Did you ever want to see a society remade into the corporatist mode? Greece is going down that path right now. The IMF is gleefully setting out conditions and ‘austerity measures’ necessary for Greece to qualify for the bailout package. How much would you wager that the Public Sector is going to take a beating? Today’s news is part of a cycle of the forced privatization of the Greek economy.
“Hundreds of youths rioted in Athens on Saturday, throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at police who responded with tear gas at a large May Day rally against austerity measures needed to secure loans for near-bankrupt Greece.”
The youthful vanguard responds, but until the middle class in Greece responds their efforts will be in vain.
“Greece’s additional austerity measures are likely to include raising consumer taxes while docking pensions and public service pay. Unions are furious.
“These measures are death,” said Nikos Diamantopoulos, participating in a rally organized by unions. “How people are going to live tomorrow, how they’re going to survive, I do not understand.”
The people will live for tomorrow but will they accept the dismantling of the state in order to ‘save’ their country? Some resist:
“The Greek people do not owe anything to anybody,” Left coalition leader Alexis Tsipras told reporters at one of the Athens rallies, assailing “those who have brazenly robbed public money and pension funds.”
Virginia Kalapotharakou, an accountant who joined striking seamen and dockworkers rallying in the port of Piraeus, called the potential measures “very reactionary.”
“They’re trying to do away with all the rights we gained through struggles in previous years,” she said.
Because breaking unions and cutting the public sector is obviously the first choice in fixing a country. How about raising corporate taxes and income taxes for the rich? Austerity plans seldom mention these strategies.
Stay tuned, hopefully the workers in Greece can resists the undoing of their country.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
6 comments
May 4, 2010 at 5:19 pm
σχολη χορου
Alexis Tsipras speaks for himself, politicians in Greece do NOT speak for the people, politicians and their tail, jurnalists, hide the truth. The elderly who worked and paid for social security all their life will now starve to death and the politicians continue to make billions for themselfs.
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May 6, 2010 at 4:23 pm
The Destructionist
The instability affecting Greece is now spreading throughout the world’s financial markets. The Dow Jones dropped roughly 1,000 points today before clawing its way back up to finish at 10,520 (a loss of 347.87 points).
The euro also lost value today: approximately 2 percent in all, according to experts, as news of Greece’s economic nightmare continued to blanket the media. Could this be the beginning of a global catastrophe? With financial markets around the world already treading water, due to junk derivatives, and countries scrambling to prop up their own currencies (in light of the latest news about the devaluation of the euro), how much more can they take before, they too, crumble under the weight of the inevitable?
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May 8, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Bleatmop
Glad to see the EU is rushing in to aid one of their members financially during a time of trouble, especially one engineered by Goldman-Sacks. Oh wait… that’s not what they are doing? Well what use is the EU then??
Money, power, justice for the “elite” only. Welcome to the new oligarchy.
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May 9, 2010 at 8:16 am
The Arbourist
This is really quite vile social engineering. I was hoping that the Chicago School of economics, after being so throughly discredited in the Southern Cone, would not be applied elsewhere.
It looks like I’m wrong so far.
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May 9, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Bleatmop
That’s because old Milt and his cronies didn’t create an economic system, they created a system to grab any control and power away from the working classes and place it in the hands of the 0.1%. I’m sure in their minds things worked beautifully in the southern cone (as well as SE asia, New Orleans, ect.) and that things are moving as planned in Greece.
I’m just wondering how bad things are going to get before people not of the 0.1% wake up and stop these guys. I think it’ll be when they start exporting all the engineering, architect, research, ect jobs to china and india. It’s very easy to have all those plans done in those countries in the internet era. In fact, I think it’ll be easier to export those jobs than it was to export our manufacturing sector last generation.
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May 11, 2010 at 9:49 am
The Arbourist
That’s because old Milt and his cronies didn’t create an economic system, they created a system to grab any control and power away from the working classes and place it in the hands of the 0.1%.
Absolutely. What really burns my toast is the poor people who continue to support leaders and systems that are reducing the quality of their lives.
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