Nadia Valavani
The Cretan writer
“The world never changes if we simply struggle for survival…” is the message of the new book “BREAD AND ROSES”, underlined in an interview to “In-On” magazine, the Cretan writer Nadia Valavani.
She also mentioned that “All the issues revolve around the focal question whether a “civilized” society in the future could exist without a cultural revolution today. In those dark ages today, we can find ourselves behind the line of struggle that the impoverished labor workers of Lawrence Massachusetts in the clothing industry set, when they rebelled in 1911 requesting «we want bread but we also need roses”.
Question: Tell us the views and the role of the Audit Committee of Debt so as to overcome the crisis in Greece.
Answer: The Committee for the Accounting control on the Creek Government Debt was established on March 3rd 2011 through a declaration with 100 Greek and 120 international signatures. The declaration demanded the “opening” of the books of the public debt, identification of the “odious debt” (a product trade according to the German courts for instance all the contracts signed with SIEMENS or the naval submarines), as well as invoking emergency aiming at its active deletion. It was asked by any Greek government to proceed to (external) default [“declaration of default”] so as to stop mortgaging our natural resources for the benefit of our “institutional gamblers” (“financial markets”) until they accept the “haircut”. It also called the people and youth collectives to take action regarding the issue of debt. In May 2011, during an international conference in Athens the creation of ELE was established as well as in other European countries. Today, there are Committees in Ireland (a report has already been given), in Portugal, in Spain, in Belgium and will soon be established in France and Italy.
So far, the declaration has been signed by 80.000 people, half through the net and the other half in Syntagma square among the squats. Along with the Committee regarding the German debts to Greece we highlighted the issue of “cleaning” with the huge, today, compulsory occupation loan that Germany took from Greece (!), which is “registered” in the balance sheets of the Bank of Greece without any attempt to claim it. We were the first to introduce the international term “haircut” in the Greek vocabulary, while through the documentary “Debtocracy” 2.500.000 Greeks realized the recent international experience regarding default and debt write-off.
Moreover, recently the Mass Media mocked our representatives with “arguments” of this kind: In case of a default, neither salaries nor pensions will be paid. Or: “Haircut” can be implemented only in South American countries. However, this systematic kind of lie has a short life. Due to the disastrous policy of the Memorandum and the Medium Term (which in fact, sells off all the Greek public assets, apart from the “antiquities”) a mandatory “primary surplus” was imposed since 2012 – in other words, salaries and pensions are not covered by loaning: In case the money from the national Budget is not enough, there will be a constant “haircut” in the salaries and pensions… The Greek public debt reached 118% in 2009, and it is scheduled to become 120% in …2020: First, it will reach its peak and then there will be a “voluntarily” haircut at 50% concerning the banks and the insurance funds (the latter are not exempt, as opposed to the reality in the «haircuts» in the south American countries that were caused by the national governments …). However, just before this extremely dubious “negotiation” with the banks, the International Monetary Fund already declares that this is not enough, while the scenario of a “haircut” up to 80% with the activation of the CDS appears for the first time (we act as guinea pigs so as conclusions are drawn for the function of the global financial system) – namely for an “official” default in or out the Euro zone …
Question: Tell us your suggestions for the present situation and for the economic crisis of the country.
Answer: The people should get the situation in their hands, through the creation of a social and political front, not involved in Memoranda, new loans and “Greek” governments-representatives of the bankers. We should declare default alleging the – recognized by the UN – “state of emergency need”: The priority is the survival of the people of a country against its “obligations” towards its lenders.
This has to be accompanied with the nationalization of the Greek banks and large strategic companies (literally redeemed through “help packets”), guarantee of the bank deposits with a parallel “seisachtheia” of the internal debts, as well as the exercise of a financial, fiscal, and developmental policy towards a radically different direction: Enough is enough for a policy that threw in the street 1.000.000 people devastating the life of many million people and the country itself. There should be a reverse situation of the current relay from those in the “bottom” to those in the “top” along with those that are “out”.
We need a friendly kind of development for the laborer and the environment, supporting the real cooperative and small and medium entrepreneurship in fields that Greece can have comparative benefits: Agriculture, Tourism, Shipping, Energy, Ores, Mineral Wealth, light industry and services. These are the very fields that the big German businesses ask a “special wage and financial status”, in order to import from Greece with wages that exist in Bulgaria and tax-free – calling them “Greek exports”.
Question: What messages are conveyed in your new book?
Answer: As opposed to what is implied by a first look, a book that deals with “art issues and politics”, such as “BREAD AND ROSES”, which was published by “Taxideftis” Publications, does not constitute a luxury. The book addresses to an audience of “artists of the act”: people that think and struggle, mixing topics that either were first set by Brecht or Rose Luxembourg or the Russian artistic Avant –Garde in October or even the relation of the Left Wing with the Art, modernity or postmodernism today.
All the issues revolve around the focal question whether there could be a “civilized” society in the future without a cultural revolution today. In those dark ages today, we can find ourselves behind the line of struggle that the impoverished labor workers of Lawrence Massachusetts in the clothing industry set, when they rebelled in 1911 requesting “we want bread but we also need roses”. Because the world never changes when struggling for mere survival…
Curriculum Vitae
Nadia Valavani is an economist, writer and researcher of the work of Brecht. She was born in Herakleion in 1954.Her rich work involves a novel entitled “The Vespers guests” (Dolphin, 1996, Stachi, 1999), three poetry collections (the last one is “The Great Era”, 2009), “The necessary war” (Stachi, 1999), an album about the war in Yugoslavia and a collection of texts entitled “Bread and Roses” – “Art and political issues” (Taxideftis, 2011). She has designed the international version of Bertolt Brecht – Critical approaches (Polytropon, 2004) as well four performances of speech and music. Her articles and texts are published in daily newspapers along with the newspapers of the left wing as well as in scientific and art magazines.