Dear Friends,
We forward to you the "Delphi declaration" on
Greece and Europe, a declaration we believe becomes more relevant and
important, as the clash between Greece and the Troika goes no to a new climax.
The text is in English and in Greek.
The declaration was adopted some days ago, during an international
conference on the crisis, alternatives to euroliberalism and ways to stop the
probably looming war with Russia, which was held in Delphi, Greece. The
declaration was signed by nearly all participants and by people who wanted but
were unable to participate in person.
We also forward to you the link with the video of the press
conference and also the you tube link where you can follow the speeches of
the participants. We will post new material there as soon as we are able to
prepare it. We are planning also to publish, in one form or another, the
texts of the conference.
We want to express once more our deep gratitude to all
participants in the conference and to all those who supported the initiative,
or, being unable to attend the conference, have submitted their reports to it.
We want to thank in particular Samir Amin, Boris Kagarlitski, Giullieto
Chiesa, ex-Minister Gerassimos Arsenis, the ex-President of the House of
Representnatives of Cyprus, Dr. Vassos Lyssarides and Dinos Toumazos for their
support and their actual involvement in the preparation of the conference.
Without them, we simply would be unable to hold it.
for the organizing committee of the Delphi conference
Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
Press conference : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEALxsSWRC4
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Delphi2015
contact email: the.delphi.initiative@gmail.com
Email επικοινωνίας : the.delphi.initiative@gmail.com
On Greece and Europe
European
governments, European institutions and the IMF, acting in close alliance with,
if not under direct control of, big international banks and other financial
institutions, are now exercising a maximum of pressure, including open threats, blackmailing
and a slander and terror communication campaign against the recently elected Greek government and against the Greek
people.
They are asking
the elected government of Greece to continue the “bail-out” program and the
supposed “reforms” imposed on this country in May 2010, in theory to “help” and
“save” it.
As a result of
this program, Greece has experienced by
far the biggest economic, social and political catastrophe in the history of
Western Europe since 1945. It has lost 27% of its GDP, more than the material
losses of France or Germany during the First World War. The living standards
have fallen sharply. The social welfare system is all but destroyed. Greeks
have seen social rights won during one century of struggles taken back. Whole
social strata are completely destroyed, more and more Greeks are falling from
their balconies to end a life of misery and desperation, every talented person
who can leaves from the country. Democracy, under the rule of a “Troika” acting
as collective economic assassin, a kind of Kafka’s “Court”, has been
transformed into a sheer formality in the very country where it was born!
Greeks are experiencing now the same feeling of insecurity about all basic
conditions of life, that the French experienced in 1940, Germans in 1945,
Soviets in 1991. At the same time, the two problems which this program was
supposed to address, Greek sovereign debt and the competitiveness of the Greek
economy have sharply deteriorated.
Now, European
institutions and governments are refusing even the most reasonable, elementary,
minor concession to the Athens government, they refuse even the slightest
face-saving formula there might be. They
want a total surrender of SYRIZA, they want its humiliation, its destruction.
By denying to the Greek people any peaceful and democratic way out of its
social and national tragedy, they are pushing Greece into chaos, if not civil
war. Indeed, even now, an undeclared
social civil war of “low intensity” is being waged inside this country,
especially against the unprotected, the ill, the young and the very old, the
weaker and the unlucky. Is this the Europe we want our children to live in?
We want to express our total, unconditional solidarity
with the struggle of the Greek people for their dignity, their national and
social salvation, for their liberation from the unacceptable neocolonial rule
the “Troika” is trying to impose on this European country. We denounce the illegal and unacceptable agreements
successive Greek governments have been obliged, under threat and blackmail, to
sign, in violation of all European treaties, of the Charter of UN and of
the Greek constitution. We call on European governments and institutions to
stop their irresponsible and/or criminal policy towards Greece immediately and
adopt a generous emergency program of support to redress the Greek economic
situation and face the humanitarian disaster already unfolding in this country.
We also
appeal to all European peoples to
realize that what is at stake in Greece it is not only Greek salaries and
pensions, Greek schools and hospitals or even the fate even of this historic
nation where the very notion of “Europe” was born. What is at stake in Greece are also Spanish, Italian, even the
German salaries, pensions, welfare, the very
fate of the European welfare state, of European democracy, of Europe as such.
Stop believing your media, who tell you the facts, only to distort their
meaning, check independently what your politicians and your media are saying.
They try to create, and they have created an illusion of stability. You may live in Lisbon or in Paris, in
Frankfurt or in Stockholm, you may think that you are living in relative
security. Do not keep such illusions. You
should look to Greece, to see there the future your elites are preparing for
you, for all of us and for our children. It is much easier and intelligent
to stop them now, than it will be later. Not only Greeks, but all of us and our
children will pay an enormous price, if we permit to our governments to
complete the social slaughter of a whole European nation.
We appeal in
particular to the German people. We
do not belong to those who are always reminding the Germans of the past in
order to keep them in an “inferior”, second-class position, or in order to use
the “guilt factor” for their dubious ends. We appreciate the organizational and
technological skills of the German people, their proven democratic and
especially ecological and peace sensitivities. We want and we need the German
people to be the main champions in the building of another Europe, of a
prosperous, independent, democratic Europe, of a multipolar world.
Germans know
better than anybody else in Europe, where blind
obedience to irresponsible leaders can lead and has indeed led in the past.
It is not up to us to teach them any such lesson. They know better than anybody
else how easy is to begin a campaign with triumphalist rhetoric, only to end up
with ruins everywhere around you. We do not invite them to follow our opinion.
We demand simply from them to think thoroughly the opinion of such
distinguished leaders of them like Helmut
Schmitt for instance, we demand them to hear the voice of the greatest
among modern German poet, of Günter
Grass, the terrible prophecy he has emitted about Greece and Europe some
years before his death.
We call upon
you, the German people, to stop such a Faustian
alliance between German political elites and international finance. We call
upon the German people not to permit to their government to continue doing to the Greeks exactly what the Allies
did to Germans after their victory in the First World War. Do not let your elites
and leaders to transform the entire continent, ultimately including Germany, into a dominion of Finance.
More than ever
we are in urgent need of a radical
restructuring of European debt, of serious measures to control the activities
of the financial sector, of a “Marshal Plan” for the European periphery, of a
courageous rethinking and re-launching
of a European project which, in its present form, has proven unsustainable.
We need to find now the courage to do this, if we want to leave a better Europe
to our children, not a Europe in ruins, in continuous financial and even
open military conflicts among its
nations.
Delphi, 21 June 2015
The
above declaration was adopted by nearly all participants in the Delphi
conference on the crisis, on alternatives to euroliberalism and EU/Russia
relations, held at Delphi, Greece on 20-21st of June. It is also supported by
some people who were not able to be present. The list of people who signed it
follows. In it there are not only citizens of EU countries, but also of
Switzerland, USA, Russia and India. Many distinguished American
scholars seem to be more sensitive as regard the European crisis, than the
… political leaders of EU themselves! As for Russians, it is only normal and
natural to bear a great interest for what is going on in EU, as EU citizens
bear also an interest for what is going on in Russia. All participants in the
Delphi conference share the strong conviction that Russia is an integral part
of Europe, that there is a strong interconnection between what happens in EU
and in Russia. They are categorically opposed to anti-Russia hysteria, which in
fact is nothing less than the preparation of a new, even more dangerous cold,
if not hot war.
Altvater
Elmar, Germany
Member of
scientific community of AΤTAC. Retired Professor of Political Science, Free University of Berlin.
Amin Samir, Egypt/France
Economist, President of the Forum Mondial des Alternatives
Ayala
Iván H., Spain
Researcher, Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales
Arsenis Gerasimos, Greece
Εconomist, ex-minister of Economy, of Finance, of National Defense and of
Education, ex-UN official and ex-director of UNCTAD
Artini Massimo, Italy
Member
of Parliament
Bellantis Dimitris, Greece
Lawyer,
PHD in Constitutional Law, Member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA
Black William, USA
Professor of Economics, University of Missouri (Kansas City)
Cassen
Bernard,
France
Professor
Emeritus, Université Paris 8,
secretary general of "Mémoire des luttes"
Chiesa
Giulietto, Italy
Politician,
journalist and author, ex MEP, president of the "Alternativa"
association
Freeman Alan, Canada/UK
Gabriel Leo, Austria
Director of the Institute for Intercultural Research
and Cooperation (IIIC), Vienna, Member of the International Council of the
World Social Forum, Coordinator of
the NGO Committee for Sustainable Development of the United Nations
George Suzan, France
Political and social scientist, writer, President of
the Transnational Institute
Georgopoulos
Dimosthenis, Greece
Economist,
sociologist, political scientist, Secretariat on Industrial Policy, SYRIZA
German
Lindsey, UK
Convenor, Stop the War Coalition
Graeber David, UΚ
Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics. Author of “Debt:
The First 5,000 Years”
Hudson
Michael, USA
Professor
of economics, University of Missouri (Kansas City), UMKC. President, Institute
for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET)
Irazabalbeitia
Inaki, Spain
Former
MEP / responsible for International Relationships for the party ARALAR, Basque
Country
Jennar Raoul
Marc, France
Dr. in political sciences, specialist on European law and on WTO regulations, writer of twenty books, among them “Europe, la trahison des élites”
Kagarlitsky
Boris, Russia
Director
of the Institute for globalization studies and social movements (IGSO)
Kalloniatis Costas , Greece
Phd on
macroeconomics, adviser to the Ministry of Labour, researcher in the Labor Institute
of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece
Kasimatis
Giorgos, Greece
Prof.
Emeritus of Constitutional Law, University of Athens. Founder and Honorary
President of the International Association of Constitutional Law, ex-advisor to
PM Andreas Papandreou.
Koenig Peter, Switzerland
Εconomist / geopolitical analyst
Koltashov
Vasiliy, Russia
Head of the economic research
unit of the Institute for Globalisation and Social Movements
Konstantakopoulos Dimitris, Greece
Journalist, Writer, Coordinator of the Delphi
Initiative
Koutsou Nikos, Cyprus
Member of Parliament from
Famagusta
Kreisel Wilfried, Germany
Former
Executive Director, World Health Organization
Mavros
Giannis, Greece
Member of
the National Council for the Claiming of Germany’s Debts to Greece
Mityaev
Dmitry A. , Russia
Deputy
Chairman of the Council for Study of Productive Forces of the Ministry of
Economic Development and the Russian Academy of Sciences on Development Issues
Ochkina
Anna, Russia
Head of Department of social
theory at Penza State University
Pantelides
Panagiotis, Greece
Economist,
senior researcher, European Institute of Cyprus
Petras James, USA
Bartle Professor Emeritus ,
Binghamton University
Ex-Director
of the Center for Mediterranean Studies (Athens), ex-adviser to the Landless
Rural Workers Movement of Brasil and the Unemployed Workers Movement
in Argentina
Pinasco Luca, Italy
National
coordinator of Proudhon Circles-Editor for foreign policy of the journal
"L'intellettuale dissidente”.
Radika Desai, USA
Rees
John, UK
Co-founder, Stop the War
Coalition
Roberts Paul Craig, USA
Former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, Associate
Editor, Wall Street Journal, Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University,
William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Sideratos Aggelos, Greece
Publisher
Sommers
Jeffrey, USA
Senior Fellow, Institute of World Affairs, Professor,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
St
Clair Jeffrey, USA
Editor, CounterPunch, author, Born Under a Bad Sky
Stierle Steffen, Germany
Εconomist,
ATTAC Germany
Syomin
Konstantin, Russia
Tombazos Stavros, Greece
Professor of Political Economy, University of Cyprus, member of the
international "Committee of Truth on Greek Sovereign Debt" (debt
auditing committee) created by the Greek parliament
Vanaik Achin, India
Retired Professor of International Relations and Global Politics,
University of Delhi
Xydakis Nikos, Greece
Zachariev
Zachari, Bulgaria
President
of the Slaviani Foundation
Zdanoka Tatjana, Latvia
Member of European Parliament
The conference on the internet : The Delphi Initiative - YouTube
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