Below are two eye opening reports/analyses by two of the best counterpunchers in Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St Clair's stable of bomb throwers. The subject is Greece: its political/economic crisis and the myths surrounding average Greeks being the cause of its crisis.
In the first, Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People: The Myth of Greek Profligacy, my friend Marshall Auerback, argues that the masses of the Greek people (the bottom 80% of a highly unequal income distribution) are being set up as scapegoats to pay for a neo-liberal austerity plan that aimed producing income deflation (instead of a currency devaluation) to improve export competitiveness. Auerback explains why this is really a plan of collective punishment that is guaranteed to fail while shredding what is left of Greece's social contract.
In the second, Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails: How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land, Patrick Cockburn presents the reader with a micro-case study of what is happening to average Greeks (i.e. part of the lower 80%) on the island of Naxos, the largest and my favorite island in the windy Cyclades.
Chuck Spinney
Barcelona
Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People
The Myth of Greek Profligacy
by MARSHALL AUERBACK,
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2011
Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails
How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 18, 2011
Phi Beta Iota: One reason why the Electoral Reform and BigBatUSA endeavors are so important NOW, is because if they succeed in the USA, where Internet connectivity, cognitive surplus, and Occupy awaking have converged, the model can be scaled globally very quickly. At root this is about secular corruption. Pope Benedict XVI had a chance to use Assisi creatively but chose the low road.
