Equality comes to Greece

The Greek Parliament has voted for marriage equality:

Greece has become the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage.

Same-sex couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children after Thursday's 176-76 vote in parliament.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the new law would "boldly abolish a serious inequality".

Good. But there are still EU members who refuse to recognise marriage equality, or have constitutions specifically enshrining bigotry. The ECHR needs to step in and deal with them.

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The quislings win in Greece

Greece went to the polls yesterday in the second round of elections this year, and re-elected the government which betrayed them just two months ago. Its a surprising result, but I guess even a quisling SYRIZA is considered better than a corrupt quisling New Democracy.

Golden Dawn did well, as expected, but the real winner was the "none of the above" party: turnout dropped by 7 percentage points, to 56.6%. Those who refused to vote (because there was nothing to vote for) outnumbered those who voted for the top four parties combined. As for SYRIZA's "mandate", its about 20% of the voterbase. Combined with a wafer-thin coalition, we'll probably see a government collapse sooner rather than later.

Nothing to vote for in Greece

Last month, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sold out his own voters to the Germans and accepted even harsher austerity to repay the odious debt of previous corrupt governments. And now, the task done, he's called elections. The goal is presumably to gain post-facto approval of his sellout, while heading off a backbench rebellion by his own party. But now that SYRIZA has joined PASOK and New Democracy in the quisling camp, that doesn't leave Greeks who want a government who works for them, rather than Germany, much to vote for. The primary alternative are Golden Dawn, who are actual Nazis. Which isn't much of a choice. Election turnout has dropped by almost 7.5% since the crisis began, from 70.9% in 2009 to 63.6% in January (up from a low of 62.5% in June 2012, because there was something to vote for). And with nothing to vote for, and no real choice to make, it is likely to drop again.

That will likely suit the Germans very well, but with over a third of Greeks abstaining from their elections, the legitimacy of the system is in question. And when successive governments have so profoundly betrayed voters, you really have to wonder how long people will tolerate it.

Greece, quislings and onerous debt

On Monday, we learned that Greece's SYRIZA government, elected on a platform of opposing austerity and backed by a referendum reinforcing that message, had turned quisling, agreeing to a humiliating and vindictive continuation of austerity in exchange for the possibility that the EU might give them more money to give to Germany's bankers. Its a terrible deal which will make things worse in Greece rather than better, and not just economicly - SYRIZA having joined PASOK and New Democracy as quislings, Greeks who want a government which works for them rather than German bankers really only have Golden Dawn, who are actual Nazis, to turn to. Meanwhile, it has also utterly discredited the European Union as a democratic institution, and made it clear that is is instead a tool for the economic domination and subjugation of other countries by Germany. If Germany doesn't like your government or its policies, they will economicly carpet-bomb you, then get the ECB to trigger a bank run to force regime change. No sane or democratic country should belong to this institution, and voters who want to actually control their own countries and pursue policies other than NeoLiberalism should be voting to get out ASAP.

And then today we learn that the IMF doesn't think the deal will work anyway:

The International Monetary Fund has warned that Greece will require far more generous debt relief than is currently on offer from its creditors, as MPs in Athens prepare for a crucial vote on Wednesday on a new bailout plan. An IMF report leaked to Reuters shows that Greece’s public debt is likely to peak at 200% of its national income within the next two years, with the risk that the actual outcome could be even worse.

[...]

The report highlights the IMF’s scepticism about Greece’s ability to meet the ultra-tough budget targets insisted upon by its European creditors, and suggests that Athens should receive a 30-year grace period before it has to start paying off its debts.

Putting into question the fund’s involvement in the bailout, the report paints a far darker picture of Greece’s public finances than that contained in the blueprint released at the end of the marathon eurozone leaders’ summit on Monday. “The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date – and what has been proposed by the ESM,” the IMF said, referring to the European stability mechanism bailout fund, which will be used to bankroll the Greek bailout.

But as Germany opposes actual debt forgiveness (because a) it means admitting that the money is lost; and b) it reduces political control for them to get their quisling NeoLiberal friends back in power), its not going to happen. So the upshot of the IMF's message is that Greece would have been better off walking away, repudiating this onerous debt, and making a new start. And that would probably have saved them from Nazis too.

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Greece debt crisis: EU 'family' needs to forgive rather than punish an impoverished state

Europe rejects democracy

Yesterday, Greeks overwhelmingly voted to reject the German austerity which has destroyed their country and killed over 11,000 Greeks. You'd have expected the EU, supposedly built to ensure democracy in Europe, to respect this decision, or at least recognise the democratic limits it set on Greece's negotiating position, and try and negotiate a new deal within those boundaries. But you'd be wrong. Instead, Europe has doubled down on destroying Greece, with the European Central Bank (which deliberately caused a bank run last week to threaten the Greek people) refusing to back Greece's banks, and Angela Merkel saying that there was no possibility of negotiations. In other words, the only acceptable Greek position is total surrender, and the only acceptable Greek government is a quisling one which actively works against the expressed democratic desires of its people. As for democracy, it apparently has no role in European politics.

And now that that's been made clear, so has the solution. An undemocratic Europe is not worth belonging to, and no democratic country should participate in such an institution. Democracies should leave the EU.

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Greeks don't want to leave Europe, but Europe wants revenge on the Greeks
In the tiny village of Hercules frightened workers plan to vote No to the EU

OXI!

The votes are in in Greece's referendum, showing a decisive rejection of surrender. The question now is what happens next. Will Germany force Greece from the Euro and the EU as revenge for daring to take this decision to the people, or will they accept that the Greek government simply has no mandate for further destructive austerity and negotiate a deal which might actually help Greece rather than destroying it? And the fact that people can credibly ask that question, that economic warfare against the democratic decision of an EU member state is a live and "serious" option, tells us how sick the European project is, and how divorced it has become from its ideals.

If Europe crushes Greece, then the European dream is dead. The only Europe worth belonging to is a democratic one which works for its people rather than its bankers.

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Greece debt crisis: What happened to democracy when it’s a case of 'Vote Yes or else'?

Greece

While we were all celebrating the US Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, the IMF and Germany decided to pull the trigger on forcing Greece out of the Euro, revealing that those negotiations the Greek government had been engaging in and come close to betraying its own base on to find a compromise weren't for a permanent solution to Greece's debts, but just to kick the can down the road for six months, after which it'd be more knife to the throat "negotiations" for more austerity again. This wasn't what Syriza was elected to do, so they've gone to the people in a referendum. No-one knows which way that will go, but in the meantime Greece's slow-motion bank-run (driven by the uncertainty over negotiations, and one of the reasons for the Greek government's poor performance - you can't tax a cash economy) has gone hot, while the EU has tried to strangle Greece even further by capping the mechanism designed to prevent it.

So, basicly, the IMF and EU's efforts to be "tough" has driven the Greek economy even further into the ground, and provoked an effective referendum on default and Grexit. I'm assuming they don't want both of those things (since they involve bankers losing their money and politicians losing their pride), so heckuva job guys.

As for what happens next, faced with a concrete threat of departure and a decision in the hands of voters rather than politicians, the EU has finally offered debt relief. So maybe there'll be a better deal on the table by Sunday which the Greek government and people can accept. If not, and Greece is forced out of the Euro as punishment for debt, then I guess we'll know that it is bankers and not elected politicians who run the EU.

But either way, the fact that things have got to this point tells us that something is deeply wrong with Europe. The idea that you would crash a member country's economy with five years of crippling austerity is monstrous; to do it in an effort to repay debts which simply cannot be paid, and to keep doubling down on that mistake is just obscene. This should never have happened. People have died because of the IMF and EU's approach to Greece, and their negotiators should be held legally responsible for every one of those deaths.

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The cost of German-imposed austerity

German-imposed austerity has been a disaster for Greece: 28% unemployment, mass poverty, a public health crisis, a 20% increase in suicides and a 40% increase in infant mortality. Its a foreign-imposed humanitarian crisis, as if they lost a war or had all their food and money stolen by Nazis. The scary thing is that it doesn't have to be that way. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman runs the numbers:

if you follow that through, you find that dropping the [Troika] requirement that Greece run a primary surplus of 4.5 percent of GDP would allow spending to rise by 9 percent of GDP — twice as much — and that this would raise GDP by 12 percent relative to what it would have been otherwise. Unemployment would fall by around 10 percentage points relative to no relief.

Which would obviously be tremendously beneficial for the Greek people. Instead, the bankers are imposing policies that are killing people so they can extract their pound of flesh.

Hope wins in Greece

Greeks went to the polls today in snap elections, and threw out their pro-austerity Quisling government in favour of SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left. The Greek - and German - establishment warned them that it would be the end of the world if this happened. Clearly, Greeks think the world has already ended, and that after seven years of austerity, 25% unemployment and a 30% cut in living standards (while the rich cheat on their taxes and sail around in private yachts), it can't get any worse. And given a choice between hope for change and more of the same, they've chosen hope.

On current projections, SYRIZA has just fallen short of an absolute majority, so it will need coalition partners to govern. But the Quislings have been definitively ousted, and there will be a definite change in direction away from pointless, vicious austerity in the name of debts that can never be repaid.

The question now is whether Germany and the European Central Bank will accept this outcome, or try and overturn the democratic decision of the Greek people so bankers can get their vig. And the fact that we can even ask this question tells us that there is something deeply wrong with European politics.

Finally

Over the weekend, Greek authorities finally moved against Nazi-group Golden Dawn:

The leader of Greece's Golden Dawn party, widely viewed as Europe's most violent political force, appeared in court on Saturday night on charges of heading a criminal gang after police mounted an unprecedented crackdown on the neo-fascist party, arresting Nikos Michaloliakos and other key members of his organisation.

After a police operation in which anti-terrorism officers stormed the homes of Golden Dawn politicians across Athens, Michaloliakos and five of his MPs were seized. Fifteen other senior party activists, including a female police officer, were taken into custody accused of fomenting violence as members of a criminal organisation. Reading from a nine-page charge sheet, a public prosecutor accused the far-rightists of murder, extortion and money laundering.

But while its good to see, its also worth noting the hypocrisy here: Golden Dawn has been attacking people for years, beating, stabbing and robbing people. Their MPs have been involved in this from the beginning. And the police have looked the other way (when they're not joining in), and the government has tolerated it all this time. So what's changed?

Greece wakes up

The Greek government finally seems to be realising that Nazi party Golden Dawn is a real threat to their democracy:

The Greek authorities have launched an inquiry into allegations that members of the country's armed forces have helped to train hit squads formed by the far-right Golden Dawn party.

[...]

The inquiry came amid revelations that Golden Dawn, which has seen its popularity soar on the back of debt-stricken Greece's worst crisis in modern times, has not only set up a military wing but is actively training its members in the art of combat.

"In Golden Dawn we have an entire military structure with at least 3,000 people ready for everything," one member was quoted as saying by the Sunday Vima newspaper. Pictures of recruits in camouflage and balaclavas conducting night exercises in clandestine camps were published in another leading daily on Monday. The paper, Ethnos, claimed the men, some of who were armed with knives and wooden clubs, were being trained by members of Greece's elite special forces who sympathise with the ultra-nationalist party.

In other words, they're preparing for a coup. With the active collusion of some of the military.

I don't for a moment think that this is what Germany wanted. But nevertheless, its what they've got. Their mindless, punitive infliction of austerity on Greece has brought their nightmares back to life. And all of Europe may have to deal with the consequences.

Weimar Greece

Greeks protest against Golden Dawn attack on Communists, Guardian, 13 September 2013:

Thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Friday to protest against a violent attack on Communist party members by black-shirted supporters of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party which left nine people in hospital with serious injuries.

In what was described as a murderous attack – and the most serious violence since the extremist group was elected to the country's parliament last year – about 50 men wielding crowbars and bats set upon leftists as they distributed posters in a working-class district of the capital late on Thursday.

In a statement KKE, the Communist party of Greece, said: "The way in which they acted and the weapons employed … are evidence of the murderous nature of the attack. Among the Golden Dawners, some of whom had covered their faces or wore helmets or [party] shirts, were their leaders, well-known fascists and thugs."

Greek anti-fascist rapper murdered by ‘neo-Nazi’ Golden Dawn supporter, Independent, 18 September 2013:

Greek police raided the Athens offices of the Golden Dawn party after Pavlos Fyssas, a left-wing rapper otherwise known as MC Killah P, was killed by a 45-year-old man claiming his allegiance to the far-right group.

34-year-old Pavlos Fysass died in hospital having suffered at least two stab wounds to the heart and ribs, police officials said.

Local reports say Fysass had been watching a game of football at a café in the Athens suburb of Keratsini when he was surrounded by a group of 30 men in Golden Dawn shirts and military style trousers.

The 45-year-old man arrested in conjunction with Fysass’s death has admitted to the murder and also stated his support for Golden Dawn, police say.

Greece moves to ban far-right Golden Dawn party, Guardian, 18 September 2013:

The Greek government has hinted that it will seek to ban Golden Dawn after the far-right party was linked to the murder of a leading leftwing musician in Athens.

As violence erupted on the streets and demonstrators protested after the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fyssas, a prominent anti-fascist, the public order minister, Nikos Dendias, cancelled a trip abroad saying the government would table emergency legislation that would seek to outlaw the group.

Amid renewed political tensions between the extreme left and right, the new law would re-evaluate what constituted a criminal gang, he said.

"Neither the state will tolerate, nor society accept, acts and practices that undermine the legal system," the minister told reporters, adding that the attack showed "in the clearest way the [party's] intentions".

This is where German austerity has driven Greece: actual Nazis beating and murdering people in the streets, while the police stand by (when they're not joining in). Its a familiar story. Hopefully it will have a different ending.

A victory for free media in Greece

Last week, the Greek government pulled the plug on state broadcaster ERT. Now, the courts have ordered it back on air. But only in the interim - they endorsed the idea of restructuring, just not cutting it off immediately.

In the meantime, the government's high-handed actions have upset its coalition partners, who were not consulted, and it is now threatening to cause the collapse of the coalition and a snap election. This is being greeted with horror by the NeoLiberals, who are using phrases like "possible destruction of the country" if they're forced to go to the polls. Which I think perfectly illustrates their contempt for democracy and the people they supposedly represent. If Greece has an election over this, the country will go on - but a large pack of the parasitic and institutionally corrupt MPs who have sold their country out to the IMF will not. And that can only be a Good Thing.

Blinding the public in Greece

The Greek government has shut down its state broadcaster "to save money":

Greek state TV and radio were gradually pulled off the air late on Tuesday, hours after the government said it would temporarily close all state-run broadcasts and lay off about 2,500 workers as part of a cost-cutting drive demanded by the bailed-out country's international creditors.

TV and radio stations of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT, were pulled off the air in several parts of the country from about 11pm (9pm BST), about an hour before the government said all signals would go dead, although satellite broadcasts continued.

The conservative-led government said ERT would reopen "as soon as possible" with a new, smaller workforce. It wasn't immediately clear how long that would take, and whether all stations would reopen.

I guess its far easier to impose "reforms" and sell off the country if there is no independent media there to keep an eye on you.

The good news is that the Greek people aren't taking this lying down. And neither are the ERT staff - they've seized control of their studios and are still broadcasting with the assistance of the European Broadcasting Union. The government's response has been to threaten to send in riot police to shut them up - which tells you what this is really about: blinding the public and stifling criticism.

Economic malpractice

The IMF has admitted what everyone knew all along: that the austerity it imposed was the wrong prescription for Greece:

The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.

In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.

Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece's debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion.

Which raises the obvious question: are they going to do anything to fix the mess they've made? Or are they going to ignore it and prescribe the same deadly medicine to the next country?

And it is deadly medicine. The IMF's austerity didn't just crash the Greek economy, sentence it to decades of poverty, and infect them with fascism and torture - it killed people, from poor health care, infant mortality, disease and suicide. If a doctor committed this sort of malpractice, they'd be going to jail. The IMF technocrats who did this to Greece should face the same fate.