Saturday 31 October 2015

"Athens Spring"



I find it somewhat inappropriate that Yanis Varoufakis keeps trying to promote the use of the term "Athens Spring", as if it can be equated to the Prague Spring. I doubt that this appropriated term will catch on.

"Athens Spring"...or "A Long, Hot Summer"?

A recent blog posting

"Since my resignation from the finance ministry, in protest at our government’s capitulation to the troika, I have been spending my time and energy to transfer the spirit of the Athens Spring to the heart of Europe – to promote the urgent need to shine the light of transparency on Europe’s decision making as a prerequisite to tackling Europe’s gargantuan democratic deficit".

Our Athens Spring

"Our Athens Spring was crushed, just like the Prague Spring before it. Of course it was not crushed using the tanks. It was crushed using the banks".

From New York Times: Yanis Varoufakis: How Europe Crushed Greece, Sept. 8, 2015:

'If the "Athens Spring" — when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts — has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from “We the states” to “We the European people.”'

From Sputnik News : 'Varoufakis, who went head-to-head with EU and Eurozone officials during his time with Greece's Syriza party, says his experiences throughout the course of the year left him in no doubt that the EU is undemocratic. "It began as an idea after the crushing of what I call the Athens spring, which happened in the summer. It became abundantly clear that at the level of the nation-state you can't even table proposals regarding your own country, let alone proposals for the Eurozone as a whole."






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