Thousands Attend Anti-Austerity Protests In Greece, Other European Cities

"We want justice here and now ... for all the suffering Greece has gone through the past five years," a woman named Theodora, 58, who has been ...

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Greece Sticks to No-Austerity Pledge as EU Meeting Looms

Protesters gather in front of the parliament during an anti-austerity and pro-government demonstration in Athens, Greece, Feb. 15, 2015. Yannis ...

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Tsipras Postpones Announcement of Greek Presidential Candidate

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will not announce the name of the candidate for the President of the Hellenic Republic this evening as it was ...

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Panathinaikos beats OFI 3-2 in Greek league

ATHENS, Greece — Nikos Karelis scored twice as Panathinaikos came from behind to beat host OFI 3-2 in the Greek league Sunday. Danijel Pranjic ...

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Panathinaikos beats OFI 3-2 in Greek league

ATHENS, Greece — Nikos Karelis scored twice as Panathinaikos came from behind to beat host OFI 3-2 in the Greek league Sunday. Danijel Pranjic ...

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WRAPUP 2-Greece, confident as EU meeting looms, sticks to no-austerity pledge

ATHENS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Greece said on Sunday it was confident of reaching agreement in negotiations with its euro zone partners but reiterated it ...

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Global Market Uncertainty has Reached a New Level

StockMarket.jpg Home Page News Page Something Has to Give There is a high degree of uncertainty in the global markets.  How deep into negative territory can nominal bond yields fall?  Has oil bottomed?  Are deflationary forces deepening? Will Greece remain within EMU, will the monetary union be stronger or weaker, as a result? There is a high degree of uncertainty in the global markets.  How deep into negative territory can nominal bond yields fall?  Has oil bottomed?  Are deflationary forces deepening? Will Greece remain within EMU, will the monetary union be stronger or weaker, as a result?  See Also links url:  http://www.economywatch.com/features/Dollar-Bulls-Take-the-Money-and-Run.02-13-15.html Title:  Dollar-Bulls Take the Money and Run See Also type:  Reference read more

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Greece Solidarity London Rally Draws Hundreds In Support Of Syriza

Politicians, trade union leaders and other activists were among hundreds who gathered in London today for a rally in support of Greece's new ...

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Rallies in Greece, around world ahead of eurozone ministers' bailout talks

Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Athens on Sunday to support the newly elected government's push for a better deal on Greece's debt.

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Let's end the row over the Parthenon marbles – with a new kind of museum

Technologies such as virtual reality and 3D printing could make the physical location of ancient artefacts less importantIn the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, a marble statue of the river god Ilissos is displayed in heavily guarded isolation. Purloined by Lord Elgin in 1805, it was loaned to Russia by the British Museum last December, in the face of protests from the Greeks, who want all the Parthenon marbles back. The move was highly controversial. Russia and the EU had imposed mutual sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, and critics made much of the fact that Brits could move statues to Russia, but Greek farmers could not export peaches there. It was a reminder that the politics of culture is always the politics of physical things.The 21st-century museum keeper is faced with many voices clamouring for justice: for the return of stolen goods, for recognition of imperialist wrongs, for racial justice and women’s rights. They have offered two broad responses to such claims. The first builds on the “universal museum” principle, outlined by a group of influential directors, in 2004. Their argument is, first, that the present location of treasures such as the Parthenon marbles is, itself, a historical fact to be respected. Since antiquities fertilised the British Enlightenment, they have become part of our national culture. On top of that, they argue that, by maintaining large, free and well–secured collections in metropolitan centres, the “universal museum” gives global access to collections that are global in scope. This argument gained strength after the US military recklessly damaged archaeological sites in Iraq, and then Islamic State fighters overran them. Continue reading...

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Bourse sharks smelled blood, taking a bite

While the ratio between foreign sellers and buyers of Greek stocks has reached two-to-one in recent weeks, according major local stock brokers, buyers have recently included a new generation of investment groups aiming to benefit from the very low prices, mostly of Greek banks but also of other large groups.

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Panathinaikos wins 3-2 at OFI, stays 6 points behind Olympiakos in Greek league

by  Associated Press Panathinaikos beats OFI 3-2 in Greek league Associated Press - 15 February 2015 15:10-05:00 ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Nikos Karelis scored twice as Panathinaikos came from behind to beat host OFI 3-2 in the Greek league Sunday. Danijel Pranjic also scored for second-place Panathinaikos, which stayed six points behind Olympiakos. The leader beat Ergotelis 3-0 on Saturday. Third-place PAOK lost 4-0 at Atromitos, and is now five points behind Panathinaikos. Also, Kerkyra beat Kalloni 2-0 and Veria won 2-0 at Levadiakos. Karelis opened the scoring in the second minute from close range, but OFI led 2-1 at halftime through Manolis Moniakis' free kick in the 27th and Giorgi Merebashvili's penalty in the 44th. Pranjic equalized in the 48th when his long-range shot was deflected by a defender into the net. Karelis scored the winner in the 75th with a low drive from near the penalty spot. News Topics: Sports, Men's sports, Men's soccer, Soccer People, Places and Companies: Greece, Western Europe, Europe Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Tsipras stalls, does not confirm Dimitris Avramopoulos as Presidential nominee for Greece

by  Alexandros Koronakis Late Sunday night, SYRIZA stalled the announcement of their nominee for President of the Hellenic republic. While major Greek media had already announced incumbent European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs, and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos to be the candidate of SYRIZA for the position of President, government spokesperson Gabriel Sakellaridis stated that the announcement would be delayed until after the Eurogroup meetings Monday. The announcement of the nominee is expected late evening of Monday or early Tuesday, after the meetings of the Eurogroup are concluded. The stall, and Sakellaridis confirmation that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke to European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker earlier on Sunday, verifies New Europe's article earlier this week, that explained Avramopoulos is a bargaining chip of the Tsipras government.

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Gap yawns between Greece and creditors

Athens faces day of reckoning as eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels

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SYRIZA Stance Restores Greek Pride

A side-effect of the rise of SYRIZA's to Greece's Premiership has been the restoration of pride after being controlled by foreigner lenders. The post SYRIZA Stance Restores Greek Pride appeared first on The National Herald.

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Greeks Rally Against Austerity Again

About 15,000 people gathered in central Athens on Feb. 15 to support the newly-elected government's push for a better deal on Greece's debt. The post Greeks Rally Against Austerity Again appeared first on The National Herald.

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Germany's economic policy is hurting Europe, the world, and itself

FROM Washington to Athens, politicians and economists who often have little in common all agree that Germany under Chancellor Angela Merkel is largely wrong about economic policy. Germany's apparent economic strengths--the lowest unemployment in two decades; steady, if low, growth; a balanced federal budget--mask weaknesses and policy errors, they say. A first mistake is to insist that troubled euro-zone countries such as Greece not only make structural reforms to their economies, but simultaneously cut spending and borrowing (depressing demand). But a second is domestic. Given low interest rates, now would be a golden opportunity to borrow and invest more at home, boosting the economy and providing a Keynesian stimulus to the entire sluggish euro zone. Instead, Germany is investing less than in the past and less than most other countries (see chart). Raising investment could also deal with another imbalance in the German economy: its current-account surplus, the largest in the world, which has just set another record in 2014 of EUR220 billion ($250 billion), over 7% of GDP. By definition, this surplus measures the excess of savings over investment. Invest more, and the surplus would shrink or even disappear. Such thinking has fans even in Germany. Marcel Fratzscher at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin thinks that German strength is an "illusion" given its large "investment gap". Public investment in Germany--shared by the federal, state and local governments--has fallen from 6% of GDP in 1970 (in the West) to 2% now. Roads, bridges, broadband internet and much else could do with more money. The German Marshall Fund has said that 40% of bridges in Germany are in "critical condition". The Cologne Institute for Economic Research, another think-tank, reckons that the capital stock of German machines has not risen in real terms since 2008. Markus Kerber, director of the German Federation of Industries, a trade association, says that a "long-term investment-offensive is needed" to sustain growth. But other German economists are sceptical about claims of underinvestment. Christoph Schmidt, chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, which advises the government, thinks published ratios of investment as a percentage of GDP can be misleading when compared both across time and between countries. France, for example, has a lot of public housing. Germany does not, and this skews the numbers. Reunification in 1990 caused a one-off investment boom in both parts of the country. And whereas other countries had property crashes, Germany did not. In that case, at least, skimping on housebuilding was sensible. Yet the trend of declining public and private investment remains clear. A recalculation to fit European Union norms lifts Germany's investment ratio from 17% to 19%, by including companies' research and development spending. But that is still low. Why is this? Most investing is done by private firms. But German ones have for years preferred to invest abroad, not at home. Mr Fratzscher regrets this: he reckons that German investment abroad has yielded an annual return of 10% over 20 years whereas foreign investment in Germany has made more like 15%. The main reason for low domestic investment, says Michael Hüther, the Cologne institute's director, is uncertainty and nervousness over the future. Continuing anxiety over Greece and the euro has been especially damaging. More recently worries about Russia, which is more commercially entangled with Germany than with other big Western economies, have unsettled the business climate. But the biggest problem for many businessmen may be benighted government policies. These start with Germany's "energy transition," a plan to exit simultaneously from fossil fuels and nuclear energy. The main policy is a huge subsidy to solar and wind. The surcharge that many firms have to pay on a unit of energy is larger than the entire cost of electricity paid by firms in America. Half the firms polled by Mr Hüther's institute claim that this makes any new investment unattractive. Many also complain, in a country that has an ageing, shrinking population, about a shortage of skilled workers despite Germany's admired apprenticeship system. Mrs Merkel's government, under the influence of her Social Democratic coalition partners, has made things worse by letting some workers retire at 63, rather than at 67, as previously envisaged. In the housing market, owners are put off investment by a cap on rents in many cities. A new federal minimum wage is yet another measure that will add costs for business. The best way to boost investment is to fix these policy errors, argues Mr Schmidt. On energy, even if the government insists on sticking to its emissions targets, it could leave the choice of technology to the market. The pension age could be raised again; the minimum wage should be lower. And public investment should be raised. Gustav Horn, head of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute, part of a foundation with links to the trade unions, reckons that a 1% increase in euro-zone public investment would boost GDP by 1.6%. Yet Germany led resistance to calls for more public money to be put into the European Commission's planned investment programme. At home it is constrained by the constitutional "debt brake", adopted in 2009, which requires state governments to balance their budgets by 2020 and the federal one to do so by 2016. Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister, has beaten the timetable, balancing the budget in 2014. He and Mrs Merkel are proud of the "black zero", which demonstrates that Germans sticks by the rules, as others should. The books may balance, but Germany is a long way from rectifying its investment shortfall at home. Click here to subscribe to The Economist This article was from The Economist and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Research Reveals Why Men Cheat, And It's Not What You Think

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Greece faces day of reckoning at Brussels talks

Greece faces a reckoning in Brussels on Monday that will bring into relief profound differences with its international creditors and test the mettle of the ...

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Syriza leader confident ahead of eurozone crunch talks in Brussels

Alexis Tsipras says he is confident Greece can secure a deal, but faces growing criticism at home for softening anti-austerity stanceGreece’s new prime minister Alexis Tsipras is “full of confidence” his country can secure a deal to ditch strict austerity measures while still satisfying Athens’ international creditors, despite warning that crunch talks in Brussels today would be “difficult”.As a key deadline approaches for Greece to either agree to stick to its existing bailout programme or reach a compromise with its lenders, eurozone finance ministers meet again on Monday in an attempt to hammer out an agreement. Continue reading...

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This cool combo chart shows Greece's economic disaster is even worse than it looks

The Economist's data team has put together a great chart collection on Greece that's so packed with data that this eight-charts-in-one mega-chart is ...

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Greece Confident Of Agreement Ahead Of Eurozone Negotiations

By Jeremy Gaunt and Karolina Tagaris ATHENS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Greece said on Sunday it was confident of reaching agreement in negotiations with its euro zone partners but reiterated it would not accept harsh austerity strings in any debt pact. A day before a euro zone finance ministers' meeting in Brussels to shore up with Greece's dwindling finances and help keep it in the euro zone, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told Germany's Stern magazine Athens needed time to implement its reform program and shake off the mismanagement of the past. "I expect difficult negotiations; nevertheless I am full of confidence," he said. "I promise you: Greece will then, in six months' time, be a completely different country." The Eurogroup of finance ministers meets in Brussels on Monday to try to find common ground with Tsipras' new leftist government, elected on a pledge to scrap the austerity strictures of Greece's international bailouts, on issues such as debt management, financing, privatization and labor reform. If the meeting produces no results, there is a concern that Greece will be headed for a credit crunch that would force it out of the euro zone. Progress, however, could mean further negotiations, perhaps later in the week. "The irresistible force will be meeting the immovable object," Vasileios Gkionakis, head of global FX strategy at UniCredit, wrote in a note. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi refused to discuss the possibility of Greece leaving the euro zone if an agreement with European Union/International Monetary Fund lenders fell apart as a result of Greece's demands to alleviate its debt burden. He simply reiterated the euro zone's founding position that membership is "irreversible." BRIDGE PROGRAM? Tsipras wants a bridge program to be put in place for a few months while a new deal is agreed to replace the bailout, which has already forced drastic cutbacks onto ordinary Greeks. The rest of the euro zone, particularly Germany, says Greece must continue with those commitments as a quid pro quo for the 280 billion euros ($320 billion) it has received in bailouts. Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazmir, whose country is said to be taking a tough line, tweeted that he was skeptical whether all details could be agreed on Monday. Greece's current bailout expires at the end of the month. A Eurogroup meeting last week ended without apparent progress although technical talks were later approved. Greek government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis showed no sign that Greece was easing back on its core demand. "The Greek government is determined to stick to its commitment towards the public ... and not continue a program that has the characteristics of the previous bailout agreement," he told Greece's Skai television. "What we have agreed on is that there is a need for a national reform plan, which European partners are listening closely to, and positively to tackle steady problems in Greece's economy and society that date back decades." Some of the problems facing the Eurogroup are semantic. The Greeks, for example, will not countenance anything that smacks of an "extension" to the old bailout, preferring something new called a "bridge" agreement. WAVE OF ANGER This is political. Tsipras rode into power on a wave of anti-austerity and anti-bailout anger last month and would have a hard time explaining a row-back so soon. Thousands of Greeks massed outside parliament in Athens on Sunday to back his strategy. But even a cosmetic change of labels could have practical consequences. An "extension" may not require many national ratifications unless it involves additional financial commitments from euro zone governments. But any new bailout program might require several national parliamentary ratifications and could also bring Germany's Constitutional Court into play. Among those requiring a parliamentary vote on a new bailout are Germany, Slovakia, Estonia and Finland, all identified by one veteran of EU meetings as part of a hard core of opponents to Greece's plan. The Eurogroup's main debate with Greece's "no-austerity" stance will revolve around the funding of a bridge program, Greece's request to reduce the 'primary' budget surpluses, excluding interest payments, that it is required to reach, and privatizations and labor reform. Greece said on Saturday that it was reviewing a 1.2 billion euro deal for Germany's Fraport to run 14 regional airports, one of the biggest privatization deals since Greece's debt crisis began in 2009. It has also pulled the plug on the privatization of the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki. On the question of liberalizing labor markets, government spokesman Sakellaridis remained tough: "We will discuss it with workers and with pensioners. Whatever we do we will do through dialog. We will not legislate at the sole behest of outside factors." ($1 = 0.8785 euros) (Additional reporting by Costas Pitas in Athens, Paul Day in Madrid and Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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The Greeks: An exhibition of artifacts with an agenda

Titled The Greeks – Agamemnon to Alexander the Great, it's being billed as the largest showcase of ancient Greek artifacts ever to tour North America.

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Ares Arise! 31 Artists Pay Tribute To Greek Mythology For Launch Of New Graphic Novel

These remarkably high-quality, emotional, and entertaining tales of Greek Mythology are drawn and written by Brooklyn-based artist George O'Connor ...

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Thousands rally in Athens over Greek debt

Similar rallies are taking place in several Greek cities and about 40 other solidarity gatherings are planned across Europe and in Australia, Brazil and ...

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Gunshot fired in Greek Park Circle

University of Georgia police received a report of a single gunshot in Greek Park Circle near the Pi Kappa Alpha house early Sunday morning, ...

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Hundreds rally in support of new left-wing government in Greece

"We understand that whatever happens in Greece depends not only on the Greek people, if we want to be successful we have to build an international ...

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Greek PM Tsipras to 'Stern': 'Greece Will be a Different Country in Six Months'

Tsipras_Parliament Greece does not need new bailout loans, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in an interview to German magazine “Stern” to ...

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Here's what happened in the 'missing hour' when the Eurogroup statement on Greece fell apart

Late Wednesday night, some people close to the economic rescue talks between European finance ministers thought an agreement had been reached on setting the foundations for a renegotiation of Greece's bailout programme. However, the news conference that followed was delayed by over an hour, and then a clearly frustrated Jeroen Dijsselbloem told the waiting media that no statement had been agreed upon and that talks would continue until Monday. On Thursday morning, rumours about what happened in that "missing hour" were swirling after the text of a purported agreement was leaked to the Financial Times. It reportedly shows an agreement between the European finance ministers and the Greek finance minister, which was then vetoed by the Greek prime minister minutes after the bargain was struck. The statement provided a framework for discussion over resolving the impasse between the new Greek government and its European partners over a renegotiation of the conditions of Greece's bailout funding. The leak suggested that Athens was willing to restate its "commitment to a broader and stronger reform process ...[and] their unequivocal commitment to the financial obligations to all their creditors," in exchange for "extending and successfully concluding the present programme." Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blocked the deal, according to a Greek journalist: It is confirmed that PM Tsipras made final decision to block the statement. Greek govt says Varoufakis & Dragasakis were also negative abt it — Yannis Koutsomitis (@YanniKouts) February 12, 2015 So the question is, what happened in that hour? There are numerous competing theories, the truth of which could give us a better understanding of exactly how these negotiations are likely to play out over the next few days. The first suggestion, pointed to by the FT's Peter Spiegel, is that there was an agreement in the meeting and that Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis signed off on the statement but that it was later vetoed by officials in Athens just before the news conference. Such a scenario would imply that the Greek negotiating team in Brussels is not in agreement with other parts of its government — that Varoufakis and Dragasakis are willing to offer concessions that Athens refuses to sign off on. There have long been worries that the far-left Syriza coalition may be more divided than it appears on the surface, with its membership running the gamut from environmentalists to Trotskyites. Varoufakis, however, has been swift to dismiss the accusation that there is any rift between him and Tsipras: @Simon_Nixon All the time. And are perfectly synchronised. Something you would have gathered if you heard us & not what others said we said. — Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) February 11, 2015 The second theory then, if we accept Varoufakis' position, is that there was no agreement in the meeting on the text of the statement but that sources within the Eurogroup decided to leak a draft to the media to embarrass Athens. While this scenario is equally concerning given that it suggests the two sides remain hostile to each other, it nevertheless carries with it the more reassuring inference that there is a single voice from Greece that is able at least to strike a deal if an acceptable one is offered. However, if factions within the Eurogroup are willing to try to embarrass the Greek delegation in the media, it is not grounds for wild enthusiasm. And after numerous leaks from the European Central Bank over recent months, it could suggest that the institutions of the monetary union are starting to develop holes as the euro crisis continues. And so we come to the third theory — miscommunication and misunderstanding. It remains possible that some in the meeting thought they had reached a deal, while others held that no such deal was ever formally struck. In the confusion that followed, the side believing that the text had been agreed upon may well have become frustrated by the reported last-minute politicking and attempted to reassure markets that a framework was in place by passing the statement to the FT. Understandably, if the Greek side believed no such agreement had been struck, they were within their rights to deny such a deal existed. This is certainly the implication of Varoufakis' tweet to Spiegel (though note he does not deny the accuracy of the text): @SpiegelPeter @ftbrussels Might I suggest that you refrain from dubious claims based on even more dubious leaks? It's rather unseemly — Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) February 12, 2015 Given the stark divisions within the Eurogroup, the idea that there was simply a miscommunication about the group's message cannot be ruled out. With Greece's future in the eurozone on the line, however, such mistakes can come with very real costs.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

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Greeks Demonstrate Again Their Support to the Government

Greeks Demonstrate Thousands of people gathered again at Syntagma Square across the Greek parliament in downtown Athens to show their ...

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All-Mormon Utah High Court Now Has a Greek

On February 13 the Utah Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment of Constandinos (Deno) Himonas to the Utah Supreme Court, the highest juridical body in the state. The confirmation of Himonas as a Utah Supreme Court Justice is historically significant not only to the Greek-American community, but also to Utah’s history as he, a Greek Orthodox, […] The post All-Mormon Utah High Court Now Has a Greek appeared first on The National Herald.

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Carnival Events Across Greece

Many carnival events took place this weekend across Greece, despite the fact that everyone’s attention is turned to Brussels for tomorrow’s critical Eurogroup. People dressed in costumes filled the streets of cities and small towns, celebrating and making pranks. After all, the “apokries” is time to have fun and leave all worries behind. Municipalities across the country organized events and parades that saw thousands of Greeks taking it to the streets, celebrating. The municipalities of Athens and Piraeus organized a number of events for masqueraded young and old, leaving everyone pleased. Many of the carnival customs in several areas of Greece are of pagan origin. However, the biggest carnival in Greece, and one of the biggest in Europe, is the one in the port city of Patras and is not of pagan but Italian origin. It is also the oldest, since it started in 1870. Big traditional carnival events also took place in Xanthi, Rethymno, Kastoria, Tyrnavos and Volos. In the last few years of recession, the theme of the economic crisis was present in parades and costumes. Yet, the mood always remained celebratory.

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Former PM Papandreou Sends Letters to Greece’s Creditors Asking for Agreement

Former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou sent a letter to all representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, asking for a mutually beneficial solution to the Greek debt problem. In his letter to Greece’s creditors and all leaders of European Union’s 28 members, the President of the Socialist Democrats Movement (KIDISO) invited officials to take into account the efforts and suffering of the Greek people during the crisis and help Greece enter a growth path. He urged European leaders to promote policies and reforms that Greece is in dire need for. According to the party’s official announcement, the letter’s key points are: * The results of the sacrifices Greek people made during the five years of recession. * The reforms implemented in a framework of austerity and the fact that those reforms were interrupted. * The errors and weaknesses of the existing bailout program that created problems instead of helping Greece come out of the crisis. * Instead of fiscal austerity and lack of growth policies, Greece must be put on a path of fiscal responsibility and development policies.

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Thousands rally against austerity across Greece

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — About 15,000 people have gathered in central Athens to support the newly elected government's push for a better deal on Greece's debt.

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Greek Euro exit is 'inevitable', former UK Chancellor Ken Clarke warns

A Greek exit from the eurozone appears inevitable and Britain must insulate itself from the effects, former Chancellor Ken Clarke has warned.

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This Week Is The Latest Deadline For The Greek Euro Deal And The View From Germany

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has already rejected the bailout saying that it “was first cancelled by its very own failure and its destructive results”.

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Kenneth Clarke says Syriza victory risks Greek exit from eurozone

Kenneth Clarke: 'I can't see how you sensibly avoid the Greeks defaulting and the Greeks having to leave the eurozone.' Photograph: Eddie ...

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Eurozone finance ministers confront Greece

Meeting in Brussels will look for possibilities for compromise on bail-out terms, but end-of-month deadline puts pressure on negotiators.

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Reinventing Republicanism in Poland

Poland has never been a particularly liberal country. In other words, its political culture has not focused on the individual or individual rights. Consider the great confrontation of the 1980s: between the collectivist ideology of the Communist Party and the spirit of solidarity of the opposition. Both sides were animated in part by older republican virtues -- a focus on the public good. It's telling that Communist-leaning intellectuals read the daily Rzeczpospolita while the opposition read the underground Res Publica, both titles deriving from the Latin for "public affair." "The Polish tradition has no liberal traits. That was an intellectual import during the 1990s," Jan Filip Stanilko told me in an interview in Warsaw in August 2013. "The only heritage of original thinking in Poland, original in the sense that it has deeply rooted origins, is republicanism. It is rooted in the 15th and 16th centuries, and it lasted politically, in terms of institutions, until the end of first Polish Republic. But in Polish culture, it lasted much longer until the end of the 19th century, and it was a fundamental part of the intelligentsia's state of mind. That means that every member of the intelligentsia, even if they were a peasant or worker in origin, was somehow republican in thinking, with the notion of the common good at center." Stanilko has worked with several think tanks in Poland, most recently at the Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies (WISE). He was instrumental in organizing the Great Poland Project, a right-wing forum for ideas. He is equally comfortable talking about the big picture and burrowing down into specific policy proposals. And he is often scathing in his critique of the trajectory of Polish politics over the last two decades. "There was no general shaping vision of how Poland was supposed to look after 20 years," he told me. "Since 2007 we've had 500 strategic documents in Poland. That means we've had no strategy. Literally. There were 530-something sectorial strategies and no overarching strategy. Donald Tusk was the first leader to decide to have such a document. The EU wants us to have such a document. For these 20 years, we used Western intellectual tools to transform ourselves. One part of the elite -- the leftist parties -- wanted to transform into something that is Western, European, pro-choice. And the Right part of the elite wants to rediscover, which means to anchor us in some parts of our history and recreate a new spirit." Stanilko aims his critique at both the leadership and the political machine that enacts policy. He suggests that the challenges facing Poland require the kind of "adaptive leadership" that public policy guru Ronald Heifetz has articulated for the business and non-profit world. "Technically in business you have lots of reengineering in corporations because they must move fast," Stanilko continued. "The proper leader should help workers adapt to changes. We have in a similar way a huge transformation in Poland, but people still have not adapted to the effects of transformation. It's only been 20 years. How long did it take France to adapt to the French revolution? 100 years at least. We must as a society adapt to the effects of transformation and then adapt to the challenges of globalization at the same time. We don't need a leader who will punish everyone. We need a leader to help people to adapt, for instance to help them migrate within Poland rather than to another country." Such a leader must somehow deploy the political machinery of his or her party to drag the Polish bureaucracy into the 21st century. But unfortunately, Stanilko pointed out, "This political machine works more and more in the interest of enlarging bureaucracy -- which is the reenactment of clientelism, the most ominous force in Polish politics since the 14th century. The bureaucracy is a mode of transforming society, as Max Weber wrote, but it's rational. Societies that are the most modern are the least clientelistic. Clientelism means funneling trust into separate social channels and redistributing public funds through these channels, as in southern Italy. We see this clash between north and south Italy, east and west Germany, and it's a clash in Poland as well with one side of society against another. But it's not Solidarity versus the Communists. It's those who work against those who are not working. We don't have a language in the public sphere to name this clash because our discourse comes from the 1990s." We talked about his introduction to the policy world, the role of a strong state, and the political future of the standard-bearer of the Polish Right, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The Interview I'm interested in your take on the economic transition in 1989 until the late 1990s. You talk about liberalism as an import without roots here in Poland or Polish intellectual history. Do you see the transition as an import that was necessary or as an unfortunate stage that could have been done differently according to different principles? This is a story for five books! First of all, the Polish state was technically bankrupt. We asked for the help and mercy of the Western institutions. It's funny in a way, since the transformation was at the behest of the so-called neoliberal movements of the West. Even though there were some signs that this model didn't work in Argentina, it was employed here in a copy/paste way, because the consultants were just taught and trained to do this. The problem was that no one here thought to invent something custom-made for Poland. The political elites thought that the transformation should somehow be intellectually and technically prepared by our Western friends. But the problem with the transformation is also that the Soviet Union collapsed in a very specific sway. Russia collapses every time the secret services collapse, that is, when the political power over the secret service collapses. So the Soviet Union was actually as weak as we were at that time. Yet, there was a very significant bloc of post-Russian interests, their clients and cronies, in Poland. The most serious one was General Jaruzelski. He's a Russian general of Polish origin. If you focus on his biography it's clear. Of course he's a very interesting paradoxical person. He received power over the Polish army in the 1960s as a young guy raised up by Russians. General Jaruzelski was educated in Poland before the war and after the war, but actually he was a general of a foreign state. Jaruzelski was not General Park Chung-hee. General Park was educated in Japan, but he was independent in his thinking on Korea. With Jaruzelski, the power was in his hands until the end of the People's Republic of Poland. Even at the moment of transition he was still holding a lot of power. His acolytes did a very good business during the transition using public funds and rents that they could seek being the proprietors of the Polish state and economy. Polish elites are always looking for some foreign example. Imports were crucial because we had long period of lack of contact with the world center. Of course, this is not totally true because the politically involved scientific elites in the People's Republic of Poland got Fulbrights to study in the United States, where they learned about capitalism. The first Fulbright fellows became the first Polish capitalists. The young economists from the Communist Party were very influenced by the post-Milton Friedman way of thinking. That's where Balcerowicz came from. Who were the guys from the opposition? They were intellectuals: moralists, editors of books and newspapers, historians. They were mainly historians. Most Polish politicians are historians: Gemerek, Tusk, Bronislaw Komorowski, all historians. Adam Michnik and Tadeusz Mazowiecki didn't have any idea about the economy. They were intellectuals, so they decided to put Balcerowicz in place. And the plan was negotiated between Soros and Gorbachev a year earlier (Stanislaw Gomulka did a big book on this). Institutional channels gave us the money. Somehow we were not sovereign. We were bankrupt. We were like Greece is today. There was no general shaping vision of how Poland was supposed to look after 20 years. Since 2007 we've had 500 strategic documents in Poland. That means we've had no strategy. Literally. There were 530-something sectorial strategies and no overarching strategy. Donald Tusk was the first leader to decide to have such a document. The EU wants us to have such a document. For these 20 years, we used Western intellectual tools to transform ourselves. One part of the elite - the leftist parties - wanted to transform into something that is Western, European, pro-choice. And the Right part of the elite wants to rediscover, which means to anchor us in some parts of our history and recreate a new spirit. We have a special history. We had periods that we call the First Republic and the Second Republic. These projects were very different. We know that, geographically and economically after the end of the Second Republic, Joseph Stalin was the creator of this state. Now we somehow must make ourselves into the proprietors of the processes that are going on in Poland. Being a proprietor of the process is the most difficult problem during an age of globalization. Americans strive to be proprietors of the processes of globalization by means of GE, Chevron, GM, Google. These are the instruments, the driving strategies for those who reap the value. You build enterprises on these processes, and you leave the lower part of the value chains for other countries -for those who do the work that is outsourced, like Poles. Governmental processes are the same. With the Lend Lease Act, the American Navy became the guardian of world trade. The price the world pays is that it must use the dollar for trade - that's the role of a global empire. The question here is what is the role of Poland in this changing global landscape, with the deterioration of America's geopolitical position, the rise of Asia particularly the demographic rise, and the blind alleys of European integration like the Eurozone. From an economic point of view, it's a zero-sum game. We are at a moment when transformation myths are falling apart. The Polish stock exchange is the fourth or fifth biggest in Europe. Spaniards are coming to Poland to study. We are called the "green island" of economic growth. Even if it's not true, that's what we are called in Europe. When I go to Brussels or other Western countries, I am fascinated at the way that Poland - once the sick man of Europe, with its bumper sticker of chaos, dirt, and anti-Semitism - is treated like we are the leaders of Europe. The French and German invited us to join EADS, the biggest military enterprise in Europe. That's a fundamental change. The Russians wanted to join this EADS project, and they were politely rejected. The problem is that we've grown too big in economic terms. Our heads are too small to manage our big body. That's the reason that the current political elites are not ready to govern this big body. I would also add that the most prominent right-wing intellectuals are of course nationalist, which means that they support the nationalist idea. But Professor Legutko specialized in English literature and is an Anglophile. Another one, Zdzislaw Krasnodebski, one of the most famous Polish sociologists, is a Germanophile and lives in Germany. Jadwiga Staniszkis, her father was one of the leaders of the national democrats, but she may be considered a neo-Marxist in her understanding of political economy. Another prominent intellectual, Professor Zybertowicz, has intellectual roots in studying Michael Foucault's idea of social control. So, what kind of right-wing nationalist is that? This is the generation that allowed us, as their pupils, to make contact with the most valuable intellectual structures to rediscover our heritage. That's how I rediscovered republicanism. I read historians of republicanism at Cambridge. They taught me about republicanism all over the world. I discovered that they know nothing about Poland, but we can still learn much about Poland through their works. My generation has no difficulty in making these contacts. We no longer have to travel on a fellowship just to copy papers. Before we could read these works, but there was no money for us to go and talk with the professors. Now you can buy the work here, read it here, and go there and learn and talk to people who can explain how it works. I was very puzzled when I met with a Royal Bank of Scotland analyst here. He said, "I cover seven countries from Estonia to Turkey." I asked, "You know all the details of public finances for all those countries?" "No, I just look at seven indexes." "And you give recommendations on to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the basis of seven indexes?" "Frankly, yes." That's how I discovered how the West looks at this part of Europe. Some people might have fallen in love with this country. Maybe that was your case, as part of your intellectual history. That was experience of Timothy Garton Ash, Norman Davies,Timothy Snyder (both he and his wife deal with Polish history like no Polish historian can). I'm halfway through Bloodlands. His earlier books are very good, the one on the reconstruction of nations and his book on Henryk Jozewski. He covers this huge landscape of Polish heritage. Bloodlands is somehow the last chapter of this history. Right now we have a problem in Poland in the discrepancy between our private and national aspirations. Privately, Poles want to be affluent. We are the hardest workers in Europe. We work the longest hours a week - but very inefficiently. Warsaw is one of the most expensive cities in Europe. And we have very serious problems with spending huge amounts of European cash effectively- because of the structures here. The biggest national problem, also for intellectuals, is not a post-Communist problem. It's a traditional problem for Poland since the 16th century: state-society relations. The Polish gentry at the beginning of the 17th century decided not to have a central budget. The gentry forbade the king from having a central budget. That meat that after 150 years there was no Poland: no army, no academy of science. The only thing that saved us as a nation was our ministry of public education, the first one in the world. Everything else was private. It was noble of us to give the world one of the first public libraries in Europe, but this library after 30 years was robbed by Russians. It became the basis of the imperial library of Petersburg. Then some part of it came here again in the 1930s from the Soviet Union. Several years later, another private library, the biggest Renaissance library in Europe, was burned by the Germans. This is the kind of problem that we have been dealing with for 300 years. Our society has not been able to beget modern institutions in order to shield its substance and, as a consequence, must periodically import the institutions to rebuild itself from scratch. The world crisis destroyed some transformation myths and exposed new groups in this society, like groups of Polish proprietors who did business silently for 20 years and are now internationalizing their activities. I know a guy who owns 15 factories around the world. He's the second biggest producer, after Germany's Henckel, of construction glue. These people are the core elite of Polish society, but they are not part of the establishment. The establishment here is full of people who are incompetent but had the opportunity to be in the right place during the transformation. The next generation's role is to build meritocratic institutions that reward people not through their historical positions but through their current positions, which they earned through working. This can be done in a liberal, republican, conservative, or socialist way - we just need the frame. This is the biggest problem in relations with social elites: the state-society problem. I believe Poles don't want to have a strong state because they are afraid of it, especially in the area of justice. People know that they can do small bad things, like in southern Italy or Greece. But we won't be rich that way. If we want to be rich, we have to have strict rules and a lot of trust. The biggest problem between state and society and elites and society is the lack of trust. This is the most valuable but the most expensive capital because you cannot buy it. You say that Poles are afraid of having a strong state. From what you've said, I've heard different things about what a strong state could do or should do, such as maintain strong defense or.... To read the rest of the interview, click here.

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Sealed With A Kiss: The Religious History Of X And O

(RNS) When I was a young girl, my mother taught me to add “x” and “o” — a kiss and a hug — after my signature. So deeply embedded was this English-language tradition that it never crossed her mind that these symbols had anything to do with religion. I never thought about it myself until she passed away a few years ago and I found myself emitting streams of “x’s” and “o’s” like a binary love code in the countless emails that consume much of my daily life. From where do these emoticons that English speakers of all faiths sprinkle so liberally come? Let’s start with the “x” — a simple, easily drawn shape that got its start in Western civilization as the ancient Phoenician letter “samekh” for the consonant sound “s.” In early Hebrew, “x” was the letter “taw” and makes an appearance in the Book of Ezekiel as a mark set “upon the foreheads” to distinguish the good men of Jerusalem from the bad. With the advent of Christianity, “x” came to stand for Christ. “In Christian texts, one abbreviation of the Greek christos — meaning messiah — used the first two Greek letters of christos, chi (X) and rho (P), combined into one shape,” says Stephen Goranson, a historian of religion at Duke University who studies the etymology of symbols and words. “So both orientations of crossed lines — the ‘x’ shape and the more-or-less lower case ‘t’ shape — took on religious significance among Christians.” Once it was a sacred symbol, the “x” represented “faith and fidelity,” says Marcel Danesi, a professor of linguistic anthropology and semiotics at the University of Toronto. It became the signature of choice in the Middle Ages, when few could write and documents were sealed with an x embossed in wax or lead. This may be when the “x” first became associated with the kiss: It was customary to close books with a kiss, and oaths of fealty to kings were sealed with a kiss. “Symbols have a way of jumping from one domain to another, and it’s a small step to come from sealing a letter to sealing a love affair,” says Danesi, who wrote “The History of the Kiss: The Birth of Popular Culture.” He speculates that “x” underwent a conversion in an act of medieval romantic rebellion. “Romantic love becomes an obsession, and the kiss became empowering.” This may have been particularly true for women, who had less say than men over the choice of lovers. “The kiss became ‘If I kiss that man, then this is the man I love and want,’” says Danesi. “So much was packed into that symbol of a kiss. … It has become a kind of collective memory. We use ‘x,’ even if we don’t know why.” There’s another theory about how “x” crossed over into kissing territory. According to Goranson, “x” was a symbol for a blessing, and blessings and kisses have long been intertwined in the human psyche. “Mystics went back and forth on the love of God and love of a beloved spouse going way back,” he says. “Just look at The Song of Songs. The same song could be one person’s devotional hymn and another’s love poem.” “A Woman of Valor,” the Hebrew poem recited by Jewish husbands to their wives before the Sabbath evening meal, is also understood to be an expression of love of God. When the circle — “o” — came to signify a hug is another unknown. I stumbled across an unexpected Jewish angle postulated by the late Leo Rosten in his 1968 book, “The Joys of Yiddish.” Rosten suggests that the “o” evolved in connection with the word “kike.” Jews refused to sign entry forms at Ellis Island with the customary “x,” which they interpreted as a crucifix and a symbol of oppression. Instead, they drew a circle, leading immigration inspectors to call Jews “kikel” (or “circle” in Yiddish) or “kikeleh” (“little circle”), which was shortened to “kike.” Most scholars consider this theory apocryphal. Linguist Ben Zimmer says it is far more likely that the “o” stems from an entirely nonreligious source: the ancient Egyptian-Roman game of tic-tac-toe. The game was originally played with pebbles or coins and only incorporated the easy-to-master symbols of the “x” and “o” when paper became plentiful. Zimmer also believes this explains why “x” and “o” are used together. Despite their relatively recent appearance on Valentine’s Day cards, the “x” long ago shed its religious significance, and the “o” likely never had one. And so I — an editor of a Jewish magazine — plan to continue signing off with hugs and kisses. XO! (Nadine Epstein is the editor of Moment Magazine.)

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Greece may win compromise offer from bailout fund

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Greece, EU negotiations tough, deal not certain- Greek official

ATHENS Feb 15 (Reuters) - Negotiations between Greece and its European partners at Monday's Eurogroup meeting will be tough and it is not certain ...

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Ireland takes hard line on Greece austerity programme

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Make or break for Greece

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Greece plays for time as bailout clock ticks down

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5800-year-old couple found spooning in Greek grave

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Greece and EU have traded punches, but now it's time to talk

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Amid noise over Greece, European economy quietly picking up

BRUSSELS — With all the noise and uncertainty surrounding Greece, it's been easy to overlook the growing signs of economic recovery in Europe.

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Greece confident ahead of EU meeting, but sticking to its no-austerity guns

By Jeremy Gaunt and Karolina Tagaris ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece said on Sunday it was confident of reaching agreement in negotiations with its euro zone partners but reiterated it would not accept harsh austerity strings in any debt pact. A day before a euro zone finance ministers' meeting in Brussels to shore up with Greece's dwindling finances and help keep it in the euro zone, Prime Minister ...

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Weimar and Greece, Continued

Try to talk about macroeconomics, and you're sure to encounter accusations that your policies would turn us into Weimar Germany; those ...

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