Greece 2#

[url=http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/04/3643892/final-poll-before-new-greek... poll before new Greek vote foresees a left-wing victory[/url]

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...

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-a...

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."

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.

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.

Banksters and their political stooges had no choice but to keep rolling the election dice in order to achieve a satisfactory result. 

NDPP wrote:

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..."

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?

Ken Burch wrote:

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).

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.

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.

CBC:

Quote:

The head of Greece's socialist PASOK party proposed that a unity government be formed of four top parties, including Syriza despite its anti-bailout views. PASOK's Evangelos Venizelos, who spent months negotiating bailouts as Greece's finance minister, suggested dumping the usual procedure of each party seeking coalition partners. He said a government must be formed quickly and suggested one between New Democracy, Syriza, PASOK and the small Democratic Left.

PASOK needs to do the decent thing and disband.  It's their fault that the ND's are in contention to create a pro-misery coalition.

This is taking austerity to extremes.

[quote=BBC]

Greece's new Finance Minister Vassilis Rapanos has been rushed to hospital, reportedly after fainting.

Mr Rapanos, who is chairman of Greece's national bank, was due to be sworn in to the new post in the debt-laden country later on Friday.

The news follows an announcement earlier in the day that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras needs an emergency eye operation.

He has been forced to cancel his first parliamentary meeting as a result.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18554590

Unemployment rises to 24.4% as poll shows that Golden Dawn is now the third largest party.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g95rFNbQrI9QsE-GQzf8nV7BLmdw?docId=CNG.230ef1109cfdd13762e5b185cc6bb6e8.101

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-06/greek-poll-shows-anti-bailout-syriza-ahead-in-voter-preference

NDPP wrote:

From Crisis to Resistance in Greece

http://socialistworker.org/2012/07/05/crisis-to-resistance-in-greece

At many of the assemblies held by SYRIZA, doctors and nurses appeared with tears in their eyes, saying that we must do something--because we are very near the moment when these doctors and nurses will have to stand there in the hospitals and say to people that they must not come to the hospitals, even if they are sick, because you would be in danger of dying from lack of medicines and resources.

One very, very important story in Greece is about missing medicines. Greece is a country that produced pharmaceuticals based on the latest technologies--very expensive medicines. But the capitalists preferred to export all this, and now there is nothing left.

We've all been lied to and constantly since WW II. We were promised middle class capitalism based on consumerism. The greatest weapon of the cold war era, as it turns out, was a parade of filthy lies concerning a way of life that will be unsustainable for the other 80-85% of humanity. And I think the rest of the world is beginning to realize they've been lied to. The promise of capitalism is a monumental lie.

This is really sad. Apparently in Greece you now lose health insurance after being unemployed for a year, which must now be very common. Some doctors are trying to help uninsured patients in their spare time, but for conditions like cancer it's clearly and painfully not enough.

As the head of Greece's largest oncology department, Dr Kostas Syrigos thought he had seen everything. But nothing prepared him for Elena, an unemployed woman whose breast cancer had been diagnosed a year before she came to him.

By that time, her cancer had grown to the size of an orange and broken through the skin, leaving a wound that she was draining with paper napkins.