Parliament passes urgent austerity package by slim margin

poverty is the worse kind of violence

Greece's Parliament in the early morning hours on Thursday passed a Memorandum-mandated austerity package worth 13.5 billion euros that envisions further cuts in public sector salary scales, pensions and tax hikes, along with labour sector liberalisation and the opening of various so-called "closed" occupations.

The single-article draft bill was ratified in the 300-MP Parliament with a majority of 153 votes for and 128 against, with 18 voting present. Only one MP did not vote.

While the assembly met in the parliament, thousands of protesters had encircled, by early evening, Syntagma Square. The planned rally of GSEE and ADEDY was impressive in volume and pulse with the participation of the world beyond all precedent.

Unfortunately once the Syntagma Square gathering "marred" by hooded various episodes.


SOURCE:http://www.express.gr/news/ellada/656429oz_20080225656429.php3

http://www.madata.gr/epikairotita/social/234411.html

Up to million in the streets of Athens

Riot rage: Athens protesters throw firebombs, police shoot tear gas

A rally in the Greek capital turned violent when protesters in Syntagma Square lobbed Molotov cocktails at police, who retaliated by firing tear gas at the demonstrators.

Security forces also reportedly used flashbang grenades and pepper spray to push protesters back from the parliament building. According to Greek newspaper Kathimerin, the police had been ordered to orders to refrain from using chemicals against protesters.

It's as thousands gathered in front of parliament for the country’s biggest anti-austerity protest since the new government came to power.

Clashes erupted in different parts of Athens Syntagma Square, with demonstrators throwing fire bombs at police.

Witnesses reported smoke rising over the square as security forces dispersed most of the protesters. Some remained, and continued the demonstration; others relocated.

Athens police have arrested at least 20 protesters so far, local media report. Some of the arrests come after members of the radical leftist party Syriza clashed with riot police in the streets of Panepistimiou and Benaki, in the capital's downtown district. Police reportedly again used stun grenades to disperse the hooded youths.

Several injuries are reported.

The general strike halted transit and other industries nationwide. As many as 350,000 Greeks have poured out into streets across the country, estimates the civil servants union ADEDY.

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Liberation: Greece cradle of an other world!

No, what happens in Greece, though dramatic, is not a disaster. It is also an opportunity. Because the power of money has, for the first time, exceeded a target rate of previously progressive, thorough and carefully organized destruction of public interest and human dignity. And in a country so famous for its philosophy of life, the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxonic model, and famous for his tireless resistance to the multiple forms of oppression that tried to rein it.

The Greek does not dance and will never dance on one leg, nor bend slavishly or anything else the regimes want him to do. He dances with his hands, as if he is to fly to the stars. He writes on the walls what he'd like to read elsewhere. He burns a bank when he no longer affords to bake with the traditional barbecue. The Greeks are so alive, as the ideology of the deadly threat. And if the Greek is sickened to death, at the end he always gets up. Yes, the economy of Europe wanted to create an example. But amid the frustration of hitting the country that seemed weaker in the euro area, in the extreme violence the masks fell. It is now more than ever, the time for us to demonstrate its true face: that of totalitarianism. Because this is really what is all about. And there is only one answer to totalitarianism: the fight, persistent and tenacious, until the battle, if necessary, since the very existence jeopardized . We have one world, one life, and values ​​to defend. Everywhere the streets are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our parents, who are  hit in front of our eyes, even if they are away. They are hungry, cold and we are with them. All the hits that they receive equally injure us. Every child in Greece who faints at school, invites us to resentment and rebellion. For the Greeks, it is time to say no, and, for all of us, it's time to support them. Because the Greek people are now leading the battle against economic totalitarianism, everywhere destroying public property, threatening their daily survival, spreading despair, fear and indolence through a war of all against all.


Apart from an emotional anger that is defused by destroying the symbols of oppression, Greeks develop a clear anger, the fighters who refused to give their very lives for the benefit of the banking mafia and logic, that of "mad money". In the assemblies of direct democracy, the movement of civil disobedience movement "We do not pay" and the first experiences of self management, a new Greece emerges at this time, it rejects the tyranny of the market on behalf of the people. I do not know how long it will get people to free themselves from their voluntary work, but it is certain that, faced with the absurdity of client politics, corrupt democracy, the rule of grotesque cynicism of banksters (bank mafia) they will have only the option-against any blackmail - to manage thei affairs on their own.


Greece is our past.
It is also our future.
Discover with her again!
In 2012 we all become Greek!


source:http://www.liberation.fr/monde/01012390932-grece-berceau-d-un-autre-monde

Greece’s geopolitical orientation should not be taken for granted

Due to its geography and geopolitics, Greece will be in play for years to come, argues Robert D. Kaplan.

Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor, a Texas-based global intelligence company.

"Greece is where the West both begins and ends. The West -- as a humanist ideal -- began in ancient Athens where compassion for the individual began to replace the crushing brutality of the nearby civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The war that Herodotus chronicles between Greece and Persia in the 5th century B.C. established a contrast between West and East that has persisted for millennia.

Greece is Christian, but it is also Eastern Orthodox, as spiritually close to Russia as it is to the West, and geographically equidistant between Brussels and Moscow. Greece may have invented the West with the democratic innovations of the Age of Pericles, but for more than a thousand years it was a child of Byzantine and Turkish despotism.

And while Greece was the northwestern bastion of the anciently civilised Near East, ever since history moved north into colder climates following the collapse of Rome, the inhabitants of Peninsular Greece have found themselves at the poor, southeastern extremity of Europe.

Modern Greece in particular has struggled against this bifurcated legacy. In an early 20th century replay of the Greco-Persian Wars, Greece's post-World War I military struggle with Turkey led to a signal Greek defeat and as a consequence, more than a million ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor escaped to Greece proper, further impoverishing the country. (This Greek diaspora in Asia Minor was a massive source of revenue until the Greeks were expelled.)

Not only did World War I have a bloody and epic coda in Greece, so did World War II, which was followed by a civil war between rightists and communists. Greece's ultimate escape from the Warsaw Pact was a rather close-run affair: again, the effect of Greece's unstable geographical location between East and West.

Greece struggled on. As recently as the mid-1970s it was governed by a particularly brutal military dictatorship (led by colonels from the backwater of the Peloponnese), which lasted for seven years, and fear of another coup persisted during the initial stage of its reborn democracy.

Even though the Olympic tradition began in Greece in antiquity and the first modern Olympics were held in Greece in 1896, Greece was denied the right to host the centenary modern Olympics in 1996 owing to the country's lack of preparedness in organisation and infrastructure. Greece did host the 2004 Olympics, but the financial strain that the games put on Greece contributed to the country's economic fragility in the run-up to the current debt crisis.

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I am Hellene!

The Germans are threatening, but ...

Written by Menelaos Tasiopoulos

The privilege that Greece has against  Germany is the Berlin report on occupation loan and the war reparations of World War II in Greece

Within the euro zone with Greece is in a state of bankruptcy and complete dependence on borrowing by the Union, Germany has managed to close this front, through the Memorandum 1 and 2. 

Especially in the new Memorandum, which has been voted by the Greek Parliament with 199 votes, compensation for clearance of loans from Europe is excluded. Nevertheless, the German foreign ministry wanted to close with an explicit and not only on the basis of a loan agreement the whole issue.

Also, as we see announcements like this from the German-Hellenic  Business Association, Berlin wants to blackmail at this stage Greece  officially, in accordance with  the foreign ministry, the attitude that the issue of reparations is historic, and European political establishment has closed. The Greek Foreign Ministry officially confirmed in a statement that the issue of damages remains open for Athens.

What do the Germans fear? Any exit of Greece from the eurozone, voluntary or mandatory. In such a case, given that Greece will seek funds for the functioning of the state and to support its economy, at least in the first two years of difficult adjustment, could claim damages, which according to the calculation of Paris, are reaching the amount of 500 billion euros. A huge amount that threatens the dominant position of Germany in Europe.

And of course the exit from the eurozone, may be the result of generalized unrest and overthrow of the current political and party system in Greece, which controls the dominant involvement in "black funds" of Siemens bribes and weapons from Berlin.

Germany has also calculated the process of claiming compensations, which could be followed by Greece, when the decision of withdrawal from the euro and Europe will be taken.

Assign all of its assets (entitle the reparations and sell them) in foreign banks and international funds, which are based in England and the U.S, perhaps in Russia, which is in a state of state capitalism and get in advance discounted capital, or low, at rates of 1-2% credit. 

So if we have to calculate a total amount of 500 billion (1 trillion according to other calculations including the loan and the reparations of Paris Peace Treaties) and not only at the level of forced loan,

Greece gives its requirements and takes a total amount of 300 billion and assigns the remaining 200 billion in banks and funds, which they (for example banks, US, Russia etc.) can claim directly from Germany.

The 200 billion euros is too much profit for the protagonists of the international markets to refuse to come into conflict with Germany, and this will complicate matters, today's bullying will collapse and Berlin, will be in a difficult position, threatened by most of international markets or other forces.

Today's relentless and defiant attitude that Germany has followed has its logic.

And at this stage Sachinidis (minister of economics) and his colleagues at the Treasury may not be able to find the files of the compensations and the threatened two-party system may have shut down the Siemens scandal, but forces against the memorandum in Greece have an impact on society. And possibly in the upcoming elections, their presence will be formalized in the parliament and strengthen even further their position, not allowing any, next, government scheme, to make other non acceptable to the interests of Greece, compromises.

http://troktiko.eu/2012/04/oi-germanoi-ekbiazoun-alla/

Athens: Protesters Beat Policeman, Set Uniform Jacket Alight

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Society

Protesters attacked one policeman at Syntagma Square, near the spot where Dimitris Christoulas, 77, committed suicide on Wednesday morning. According to Greek media reports, mourners had marched to Syntagma Square after having attended the funeral of the retired pharmacist. It looks as if there was also a march by anti-authoritarian protesters.  News portalZougla.gr reports that some of the protesters attacked the policeman, grabbed his mobile and stripped him off his jacket and they beat him with punches, breaking his nose.

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