Flash brief from the #greekrevolution | 130 comments (123 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden)

The demonstrations didn't sway the ruling elite. The Greek Government won the austerity vote by 155 to 138.

Greece's parliament approved the five-year austerity plan with 155 votes in favour and 138 votes against.
Only one member of prime minister George Papandreou's socialist party voted against the law and the speaker of parliament announced he had been immediately expelled from the party. One deputy from the conservative opposition cast a vote in favour.

And these are the "Socialists". The looting is only okay when it is state-sanctioned.

by Magnifico on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:24:16 PM EST

Re: Austerity plan passes (none / 1)

So the question becomes: what are the Unions and Indignants going to do?

Papandreou isn't going to call an early election he is almost certain to lose.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:34:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Austerity plan passes (none / 1)

The only option they have if they want to prevent the looting is to take the parliament, TV and central bank.. closing all bank operations, at least until tomorrow, so that the vote on the schedule of the austerity measure do not happen.

In other words, they would have to face the army.. otherwise, the political elite of Greece will commit suicide.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:41:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

In other words, they would have to face the army..

So in other words, Greeks must decide if they will kill other Greeks in a civil war?

by Magnifico on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:44:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

As far as I see it.. yes. Otherwise, the measures will stand.. for now.

The other option is long-term passive revolt: not paying any tax, issuing local coins, non-stop general strike....

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:51:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 2)

It ain't 1967. The army would revolt if given orders to strike against the people.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:07:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Could a sufficiently determined assembly of protesters push their way into the legislative assembly? At what cost?

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 05:40:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 2)

If history is any guide, in general that happens when organized groups with knowledge of and access to heavy machinery join as groups. They can then remove blockades and can in general not be stopped by anything less then deadly force (or placing tanks in their way, but tanks tend to be in the stage of deadly force anyway). Miners has played this role at least in Serbia and Roumania.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 05:19:53 PM EST
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Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 7)

Listen: Athens is home right now possibly to the highest ownership rate of gas masks per capita in the world. A surprisingly rapid dissemination of anti-police violence survival and counter-attack tactics, a small but vigorous nucleus of anarchist protesters having been practically raised skirmishing with the police and having all sorts of asymmetric street-fighting know-how, and the rapid increase of unemployment combined with the sort of quasi-Mubarak level police violence we saw yesterday is bound to increase the ranks of those ready, willing and able to fight. You see police throw tear-gas or charge the crowd and the amazing thing is that most of the protesters react quickly, but not panicky, as if they are seasoned veterans, very unimpressed by the riot-gear and the blatant readiness of the police to inflict grievous bodily harm to people of all ages. It is amazing to witness. You realize that people adapt pretty quickly to circumstances.

If the protesters weren't peaceful in their great majority yesterday, there is no way short of actually shooting people, that the police could stop them. Should the Communist Unions (who have a rather dim view of "petty bourgeois rebellions" such as what is unfolding in Syntagma) ever decide to act violently (not likely) they could storm the Parliament, in circumstances similar to yesterday's, in half an hour. Heck even the much less muscular unionists of SYRIZA and the extreme left could do it. Possibly with no casualties. They won't though. Most of the relevant parties are wedded deeply to representative democracy. Most of the left considers (with some justification) that establishing democracy after 1974 is its own doing. And they will not allow all Hell to break loose.

After all, the question would then be: what next? And there's the rub: no one has any idea what to do after storming the Winter Palace any more.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 06:35:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Listen: Athens is home right now possibly to the highest ownership rate of gas masks per capita in the world.

Outside Israel, I suppose...

Economics is politics by other means

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 06:50:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

You know, I wouldn't bet on that...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 07:04:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 3)

After all, the question would then be: what next?

With people who represent the 80%+ majority of the Greek people physically occupying the Parliament, demand that the Parliament dissolve itself and call for new elections within a month. Demand that the government order the police to stop attacking mostly peaceful protestors and in return the protesters will begin instead organizing for the coming election. Demand that ongoing discussion of economic alternatives be presented on TV and the internet with Yanis Varoufakis and others to rationally discuss what are and are not options.

That at least would constitute working towards a peaceful and functional resolution of the problem. Now all that exists are doomed projects that harm the Greek nation and people and the future looks very bleak. The current iteration of Greek democracy has already ended in a ditch. This would provide an alternative other than fascism, fascism administered by foreign fascists at that.

You are correct that no one knows what to do after storming the Winter Palace. So don't take that route. We know how that ends. The future is uncharted territory largely because it has been in the interests of the Serious People to never allow that territory to be charted. That territory is one in which a government is in fact accountable to the majority of the people instead of a clique of the wealthy.

The failing of previous revolutionary movements, from the revolution that led to the USA to the present is that they have not addressed the economic and social problems in a functional manner. The most important issue is likely to be the control and direction of monetary policy. Give Yanis Varoufakis and like minded Greeks a chance to present alternatives to TINA. Let TARA shine.

What is needed are policies that put the whole of society ahead of the profits of a few sociopaths. It is because of that sociopathy that attempting to do something sane seems crazy. As I have said: "If sanity be culturally normative, by the norms of this culture I claim insanity!" It is past time for new norms. My sincerest apology for the fact that the actions of my own government are one of the biggest obstacles to the development of a viable future. But we are all tainted by that same original sin.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:02:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

I was reading through this on another computer because I wanted to link to a dkos piece on Greece. As I was reading through it I liked it so much, especially the final paragraph, that I signed in just to recc the comment. Nicely done. It is a fight we all need to root for each other on.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

by NearlyNormal on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 01:01:39 AM EST
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Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

It's not like the current occupants of the WInter Palace have a clue, either.

Economics is politics by other means

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 03:04:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

No one knows what to do after storming the Winter Palace.

This is the very same situation the Parliamentarians faced in the 1640s in England. The existing thought system made it impossible to deal with a monarch who was bent on imposing Divine Right absolutism. Christopher Hill described the situation after the King had been captured pretty well. He said the Parliamentarians suffered from a "mind-stop" which made it impossible to contemplate the next step. But that "mind-stop" was overcome, to the detriment of Charles I. We have been through many iterations since that time.

It took another 45 years or so to arrive at another quasi-stable political solution, but the outcome of 1688 has served as the original part of the foundation for the current system in England, while allowing that foundation to be greatly expanded over time. Yet a similarly radical expansion is needed in the U.K. today. Likewise in the USA.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 09:24:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 2)

Aren't you missing out the Putney debates there?

The Debates

The Levellers wanted a constitution based upon manhood suffrage ("one man, one vote") and a fairer reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies. Further, they also wanted authority to be vested in the House of Commons rather than the King and Lords (with elections every two years) and "native rights" to be declared sacrosanct for all Englishmen:

freedom of conscience, freedom from impressment into the armed forces, everyone equal under the law and no penalties should be made for not going to church, or attending other acts of worship.

The Leveller's ideas had come to dominate the thinking of soldiers and officers in Cromwell's New Model Army. In October 1647, five of the most radical cavalry regiments in elected Agitators (Latin to drive) who were known as New Agents to represent their freethinking political and religious views.

The New Agents issued a political manifesto: The Case of the Armie Truly Stated, and endorsed the constitutional proposals drafted by civilian Levellers in the Agreement of the People.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 11:21:51 AM EST
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Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Aren't you missing out the Putney debates there?

Yes, it was a simple gloss with no attempt to convey the marvelous diversity of ideas that emerged, however briefly, during the Civil War. Another question would be how the Restoration might have been avoided.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:44:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/the-dark-side-of-acing-the-tests_b_887160.html

Train them from a young age to have a unidirectional mind.

Bruner's primary concern was that children are being pressed to do too much too soon. The negative effects of early academic work are several fold, he stated. Young children are too often asked to do things for which they are developmentally unready. This leads to frustration, stress and a potential aversion to learning. More debilitating, the early introduction of so-called academic work has a conditioning effect, perhaps unintended, but very powerful. Gradually, children in what we now call "high stakes" learning situations, whether at school or home, are conditioned to see learning as, and only as, the process of delivering the "correct" response to the powerful adult in whose presence they find themselves.
Children like to please parents and teachers. If extrinsic and intrinsic rewards are conditioned on giving "right" answers, children will indeed work hard to figure out what the adult will accept as the "right" answer. The process is self-perpetuating as the rewards are compounded over time. When strongly conditioned to see learning this way, qualities like imagination, skepticism, eccentricity, originality, invention and creativity will be extinguished. These are unreliable mechanisms for discerning "right" answers.

by Upstate NY on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:24:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Austerity plan passes (4.00 / 2)

Putting the army on the streets, to enforce the diktat of extra-national financial interests, carries a high risk of splitting the army, opening the door to Civil War.

The End Game, right now, is Greece leaving the euro and the EU to prevent the country becoming a colony. People will put-up with sustained economic deprivation when they think the choice is Us XOR Them.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:59:49 PM EST
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Re: Austerity plan passes (none / 1)

And they know they are going to suffer economic deprivation anyway.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:01:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Austerity plan passes (4.00 / 4)

Or, they can use the greatest Greek weapon they ave, and it's quite an effective weapon that the Greeks have perfected. Use their lazy sunny dispositions, acumen for dysfunction and ineptitude, to implement the austerity measures in a fashion that creates an even bigger black hole and sops that next tranche of funds instantly. It would give pause to the Europeans who meet in the next two months to determine the way forward.

(In case this isn't obvious, part of my post was snark, but I do think it's time that Greece stopped implementing the measures they agreed upon).

by Upstate NY on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:47:40 PM EST
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Re: Austerity plan passes (4.00 / 3)

Of course, they might take a clue from Organized Turtles.

NEW YORK -- About 150 turtles crawled onto the tarmac at New York's Kennedy airport Wednesday in search of beaches to lay their eggs, delaying dozens of flights, aviation authorities said.
The slow-motion stampede began about 6:45 a.m., and within three hours there were so many turtles on Runway 4L and nearby taxiways that controllers were forced to move departing flights to another runway.
"We ceded to Mother Nature," said Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the airport.

We're hoping for more serious but creative actions. A vested suicide bomber with huge explosives at the Parthenon (which turn out to be...)

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 03:23:24 PM EST
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Re: Austerity plan passes (4.00 / 3)

A vested suicide bomber with huge explosives at the Parthenon (which turn out to be...)

... a really good way to get your activist killed.

Dumbasses who show off pretend-weapons around trigger-happy security gorillas tend to get real dead, real quick. And in that particular case, I can't say I blame the trigger-happy security gorillas.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 05:47:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

the arab spring must cross the mediterranean (4.00 / 9)

for a european summer.

by wu ming on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:43:05 PM EST
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Re: the arab spring must cross the mediterranean (4.00 / 2)

Keep it moving right across the Atlantic if you can. Might be a waste but who knows what the birth of social media might do before it gets stomped down

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

by NearlyNormal on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 06:17:17 PM EST
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Death by 1,000 cuts (4.00 / 3)

The problem with this type of revolution is tactical. Instead of the masses engaging the police on the streets, it might be more effective for small groups to engage with the 100s, if not 1,000s, of soft targets such as power, media, network, traffic, and commerce. The state cannot yet physically police all places at all times. I think the police and military, after hundreds of years of practice, have found effective ways to shut down any street protests and they need not be as deadly as Napoleon's tactics on 13 Vendémiaire.

by Magnifico on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:43:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Death by 1,000 cuts (none / 0)

Problem is.. that would not delay tomorrow's vote.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 01:45:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Death by 1,000 cuts (4.00 / 2)

A broad-based civil disobedience movement can have a lot of fun: Don't charge for services (or charge them, but give the proceeds to the unions instead of the employers). Don't clear out garbage from the residences (or even neighbourhoods) of particularly odious banksters. Picket sell-out politicians like you'd do if they were neo-Nazis. "Accidentally" release embarrassing documents and footage. Release cockroaches or termites into your property when it is foreclosed on. And so on and so on.

More risky, both in terms of crackdown and in terms of public support, would be systematically counterfeiting €-Mark notes. This has a certain ideological appeal, since it would simply be rectifying the ECB's unwillingness to do its job and print enough money to cover the €-zone's needs. But the potential backlash is, perhaps, not worth it.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:16:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Death by 1,000 cuts (none / 0)

Yes. Then get the army on your side and the politicians will flee for their lives. That will work, if you don't end up with a military dictatorship.

Today Greece ... tomorrow CA. I'm taking notes.

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

by THE Twank (yatta blah blah @ blah.com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 05:10:43 PM EST
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we do have a mediterranean climate, after all n/t (none / 1)

by wu ming on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 02:49:15 AM EST
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Re: Austerity plan passes (4.00 / 4)

Greek PM: Austerity is Patriotic Duty

Goerge Orwell is so obsolete.

by das monde on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 09:19:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]