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Greece 2#
June 5, 2012 - 2:26pm
continued from Greece 1#
http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/greece
Greek Stocks Fall Amid S&P Warning on Eurozone Exit
http://presstv.com/detail/2012/06/05/244779/greek-stocks-fall-amid-sp-wa...
Final poll before new Greek vote foresees a left-wing victory
Time to popularize what has been done in Iceland, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Talk about ways to fix an electoral scheme to provide phoney majorities. A 50 seat bonus for the party with the most seats, fascinating feature. Does anyone know if any other country has this kind of winner's bonus?
The spokesman for Greece's extremist far-right Golden Dawn party caused an uproar after he physically assaulted two left-wing deputies on live television during a morning political show. A public prosecutor ordered his immediate arrest.
Tempers frayed Thursday on the political show on the private Antenna television station during a discussion of the country's politics in the run-up to repeat elections June 17. Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris took offence at a reference by radical left Syriza party member Rena Dorou over a court case that is pending against him.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/06/07/greece-far-right-tv-slap-c...Greece Gets 'Corzined': Simple Arithmetic Sets In (and vid)
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-06-06/greece-gets-corzined-its...
" As European leaders grapple with how to preserve their monetary union, Greece is rapidly running out of money. Officials scrambling for solutions, have considered dipping into funds that are supposed to be for Greece's troubled banks. Prolonged austerity is making it harder, not easier, for governments like Greece to become self-reliant again. Go figure!"
Global Banking Crisis & European Bank Holiday (and vid)
http://presstv.com/Program/245330.html
"Max Keiser interviews Warren Pollock from wepollock.com about the global banking crisis and the systemic fraud in the international banking system.."
The Nightmare Gathers Force - by Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.it/2012/06/nightmare-gathers-force.html
"In writing about the ongoing crisis facing Greece (and Europe generally), commentators often advance the notion that what is occuring in Greece in particular provides a preview of what will happen in the US if we continue on our current path. Conservative and neoliberal writers (but I repeat myself) proclaim that this necessitates becoming more brutal in their dedication to 'austerity': that is, the ruling class must be exravagantly ruthless, without surcease, in depriving those who are without power, wealth and privilege of every means of sustaining their lives.."
As Greek Banks Run Out of Safe Deposit Boxes, an Eerie Calm Takes Over Country
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greek-banks-run-out-safe-deposit-boxes-eer...
"..Stavropoulos and her friends have a new strategy to deal with their daily expenses. 'We charge everything to our credit cards,' she says. If the Greek banks fail, they won't be able to collect...if they want to mess me around, I will do the same to them.."
Austerity Kills: How the Euro Crisis is Being Used to Break the Social Contract (and vid)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/austerity-kills-how-the-eurocrisi...
"In a RealNews Network interview, Rob Johnson of the Roosevelt Institute describes further how the Eurocrisis has become a tool to break the social contract."
The Political Issues in the Greek Election
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/gree-j16.shtml
"...Whoever wins the election, the working class will be forced to repay the 200 billion-plus bailout through the austerity measures attached to the Memorandum signed with the troika - the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This will inevitably be followed by calls for additional sacrifice, whether or not Greece is allowed to remain in the eurozone.
Greece is the victim of a social counterrevolution that is being implemented by the ruling elite and which they intend to roll out across Europe. Cuts totaling hundreds upon hundreds of billions of euros have already been made across the continent. In Greece, the ruling class is testing out just how far it can go.."
Any Quebec Babblers seeing parallels between the financial community's tactics in Greece right before THIS election and the stunts the Anglo corporate elite pulled before the 1970 Quebec election?
BTW, I've started a prediction thread on the Greek election results and the post-election situation here
http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/greek-election-and-post-election-predictionsAnybody know of an independent Greek news source for the election results tomorrow?
I don't know about 'independent' but for the numbers I'll be going here:
http://www.ekathimerini.com
http://www.athensnews.gr/content/55344
Fear and Loathing in Athens (and vid)
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/fear-and-loathing-athens/11283
"Greetings from Greece, land of privatizations, fascist paramilitaries and immigrant roundups. Also the land of some of the most inspiring and brave people I've met during the END:CIV tour. The situation in Greece is complex..."
Why Don't the Communists Just Link Forces with the Radical Left Coalition?
http://rebelyouth-magazine.blogspot.ca/2012/06/why-dont-communists-just-...
"The present assessment of the Communist Party of Greece (which was posted here today) deserves some introduction for our readers in Canada..."
looks like new democracy has won it, a real shame, hopefully they can do something to ease the pain of the greek people, but my guess is that it just continues to worsen for a while, and then some iteration of syriza eventually comes to power, with a far more constrained field of activitiy and possibility, after all the privitizations and that. http://www.skai.gr/ekloges2012
The Guardian has this caveat: " A caveat however - results are more likely skewed to the right because rural areas go first. Athens is likely to push this again towards the left."
Again from the Guardian: New Democracy could form a coalition government with PASOK given the current results, but PASOK apparently refuses to form a government without SYRIZA in it.
Syriza is 2% behind with 18% counted. I've seen no one say how likely given the rural/urban thing that they can make that up. But it would require them going from 27% to at least 30% in the rest of the votes.... less if ND were to drop from 29.5 to 28% for the rest, which is quite conceivable, even if Syriza is not the main beneficiary of an ND drop.
Let's hope it's not a repeat of 1967.
Getting worse. 40% of votes in and Syriza now 4.5% behind.
PASOK says it will not join government without Syriza. But that does not mean they will refrain from unseating an ND minority government. Not stable, and tacitly meaning the givernment has to appease Syriza a bit, but nothing to write home about. Have not seen any commentary that delves into this route that could be followed.
I dont think Greece is even close to ripe for a coup. The Right and capitalists so far dont need that to get as much as they would get out of a coup... without all the mess.
Still think they had the right idea, given that their insistence on splitting the left has given the pro-austerity party a victory it otherwise wouldn't have had?
The KKE vote collapsed tonight, NDPP. How can they still present themselves as a revolutionary alternative if their vote total went down?
Greece needed a Popular Front...now what will they do?
It's not my position I just posted the article. Nor do think elections are necessarily determinative or final in such things.
Banksters and their political stooges had no choice but to keep rolling the election dice in order to achieve a satisfactory result.
Fair enough, NDPP.
Still, given the ferocity of the Greek military and police, wouldn't a street revolution be kind of a longshot?
This isn't Russia in 1917...we can assume that the Greek army will never desert the forces of reaction(as the Tsar's troops did in '17).
Something odd I noticed going through the "Athens News" election results link.
In most of the multimember constituencies that SYRIZA is carrying in the popular vote, it isn't as yet leading in the seat count.
IN "Piraeus B", for example, SYRIZA at this point is taking over 36%, to only 18% for the ND's, yet SYRIZA and ND have both won 2 seats there at this point.
Does that strike anybody else as suspicious, or does it just take awhile for the results in multimember constituencies like this for the seat count to actually reflect anything close to the popular result?
I'm not so sure after reading this article from February. And in Michael Moore's documentary about capitalism, in the segment on bailouts for banksters, the the cops in Manhattan stoody idly by and encouraged Moore who proceeded to wrap a Wall Street bank in police tape to indicate scene of a crime. Apparently police pension funds suffered significant losses in the casino economy.
I think the crooked politicians know that the majority of police have limits as to how far they will go to insulate the ruling clique from street level democracy. Greek and American protesters have received more than a few winks from cops and soldiers since 2008. At some point they will realize that the Tsars and Kaisers of today are megalomaniacal dictators bought and paid-for by a handful few oligarchs who know one ever votes for.
well, this result represents the success of a worldwide media campaign against the greek left. the winners tonight: all the usual domestic right-wing factions, the european technocracy, bankers, and anyone else involved in sucking wealth out of the greek people.
on the plus side, the market's pleasure with this result boosts obama's re-election campaign agaignst romney, as we shouldn't see any major shocks coming out of europe, always negative for incumbents presidents.
Count Wall Street bankers among the winners. They are covering bets that government is strong enough to force Greeks into a generation of unemployment and economic depression in order that banks both sides of the ocean make more money. Obama is blaming the EU and Republicans lately for the Liberal Democrats failed economic strategy.