Democracy and the eurozone crisis: quotes #11

Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty, Athens 15.06.2011 [boston.com]

Greece: Democracy under threat

 

The ongoing economic and social crisis in Greece, together with a lack of confidence in the political system, is now posing serious threats to democracy. We believe that there is now an urgent need to raise international awareness of these threats, and of repeated violations of civil and human rights.

We are particularly concerned by the following:

The government continues to tolerate the violence and hate speech of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, even when it violates existing laws. Though several Golden Dawn members and deputies have been indicted for violent crimes, their cases are repeatedly postponed and remain unresolved. Golden Dawn deputies publicly attack democracy and the parliamentary system and display the symbols of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974; the party recruits supporters unopposed by the authorities, including in secondary schools.
 

Members of the Greek police engage in violence against immigrants and political protesters but have not been brought to account, despite repeated calls from international agencies such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNHCR. Perpetrators of racist attacks are almost never arrested; instead, their victims are often detained. There have been allegations of torture in the Athens police headquarters, and police infiltration by Golden Dawn has been well documented. Greece has no independent police complaints procedure, and the government has failed to investigate these issues.        
 

Refugees and migrants face attacks, sometimes fatal, from supporters of far-right groups on an almost daily basis; the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights recently called such violence “a real threat to democracy” and said that “impunity for the rising number of racist crimes has to end.”

The government’s policy of arbitrarily arresting immigrants - including some born in Greece - and detaining them, often in inhumane conditions, has also been condemned by UNHCR. Though large numbers of the refugees and irregular migrants entering Europe come through Greece, the country lacks a functioning asylum system.
 

International, European and constitutional law is persistently violated and constitutional safeguards sidelined. Legislation with far reaching consequences is introduced by means of presidential and ministerial decrees, violating the separation of powers and bypassing parliamentary scrutiny and judicial control. The basic constitutional principles of accountability and responsibility have been abandoned and Parliament is asked to approve decisions taken elsewhere.
 

Independent journalists have been censored or intimidated by the judiciary, media proprietors and businessmen. Greece has now sunk to 84th place in the Reporters Without Borders Annual Press Freedom Index for 2013, the lowest in Europe alongside Bulgaria. The report refers to the “disastrous social and professional atmosphere” in which Greek journalists operate. Some privately owned mass media, especially TV channels, have long played an ambiguous role in Greece; with the crisis, that role has become even more manipulative and corrupt. 
 

We are deeply concerned that fundamental rights and freedoms for which the Greek people have fought over many decades are being systematically undermined. Our initiative aims to inform and mobilize international public opinion, and has no party political affiliation.

Thanasis Gavos - Journalist

Costas Douzinas - Professor of Law / Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

Costas Lapavitsas - Professor in Economics / Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, at SOAS

Maria Margaronis - Journalist

Alexander Kazamias - Senior Lecturer in Politics, Coventry University

Anastasia Patrikiou - Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Christos Pittas - Composer / Former Head of BBC Greek Service

Doxa Sivropoulou - Economist 

Initiative for Democracy in Greece

Online Petition

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

 [screenrush]

That's the most important thing I can ever teach y'all; y'all got to learn how to take care of people smaller and sweeter than you are.

Beasts of the Southern Wild begins with a tour de force in narrative structure, clarity and precision: three scenes introducing six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), her father Wink (Dwight Henry), and their multicultural bayou community in southern Louisiana. Hushpuppy has a profound understanding of the internal balance holding the world together; she has an organic relationship with nature, and sees herself as "a little piece in a big, big universe." And thus the film builds up its main theme in the most commanding and elegant of ways, as it places Hushpuppy at the very centre of a world falling apart: she now has to deal with the fatal illness of her father and the destruction of her community by a Hurricane Katrina-like storm.

Director, co-writer and co-composer Benh Zeitlin created a highly original and visually stunning film, which successfully blends elements of social and magic realism. Hushpuppy, for example, argues that since the world depends on everything fitting together, if one piece breaks "the entire universe will get busted;" this view is visualised through the imaginative story of the Aurocks, fierce creatures freed from the melting ice caps in the Arctic due to global warming, and heading to Louisiana. Hushpuppy will eventually have to confront them, in what is one of the most moving scenes of the film. Moving, however, is an understatement when it comes to addressing the performance of Quvenzhané Wallis, as well as that of Dwight Henry; both display the exquisite expressiveness, originality, and naturalness that non-professional actors are gifted with.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is an ingenious coming-of-age story that works across the individual and the collective level and displays a significant degree of social concsiousness and environmental awareness. Above all, however, it is a quintessential example of independent filmmaking that surpasses the conventions and constraints of mainstream studio productions. The work of directors as varied as John Cassavetes, Majid Majidi, Kelly Reichardt, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, has made clear that it is not big budgets that matter; on the contrary, great cinema thrives on creativity with a soul and an edge. And the greatest merit of Beasts of the Southern Wild is that it has got both.
 

Democracy and the eurozone crisis: quotes #10

Homeless man in Athens, 02.02.2012, Photograph: Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg  [latimes.com] 

The European Union is currently undergoing the biggest economic crisis since its foundation 20 years ago. Economic growth is collapsing: the eurozone economy contracted by 0.6% in the fourth quarter last year and this slump is set to continue.

The euro crisis was incorrectly blamed on government spending, and the subsequent imposition of cuts and increased borrowing has resulted in growing national debts and rising unemployment. Government debts in crisis countries have predictably soared: the highest ratios of debt to GDP in the third quarter of 2012 were recorded in Greece (153%), Italy (127%), Portugal (120%) and Ireland (117%).

Under pressure from the European Commission, Europe’s member states have responded by implementing severe austerity programmes, making harsh cuts to crucial public services and welfare benefits. The measures mirror the controversial structural adjustment policies forced onto developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s, which discredited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The results, like their antecedents in the South, have punished the poorest the hardest, while the richest Europeans – including the banking elite that caused the financial crisis – have emerged unscathed or even richer than before.

Behind the immoral and adverse effects of unnecessary cuts though lies a much more systematic attempt by the European Commission and Central Bank (backed by the IMF) to deepen deregulation of Europe’s economy and privatise public assets. The dark irony is that an economic crisis that many proclaimed as the ‘death of neoliberalism’ has instead been used to entrench neoliberalism.

Privatising Europe: using the crisis to entrench neoliberalism

Joseph Zacune, Transnational Institute,  13.03.2013

The Applicant, by Sylvia Plath

 [thesylviaplath.blogspot]

Sylvia Plath
The Applicant

                                             First, are you our sort of a person?
                                             Do you wear
                                             A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
                                             A brace or a hook,
                                             Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

                                             Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
                                             How can we give you a thing?
                                             Stop crying.
                                             Open your hand.
                                             Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

                                             To fill it and willing
                                             To bring teacups and roll away headaches
                                             And do whatever you tell it.
                                             Will you marry it?
                                             It is guaranteed

                                              To thumb shut your eyes at the end
                                              And dissolve of sorrow.
                                              We make new stock from the salt.
                                              I notice you are stark naked
                                              How about this suit -

                                              Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
                                              Will you marry it?
                                              It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
                                              Against fire and bombs through the roof.
                                              Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

                                              Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
                                              I have the ticket for that.
                                              Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
                                              Well, what do you think of that?
                                              Naked as paper to start

                                              But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
                                              In fifty, gold.
                                              A living doll, everywhere you look.
                                              It can sew, it can cook,
                                              It can talk, talk, talk.

                                              It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
                                              You have a hole, it's a poultice.
                                              You have an eye, it's an image.
                                              My boy, it's your last resort.
                                              Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Democracy and the eurozone crisis: quotes #9

 Photograph: Alvaro Barrientos/AP  [guardian.co.uk]

The outcome of the Italian elections should send a clear message to Europe’s leaders: the austerity policies that they have pursued are being rejected by voters.

[...]

[T]he reality is that much of the European Union is in depression. The loss of output in Italy since the beginning of the crisis is as great as it was in the 1930’s. Greece’s youth unemployment rate now exceeds 60%, and Spain’s is above 50%. With the destruction of human capital, Europe’s social fabric is tearing, and its future is being thrown into jeopardy.

[...] The reality [...] is that the cure is not working, and there is no hope that it will – that is, without being worse than the disease. Indeed, it will take a decade or more to recover the losses incurred in this austerity process.

[...] 

An alternative set of well-discussed policies could work. Europe needs greater fiscal federalism, not just centralized oversight of national budgets. [...] [I]t clearly needs far more European-level expenditure, unlike the current miniscule EU budget (whittled down further by austerity advocates).

A banking union, too, is needed. But it needs to be a real union, with common deposit insurance and common resolution procedures, as well as common supervision. There will also have to be Eurobonds, or an equivalent instrument.

European leaders recognize that, without growth, debt burdens will continue to grow, and that austerity by itself is an anti-growth strategy. Yet years have gone by, and no growth strategy is on the table, though its components are well known: policies that address Europe’s internal imbalances and Germany’s huge external surplus [...]. Concretely, that means wage increases in Germany and industrial policies that promote exports and productivity in Europe’s peripheral economies. 

What is Italy saying?, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate, 04.03.2013

 

Once upon a time in Athens, #1

Dervenion St., 17.02.2012 [mural: bleeps]

Speaking of the Occupy movement

 Photograph: Monika Graff/Getty Images, May 1, 2012  nydailynews.com

[A]nyone who argues that demands must be capable of being satisfied assumes that there is someone or some existing institutional power to whom one could appeal to have one’s demands satisfied. Union negotiations backed by the threat of strikes usually do have a list of demands which, if satisfied, will avert the strike, and if not, will commence or prolong a strike. But when a company, corporation, or state is not considered a legitimate partner for negotiation, then it makes no sense to appeal to that authority for a negotiated settlement. In fact, to appeal to that authority to satisfy the demand would be one way of attributing legitimacy to that authority. So articulating demands that can be satisfied depends fundamentally on the attribution of legitimacy to those who have the power to satisfy the demands. And when one ceases to direct demands to those authorities, as happens in the general strike, then it is the illegitimacy of those authorities that is exposed. [...]

But if those existing institutions are complicit with the economic regime that depends upon, and furthers, the reproduction of inequality, then one cannot appeal to those institutions to bring about an end to the conditions of inequality. Such an appeal would defeat itself in the course of its articulation. Simply put, the appeal or demand that sought to be satisfied by the existing state, global monetary institutions, or corporations, national or transnational, would be giving more power to the very sources of inequality, and in that way aiding and abetting the reproduction of inequality itself. As a result, another set of strategies are required, and what we are now seeing in the Occupy Movement is precisely the development of a set of strategies that call attention to, and oppose, the reproduction of inequality.

[...]

[I]t would not be possible to think democracy without an ideal of radical equality. So radical equality is a demand, but it is not directed to those institutions that reproduce inequality. It is directed to the people themselves whose historical task is the making of new institutions. The appeal is to ourselves, and it is this new “we” that is formed, episodically and globally, in every action and demonstration. Such actions are in no sense “apolitical.” They take aim at a politics that offers practical solutions at the expense of addressing structural inequality. And they remind us that every form of politics gains or loses its legitimacy depending on whether it accords equality to the people it is said to represent. Otherwise, it fails to represent, and so destroys its own legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In demonstrating, in acting, the people come to represent themselves, embodying and reanimating the principles of equality that have been decimated. Abandoned by existing institutions, they assemble themselves in the name of a social and political equality, giving voice, body, movement, and visibility to an idea of “the people” regularly divided and effaced by existing power.

The above text is an excerpt from the article So, what are the demands? And where do they go from here? by Judith Butler, published in tidal: occupy theory, occupy strategy, #2, March 2012, pp. 8-11; all issues are available in full here and here.

Photograph: Marcus Santos, May 1, 2012  nydailynews.com

Moebius in Venice

blog.needsupply.com

Jean Giraud/Moebius  

Venise Celeste, 1984

goldworld.it

itaibachar2.blogspot.com

New York State, by Kenneth Josephson

stephendaitergallery.com

Kenneth Josephson, New York State, 1970

The subject of the photograph is photography itself, and the ways that life is documented, manipulated, trivialized, and celebrated with photographs. Kenneth Josephson found a snapshot of a ship taken by an anonymous photographer and used it for a postcard, and he employed it to convey his conviction that what is being viewed is not as important as engaging with the ideas behind it. The “reality” New York State depicts is the reality he created with the choices he made, similar to the choices that artists make for other kinds of art—subject, materials, composition, and emphasis. 

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art