By Patrick L. Smith, Salon.com, Feb 12, 2015
We should be considering the Greece and Ukraine crises together. If only the news media would allow that.
“American backing for the Poroshenko government is decisive now, and there is no sign Washington intends to swerve from its insistence that Ukraine must be reshaped in the neoliberal mold regardless of the costs…
“A federation will spoil Washington’s neoliberal project in Ukraine. Easterners seem to see straight through Yatsenyuk’s hocus-pocus about the virtues of radical austerity. Again, what will Kerry mumble in Poroshenko’s ear in the next little while?”
Europe’s confrontation with Greece, the West’s with Russia as the Ukraine crisis runs nearly out of control: Why is it more useful by the week to think of these together?
They are both very large, moments of history. There is this. They both reach critical moments this week, as if in concert. The outcomes in each case will be consequential for all of us.
As noted with alarm last week, most Americans have by now surrendered to a blitz of propaganda wherein Russia and its leadership are cast as Siberian beasts, accepting as truth tales the National Enquirer would be embarrassed to run. In Europe, Greeks and Spaniards show us up, indeed, as a supine, spiritless people incapable of response or any resistance to the onslaught. There is this, too.
At writing, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s imaginative new finance minister, has just made his first formal effort to present European counterparts with new ideas to get foreign debts of €240 billion ($271 billion) off the books and the Greek economy back in motion. These ideas can work. Even creditor institutions acknowledge that Greece cannot pay its debts as they are now structured. But at a session in Brussels Wednesday, the European Union’s arms remained folded.
Complete story at - Neoliberalism is our Frankenstein: Greece and Ukraine are the hot spots of a new war for supremacy - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond
We should be considering the Greece and Ukraine crises together. If only the news media would allow that.
“American backing for the Poroshenko government is decisive now, and there is no sign Washington intends to swerve from its insistence that Ukraine must be reshaped in the neoliberal mold regardless of the costs…
“A federation will spoil Washington’s neoliberal project in Ukraine. Easterners seem to see straight through Yatsenyuk’s hocus-pocus about the virtues of radical austerity. Again, what will Kerry mumble in Poroshenko’s ear in the next little while?”
Europe’s confrontation with Greece, the West’s with Russia as the Ukraine crisis runs nearly out of control: Why is it more useful by the week to think of these together?
They are both very large, moments of history. There is this. They both reach critical moments this week, as if in concert. The outcomes in each case will be consequential for all of us.
As noted with alarm last week, most Americans have by now surrendered to a blitz of propaganda wherein Russia and its leadership are cast as Siberian beasts, accepting as truth tales the National Enquirer would be embarrassed to run. In Europe, Greeks and Spaniards show us up, indeed, as a supine, spiritless people incapable of response or any resistance to the onslaught. There is this, too.
At writing, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s imaginative new finance minister, has just made his first formal effort to present European counterparts with new ideas to get foreign debts of €240 billion ($271 billion) off the books and the Greek economy back in motion. These ideas can work. Even creditor institutions acknowledge that Greece cannot pay its debts as they are now structured. But at a session in Brussels Wednesday, the European Union’s arms remained folded.
Complete story at - Neoliberalism is our Frankenstein: Greece and Ukraine are the hot spots of a new war for supremacy - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond
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