Lord Stirling's News Blog EUROPE - Special Report Greek Elections Results

A majority of voters in Greece have essentially rejected a core policy for dealing with the eurozone crisis as devised by Brussels and Berlin, our correspondent adds.

Syriza Wins ~ link ~ 

It appeared to be just one seat short of a majority. Mr Tsipras said that Greece is “leaving behind disastrous austerity” as Syriza takes power. Exit polls suggested a clear win for the party which has threatened to overturn Brussels-imposed austerity measures.

European Debt Revolution: Can Syriza’s plan work? ~ link ~ 
 
Syriza’s promises to call an end to the Brussels-mandated budgetary austerity policies which both socialist and centre-right governments have been following since 2010 are not new – politicians of the left and right have been promising to ease austerity across much of Europe over the past couple of years.

But what is potentially groundbreaking is Syriza’s proposal to convene a European Debt Conference, modelled on the London Agreement on German External Debts in 1953 which wrote off around 60 percent of West Germany’s debts following the Second World War, and which Syriza hopes would lead to a huge write-down of government debt for Greece and other southern European countries. 

The idea was initially mooted by Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras in 2012 when the left-wing coalition finished second in the last Greek elections. Roundly dismissed as fantasy for almost all the two years since then, the proposal is at the heart of the party’s campaign manifesto and Syriza insists it won’t back down if it wins the election.

Is this the day Europe gets its Future Back? ~ link ~ 

With The Greek election in full motion, and first results perhaps 12 hours away, It would seem useful, no matter how the Greeks vote, to lay to rest a few misconceptions, and to expose a few ‘conceptions’ that have – largely – remained buried to date.

The first misconception is that the Greeks borrowed like crazy and therefore deserve to be thrown into a pit of suffering and misery. It is simply nonsense, a mere political narrative. Besides, most of what was borrowed went to the utterly corrupt ‘oligarch system’, not to the people in the street. Something the EU was certainly aware of when it accepted Greece as a member. But corrupt regimes can be of great use.

A few days back, in Bunch Of Criminals!, I made the point that the EU, and its members, have no right to do to a fellow member country what they did to Greece – and want to continue doing -.
 

Today Athens, Tomorrow Madrid ~ link ~ 

The picture that Brussels’ bureaucrats are most afraid of…