Paul Murphy MEP is in Greece this week, campaigning with Syriza in the run-up to Sunday's election. He'll be writing daily reports of his experiences; the first of these is below.

The eyes of Europe's left and many working class people suffering under austerity are now on Greece. This was brought home to me when I arrived yesterday in Greece and found myself amongst many international visitors who were also present to support Syriza in the final days of the election campaign. Those present included Francisco Louca, the leader of the Left Bloc in Portugal, together with many of his Portugeuese comrades; Willy Meyer; a Spanish MEP of Izquierda Unida; a left MP from Argentina, and people from Occupy Wall Street. Many more are coming, including the Marxist academic, David Harvey, and Gabi Zimmer MEP, the President of the GUE/NGL left group in the European Parliament.

For Greece, bargaining is infinitely more sensible than pleading, particularly when the Troika is terribly bad at knowing where its own interests lie. By Yanis Varoufakis.

When two sides bargain, their interaction reflects a potential mutual benefit but also a measure of conflict. For instance, when a firm and its supplier reach a deal, there is often more than one price where both will benefit. The high end of the range favours the supplier while the lower advantages the firm. So, when bargaining leads them to an agreement on the final price, they unlock a mutual benefit and resolve a potential conflict.

Now, bargaining only makes sense if both sides enjoy a modicum of bargaining power. And what determines that? The simple answer is: a readiness to draw a ‘line in the sand’ and credibly resolve to walk away from the negotiations if that ‘line’ is crossed. Thus, a buyer determines a maximum price, and the seller a minimum price, and commits to scuttle the deal if the opposite side refuses to grant at least this minimalist demand. If one of the two bargainers cannot envision circumstances under which she will prefer to reject the other’s offer, and this is transparent, negotiations are pointless. The party that cannot imagine saying ‘no’ should desist from bargaining and simply plead with the other side, appealing to its kindness, generosity and, in desperate cases like Greece’s, sense of mercy.

Spain has become the fourth Eurozone member-state to fall out of the markets, and has secured a bailout from Europe - albeit unofficially. By Yanis Varoufakis.

When the Spanish Prime Minister declared that the Spanish state would save Bankia while at the same time admitting that Spain could not raise the cash to do it, two were the plausible explanations of how this feat was to be achieved.

1. One was that Spain would officially become the fourth Eurozone member-state to have fallen out of the markets, securing a bailout from the rest of Europe.
2. The second explanation was that Spain would become the fourth Eurozone member-state to have fallen out of the markets, securing a bailout from the rest of Europe, without admitting that this is the case – in other words, unofficially.

Guess which of the two options Europe opted for: The second one, naturally! Indeed, why come clean when the option of subterfuge is available?

Eurobonds issued and backed by the ECB would alleviate the financing problems of all fiscally-stricken member states, and require no debt guarantees nor fiscal transfers from Germany, Holland or Finland. By Yanis Varoufakis.

They came. They talked eurobonds. They left in a miff. Why?

Purportedly because Germany, Finland and Holland believe: (a) that eurobonds mean a fiscal transfer from low interest rate countries to high interest rate ones and, therefore, (b) that such a transfer is illegal according to the Lisbon Treaty and the German constitution.

What Germany, Finland and Holland are rejecting is what is known in the trade as jointly and severally guaranteed eurobonds. That is, bonds issued with the backing of all the Eurozone member states jointly. Under such a scheme, it is indeed true that the German taxpayer will be subsidising the Spanish taxpayer and this would come into conflict with both the Lisbon Treaty and the German constitution. But even if it did not (or even if the Treaty and the constitution were amended), it would make little sense, from a macroeconomic viewpoint, to go down the road of this type of eurobond. Why? Because when both Spain and Germany are backing some form of debt (or bond), the interest rate that the common debt will incur will be some weighted average of Spanish and German interest rates. And this in-between interest rate will prove too high for Germany (at least politically) and not low enough (economically) for Spain. The reader may, therefore, be surprised to read that, on this, I am in agreement with Mrs Merkel: jointly and severally guaranteed eurobonds are not the solution.

New Democracy needs strategies that cut to the bone: it has to foster fright at a surging far left, it has to force home the message that SYRIZA's positions are contradictory. The rhetoric of suicide fits this bill consummately. But it is also double edged. This is suicide season and where will it lead? By Iannis Carras.

Accusations and counter-accusations of imminent political, social and economic ‘suicide’ are setting the tone of the new election campaign in Greece called for 17 June. “Early elections will lead to national suicide”, claims one left-of-centre Minister. Right-wing counterparts equate Greek exit from the Eurozone with a deathwish. The rhetoric of suicide has been used by the Governor of the Bank of Greece, as also by a large number of columnists and commentators. Not to be outdone, Alexis Tsipras, leader of SYRIZA, argues that Greece “will not take the road to suicide willingly”. As he has made clear elsewhere, he considers the EU-IMF Memorandum, which he now intends to renegotiate, to be a direct route “to the hell” (sic!). Needless to say, Greeks have no monopoly over the term. “Europe”, according to the Nobel-economist Joseph Stiglitz, “is headed to a suicide”. Paul Krugman agrees. The 'memorandum' is a “national suicide pact”, or, alternatively, a return to the drachma would be a “selbstmord” shout others.

The number of people in Colombia killed by US tobacco is way beyond the number of>Americans killed by Colombian cocaine. Do they have a right to come to the United States and carry out chemical warfare on North Carolina and Kentucky because they have a tobacco problem and it's coming from there? By Stuart Rodger.

For those of us who support the repeal of the drug prohibition laws – and for them to be replaced with a policy of strict regulation and legalisation – there are certain facts we are already fairly familiar with. We know, for instance, that the demand for drugs is so huge and so permanent that demand-side strategies are futile. We know, too, that there will always be people who cater to this market, so supply-side strategies are equally futile. And we know as well that the damage drugs do is often the result, not of the drugs themselves, but their unregulated production in the anarchy of the illicit drug trade. But one aspect of the drug war that has, for too long now, been overlooked, is the consequences it has had on the environment.

The circumstances Greece is facing today are genuinely different to those of Argentina a decade ago, meaning Greece cannot 'do' an Argentina. By Yanis Varoufakis.

Mark Weisbrot has been arguing, for some time now, that Greece must try to emulate Argentina; that is, to default on its debts not as a bargaining strategy that yields a New Deal within the Eurozone but, rather, in the context of exiting the Eurozone altogether and going it alone. Recently, Paul Krugman has endorsed this position (see here and here). I think they are profoundly wrong.

Thousands of indignados reoccupied Madrid's Puerta del Sol on Saturday as part of a global day of action to mark the anniversary of the movement. By Jérôme Roos.

Why would we need political parties if we can have a political party? That’s the question that rang through my head as I roamed around Puerta del Sol last night, climbing on top of the metro station to see a crowd of hundreds of thousands amassed in the square. In one corner, people were actively debating alternatives to capitalism and representative democracy — in another, hundreds were dancing wildly to the beats of a professional drum circle.

At midnight, the square was still crammed with people. Earlier, tens of thousands had marched to Sol from four different corners in the city. Walking along with the Southern march, we witnessed the incredible sight of more people joining us in every single neighborhood we passed through. In a sign that the 15-M movement has effectively decentralised itself, neighborhood assemblies amassed locally and then joined the larger marches to Sol.