#161

The_Boourns_Identity posted:

Waylondo posted:

and now in psychoanalytic terms, you are acting as the big (m)Other, taking Zizek's perverse and sexually-motivated mewlings and sublimating them into truth categories like 'correct' or 'right.'

whoa this kind of posting is cool here? i've been studying lacanian psychoanalysis to improve my posting strategies for about a half decade now but i haven't found where it works best

unfortunately, no one can be told what cool posting is. you have to see it for yourself

#162
[account deactivated]
#163
"Moreover, as Ned Ludd pointed out in comments today, Greece has retreated from another one of its defiant gestures, that of cultivating ties with Russia:

An offer from Gazprom was “ready for signatures”, and Greece walked away.

he Greek government in the end balked at the Gazprom offer (which was ready for signature on 23rd April 2015) following warnings from the EU Commission that its terms were contrary to European law – i.e., to the Third Energy Package.

I was told by my source that the Greek government could not in the end bring itself to defy the EU Commission on this issue because of its fears that this would jeopardise its negotiations with the EU finance ministers at the Eurogroup meeting on the following day.

Alexander Mercouris’s “source in Athens” may be a Russian diplomat or official at their embassy in Athens, who is aggravated by Greece’s incomprehensible negotiating strategy.

There was no point in making overtures to Moscow if Greece was not prepared to follow them through. It was totally predictable that the EU authorities would object to whatever deal Greece made with Russia or with Gazprom. If Greece was not prepared to defy the EU authorities on this question, it should not have proceeded at all. As it is the Russians must be annoyed at being led up the garden path, while the European leaders have been antagonised and persuaded that Greece’s anti-austerity posture is ultimately a bluff."


#164
dammit
#165
llol for fucks sake
#166
yeah i was wrong Syriza are fuccbois and Varoufakis/voters are too scared of grexit to do the right thing...
#167
gj to syriza for giving golden dawn all the credibility in the world.
#168
well according to Varoufakis at least there's a lot of distortion about what happened & there might be a coup soon
#169
"Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has described how he and his wife were abused by a group of youths at a restaurant in Athens late on Tuesday.
The minister says the couple were with a friend when they were confronted by "anti-state activists", who threw glass objects at them.
Mr Varoufakis has been criticised for his handling of talks with Greece's international creditors.
He was sidelined this week as the government urgently seeks a deal.
The finance minister said he was sitting outside at a restaurant in the Exarchia district with his wife, artist Danae Stratou, and a friend, when they came under attack from a number of youths.
The area is seen as popular with far-left activists. Mr Varoufakis's left-wing Syriza party has in recent years moved closer to the centre."
#170

aerdil posted:

well according to Varoufakis at least there's a lot of distortion about what happened & there might be a coup soon



otoh he would say that

#171

aerdil posted:

well according to Varoufakis at least there's a lot of distortion about what happened & there might be a coup soon



The only coup Varoufakis seems to have talked about is a metaphorical financial one:

"The Greek minister said that the International Monetary Fund and northern European partners refuse to accept the reality that “the policy is disastrous both for Greece and for Europe itself,” while adding that negotiations are tough and the government has to face a new type of coup “not with tanks, as in 1967, but through banks.”

And why would a more 'conventional' coup be necessary, the way things are going, since Syriza has not actually sought to challenge the European status-quo economically or politically (i.e. in terms of its foreign relations with Moscow)?

#172
The Muslim Brotherhood at least had been sticking out its neck a bit for Gaza prior to the Egyptian military's correction of the elections....

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#173
Godammit
#174
lol
#175
This is how my relationship with Valve began. While a total ignoramus of the world of video games (as per my confession above), the people at Valve and I discerned a double coincidence of interests. My academic curiosity blended nicely into Valve’s burning desire to serve its gaming community better, through the development of services that are in tune with the community’s needs as gamers but also as traders, developers, participants in something much bigger than just video games.

By studying Valve’s economy, we would have an opportunity to enhance the experience of its customers, in addition to sharpening my own thinking about what makes real economies tick. And as if all this were not enough, there was another incentive thrown into the mix: the opportunity to understand better the remarkable social organisation of production within Valve itself. (But more on this in another post…)

Within hours, an agreement was reached: I would become, in some capacity (that was to be hammered out later), Valve’s economist-in-residence.
#176
[account deactivated]
#177
So it seems like Syriza is negotiating pretty hardball after all. No deal, despite running out of money. Even after they had to replace their chief negotiator after he was being too "abrasive"!
#178
It certainly is being obstinate about the contradictory objectives it has set for itself: whether this steadfastness will eventually overcome itself as a radicalization of said objectives remains unclear.
#179
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/05/01/varoufakis-tells-attack-witness-he-might-be-expelled-from-greek-government/

Then Varoufakis asked the crowd: “Why are you attacking me? Do you know the reason? Have you realized that I am not part of the current status quo? Have you realized that in about a week they will expel me from the government?”

“If you know that the system is rotten, why don’t you do something to change it?,” an anarchist asked Varoufakis to get a stunning reply.

“It’s not possible, simply. This is the current system, I tried, but I failed. It’s impossible,” admitted the Greek Finance minister according to the witness.



#180
He's met The Beast.



Oliver Stone is the greatest american filmmaker alive today.
#181
The claim was that for a four-month period the European Central Bank would call a halt to the torture it had been imposing on the country’s economy since February 5, when it decided to terminate the most important mechanism for funding the Greek banks. As it is now generally recognized, the government was dragged into signing that unbalanced agreement through pressure from an accelerating outflow of bank deposits and the threat of bank collapse.

Now, with public coffers emptying to forestall a cutoff of debt servicing and inescapable state obligations, it is evident that the only time that has been bought is time that works to the advantage of the Europe institutions and that the Greek side is exposed to an intensifying blackmail as its position deteriorates.....

The Greek side did not take into account what was obvious from the outset, namely that the European Central Bank and EU were not going to sit twiddling their thumbs when faced by a government of the radical left. Τhe biggest gun in their arsenal is liquidity and it was entirely logical and predictable that they would resort to it immediately. And naturally the lenders have every reason to continue “tightening the noose” (as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras puts it) until they have forced the Greek side into total capitulation.

To put it differently, if with the February 20 agreement the lenders had agreed to “ensure liquidity,” if they had delinked its provision from the specific austerity plans they seek to impose, they would simply have deprived themselves of the most significant means of exerting pressure they have at their disposal. That Tsakalotos believed they would do this smacks of extreme political naivety, if not willful blindness, particularly when a major section of his own party has been warning from the outset of the inevitability of this development.

#182
there's a rumour that pulp wrote common people about this guy's wife lmao

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.athensvoice.gr%2Farticle%2Fcity-news-voices%2F%25CE%25B8%25CE%25B5%25CE%25BC%25CE%25B1%2F%25C2%25ABcommon-people%25C2%25BB&edit-text=&act=url
#183
xRGGbyZzuTg
#184
imagining a hard boiled detective attempting to figure out if this greek lady is the subject of the pulp song.
#185
#186
Hey, lay your burden down
Seems the last day of the miners' strike
Was the Magna Carta in this part of town



If true, the Pulp connection may explain alot...
#187
Premier Alexis Tsipras and the leading figures of his Syriza movement agreed to defend their "red lines" on pensions and collective bargaining and prepare for battle whatever the consequences, deeming the olive-branch policy of recent weeks to have reached a dead end.
"We have agreed on a tougher strategy to stop making compromises. We were unified and we have a spring our step once again," said one participant.

Such declarations of a commitment to a hard bargaining stance are not really a signal of a novel development relative to what the Greek government has already been doing so far, but its a good sign that Syriza is still making them-because it suggests that it still on ideological route where a qualitative change in strategy may eventually happen.

also:

Officials say Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered Greece roughly €2bn up-front to smooth the way for the so-called "Turkish Stream" gas pipeline. While this would allow Greece to meet its IMF payments in May and June and then default later to the European Central Bank - deemed the real foe - it would not solve any of Greece's problems.

The implicit quid pro quo would be a Greek veto on an extension of Western sanctions against Russia. Such a decision would damage the rift with Europe beyond repair and would infuriate the Obama White House, which still has some sympathy for Syriza.
#188
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32701278

Greece is believed to have borrowed €650m from its IMF holding account to meet the debt interest payment.



#189

Panopticon posted:


i know that feel..

#190
its cool that the insane made up number that is going to be shoved down the greek peoples throats is being driven higher by these clowns.
#191
[account deactivated]
#192
lol
#193

Panopticon posted:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32701278

Greece is believed to have borrowed €650m from its IMF holding account to meet the debt interest payment.



#194
does anyone think there's any chance of greek escape/default at this point? at all? or has merkel definitively sealed the deal. asking for an i-banker friend from the yacht club, of course.
#195
ed

Edited by wasted ()

#196
Out of the mouth of scum:

"In the last election, Syriza succeeded in talking Greeks into believing there is a simpler way to stay in the euro - a way without major reform efforts that are actually in Greece's interests," said Schaeuble.
"Perhaps they shouldn't have made promises like that," he said, adding he had repeatedly tried to find a way to let Greece stand on its own feet."
#197
hows greece doing today
#198
supposedly close to a deal with the germans. a molotov type pact perhaps.
#199
So what happens to Greece now. If they cave to the Germans then Syriza loses all credibility. A Greek friend told me he supported Syriza because they were a long shot, but at least it was a shot. The country might be in misery for a while if they fail or even if they win but he hoped Syriza might stand firm or throw their lot in with the Russians.

When Syriza isn't credible anymore then what does it mean for the reactionaries there. Does Golden Dawn sweep to power or just become a key electoral coalition member/ gang of thugs to suppress dissent against austerity.

What is the end game for Greece? Sucked dry by Eu scum and terrorised by Nazis, locked into the system that's killing them. How can they come back from this, when everyone is ready to believe its just those feckless Greeks getting what they deserve?
#200
i dont know