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Yesterday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras warned that his country’s coffers would run dry by November unless international lenders disbursed a vital 31.5 billion euro (1.28 trillion Roubles. 41 billion USD. 25.5 billion UK Pounds) loan instalment soon. Samaras invoked a comparison with the Weimar Republic in Germany before the Second World War, warning of “chaos” in Greece if his coalition government failed and democracy collapsed. Mr Samaras told reporters, “The government’s giving a fight on all sides for the credibility and salvation of this country so the people’s sacrifices don’t go to waste”.
Athens and its debt inspectors are still trying to hash out new spending cuts to help speed up the release of the next round of bailout funds. Amid this uncertainty, Mr Samaras highlighted the consequences of a Greek exit from the euro, warning it would be “a total disaster” and could prove “very destabilising” for Europe, saying that once one member country left, the international markets would probably target the next “weakest link”. Samaras pointed up that this would prove “painful for everybody and could prove fatal for many”. Athens is grappling with the worst financial crisis of its modern history with one in four people out of a job and the country’s recession predicted to continue for a sixth year. In Athens, international lenders continue to delay the release of the loans. Gerry Rice, a spokesman from the IMF, said the lending organisation would not hand out its portion of cash unless it gauged the viability of Greece’s debt as being sustainable or other lenders filled a financing gap in the bailout.
In an interview published yesterday with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Mr Samaras warned that the cohesion of Greek society was being “endangered by rising unemployment, as was Germany towards the end of the Weimar Republic”. Such grim conditions are fertile ground for the rise of extremism. Support for the extreme-right Golden Dawn party has soared, and the Prime Minister warned in the interview that Greek democracy is “facing perhaps its greatest challenge”. Society, he went on, was threatened by extreme left-wing populists and “the rise of a right-wing extremist, one might say fascist, neo-Nazi party. People know that this government means Greece’s last chance. We’ll make it. If we fail, chaos awaits us”. He also outlined solutions, including the recapitalisation of Greece’s banks directly from a European fund to avoid further debt piling onto the country, noting, “The European Central Bank, which owns Greek government debt, could declare itself happy with lower interest… or agree to a rollover when these bonds are due”. So far, EU officials have adamantly rejected this.
A German government spokesman announced yesterday that Chancellor Angela Merkel would go to Athens on Monday to show support for reform efforts. However, many Greeks blame Germany’s insistence on austerity for their hardship, and the left-wing SYRIZA party urged unions to protest against the German leader. Union leaders said, “Workers, pensioners and unemployed people can take no more of the EU’s punitive policies”. Nevertheless, a German statement stressed that it wants Greece to stay in the euro bloc, albeit while pushing ahead with painful reforms. Since Greece received its first bailout in May 2010, it’s repeatedly slashed incomes, increased taxes, and raised retirement ages.
6 October 2012
Nathalie Savaricas
Independent (London UK)
Editor’s Note:
“Reform” means pain (and downright penury) for working people and retirees so that the McMansion filth can party on without a care. That’s the policy of the US Republican Party, too… it intends to slam its boot-heel hard into the faces of the most vulnerable Americans so that the Affluent Effluent can profit whilst kids starve. That’s objectively evil… a vote for the Republican Party (or any of its foreign analogues) is a vote for undisguised greed, malevolence, and wickedness. The Republicans worship Almighty Mammon… and God did say, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. If you shill for the GOP, you’re my enemy… full stop… I’ll do whatever I can to defeat your criminal ideology and stop its malicious grasping any way that I can. Yes… our immortal souls DO depend on it…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Samaras Lets His Mask Slip
Tags: Alexis Tsipras, Antonis Samaras, Carlos Latuff, cartoons, Coalition of the Radical Left, editorial cartoons, EU, European Parliament, European Union, Greece, Greek, Greek government, Greek Prime Minister, Greeks, Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, Karolos Papoulias, ND, New Democracy, Panhellenic Socialist Movement, PASOK, political commentary, politics
Greece Under Occupation
Carlos Latuff
2010
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Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, of New Democracy, has been careful to project a reputation as a statesman standing above politics… at least, when it comes to his reputation abroad; at home, he’s better known as a bruiser. Therefore, it was remarkable that he used a joint news conference with José Manuel Durão Barroso, the President of the European Commission, for a scathing personal attack… in English… on Alexis Tsipras, leader of the leftist SYRIZA bloc. Asked by a Brussels-based reporter about the prospect of a SYRIZA victory in elections to the European Parliament this spring, Samaras accused Tsipras of being unpatriotic for staying away from the opening ceremony, and of being “anti-European, anti-Western, and anti-NATO“. If this is Samaras on his best behaviour, expect a tough election campaign.
Prime Minister Samaras told foreign reporters that the Greek government… a coalition between the neoliberal rightwing New Democracy with the centre-left PASOK… a party that’s all but imploded… is doing fine, saying, “This is a stable government and it’ll be stable until the next election, which I hope will come in 2016”. That message might’ve been less reassuring than Samaras intended, because it left open that there might be an early election… before 2016… which a break-up of the coalition would trigger. The coalition’s majority in parliament is only three seats.
Barroso rarely passes up an opportunity to speak, and so it was during the inauguration ceremony for Greece’s presidency of the EU Council of Ministers. At a joint press conference with Prime Minister Samaras, a misty-eyed Barroso delivered an opening statement that was three times as long as Samaras’… he spoke for 16 minutes… and he did so again a couple of hours later at the Megaron concert hall, where he spoke for almost 14 minutes, with Greek President Karolos Papoulias and the highest state and church leaders in the audience (Herman Achille Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, took half that time for his address). Barroso seemed to say, “I told you so”, although exactly what it was that he’d been right about remained a little vague.
9 January 2014
Toby Vogel
European Voice
http://www.europeanvoice.com/page/3609.aspx?LG=1&&blogitemid=1827
Editor’s Note:
Is Greece ready to abandon the West, to ally itself with its Orthodox brother, Russia? As a harbinger of the future, Greece now buys rugged Russian military hardware, in preference to pricier (and less-reliable) Western items. Shall it abandon its “costly” alliance with the West to pursue a future with the Orthosphere states in the Eurasian Economic Community? Only time will tell us… but it’s true that Russian aid would carry fewer strings than that coming from the greedy tight-fisted Germans. First, it was Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan… now, its Armenia… shall Greece be next? As I said, only time will tell us…
God willing, Greece will free itself from domination by Western bankers and German occupiers (it’s economic, this time, not military, but it’s an occupation, all the same)… it CAN overturn the American-sponsored victory of rightist forces in 1949 (and the American-fomented coup against Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos Vaportzis in 1948)…
BMD