******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
The Verso blog is led at the moment by a brief article by Stathis Kouvelakis "France 1984, Greece 2015 – parallel lives?" where SK worries that "a poisoned atmosphere is starting to emerge" within Syriza <http://www.versobooks.com/blogs> : . . . Why am I telling these tired old yarns now? Because I am now involved in a party that is not only part of the government, but its mainstay – in Greece, of course. And I am no less struck by the fact that some of those who could not accept my criticisms of the “line” a few months ago, when I said (together with all the other Left Platform comrades) that it was totally illusory to think that the Europeans would kindly agree to renegotiate the debt and allow us to implement our programme within the framework of the euro, now say “stop complaining, we can’t do anything else, the balance of forces is against us, ‘people’ agree with what we’re doing, etc.” And of course they think that they were right all along. For certain, Syriza is not in any sense the PCF of the Marchais era: you can say what you think, and there are internal tendencies and an internal discussion which also transpires in the public sphere. But my fear is that a poisoned atmosphere is starting to emerge. And seeing the remarkable invariance of bureaucratic rationality and its autistic character is also a bitter experience. Left to itself, as it was in the case of the French party, it can only lead to self-destruction and an immense waste of forces and hopes. At the verso blog now, the second article is an ironic paean to The Telegraph's reporting: "The Telegraph on the 'Leftist mutiny' within Syriza - In an unwitting accolade to Verso authors Stathis Kouvelakis and Costas Lapavitsas, the Telegraph covers the imminent "insurrection” by Syriza's "domestic rebels", the "extremist" Left Platform. The original article is here <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11639714/Embattled-Alexis-Tsipras-faces-down-Leftist-mutiny-amid-snap-Greek-election-fears.html> and the Left Platform's statement, which sought a return to Syriza's election pledges, here <http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2015-syriza-s-left-platform-proceed-to-a-counterattack-with-an-alternative-plan> Costas Lapavitsas' and Heiner Flassbeck's Against the Troika is the first book to propose a strategic left-wing plan for how peripheral countries could exit the euro." Having followed English-language reporting on Syriza/Greece since the Jan. 25 election, it has been interesting to see the conservative newspaper The Telegraph demonstrating that it had good sources in Syriza's Left Platform. It was clear to me that Telegraph reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was especially close to Left Platform leader Panagiotis Lafazanis. Right after Lafazanis returned to Athens from a trip to Russia in mid-April a report by Evans-Pritchard was the basis for a flurry of media stories on how Russia was going to bail out Greece starting with 5B euros for the "Turkish Stream" natural gas pipeline. I don't see Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's byline on Syriza/Greece reporting lately. He seems to have been replaced by Mehreen Khan. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
