library at Columbia, in a search to see if I could identify a certain number of what I would like to call “leading political economists” who have through their work and contributions over the last several centuries helped to shape our understanding of the relationship between economy, efficiency, democracy and governance. In particular I was looking for indications in their work that would allow me to make an educated guess as to what their position might have been in the case of the Sunday Referendum in Greece.
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