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Greece to hold referendum on austerity measures 5 July
- Thread starter Coriolanus
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CyclopsRock
Member
I'm not sure this inane platitude has much use here.
This is more like the house is already burnt down and now the neighbor is asking you to pay to rebuild it for him.
You're going to haggle over that.
No but you don't sell them an insurance plan whilst you wait for the fire brigade to arrive either.
Ted Striker
Neo Member
Lousy metaphors keep on coming.
Fenderputty
Banned
No ... this is more like:
"My neighbor had a hand in helping me burn my house down over the last couple of years. Now I would like them to help rebuild it for me."
Theonik
Member
I am with you on the first point, however, for as long as Greece remains a democratic country, such action would only damage any government who implemented such measures.
Edit: In Syriza's case in particular it would NEVER fly past their coalition partners who are in charge of defence.
With regards to defence treaties, we are unfortunately not yet to the point where a European Union is mature enough and trust between states is strong enough to provide the necessary insurance for its members to properly consider real cuts on its militaries. The proposed measures also ring hollow since unsurprisingly they don't tackle the very significant problem of procurement and only focus on personnel costs. But I digress.
For the second point about territorial waters. The 6nm concession was a response from Greece to Turkey threatening to go to war with Greece. International law supports the Greek claim, and the dispute is still open. International law also grants Greece control of the Aegean passenger flight corridors that Turkish military aviation does not respect. But again this is a can of worms people can slit each other's throats in another thread.
Sounds like Varoufakis was never interested in negotiating any deal. Listen to what he said in 2013: https://youtu.be/MEUWxNifJJ8?t=43m30s
He is basically saying that Greece should default and thus give the Eurozone an ultimatum (well...): We are defaulting and we are not leaving the Euro. "All hell would break loose." And now either the European Union has to bailout Greece or the Euro will die, and then we can still go back to the Drachme.
So unless he changed his mind, suddenly confronting the Eurozone and letting Greece default has always been their goal. In that case, all these negotiations would have been smoke screens.
He is basically saying that Greece should default and thus give the Eurozone an ultimatum (well...): We are defaulting and we are not leaving the Euro. "All hell would break loose." And now either the European Union has to bailout Greece or the Euro will die, and then we can still go back to the Drachme.
So unless he changed his mind, suddenly confronting the Eurozone and letting Greece default has always been their goal. In that case, all these negotiations would have been smoke screens.
Tesseract
Banned
no, i think mine is way lousier
Coriolanus
Banned
Welcome to 5 months ago.
If he wanted to do that, however, they'd have never agreed to the first bailout extension package in the first place. So it is a bit trickier than that.
Fenderputty
Banned
inanier
Tesseract
Banned
hell yeah
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
No they do not.
uuaschbaer
Banned
But the EU got the Nobel prize for peace : (.
I may know one person who wants that ... maybe.
Then what's the fucking point?
Greek people are asking themselves the same thing this very moment.
StealthGoblin
Banned
Hell no. That is what the ridiculous politicians want us to believe but down on the ground, no way. If you ask anyone in my country (UK) whether they want to be in one country called Europe I'd think the 'fuck no' response would be in the high 90%s.
I'd argue that all we really want is free trade. We'd be more than happy to have our courts be the be all and end all in our country and currently I think people would want total control of our borders. We already have our own currency.
Theonik
Member
It is a distant dream, but one European nations will have to accept if they want to remain relevant on a global scale.
StealthGoblin
Banned
Sounds like a total nightmare.
We must not exaggerate that. It's not like any Greek would have to fear for his health or life when visiting Germany. Many Germans are generally supportive. The current government has rustled a lot of jimmies with their aggressive rhetoric and blame shifting.
Coriolanus
Banned
Yes, but we're now heading back into League of Nations-like discussions. You need quite the grim global event to convince a lot of players to give up their sovereignty, and even then, if you don't act fast, it doesn't take long for fractures to appear once again.
Theonik
Member
Yes, I still live and I've been a little shit.
I still warned them about this back in January. But I felt reluctant to push that point.
Have fun trying to learn Chinese I guess!
uuaschbaer
Banned
Why? People always just say that as if it requires no explanation. There have always been huge empires and smaller nations and often empires crumbled whereas smaller nations were responsible for notable advances, such as in trade.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
About as distant (and desirable) as a One World Government,
thank fuck! 
A free trade bloc that can align and co-operate, occasionally, for global political purposes is all that's needed for Europe, everything else can go take short jump off a tall cliff.
Very few in Europe actually want to share stuff with each other, the collaboration is out of capitalist drive for bigger profits.
StealthGoblin
Banned
About as distant (and desirable) as a One World Government,thank fuck!
A free trade bloc that can align and co-operate, occasionally, for global political purposes is all that's needed for Europe, everything else can go take short jump off a tall cliff.
Essentially what the UK would prefer.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
The closest thing we have was a poll of sentiment towards remaining with, or leaving the Euro which was published a day or two before the referendum announcement.
It had support for staying in the Euro at 57%, however that was before the whole referendum shitstorm started and the campaigning began, so how relevant that poll is now is anyone's guess.
Fenderputty
Banned
This is only true for people using the Euro. Which England is not.
I can't believe that 57% want in, but I guess that's probably a lot lower than recent history. I'm guessing since Tsipras wants Greece to vote no, won't make the question something like "Want into the Euro still, eh? eh?"
Coriolanus
Banned
In previous eras, such things were possible because locomotion and the exchange of information were far more controlled affairs. Nowadays it is considered that if you can do something new or exceptionally well... why in blazes would you do that in, say, the French Guiana? Fuck that, take a plane and go somewhere with better growth prospects.
In the case of the EU this is an even harsher prospect, since why should you stay in, say, Bulgaria working for a pittance with far lower quality of life when you can just hop on a train and go to a country that's far better off? If you can move, you *will* move.
Thus, brain drain and similar problems. If all else fails, power players can just buy whatever made you good.
It's a very complex problem.
CyclopsRock
Member
I think the need for a person to be in a giant super-state to have a great life is a) a historic relic if it were ever true and b) even were it true, certainly a declining truth now. The nature of technology and business and the manner in which we conduct it (ie more frequently electronically and across borders with hardly a consideration for it) means that being in France or Germany or Belgium or Ireland specifically is less important than it used to be. In that sense, the EU is useful as a trading bloc but not as some giant Wielder Of The Continental Dick in the world stage. Why the fuck would anyone want Juncker waggling his dick about anyway? Put it back in your swimmies, son, and get your arse to Rhodes on holiday - help the Greeks out.
Theonik
Member
Essentially, it becomes very difficult to provide the same protections to your home markets as you could before the current globalised economy. Uniting is just one way of adapting to modern realities. Simply put the rules of the game have changed significantly.
OK. I will admit this made me laugh pretty hard.
You're a hundred percent right. The only benefit is common defence, but it's not like you need to be in a single country for that. Australia isn't screaming to join the US, we've merely joined the ANZUS alliance. (Aust-NZ-USA) We've also got a free trade agreement with the US....without either one of us needing to tell the other whether they can hand out bottles of olive oil on tables at Restaurants or the kinds of vacuum cleaners that can be sold, or legislating the shape of bananas.
Coriolanus
Banned
That dynamic changes entirely when you start dealing with less developed (or flat-out exploited) countries, fwiw.
uuaschbaer
Banned
I can see how a country with a large population speaking the same language, using the same currency and under the same legal system provides a lovely market in which companies can grow, but on the other hand it seems to me that the diversity of cultures, legal systems, policies and so on, you find in a collection of small countries could provide opportunities for companies etc. that wouldn't survive, be popular or be allowed in a single large country. It's like a testing ground for ideas.
Coriolanus
Banned
Well, there is *some* data to back that up, but... if you're tiny, unless you're in europe or an asian tiger, seems you'd be SoL.
CyclopsRock
Member
Well, maybe. I dunno. I mean, I know being in less developed countries massively inhibits your ability to do certain things, be it because of travel restrictions, lack of access to resources (like a stable internet connection or decent vendors) etc. We have a guy that works for us remotely from Indonesia and we basically have to wait for him to contact us because we never know when the wind will blow his house down like some metaphor-come-alive big bad wolf. But the point isn't to compare being in a developed nation with being in a under-developed one but rather to compare being in a big country (or union) and a small one. There are plenty of places in China, India, Russia etc - countries with relatively high GDPs (if not necessarily per capita) and whatnot where access to these things is similarly limited. I shouldn't imagine the opportunities afforded to poor kids in under-developed parts of India are much better than the under-developed parts of (the much smaller) Pakistan which in turn probably don't deviate that much from the under-developed areas of Sri Lanka (which is smaller still) - all in roughly the same geographic area for ease of comparison. I'm not necessarily convinced that the crappier, undeveloped parts of India will see their fortunes changed any quicker than the crappy, undeveloped parts of Sri Lanka and therefore demonstrate the benefits of being part of a larger country.
SecretSphere
Member
You really think that? I think there are more European people who want to succeed from their current country (Scots, Catalans, Basqs, Flemish, etc.) than people who want to live in a United States of Europe.
uuaschbaer
Banned
There are quite a lot of Europeans and Asian tiger people, though. And to be fair you would have to collate the patent grants of several small nations and compare that to those of a big nation with a similar total population, or indeed look at the per capita list, on which both very big and very small countries seem to do quite well.
Coriolanus
Banned
Yeah, i'm seeing it. Seems that the main divide, after size, is whether you're in a developed country or not. No real surprise there.
Fenderputty
Banned
I'm not really concerned with whether a superstate leads to more happy outcomes or not comparitively. If a bunch of individual states want to use a unified currency, they should form a superstate. If not drop the currency.
Chittagong
Gold Member
EU is just salty we haven't yet been able to take over Greece's gas reserves, they better keep borrowing at gunpoint until that. Then, Drakhma.
Souldestroyer Reborn
Banned
There isn't one.
That's why the EU is a fucking waste of time.
As a Brit, if the EU was to become the USE i'd be all for it. FUck it why not? Superpower status overnight.
It'll never happen though.
England != UK
Fucking pisses me off when i see that.
My words exactly!
Member
Not quite... this is how deep the rabbit hole goes and how twisted and sick this whole deal is. They (EU) already have a "chosen" yes man/strawman to replace Syriza since PASOK and ND are dead in the water:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7cc9ce52-1a7e-11e5-a130-2e7db721f996.html
https://translate.google.gr/transla...ha-sinantithi-o-s-theodorakis-stis-vrixelles/
In Wednesay a gala with select pro EU officials took place, look at that...
https://translate.google.gr/transla...7;-εικόνες
This guy is even more ruthless than Benizelos believe it or not and ironically, is a niece of Simitis, the PM who got Greece in the whole euro deal... As well as the lapdog of the most corrupt media monger in Greece (Bobolas, whose channel owes the greek state more than 200 million € and its' propaganda would make your Fox news blush)
Note: up untill Wednesday afternoon, the deal was supposedly close to being made between the greek goverment and EU officials, but changes were made to its contents
Also to the people discussing the defence expendures of greek army... Guess which country's industry is #1 in illegal contracts made with greek officials.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/10/rheinmetall-greece-idUSFWN0TT04M20141210
add to the above the Siemens debacle of 2010 as well as the at least 0.5 BILLION € lost by Benizelos in the case of the subs
http://www.lepointinternational.com...submarine-deals-that-helped-sink-greece-.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703636404575352991108208712
hydrophilic attack
Member
One very important argument in favour of having different nations joining as one state (although my idealistic self would prefer a global state rather than a (sub-)continental state) is that in the future we will be facing many global issues that no nation will be able to solve by itself. Issues like global warming, terrorism, tax avoidance, labour exploitation, famines, pandemics and mass emigration from certain regions due to war or climate-induced catastrophic events.
Global co-operation, for which a well-functioning EU could be a model, may be the only way to solve these issues. Unfortunately, this Greece debacle, where politicians in creditor countries chose to risk economic collapse in order to stay popular with their own electorates, over seeking a mutually beneficial agreement with Greece, has shown me that global solidarity is just not available in the quantities it needs to be. I am now totally disillusioned and think we will have wiped ourselves out within 200 years.
Global co-operation, for which a well-functioning EU could be a model, may be the only way to solve these issues. Unfortunately, this Greece debacle, where politicians in creditor countries chose to risk economic collapse in order to stay popular with their own electorates, over seeking a mutually beneficial agreement with Greece, has shown me that global solidarity is just not available in the quantities it needs to be. I am now totally disillusioned and think we will have wiped ourselves out within 200 years.
Coriolanus
Banned
Maaan, i'd forgotten all about To Potami. Makes a lot more sense now why Tsipras didn't form a political alliance with them.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
No one would win the elections if they were to be held, it would be worst. Voting no is really the best outcome.
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