Re: <nettime> The Greek elections?

["t byfield" <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Flick, the SchÃuble-Varoufakis press conference today was very 
interesting, so you might want to watch it:

	http://youtu.be/hlbJHSsnOBs

-- the action starts after 7:30 or so. At around 30:00, Varoufakis 
addresses some of what you talk about -- and, given the anodyne setting, 
he's shockingly blunt. But, more than that, his remarks offer a wide 
range of historical perspectives on the situation. That itself is a 
strategy for diminishing the pseudo-sanctity of the bailout terms, and 
reminding Germans (not 'Germany') and other Europeans that the entire 
framework is fluid, rather than mechanically or inevitably defined.

I worry about Syriza. If they succeed on their own terms, it will 
completely reframe how the entire world thinks about debt. It's very 
hard to imagine how they'll be allowed to succeed, and it's very easy to 
imagine how they could be pushed to fail. But none of us have much 
experience with people like this -- who aren't so far away from us -- 
assuming power on a national scale, do we? So that much has changed. 
It's worth considering whether your reaction -- which doesn't seem to 
have much that's fresh about it -- might change as well.

Cheers,
T

On 5 Feb 2015, at 15:47, Flick Harrison wrote:

> Thanks for the insights, Felix; very helpful.
>
> But, to get argumentative a bit:
>
> On Jan 28, 2015, at 01:04 , Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:
>
> > First, it's generally never wrong to remember victims of the fight
> > against a brutal occupying force. I don't think this counts as
> > "militant nationalism".
>
> But the timing, sir, the timing!  The rest of Europe was celebrating
> the liberation of Auschwitz that week.  Islamophobia, antisemitism and
> terrorism are also on everyone's editorial pages after the Charlie
> Hebdo business.
>
> As long as we're laying flowers to their victims, let's remember that
> the Nazi regime itself was born out of rage against austerity and
> unfair debt.  Greece's political stage (not to mention the rest of
> Europe) includes plenty who draw opposite lessons from the World War
> II story to the ones drawn by leftists.
 <...>


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