Portside

The EU's belt-tightening measures are cutting holes in Europe's social-safety net. Austerity as an economic strategy is more than just throwing a scare into countries that, exhausted by years of cutbacks and high unemployment, are thinking of changing course. It's laying the groundwork for the triumph of multinational corporate capitalism - undermining the social contract between labor and capital that's characterized much of Europe for the past two generations.

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.

Economic assistance under the Marshall plan was important to both countries, but it was the granting of debt relief that made a difference to the Germans. After World War II, Germany not only received direct transfers of money - aid through the Marshall plan. Far more important than the $1.4bn was the granting of debt relief at the London conference of 1953.

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.

Reader Comments: The Racial Divide; Take Down the Flag; Call It What It Is, Or Be Complicit; The Charleston Massacre - A Hate Crime; Racial Violence in America; Greek Debt Truth Committee - Debt Cannot and Should Not Be Paid; American Century has Plunged the World into Crisis; Rachel Dolezal; Israeli Nukes; BDS is costing Israel big money; Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson; Announcement - Celebration of Danny Schechter's Life

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.