Trouble at the Greek border crossing

by Brian Bamford

IN March1997, I stood on the Greek border at the Albanian Kakavijë frontier crossing near the Greek town of Ioannina, and watched as wagons driven by the Greek police emptied Gypsies out of the back onto Albania territory.  That was during the political crisis set off by the Pyramid sales* scandal, and all pretense of State power had collapsed in Albania.  

Later a Greek customs officers tried to explain to me why he was turning back middle-class Albanians, and he told me in English: 'this is just like the problem in the USA with its border with Mexico -- we can't keep letting people through'.  

One young lass who'd been turned back that day had traveled from her home further north to the Kakavijë frontier, and the guard said she had tried to cross three-times and each time with a different father.  When I spoke to the Albanian consul in Ioannina, he told me that there was nothing he could do for these people, and that I could have more influence by connecting the Greek Embassy in London.  This I did and I reported incident in Freedom at the time.  

That was in 1997, but as I write today with the enforced Turkish pressure on emigrants from Syria now being pushed up against the Greek frontier, according to the Politico website:

'Greek authorities [have] said they had intercepted around 4,000 people attempting to cross at points along the 50-mile border on Friday night. Some estimates suggested more than 1,000 made it to Greece on Friday, although the government denied these estimates. After 66 people were arrested Friday night, another 70 were arrested on Saturday. Officials said Saturday night more than 10,000 people were at the border.'

This weekend about 1,000 people are reported to be stranded between Turkey and Greece.

And the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated Saturday that the country no longer intended to work to prevent migrants from entering Europe. 'We will not close these doors ... Why? The European Union needs to keep its promises. We don’t have to take care of this many refugees, to feed them,' he said.
 
The Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has suggested that Austria could soon consider closing its border if the situation worsens.

Kurz tweeted Saturday that Austria is ready to provide additional police support to other countries but added, 'If the protection of the EU's external border is unsuccessful, Austria will protect its borders.'

A statement by European Council President Charles Michel read: 'The EU is actively engaged to uphold the EU-Turkey Statement and to support Greece and Bulgaria to protect the EU’s external borders.'

On the eve of the Serbian Parliamentary elections, which were to be held in the Republic of Serbia on 23 December 2000^[1], I was in Achau in the Baverian Alps, and there I boarded a train for Saltzburg which ultimately connected with a train bound for Belgrade via Budapest.  Owing to visa problems I was held up at Subotica in northern Serbia, and sent back to the Serb Embassy in Hungary to get authentication for my Freedom Press credentials which was soon sorted.  But not before I was briefly detained by Hungarian police as I was on my way to the railway station, who demanded my passport and accused me of being a Iranian.  At that time Hungary was anxious to affiliate to the EU, and there was a fear of an invasion of immigrants from Serbia and Kosvo.

What was interesting was that while I was being held by the frontier guards at Subottica, a Kosovan migrant was brought out, and we exchanged greetings before he was taken off somewhere.  I managed to give him some sandwiches which he ate greedily before he was hauled off by armed guards.  Kosovans are Muslims. yet this didn't prevent him eating and apparently enjoying the ham butties.

One can't spend time in the Balkans** without becoming concious of the importance of frontiers to those people who don't live on islands as we do.

********************
 
*  A pyramid scheme creates the illusion of financial success by paying off early investors with funds provided by later investors.  The scheme eventually collapses when no more investors can be found.  When the schemes began to collapse in Albania [in 1997] and the money vanished, Europe’s second-poorest country (ahead of Bosnia-Herzegovina) erupted into violent riots that left one person dead, scores injured and city halls, courts and police stations in flames.
High-risk, get-rich-quick pyramid schemes have popped up in Poland, Romania, the former Yugoslav federation and the former Soviet Union, where transition economies, lax regulation and vulnerable populations have created fertile ground for abuse.

But only in Albania did the schemes reach such mammoth proportions and operate with the tacit blessing--some say complicity--of the government.
Suddenly Albania, a country that seemed to be emerging successfully from decades of brutal Communist rule and numbing isolation, was plunged into a crisis that has undermined both its wobbly economy and chances for the government’s survival, exposed a false sense of prosperity and led to profound questioning of the nominally democratic system that Albania adopted after the belated fall of Stalinism in 1991.


**  The First Balkan War began when the League member states attacked the Ottoman Empire on 8 October 1912 and ended eight months later with the signing of the Treaty of London on 30 May 1913. The Second Balkan War began on 16 June 1913. Both Serbia and Greece, utilizing the argument that the war had been prolonged, repudiated important particulars of the pre-war treaty and retained occupation of all the conquered districts in their possession, which were to be divided according to specific predefined boundaries.

CUMBERBATCH & BREXIT MADE SEXY

Review:  'Brexit: The Uncivil War' on C4
by Brian Bamford

Dominic Cummings

ON Monday the 25th, April 2016, Derek Pattison put a post up on the NV Blog entitled 'Vote Leaves' Campaign Director tells select committee: "Accuracy is for snake-oil pussies".'  It accused Dominic Cummings, the newly appointed to run Vote Leave campaigner, of being the 'Vote Leave silly Ass - Dominic Cummings'.  In last night's Channel 4’s drama Brexit: The Uncivil War, Dominic Cummings, as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch was presented as a genius.  So much so that this morning I took a closer look at Mr. Cummings's arguments for how he succeeded in his campaign against the EU, Cameron and Osbourne.

When asked Cummings claims that three things helped his Leave campaign:  immigration; the public's anger about the 2008 financial crisis; and the pubic awareness that the Euro was causing problems in other countries like Greece.

Indeed it was these three factors plus the NHS that perhaps did more than the MPs to help Leave win.  According to Cummings, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove came on aboard later after the campaign was in full swing.

Cummings had to keep the politicians, who he does not trust, at a distance from the core management of the operation.  Farage and the speculator Aron Banks are both sidelined, and left to run their own campaign dedicated more to resisting immigration.

Basically Cummings adopts the theme to 'Take Back Control' for the British public, both from Brussels and from the British establishment system itself.: that is the London elite who were perceived as having been responsible for the financial crisis of 2008.

The idea is to engage and energise that fraction of the public who do not normally vote in elections and to discourage those favouring the status quo of Remain.  This involve mathematical targeting based on algorithms and large-scale data analysis.  Then hit them on social media.

'Hit them with £350m and Turkey' proclaims Cummings, addressing his staff from the office table..

Elsewhere, Cummings has argued that the dominant mental model of the Left / Right axis is no longer valid and empirically false.  Particularly among swing voters who he says are both more Left-wing and at the same time more Right wing than most politicians.  Simultaneously they will support more money for the NHS and favour confiscation of property, while favouring harsher action against terrorism or crime than the vast majority of MPs would support.

In last night's Channel Four production Benedict Cumberbatch's Cummings realises that a monster has escaped out of the bottle when Joe Cox was murdered.  Somehow it seems that Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall, and British culture is now in pieces.  Cumberbatch's performance was both stunning and sexy.

Meanwhile, Cummings was right to avoid talking about the single market, as no one would understand that because in the end the Brexit vote was sociological rather than economic.  It wasn't a repeat of Clinton's 'It's the economy stupid!'.  It was about seizing control.

*********** 

Anarcha-feminism & all things exotic

In contrast to the ideas of Bailey Lamon on everyday struggles of poor folk today, Loughborough University is hosting a conference below on something more exotic:  'Anarcha-feminism & queer theory'.  Readers must judge on whether it might be better to save your money and to stop at home and listen to The Archers.

Loughborough University, U.K. – 14-16 September 2016

Central theme: Anarcha-feminism

Call for Papers and Sessions : 

The global resistance faces turbulent times, as the balance of hope teeters between inspiring mobilisation and reactionary retrenchment. In Rojava, Kurdish communities are implementing libertarian socialism and feminist leadership on a scale unseen since the Spanish civil war, while world powers bomb the democratic Syrian opposition alongside ISIS. The mobilisation of African Americans against police brutality goes beyond liberal platitudes to highlight systemic racism, while competitors for the Republican candidacy outdo one another in barefaced bigotry and misogyny. And while anarchists were encouraged by the resurgence of popular protest in the wake of the global financial crisis, much of that energy has been absorbed by electoral initiatives from Greece and Spain to the UK and US, vindicating longstanding concerns about the co-optation of movements who expect too much of the state. In these uncertain days, the elaboration of anarchist analysis which bridges theory and practice and speaks to the needs of social movements assumes increasing importance

The 4th International Conference of the Anarchist Studies Network will be held at Loughborough University between 14-16 September 2016. Proposals are welcome for individual papers, panels, and streams of several panels. We especially encourage panel proposals, to include 3-4 presentations drawn together around a common theme, although individual paper proposals are of course also welcome.

Contributions from both within and outside the official academic sphere are invited from any scholarly discipline(s), on any topic relevant to the study of anarchism.

The central theme for the conference is anarcha-feminism. The purposes are twofold: to stimulate discussion of a form of oppression that anarchists oppose but which continues to be felt in anarchist organising; and to welcome individuals, groups and communities who have not previously participated in ASN events. By recognising the legacy of anarcha-feminists/anarchist feminism and women's activism in anarchism we want to strengthen the ties between contemporary anarchists and feminists in the struggle against oppression and use the recognition of misogynist practices and hierarchical gender structures to open up the event to other marginalised peoples. We therefore particularly encourage submissions from women, trans and non-binary people, queer activists, collectives, people of colour, people with disabilities and we strongly encourage panel and panel stream organizers to overcome exclusion. We are also especially interested in presentations that are concerned with anarchism and one/more of the following:

· Anarcha-feminist and queer theory

· Anarcha-feminist critiques of the state

· Anarcha-feminist histories

· Ecofeminism, individualist anarcha-feminism, anarcho-primitivist feminism, posthuman, cyborg and sci-fi anarcho-feminism

· Feminist critiques of anarchism and anarchist engagement with feminism

· Intersections between gender, sexuality, race, class, abilities and anarchism

· Local anarcho-feminist struggles / experiences

· Love, sex, relationships (or resistance to)

· Masculine and feminine representations and the movement between them

· Sex work and reproductive rights

· The role of women and non-binary people in the struggle against capitalism

In addition, we welcome contributions on any other topic relevant to the study of anarchism, with or without connection to anarcha-feminism.

ASN conferences aim to breach new frontiers in anarchist scholarship, and encourage cross-pollination between disciplines. As well as submissions that bridge the gap between ‘academic’ and other forms of knowledge, we also welcome proposals for workshops, art events/performances and experimental pieces and are happy to discuss ideas that you might have.

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words per paper (multiply for panel/stream proposals) to ASN Co-convenor Uri Gordon at  u.gordon@lboro.ac.uk by 14 March 2016

Anarchist Studies Network:  http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/

London Review of Books on Europe

SEEN from the besieged parliaments of Athens and Madrid, from the shuttered shops and boarded-up homes in Lisbon and Dublin, the single currency has turned into a monetary choke-lead, forcing a swathe of economies – more than half the Eurozone’s population – into perpetual recession. The Greek economy has shrunk by a fifth, wages have fallen by 50 per cent and two-thirds of the young are out of work. In Spain, it is now commonplace for three generations to survive on a single salary or a grandparent’s pension; unemployment is running at 26 per cent, wages go unpaid and the rate for casual labour is down to €2 an hour. Italy has been in recession for the past two years, after a decade of economic stagnation, and 42 per cent of the young are without a job. In Portugal, tens of thousands of small family businesses, the backbone of the economy, have shut down; more than half of those out of work are not entitled to unemployment benefits. As in Ireland, the twentysomethings are looking for work abroad, a return to the patterns of emigration that helped lock their countries into conservatism and underdevelopment for so long. Why has the crisis taken such a severe form in Europe?

 

To read the full article, go to:

 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/susan-watkins/vanity-and-venality?utm_source=LRB+online+email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160329+online

Is it time to Breed for Britain?

by Les May

IN a recent article I made reference to the fall in the UK birth rate since 1960, and the impact this will have on my children's generation.  But the UK is not alone in this regard.  A fall in the birth rate since 1960 is a phenomenon which is common to all 28 EU countries according to William Reville,  emeritus professor of biochemistry at University College Cork.

In an article headed 'Why is Europe losing the will to breed?' in last Thursday's Irish Times Reville points out that to keep the population of a country constant it is necessary for each woman to give birth to 2.1 children on average.  He provides data which shows that the mean birthrate throughout the EU is only 1.56.  Ireland has the highest birth rate of 1.94 and Portugal the lowest at 1.23, though there are four more countries where the birth rate is less than 1.4.  For comparison the present birth rate in the UK is 1.81.

He goes on to say :

'European societies increasingly are no longer self sustaining.  For example, if current trends continue, every new generation of Spaniards will be 40% smaller than the previous one.  In Italy the percentage of the population over 65 will increase from 2.7% now to 18.8% in 2050.  By 2060 the population of Germany is projected to drop from 81 millions to 67 millions and by 2030 the UN projects that by 2030 the percentage of Germans in the work force will drop by 7% to 54%.  In order to compensate for this shortage Germany needs to absorb 533,000 immigrants per year, which puts Angela Merkel's current immigration policy into context.'

As I have argued in an earlier article this matters because the non-working section of the population, children, older people, the sick and the disabled, rely upon the surplus generated by the fraction of the population which is working.  Such a situation is only sustainable if the fraction of the working, i.e. younger, population is sufficiently high both to support themselves and generate a large enough surplus.

But as Reville points out in the longer term this immigration is not a solution because when the birth rate falls to about 1.5 even immigration will not hold the population steady over time.

Whilst I have focussed upon the fact that for the immediate future there seems little alternative to continued immigration whichever side is victorious in the upcoming referendum, the economic case is only part of the picture.  Large scale migration has an impact upon the host society.

As Reville puts i:

 'European civilisation has given the world many cherished values, freedoms and institutions, including the classical legacy of Greece and Rome; the rule of law; the separation of church and state; modern science; individual freedom; a fabulous heritage of music, painting, sculpture and architecture, and more.'

This too matters, because quoting Reville again:

'European values are not universal and there is no necessary reason to expect other civilisations to adopt these values simply because they come to Europe to partake of the technical and commercial fruits of western civilisation.'  

It is fashionable to ignore such concerns and to dismiss those who raise them as 'xenophobic' or 'racist', but there is a good moral case to be made for taking a more robust approach to immigration.  

Immigration benefits the individual migrant;  immigrants make the journey in search of a better life. 

It benefits a receiving nation like the UK by adding to the workforce and helps produce that surplus which will pay the pensions of those retiring around the year 2030.  But it impoverishes the donor nation especially when the migrant is a well qualified young person who has been trained at the expense of the donor nation.

There is nothing new in this.  After the WW2 the UK needed to produce and export as much as possible, (and build the Welfare State on the surplus).  So immigration from countries like Ireland was encouraged. An elderly friend who died a year ago came from Ireland at the age of 26 in 1948 to work in a Castleton (Rochdale) mill and did not think it an indignity that a medical check was made to make sure she was not pregnant.  Being as she put it 'a big strong farm girl' she was given better paid 'men's work' and became a mule spinner.  And very happy she was to spend the rest of her life here.

In Germany, Angela Merkel's cabinet has approved new measures to help the country to deal with the influx of more than a million new immigrants.  In return for a package providing immigrants with better access to the job market and the creation of 100,000 government funded 'job opportunities', migrants will be expected to undertake orientation and language courses.  The cabinet statement said:

'Learning the German language quickly, rapid integration in training, studies and the labour market, and an understanding of and compliance with the principles of living together in our society and compliance with our laws are essential for successful integration... The newcomers are to become good neighbours and citizens, which will enable us to strengthen social cohesion and prevent parallel structures in our country.'

This contrast sharply with what to date has been the UK approach which has sometimes generated an exceptionalism in the name of multi-culturalism.  Recently Labour MP Chuka Umunna has launched a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on social integration.  Whether it will 'bite the bullet' in quite the way that the German cabinet has I don't know.  Unless it argues the case for investment in integrating migrants into our way of life it may just prove to be another talking shop.

If you don't like my argument that immigration is necessary to pay the pensions of my children's generation the answer is in your own hands.  Go forth and multiply.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/brexit-and-wars-of-roses.html

http://www.chuka.org.uk/social_integration_launch

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-151319/Birth-rate-drops-lowest-ever.html

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Fertility_statistics 

Greeks Vote 'No'!

LAST weekend, the International New York Times' journalist Susanne Daley wrote:

'Just who is financing the the “yes” ads is unclear, according to Christos Xanethakis, media editor for Newpost.gr, who said the major opposition parties in favour of a “yes” have no money.'

 

Media coverage also appeared to be bias in favour of the 'yes' campaign with coverage of the 'no' rally by the six main stations in Greece had been 8 minutes compared to 46 minutes for the 'yes' rally. 

 

A leading editorial in the Financial Times, describing '[t]he logic (of Alexis Tsiparas the Greek prime minister) grew wonkier ever since the programme expired on Tuesday evening and Athens defaulted to the IMF', went on last Saturday to declare:

'The episode [the referendum] underlines Syriza's incompetence and untrustworthiness as much as its ideology.'

 

This is not a universal view among economists and financial pundits, however, the distinguished U.S. economist, Paul Krugman, last Tuesday in the New York Times argued:

'Don't be taken in by claims that the troika's ultimatum are just technocrats explaining to the ignorant Greeks what must be done. These supposed technocrats are in fact fantasists who have disregarded everything we know about macroeconomics, and have been wrong every step of the way.  This isn't about analysis, it's about power – the power of the creditors to pull the plug on the Greek economy...'

 

Since Mr.Krugman wrote these words and despite the threats and challenges, the Greek people on Sunday delivered a resounding 'no' vote last Sunday.  Which represents a victory for the Greek Prime Minister Alexisis, who had pushed for a 'no' vote as a way of giving him more negotiating power in dealing with the creditors who clearly want to set the terms and impose more austerity on the Greek people. 

 

Krugman writes elsewhere last weekend of the claims of the European officials that they have brought a 'recovery' in Spain but that 'success [in Spain], European-style means an unemployment rate that is still almost 23% and real income per capita that is still down 7% from its pre-crisis level.'  Portugal also obeyed the E.U. Demands and is, according to Krugman, some '6% poorer than it used to be.'

 

Finland is a model of virtue by European standards with sound finances and a good credit rating allowing it to borrow money at a low rate of interest.  Yet, Finland is in its eighth year of a slump cutting real gross domestic product to per capita by 10% and this shows no sign of ending. 

 

Mr. Krugman explains:  'What all these countries have in economies have in common, however, is that by joining the eurozone they put themselves into an economic straightjacket.'  Had they not done so they could have easily devalued their currencies, making their exports more competitive.  Inside the euro-zone they have no currencies to devalue hence their problem.

 

It seems that the only way out of the current situation, short of doing away with the euro, is for the creditors to exercise a more flexible and relaxed approach towards debt.  Not so easy given that many politicians demand more discipline of countries like Greece and Spain.  That way lies more suffering and misery. 

 

Krugman puts it more forcefully:  '... you should be even more afraid of the consequences of a “yes” [vote] because in that case we do know what comes next – more austerity, more disasters and eventually a crisis much worse than anything we've seen so far.'