This week on CounterSpin: “Greek Tragedy: Nation Commits Economic Suicide.” OK, it’s the tabloid New York Post, but it’s only yelling what was spoken elsewhere: that Greek voters invited ruin with their “No” vote on an austerity referendum. It’s unclear what will happen now, but the assumption by many in media that the wiser thing would’ve been to just go along with creditors’ terms suggests a disturbing view of how democracy works. We’ll talk about the “No” vote in Greece with Costas Panayotakis, professor of sociology at NYC College of Technology at CUNY and author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy.
Also on the show: “Strangers are going door to door late at night and threatening to burn people’s houses down,” a Haitian border guard told the New York Times. These reported attacks on people of Haitian descent (and others) in the neighboring Dominican Republic come in the wake of that country’s move to strip citizenship from tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants and their children. These newly stateless people present a humanitarian crisis, but one that so far US media don’t seem very interested in. We’ll talk about the situation with Rachel Nolan, author of the article, “Displaced in the DR,” which appeared recently in Harper’s Magazine.