polis, politics, politicians

Emma Goldman (June 27 [O.S. June 15], 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer.

In this blog, we (are trying to) focus to food and nutrition.

Let's make an exemption today.

Let's remember something that happened in Greece, 2 years ago...

5th July 2015...

people said NO. 

People believed that there is some hope...

few days later, Tsipras changed it to YES...

and Greece was condemned to be a "bailout-istan" for many decades...

Results Votes %

Yes 2,245,537 38.69%

No 3,558,450 61.31%

Valid votes 5,803,987 94.20%

5 Ιούλη 2015...

Ο Λαός Είπε ΌΧΙ...

λίγες μέρες μετά, ο Τσίπρας το άλλαξε σε ΝΑΙ...

και έτσι η πατρίδα μου καταδικάστηκε να είναι μια δουλοπαροικία εις τον Αιώνα των Αιώνων...

 - - -

this is a historical paradigm where People do not have any power...

Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy

What does it mean for policy to be insulated from politics? That’s the question we ultimately confront when investigating the putative depoliticisation of the economy. Matters which should be publicly resolved, through organised processes of contestation, instead get decided privately. We can cite examples of such transitions, consider whether they embody a broader tendency and offer explanations which account for this direction of travel.

However I’ve often wondered about the micro-social aspects of such a transition, specifically how policy makers make sense of this depoliticisation. Is it a naked power grab? Is it a response to the vagaries of the electorate? Is it an attempt to address issues of socio-economic change which are seen as being impossible to raise with the public?  Yanis Varoufakis offers a partial answer to these questions in his gripping accounts of Eurogroup negotiations in his political memoir Adults In The Rooms. From loc 4202

As he spoke, Schäuble directed a piercing look at Sapin. ‘Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy,’ he began. Greece had obligations that could not be reconsidered until the Greek programme had been completed, as per the agreements between my predecessors and the troika. The fact that the Greek programme could not be completed was apparently of no concern to him. What startled me more than Wolfgang Schäuble’s belief that elections are irrelevant was his total lack of compunction in admitting to this view. His reasoning was simple: if every time one of the nineteen member states changed government the Eurogroup was forced to go back to the drawing board, then its overall economic policies would be derailed. Of course he had a point: democracy had indeed died the moment the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states without anything resembling federal democratic sovereignty.

 = = = 

And our eternal Quest for A Democratic Europe is still on but so much more disheartened...

Our Polis is governed no more by the People but by the Eurogroup... a circle of not elected technocrats... 

The end of Democracy...

The rise of Eurogroup-cracy...

jobs, education and music

The following is a comment I have posted at this story

Athens' emblematic concert hall struggles to keep the music playing



I am afraid that this story is not at all a top priority for a country with around 60% youth unemployment!
So, I think that any criticism to Helena should be towards the report priorities in a country that has lost more than 250,000 scientists and engineers over the past 5 years.
We need to remember that
Primum vivere deinde philosophari (Live first, then philosophize).
Greek Unis at the moment face an even more, than Megaron's, crisis: the levels of staff has decreased about 35% since 2010 and the salary has been reduced by 25%. It was already 50% lower than EU average...(before I get any cynical comments).
At the moment, a new Lecturer in Greece would get about 1200 pcm (after tax)...
So, let me ask you: in a country without tertiary education, without a specific plan to create jobs, without a plan to develop exports (apart from brain-draining), WHY should we bother about Megaron? That in any case, only few Greeks could afford it...

 Ioannis Zabetakis

P.S. a brain-drainer myself... I am so sorry to see my friends, my ex-colleagues and my ex-students struggling to make ends meet in a country still falling in a downward spiral with no end...

P.S.2.

More than 3 years ago, I have been writting...
A nation without education is a suicidal one