Entertaining the greek

The trial and execution of Socrates at Athens in 399 B.C.E. has come down to us as the archetype of intellectual martyrdom.

Last Friday the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens gave Socrates a new trial, assembling a panel of distinguished jurists from Europe and America to reopen the case. As the Onassis Centre’s Web site explains, the event was “not a re-enactment but a modern perspective based on current legal framework supplemented with ancient Greek elements and comical theatrics.”

This time the verdict was different–but just barely. The vote by the jury was a 5-5 tie, which meant Socrates was acquitted. The audience’s vote was more decisive: 5 to convict, 584 to acquit. Of course, it was a little late for Socrates.

This is madness

After struggling with an intractable financial crisis, Greece announced that it would cease to exist as a sovereign nation and would instead reboot itself as a social network, FetaBook.

The social network formerly known as Greece announced that it would cancel its upcoming elections and instead install a CEO, a young hacker from suburban Athens.

The hacker explained how the social network would be attractive to the investment community in ways that Greece was not. “We’re keeping all the aspects of Greece that made it a cool brand – the ruins, the Olympics, the olives. We’re just losing the things that were a drag on Greece: Greeks. Under the new plan, they’ll cease to be citizens and instead become friends, they won’t receive government benefits anymore, but they’ll be able to grow all the imaginary vegetables they want. Also Greeks waste billions a year smashing plates after meals, now there’s an app for it.”

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

In return for the new bailout, Greece must implement a savage austerity programme, accept an “enhanced and permanent” presence of EU officials supervising Greek finances and set up a blocked account with three months debt interest payments in it at any time.

«First, let’s be clear that the ‘bailout’ is not really a bailout of Greece, but rather of the mainly German and French banks. Why? Over the past decade, Germany kept domestic wages flat, helping it to run a massive trade surplus with Greece and other peripheral Eurozone (EZ) countries. These surpluses have been recycled by private banks lending to the periphery (pdf1 and pdf2), much in the same way as the 1973/79 oil surpluses were recycled largely through London in the form of highly profitable loans to Latin America. And just as Latin America (and other peripheral countries) suffered a debt crisis in the 1980s, while IMF-imposed austerity designed to repay the debt led to riots and trade union resistance, so we are witnessing much the same thing in the EZ. Nowhere more than Greece has troika-imposed austerity brought such pain, the country’s GDP having fallen by 15 per cent since early 2009 and unemployment affecting nearly half of all youth. Now that German banks have cut their exposure to Greek debt, Germany is having second thoughts about Greece staying in the euro.  Whether it happens in the coming weeks or months, a decision by the troika that Greece is in breach of its loan obligations could lead to the ECB halting its weekly refinancing operations with the Central Bank of Greece thereby forcing an immediate Greek default. It is generally agreed that if default leads to contagion in the EZ, the economic consequences for the EU could be disastrous.

The implication is clear. The troika’s actions in Greece are disastrous. Without a stable government, Greece’s departure from the euro will entail growing political chaos, and chaos will bring military intervention to ‘restore order’. Those old enough to remember the civil war of 1946-48 or the colonel’s coup of 1967 will remember that the West turned a blind eye to the repression which followed; thousands were tortured or killed and both the communist and social democratic parties were illegal for more than a generation. History may be about to repeat itself.», George Irvin.

Pobre país que não consegue dar de comer aos próprios filhos

«A esmagadora maioria dos trabalhadores da Companhia Nacional de Fiação e Tecidos de Torres Novas (CTN) rejeitou o plano de insolvência protagonizado pelo grupo Lanidor, preferindo “encomendar” uma lápide para registar a morte de uma das mais antigas fábricas do País: 2 de Outubro de 1845 – 16 de Agosto de 2011. Após 166 anos de existência, a “Fábrica Grande”, como era conhecida, fechou na semana passada.»

«Facturas não contabilizadas no valor de 6,78 milhões de euros foram “encontradas numa sala” do Instituto do Desporto de Portugal»

A Grécia prestará à Finlândia uma caução especial para viabilizar a participação desta no programa de ajuda, sob a forma de depósito numa “escrow account” que assim garantirá, exclusivamente a favor da Finlândia, o cumprimento das obrigações da Grécia, estes benefícios para um credor, apenas. Levantou-se um coro de protestos por parte de outros países credores, com destaque para a Holanda que afirma querer igual tratamento sem o que não participará na ajuda à Grécia.

Incha porco!

Na Grécia antiga uma das formas de acrescentar o insulto à injúria era gravar nas pedras atiradas pelas fundas a palavra ΔΕΞΑΙ (Toma lá!). Depois bastava acertar “no alto da pinha” do adversário.

Mutatis Mutandis

«(…)while Athens resembles a First World capital(…), it is littered with garbage and low-quality graffiti, its infrastructure crumbling from neglect and more than a year of semi-regular rioting(…), the rot going back much further, to 1974 when politicians in newly re-democratized Greece began expanding the state to “enlarge their influence.” That process accelerated after 1981, when Greeks “got our first Socialist government. In Greece we had socialism through borrowing, and actually politicians were never honest about what the true situation was. That holds across the political spectrum.” The expansion of the state brought with it “a whole system here in Greece of state subsidies—and here I’m including EU subsidies to Greece—which create more bad than good.” In 2009 one-third of research and development spending in the EU was publicly funded, and in Greece that ratio approaches 50%. When you create “something that has zero kind of entrepreneurial risk… you do it in order to exploit these funds, not to create something productive.” On top of misguided government spending, “we spent a very long period during which entrepreneurial activity was victimized, during which profit was seen as wrong. It’s a very populist approach, to go and tell the people that the rich will pay.” Here, Mr. Coustas is not referring primarily to his rarefied breed, but to the roughly 30% of Greeks who are self-employed—the largest percentage in the OECD. “So the ‘rich’ is a much more general kind of thing. Anyone who wanted to make an investment here was considered a kind of bloodsucker.” Mr. Coustas recalls the early 1980s, when he was in Japan to sign a new shipbuilding contract for Danaos. He was approached by a Japanese workers’ representative who “wanted to thank us for giving them work.” The worker told him, “‘We will do everything possible to build a good ship for you.’ Can you imagine that happening here? Here, if you tried to do the same thing and place an order in the Greek shipyards, you would get protests that either you paid too little, or are trying to pressure the workers, or whatever.“»

Constituição, justiça, corrupção, impostos, função pública, Flórida da Europa…

E Portugal não é a Grécia.

A Grécia oferece um cavalo gigante para pagar a dívida

O estardalhaço à volta da crise grega é tão grande que a loiça partida pelo reguila da Ibéria passa por brincadeira.

O nó gordio de Alexandre, resumido aqui, não dá acesso à Ásia Menor nem a estratégia de Péricles deixa mais que um caminho pedregoso entre Atenas e os portos do Pireu. Vai ser necessária mais do que uma falange espartana para vencer os Visigodos.

Quem sabe um pouco de ironia socrática, fingindo ignorar as respostas que procuram.