Portside

While Americans teetered, arguing as to which side gained more in the elections, Germans have been balancing on a seesaw of their own – which can also have decisive consequences.

The impasse in forming a government in Germany has dragged on since election day, September 24th – often like a traffic gridlock, hardly moving forward. But Germany is Europe’s main central power – and with no proper government! Angela Merkel still acts as boss, the old ruling cabinet holds on as caretakers, but it’s all on borrowed time, with no legitimacy.

The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge. We spend too much time speaking to people instead of with them, we make too many promises to do something for others instead of inviting them to get active themselves, to fight and organize with us.

With Bernie in the USA, Corbyn in Britain and various kinds of leftist opposition in Ireland, Spain and Portugal, resistance to billionaire-led governments has been growing, most dramatically last year in Greece until German "austerity" smashed it (though perhaps not permanently). Germany already has the LINKE party, with 64 seats in the Bundestag (out of 630). But it has failed to fill that gap of anger, worry and distrust among working people...

Germany is constitutionally barred from foreign missions but that never bothered anyone in the government. Germany's rulers, in coalition armchairs or skulking in lobbies behind them, are very determined to expand political, economic and military power, not just in Europe but to far distant shores as well. Some dangerous bombs from the last century are still found in Germany; they must be defused. This applies equally to dangerous ideas.

European bankers attack on Greece is like the Mitt Romney attack on 47 percent of the people. U.S. voters rejected those policies in 2012. Germany and Europe embrace what voters in our country rejected...The welfare consensus was initially adopted because capitalists were trying to stave off threats of socialist alternatives: providing for the poor, they reasoned, would prevent citizens from sympathizing with Marxists, Communists, and other left-leaning groups.

The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece's Surrender - as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets (and in red). Read and weep.

The future demands a proud Greece within the Eurozone and at the heart of Europe. This future demands that Greeks say a big NO on Sunday, that we stay in the Euro Area, and that, with the power vested upon us by that NO, we renegotiate Greece's public debt as well as the distribution of burdens between the haves and the have nots.

An austerity crisis continues to be imposed by European bankers on Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, among others. A catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression has been forced upon Greece for over five years under the deceptive description of a bailout. Now the banks are demanding even more, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that Germany will not be blackmailed by Greece, demanding a deal before financial markets reopen next Monday.

Europe is at a crossroads..the decision is now not in the hands of the institutions...but rather in the hands of Europe's leaders. Which strategy will prevail? The one that calls for a Europe of solidarity, equality and democracy, or the one that calls for rupture and division? If some think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake. I would suggest that they re-read Hemingway's masterpiece, For Whom the Bell Tolls.