Greece

91-Year-Old Greek WWII Hero Wins Big In Euro-Elections

May 27, 2014 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Create! Democracy, Europe, European Union (EU), Facism, Greece

In Europe, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon once more. Yesterday marked the conclusion of the European Parliamentary elections, and the extreme-right had a number of terrifyingly strong showings in France, Austria, Denmark, Hungary and Greece, among other countries. But as disillusioned citizens across the continent send their ultra-nationalist, proto-fascist and even openly neo-Nazi deputies to Brussels and Strasbourg, the one candidate who actually managed to secure an overwhelming victory here in Greece is Manolis Glezos, the legendary 91-year-old WWII resistance hero, who, on May 30, 1941 — at the age of 19, just weeks after the Nazi invasion and occupation of his country — scaled the Acropolis in the dead of night and, together with his friend Apostolos Santas, tore down the Swastika. . . It is an absolute disgrace that today, in the 21st century, a legendary WWII resistance hero like Manolis Glezos. . . will now have to take up a seat in a European Parliament populated by dozens of nationalists, fascists and neo-Nazis who take their despicable ideologies from the same monsters who once murdered his brother, and millions more across the continent — and far beyond.

Three Days Of Solidarity, Creativity & Sustainability

May 23, 2014 AthensFest, www.festival4sce.org Create! Greece, Solidarity, Sustainability

The Alternative Festival of Cooperative & Solidarity Economy invites you to a three-day event on Solidarity, Creativity and Sustainability, held at the Self-managed Camping of Voula (Athens) from May 30 to June 1, 2014. We consider that the so-called “crisis”* is mainly a crisis of consciousness and we counterpropose another world that we can create right now; a world that fosters communication, exchange and transition practices for a society based on participation, self-management, solidarity and respect for nature and human beings; a world that is evolving constantly and dynamically towards a new system of values beyond the existing models of smug individualism, excessive consumerism and the sacrifice of everything on the altar of profit. We no longer accept this world and we create today the conditions for its transcendence. Our three-day event, during which we affirm through practical workshops that we can now work altogether to create the conditions of the “New” and overcome the “Old”, is harmonized with the context of this new global reasoning. Our choice of the Self-managed Camping of Voula as the hosting place of this event reflects our belief that the processes of management, decision-making, use and care of public spaces are purely political acts concerning the societies themselves and not some representatives who decide for citizens without citizens.

Greek Radical Leftist Leader Alexis Tsipras Calls Greek Bailout A Failure

May 18, 2014 Harry Papachristou, www.reuters.com Organize! Greece

Greek radical leftist leader Alexis Tsipras, running to head the European Commission, said on Thursday his country's EU-led bailout has been a failure, despite Athens' recent return to bond markets. "What happened in Greece is not a success story but a social tragedy that shouldn't be repeated anywhere in Europe," Tsipras said during a debate among candidates for president of the European Commission, to be appointed after EU Parliament elections May 22-25. Greece is also holding two rounds of municipal elections on May 18 and on May 25. Tsipras, the European Left's candidate in the European elections, made his first appearance in a string of televised debates among the contenders. These debates are the first of their kind as the EU seeks to show its relevance to increasingly hostile voters.

Vio.Me: Workers’ Control In The Greek Crisis

May 1, 2014 Theodoros Karyotis, www.roarmag.org Create! Cooperatives, Greece, Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

Just one among thousands of Greek companies that succumbed to the deep recession brought about by the austerity measures imposed by a series of governments, the construction materials manufacturer Vio.Me was abandoned by its owners in May 2011. Forty of its workers, organized horizontally in a militant primary workers’ union, occupied the factory, located in the outskirts of Thessaloniki, to prevent the employers from taking away the machinery before paying the workers the nearly €1.5 million owed in salaries and compensations. After one year of unfruitful contacts with the Ministry of Labor and the central trade union bureaucracies, the workers of Vio.Me, with the threat of poverty and chronic unemployment looming over their heads, announced in July 2012 their intention to self-manage production in the occupied factory, with their now famous slogan: “If you can’t do it, we can.” This declaration was met with the indifference or hostility of most political parties, right and left, and of the trade union bureaucracies.

Greeks Strike Against Austerity Before Merkel Visit

April 10, 2014 Renee Maltezou and Costas Pitas, www.reuters.com Resist! Austerity, European Union (EU), Greece, IMF

Thousands of striking Greeks marched to parliament on Wednesday to protest against job cuts and austerity measures imposed by the country's foreign creditors, including Germany, whose leader will visit Athens this week. Schools and pharmacies were shut, ships remained docked at ports, hospitals operated on emergency staff, and transport in Athens was disrupted due to the 24-hour strike called by private sector union GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY. More than 20,000 workers, pensioners, students and the unemployed marched peacefully through the streets of the Greek capital chanting "EU, IMF take the bailout and get out of here!" Unions said their anti-austerity message was also aimed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Athens on Friday. Germany has insisted on painful spending cuts and tax hikes in return for international loans.

Greek Journalists Strike To Protest Austerity

April 9, 2014 Europe Online, www.en.europeonline-magazine.eu Resist! Austerity, Greece, Strike

Athens (dpa) - Greek journalists walked off the job for 24 hours on Tuesday to protest austerity measures and income cuts, forcing a news blackout across the country. The strike, which began at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) affected all media, including radio and television news broadcasts, websites and daily newspapers. Journalists‘ unions have been protesting firings and pension and benefit cuts while hundreds of journalists in the private sector frequently go unpaid for months. Tuesday‘s strike comes one day ahead of a nationwide strike by workers in the state and private sector, which is expected to disrupt public services and transport, including rail and ferry service. Hospitals will be operating on skeleton staff as doctors and nurses join the 24-hour walkout and pharmacies will be closed for the day.

Military Spending, Banking, Austerity, TAFTA…Protested

December 20, 2013 Staff, www.euronews.com Resist! Austerity, Brussels, Europe, Finance and the Economy, Germany, Greece, Italy, Video, Wars and Militarism

The EU summit brought hundreds of protesters onto the streets of Brussels over a variety of causes – from austerity to food production and military policy. While European leaders talked about defence and banking rules aimed at protecting taxpayers, demonstrators complained the EU favours vested interests. “They are pursuing policies for big business, the big bosses, whereas we need all that money for the people. If we don’t fight we’ll be adopting the German model, where the situation of young people, having to work for little jobs, will always be precarious,” said Stephane, a student. Traffic was disrupted as some 50 organisations turned out to stage demonstrations. Anger was also directed at cost-cutting by Belgium in its new budget, and by other European governments. “What we see in countries with very strong austerity like in Greece, Portugal or in Spain, is that debt goes up, the deficit goes up, so does unemployment and the number of suicides. It’s economic poison,” said Felipe Van Keirsblick from the CNE trade union representing private sector employees.

Greece: Rise Of The Party, Demise Of The Movement?

November 26, 2013 Leonidas Oikonomakis, roarmag.org Educate! Democracy, Greece, Revolution

I was at Syntagma Square in Athens during its long summer of 2011. Just like hundreds of thousands of other participants in this incredible horizontal experiment, I was impressed by the ability of everyday people — who were until then outsiders of the political game — to spontaneously get together and organize themselves into the largest Popular Assembly Athens has ever witnessed, seeking to overturn the neoliberal austerity measures the government was soon to vote on, and invent ways in which direct democracy could possibly work as a form of decision-making beyond the limited space of a square. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 10, 2013, another call for the occupation of Syntagma Square was made. Yet this time there was no need to investigate who made the call, neither “who brought the mic”. The whole event was organized by the radical-left party SYRIZA. Many leftists in Europe and North America look to SYRIZA with hope and amazement. But is it really a good sign that a political party has “stolen the show” of the movements and usurped their energy? Should we not be worried that the horizontal and direct democratic experiment of the squares has largely given way to the old hierarchical forms of representation and electoral politics? Should we not be concerned that the Popular Assemblies have been replaced with the speeches of a party leader in Parliament?

The Surge Of Neo-Nazism In Greece

September 28, 2013 James Ball, www.truth-out.org Educate! Greece

"The surge of neo-Nazism in Greec certainly would not have been possible without the ongoing economic catastrophe and the social decay caused by the policies of fiscal sadism conceived by the EU and the IMF and enforced by the servile and thoroughly incompetent Greek political establishment in exchange for the bailout loans; but neither would it have materialized had it not been for the presence of a long historical tradition of authoritarianism and fascism in Greece. Golden Dawn also might not have surfaced as a viable political force were it not for the criminal failure of the two major parties (the conservatives and the socialists) since the end of military rule to build a marginally fair and a barely just social order and to use the resources available to the state for true public purposes instead of as bait for ignorant voters and to enrich themselves and their associates."

Greek Govt Cracks Down On Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party

September 28, 2013 Staff, www.rt.com Educate! Golden Dawn, Government, Greece, Racism

Greek police have arrested the leader, several MPs and dozens of members of ultra-right Golden Dawn party on charges of leading a “criminal organization.” The party promised to respond with mass rallies of its supporters. Greek police issued arrest warrants for Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos, party spokesman and MP Ilias Kassidiairis, two other prominent members, at least five other party MPs, as well as number of ordinary party members. “The Secretary General and one lawmaker of the Golden Dawn Party were arrested a short while ago after arrest warrants were issued,” Greek police informed journalists. Police have detained about 30 members of the ultra-right party, which won 18 seats in the Greek parliament in the June 2012 elections, having received close to 7 percent of the popular vote.

Greek Anti-Fascist Musician Murdered By Neo-Nazi Thugs

September 18, 2013 ROAR Collective, www.roarmag.org Educate! Greece

Pavlos Fyssas, a 34-year-old left-wing activist and hip-hop artist, was stabbed to death by Golden Dawn supporters in the Keratsini district of Athens. According to Pavlos father, Pavlos’ friends made a remark against Golden Dawn inside a café where they were watching a football match. Somebody from a nearby table overheard them and made a phone call to Golden Dawn members. Golden Dawn squads arrived almost simultaneously with DIAS motorbike police. Pavlos tried to help his friends evade the scene, but he was ambushed by another Golden Dawn squad and surrounded. Then another Golden Dawn associate drove with his car opposite in an one-way street, stopped and stabbed him to death, while the DIAS policemen did not intervene.

Greeks Protest Against Golden Dawn Attack On Communists

September 17, 2013 Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Resist! Greece

Thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Friday to protestagainst a violent attack on Communist party members by black-shirted supporters of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party which left nine people in hospital with serious injuries. In what was described as a murderous attack – and the most serious violence since the extremist group was elected to the country's parliament last year – about 50 men wielding crowbars and bats set upon leftists as they distributed posters in a working-class district of the capital late on Thursday. With the Communist party preparing to stage a youth festival in the coming days, Thursday's midnight assault comes amid mounting fears that the far right is trying to cultivate an atmosphere of civil war in Greece.

The Catastrophic Management Of Catastrophe

September 17, 2013 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Educate! Austerity, Chile, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Spain, Türkiye

The catastrophic management of catastrophe. If there is one line that describes the nature of neoliberal crisis management, that must be it. From Mexico and Latin America in 1982 to the South-East Asian crisis of 1997-’98, and from Turkey and Argentina in the early 2000s to the European debt crisis from 2010 onward — the most catastrophic thing about neoliberal crisis management is not only that it has a penchant to turn already catastrophic financial crises caused by runaway private speculation into an immense source of private gain for the same very financiers responsible for the catastrophe to begin with; but, even more nefariously, that it makes those catastrophes so much more catastrophic than they really need to be for almost everyone else. Notwithstanding all the propaganda and rhetoric about “free markets” promoting democracy and development, the massive bank bailouts of the neoliberal era have invariably shown that those so-called neoliberals in fact care very little even about free markets — let alone about democracy or development.

‘We Won’t Pay’: Greek Activists Reconnect Power To Poverty-Stricken Homes

August 9, 2013 Staff, ww.rt.com Resist! Greece

Members of the ‘We Don't Pay’ movement demand alternatives to the austerity measures that, as many argue, have deepened the recession and made unemployment unbearable. “The vast majority of the public is sunk into poverty, and a few families across the world have 99 percent of the wealth. That's not something we want to bear, that's something we want to overthrow here in Greece and across the world,” Ilias Papadopoulos from the ‘We Don't Pay’ movement told RT in Athens. Members the group, that began in a village of 3,000 people, reconnect electricity to homes and disconnect power from road tolls, making them free for motorists. Sometimes they also target the Athens metro system.

Greece Opposition Party, Syriza, Re-Organized To Win

July 26, 2013 Agencie France Presse, www.AFP.com Organize! Greece

"Starting tomorrow, with our new party, all together, stronger and more united than ever, we will embark on our great and victorious path," Alexis Tsipras said in a statement issued by the party. Tsipras, who ran against another two candidates, was re-elected with 74.08 percent of the votes. At the end of a dramatic five-day party conference and heated debates, Syriza decided to adopt a new, unified form, abandoning its previous format that featured various small factions. Syriza scored a surprising second place in parliament in the elections of June 2012, winning 72 seats out of an overall 300.

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