Greece’s PSI is Dead on Arrival: An error in search of a rationale but also a failure that may prove a harbinger for the Modest Proposal

by Pr. Yannis Varoufakis
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu

A brief history of Greece’s PSI


In the beginning there was Wholesale Denial. Then the Denial began to subside under the weight of circumstances. It did so slowly, agonizingly so, with the result that, in the process, Greece lost any capacity it might have had to rebound. It also caused the Crisis to spread like a bushfire throughout the eurozone, turning liquidity problems into unyielding insolvencies first in Ireland, then in Portugal. Still, to this day, Denial is in the air. But it cannot remain intact, without the whole eurosystem crashing and burning. The Greek PSI may be the harbinger of denial’s end. If not, it is hard to see what will stop the juggernaut of the Crisis from destroying the few chances the euro has of survival.

Taking things from the top, the Wholesale Denial began life two years ago when imploding Greece was issued a triple ‘Nein’:...

The Greek Character of Macedonia through the Ages

by Christos Karatzios MD

«ΕΣΤΙΝ ΟΥΝ ΕΛΛΑΣ ΚΑΙ Η ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ»
(Estin oun Ellas ke i Makedonia) “Macedonia, is of course a part of Greece”
Strabo, Geography, book 7, Fragment 9 (circa 7 BC – 23 AD)

With this quote, Strabo, the famous ancient Greek historian and geographer described the relation of Macedonia to the rest of Greece when he was describing the known ancient world. The rest of his geographical encyclopedia describes the Macedonians and their lands and is a testament to the Hellenism of Macedonia through the perspective of the ancients [1].

There is overwhelming evidence that the ancient Macedonians, their civilization, their culture, and their history were Greek ever since they settled the lands north of Mt. Olympus about 2,000 BC, and most modern classical scholars and archaeologists agree on these points [2]. As it stands, even historians like Eugene Borza who have not totally supported the fact that the ancient Macedonians were Greek, do state that by the time of Philip II and Alexander the Great, they had been absorbed and assimilated by the Greeks [3]. However, since Borza, more....

Some Christian Evidences on the Invented Macedonian Question

by Pr. Ioannis N. Kallianiotis

October 2011

http://www.antibaro.gr/node/3467#_ftnref43

Abstract

The purpose of this small paper is to provide some Christian evidences (during the Christianization of Greek-Macedonians in year 50 A.D.) and a scientifically true analysis on the Hellenic (Greek) history and to examine what this information regarding Macedonia means to us and to the uninformed world as a whole. We will offer some thoughts and unshaken Christian events that may help to answer questions concerning today’s conditions in south-eastern Europe, the borders of the “Christendom” (currently, the under decomposition European Union). It is imperative that all scholars, politicians, decision makers, students, and intellectual human beings have this information regarding an artificial state, Skopje, created recently between Greece and Serbia, because we, as educators, are responsible for all young people of this planet and we must tell them the plain truth in simple words, away from any expediency, propaganda, and anti-scientific delusion. This new Albano-Slavic state has unlawfully chosen the Greek name “Macedonia” for its nation and Greece is opposing their aggressiveness and will resist their expansionism. It is historically wrong for them to use Greek names and symbols because they have nothing in common with Ancient Greeks since they came from Dardania and appeared in the region in the 7th century A.D.; their old name was Vardarska. How can they found their new establishing state on an incredible lie? They must know that there is social justice and it will, soon or late, prevail!

The Keynes-Hayek Rematch (in the cases of Greece and Eurozone crisis)

LONDON – The Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, once remarked that to have the last word requires only outliving your opponents. His great good fortune was to outlive Keynes by almost 50 years, and thus to claim a posthumous victory over a rival who had savaged him intellectually while he was alive.
Hayek’s apotheosis came in the 1980’s, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took to quoting from The Road to Serfdom (1944), his classic attack on central planning. But in economics there are never any final verdicts. While Hayek’s defense of the market system against the gross inefficiency of central planning won increasing assent, Keynes’s view that market systems require continuous stabilization lingered on in finance ministries and central banks.
Both traditions, though, were eclipsed by the Chicago school of “rational expectations,” which has dominated mainstream economics for the last twenty-five years. With economic agents supposedly possessing perfect information about all possible contingencies, systemic crises could never happen except as...

The Wicked Game

How Greece is being beaten into a pulp to force Europe’s banks to accept capital while keeping Italy et al in awe. 

Reliable sources tell me that the troika has drawn a surprising line on the sand: Either the Greek government agrees to force upon the private sector trades unions an immediate reduction in minimum wages with immediate effect (plus the dismantling of all awards regarding dismissal compensation and limitations), or the next instalment (or tranche) of EU-IMF-ECB loans to Greece will be withheld. Noting that even Mrs Thatcher took years before she could impose her iron will on the trades unions, it is clear that the troika is asking the Greek government to commit to a change that it may be both unwilling and unable to effect. If this is true, two questions arise:

Pan Macedonian Canada Letter to Liberal leader Bob Rae

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Dear Sir,

On behalf of the members of the PanMacedonian Association of Canada, the largest organization of Canadians of Greek origin from the region of Macedonia in Greece, we are writing to you to express our concern regarding your congratulatory statement to our fellow Canadians from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM) on September 8, 2011 [1]. This date marked the 20^th anniversary since Skopje declared its independence from Belgrade in 1991. Just like you do, we share the same conviction that liberty and freedom should be celebrated, promoted, and congratulated, and we extend our congratulations to our northern neighbours and their diaspora communities. However, in your letter you addressed our fellow Canadians from the FYROM as “Macedonian-Canadians”, and you lauded their contribution to a “harmonious” Canada. The PanMacedonian Associations all around the world have been at the forefront of protecting the Hellenism of Macedonia ever since that...

Pau Gasol receives Death Threats in his FB page by Ultra-Nationalists from FYROM

Pau Gasol, the famous Spanish Basketball player receives death threats by FYROM’s Ultra-Nationalists in his Facebook Page.
Its surely the most pathetic News Story related to the Eurobasket 2011 of Lithuania. Pau Gasol, the ace of the Spanish National Team and LA Lakers, is receiving numerous abuses and even Death threats by Slavic Ultra-Nationalists of FYROM after commiting the… “crime” to call their country FYROM. In other words, the name that FYROM’s governments have agreed to use in ALL the International Organizations.


The Spanish player published in his FB page last Thursday, the following:

Slavmacedonians call the Greeks “Freaks of Nature” & “Deranged Bastardly Monsters” and the Australian Court dismiss the racial vilification complaint!!!

AMAC’s racial vilification complaint dismissed

Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC)
Press Release
8 Sept 2011

The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) would like to express its disappointment at the decision of VCAT Member Noreen Megay to dismiss AMAC’s racial vilification complaint against the ‘Australian Macedonian (sic) Weekly’ (AMW).

Last week Ms. Megay handed down her judgment on the matter which was heard at VCAT on the 3rd and 4th of August 2011. The AMW’s article which was the subject of the AMAC’s complaint was published in May 2009, and Ms. Megay found that the article did not meet the high threshold imposed by Section 7 of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic) for a finding of racial vilification. Section 7 requires that the conduct “incite hatred, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of” a class of persons on the ground of the race of that class of persons.

AMAC’s legal advice was that the disgraceful language used in AMW’s article would likely have fallen foul of Section 7. The article in question was titled ‘Who in this Celestial World (sic) gave the Greeks the right to take away the Macedonian language?’ and AMAC’s complaint was based mainly on the following parts of the article:

Anti-Turkish Movements in Macedonia before the 1821 Greek Revolution

by Ioannis Hasiotis

Modern and Contemporary Macedonia

Volume 1, pages 436-457

macedonian-heritage.gr

Most of what has been written about anti-Turkish movements in Macedonia during the long period between the consolidation of Ottoman rule in the first half of the 15th century and the outbreak of the 1821 Revolution is largely characterized by oversimplification. The enthusiasm with which idealist and even Marxist historians have projected revolutionary activities in the area has not been based on sufficient evidence. What is more, anachronisms have not always been avoided. Confusion further increases as a result of the geographical identification of present-day Macedonia -both Greek and 'Greater Macedonia', which stretches over parts of three neighbouring countries- with an area which, albeit known under the same name, had an entirely different geographical content during the period of Ottoman domination.

These phenomena should not be ascribed solely to political or ideological expediency influencing the writings of Greeks and foreigners on modern Macedonia....

FYROM lobby irked by Bill introduced by U.S House Committee on Foreign Affairs

July 26, 2011
The FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) lobby in the US been irked by the content of a Bill which was introduced to the U.S House of Representatives by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2012 (H.R. 2583) has proposed a limitation on U.S foreign aid to the FYROM. Further irritating the FYROM lobby, the Bill referred to the FYROM under that name, rather than under the name 'Republic of Macedonia´, as official documents have done since the Bush Administration unilaterally recognised the FYROM as the ´Republic of Macedonia´ name in 2004. The relevant sections of the Bill are as follows: