Greece

Newsletter – Overcome Fear With Love

May 16, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter BXE, Chile, Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Economic inequality, fast track, FERC, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Greece, Homelessness, Human Rights, Inequality, Injustice, Living Wage, Obama, Police violence, Racism, TPP, United Kingdom (UK), Urban decay, Walmart, Water, World Economic Forum

Instead of taking action to prevent or mitigate the next crisis, politicians are causing more harm as they work hand in hand with the wealthy elites who are trying to grab even greater power and extract even greater riches. Maryland's governor was quick to bring in the National Guard and militarized police, but just cut Baltimore education funding by $11.6 million to fund pensions, while last week the state approved funding for a youth jail the people in Baltimore don't want. This article provides five key facts about Baltimore and a graphic that shows how the United States built its wealth on slavery, Jim Crow and racially-based economic injustice and kept African Americans from benefiting the economy. Also, as a special addition to recognize BB King, he sings "Why I Sing the Blues" describing the history of African Americans from slavery until today.

Greek Anti-Austerity Protesters Occupy Siemens Office In Athens

May 13, 2015 Angeliki Koutantou, www.news.yahoo.com Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece

A small group of demonstrators occupied the Athens headquarters of German industrial group Siemens on Monday, police and company officials said, in a protest against the austerity policies imposed on Greece by its lenders. About 30 people entered the building in a northern Athens suburb, occupying the Siemens offices and hanging a banner outside the main entrance ahead of a scheduled rally to the German embassy planned for later this month. "We are not negotiating with domestic and foreign capitalists," read the banner. The protesters also threw flyers saying: "We won't become a colony of Germany or any other Imperialist power". Many Greeks blame Germany for the harsh austerity policies that the country's international lenders have demanded in exchange for 240 billion euros ($268 billion) of bailout funds since 2010.

Greece’s Tsipras Threatens Referendum On EU If No Deal Reached

May 5, 2015 Dick Nichols, www.greenleft.org.au Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece

In a three-hour appearance on private TV channel Star TV on April 27, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke extensively about the challenges confronting the anti-austerity government led by the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). The program began with a grilling of Tsipras by interviewer Niko Katsinikolao and ended with questions from a 50-strong audience. A lot of questions reflected growing concern that talks with the country’s creditors — mainly the “Troika” of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) — were stalled. A recent Greek poll showed 45.5% agreed with the government's negotiating strategy (down from 72% in February), but 39.5% say the strategy is wrong (up from 28% in February). Tsipras’s appearance came after an April 24 meeting of eurozone finance ministers (the “Eurogroup”) in the Latvian capital Riga. The talks failed to make headway in negotiating an agreement over terms for releasing some of the €7.2 billion earmarked for Greece under the second Troika “bail-out” package.

Piven On Syriza & Greece’s Prospects For Fighting Austerity

April 21, 2015 Alexandros Orphanides, www.inthesetimes.com Strategize! Elections, Greece, Politics, Social Change, Syriza

Anybody who is running for an election wants to win enough votes to take the seat for which she or he is campaigning. To do that, they tend to be conciliatory; they don’t want to make any enemies. They want to win just enough to get over the electoral barrier. They tend to be consensual, they tend to not want to make trouble. They want to keep everyone that voted for them last time and add the few more that they need to get over the hump. Movements are very different. They are dynamic. How they grow, how they succeed is very different. Protest movements in particular do two things. They identify issues that politicians want to ignore, because the politicians want to paste together a coalition that can win. Movement leaders, on the other hand, want to identify the issues that can mobilize people.

German Couple Pay Greece £630 ‘War Reparations’

March 22, 2015 Agency France-Presse, www.theguardian.com Create! Germany, Greece, Reparations, War crimes

A German couple visiting Greece walked into a town hall and handed over €875 (£630, approximately $1,000) in what they said were second world war reparations. Dimitris Kotsouros, the mayor of Nafplio, a seaport in the Peloponnese, said: “They came to my office yesterday morning, saying they wanted to make up for their government’s attitude. They made their calculations and said each German owed €875 for what Greece had to pay during world war two.” The mayor of the historic town where the tourists deposited their cheque said the money had since been donated to a local charity. The couple chose his town “because it was the first capital of Greece in the 19th century”, he added. Greek media reports named the pair as Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge. They say Zacaro is retired and Lahge works a 30-hour week. They did not have enough money to pay for two, one paper said.

Greece: Memory & Debt

March 19, 2015 Conn Hallinan, www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com Educate! Debt, Germany, Greece, Reparations, Wars and Militarism

Memory is selective and therein lays an explanation for some of the deep animosity between Berlin and Athens in the current debt crisis that has shaken the European Union (EU) to its foundations. For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout”—89 percent of which went to pay off the gambling debts of German, French, Dutch and British banks. Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further. In July, 1943 Wehrmacht General Hubert Lanz, commander of the First Mountain Division, was annoyed because two of his officers had been threatened by civilians in the Western Greek town of Kommeno.

Protesters Occupy Athens Law School

March 15, 2015 Staff, www.worldbulletin.net Resist! Anarchism, Greece, Prisons

A group of 150 anarchists has occupied the main School of Law building in downtown Athens demanding the release of convicted Greek leftists and the repeal of anti-terror laws. According to Greek media, individuals stormed the building at around 8 a.m. local time, forcing students and others present to flee the premises. Protestors are demanding the release of jailed leftist bomber Savvas Xiros along with the abolition of high-security “Type C” prisons (Type C) and Greek counter-terrorism legislation. Similar occupations are also underway at the offices of the ruling Syriza party on the island of Crete and at the offices of left-wing Thessaloniki newspaper “Avgi.” A similar occupation took place earlier this week at the headquarters the Syriza party in Athens in a protest over the construction of Type C prisons and laws concerning terrorism.

Greece Sours German Relations With Demand For War Reparations

March 14, 2015 Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Educate! Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Reparations

Greece’s strained relations with Germany took a turn for the worse on Wednesday when Athens’ leftist-led government raised the spectre of seizing German assets for war reparations that it claimed Berlin has stubbornly refused to honour. In an address before the Greek parliament, Alexis Tspiras, the Greek prime minister, said Germany had “a moral obligation” to make amends for the atrocities wrought during three devastating years of Nazi occupation. Berlin, he said, had deliberately flouted its duty employing “legal tricks and delay”. “Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece by the Nazi occupation,” the premier told the house as deputies debated establishing a committee to seek war reparations, repayment of a forced loan and the return of plundered antiquities.

What Europe’s Hopeful Left Can Learn From Latin America

March 9, 2015 Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, www.theconversation.com Strategize! Europe, Greece, Latin America, Left, Social Change, Spain

Hope is not just the ability to wish or fantasise. It is a tool for taking alternative realities seriously so that they might actually become possible. With hope, people can make mental space and concrete preparations for alternative ways of organising their societies – alternatives that are already lurking in the present, but which are simply not thought possible yet. Austerity is unrealistic because it demands that we abandon hope, which is an essential component of our humanity. Our inherent capacity to dream and aspire collectively is our only way to make a truly better world, and a political “reality” that does not accept the possibility of alternatives is not a reality at all, but a demented fiction. In Latin America, the eruption of hope in the face of austerity began with a real sense of injustice and frustration across different sectors of the population, quickly reaching beyond the dedicated activist to the ordinary citizen.

Anarchists Storm Greek Ruling Party HQ

March 9, 2015 AFP, www.france24.com Educate! Anarchism, Greece, Prison, Syriza, Torture

Anarchists occupied Greece's ruling party headquarters on Sunday in support of hunger strikers protesting against conditions in the country's maximum-security jails. A group of 50 anarchists burst into the offices of the radical left-wing Syriza party in downtown Athens on Sunday, forcing staff to leave the building, party officials said. "I was inside my office giving my first official interview to a radio station," the party's new spokeswoman Rania Svigou told AFP. "I had locked the door so I wouldn't be disturbed. Then I heard banging and shouting." she said. "I finished the interview and went out to see what was happening and they told us to get out," she added. Svigou said party workers did not call the police. Syriza has often criticised heavy-handed policing of anti-austerity protests in the past.

Greece Injured By EU

March 8, 2015 Andre Vltchek, www.counterpunch.org Resist! Austerity, Debt, European Union (EU), Greece

We are driving towards a coastal town Nea Makri, and Mr. Boutsiadis Georgios is recounting injustices Greece is facing: “People do realize what is going on, but they feel helpless. EU keeps coming up with new conditions, which are clearly serving its own interests and are certainly damaging to Greece. Now they tell us: ‘you have to sell your state companies, including those in energy and transportation sector.’ Sell it to whom? Sell it to them, to the companies in the West? Even as it is now, country is hardly producing anything, anymore…” I ask why doesn’t Greece leave Eurozone, rapidly and voluntarily. I ask the same question, on many different occasions: in Athens and on the islands. The answer is always identical: “Many people are afraid that re-introduction of drachma would mean devaluation and collapse of people’s savings.”

Ending Austerity In Greece: Time For Plan B?

February 27, 2015 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Syriza

When the Eurogroup accepted Greece’s reform proposals on Tuesday, investors and EU leaders let out a collective sigh of relief: it appears that the bombshell of a disorderly Greek exit from the Eurozone has been diffused, at least until the start of the summer. In return for a significant roll-back of its campaign pledges, Greece’s freshly inaugurated government secured a four-month extension of its current bailout program and thereby managed to avert a potentially catastrophic bank run that would likely have resulted in Grexit. But while Greece’s creditors seemed content, the agreement immediately unleashed a bitter debate within the governing leftist party Syriza. Prime Minister Tsipras may have declared a tentative victory for his anti-austerity coalition, but some influential party members strongly criticized what they perceived to be an unacceptable climbdown.

Bankers Trump Greek Democracy In Europe

February 25, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Austerity, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Syriza

The negotiations clarified what the Greek government (and any other who defies the Troika) is facing. it is only because we have now had the experience of an anti-austerity government go to the wall in an attempt to reverse austerity within the eurozone that we can now contemplate the emergence of a significant anti-euro constituency within Greece. Further, there will be opportunities to build this: every time the troika rejects a needed reform, this can and should be held up as an object lesson in what Europe means. So, Syriza helped more than the re-election of New Democracy would have to understand the true situation. This will result in a debate within Syriza: . . . there will now be a huge argument within Syriza over the acceptance of this deal, and the old slogan of 'not one sacrifice for the euro' will make a come back. Manolis Glezos, an iconic figure from the antifascist resistance and prominent within Syriza, is the first to have gone public with his dissent. He is calling for a campaign up and down the party not to accept this deal, and will vote against it. He will not be the last. Next week, there will be a rally in Syntagma Square, with the slogan 'We're not afraid of Grexit'. He concludes describing this moment as "a nodal point and not the end point in the process of Greek workers finding a solution to their dilemma."

TTIP Negotiations Give Corporations Power Over Legislation

February 14, 2015 Failed Evolution, www.failedevolution.blogspot.gr Educate! Corporatism, Europe, Greece, Politics, TTIP, usa

Since December 2013, NGOs, social movements, and politicians have harshly criticised the European Commission's (EC) proposal on 'regulatory co-operation' 1in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). They argue that a position paper, leaked back then, suggested the Commission was opening the door to massive influence by big business over future laws. Now, a leaked document shows the Commission is maintaining its course – nothing suggests it is taking civil society concerns into account. In a previous document from December 2014, the EC goes even further, suggesting limiting the policy space of municipalities and local authorities – though this idea is under fire and might not be part of the EU position, it is a sign that regulatory co-operation could prove to be not only very comprehensive, but outright dangerous to democracy.

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