The new measures package

 

The new measures package

 

On Wednesday 7th of November the Greek parliament voted for the new austerity measures package. It is almost impossible to describe in detail all these measures and their impact on Greek people 's life even in broad outline but generally speaking we could say that by including a lot of redundancies, further decrease of salaries, pensions and benefits, they bring down whatever remains standing after three years of austerity.

The age of retirement raises by 2 years which means that the majority of the workers will go into retirement at 67 years old even those who are ready to be retired next year. They cut down all pensions by between 5% and 15% and they cut out the Christmas and Easter bonus for all pensioners and public servants too. Depending on the case, the working sector and conditions, they either cut down or even stop welfare state benefits, such as unemployment, poverty, family/child care and even handicap benefits.

They also introduce a retrospective change in the national agreement of labour which has been called anti-constitutional by a specialist committee of the parliament itself but that seems not to bother the government. According to this change the minimum wage will be frozen and from now on will be regulated by the minister of labour itself, there will be no increase for anyone to the scale of payments, the  employers will have the right to give shorter notice before discharge, lower redundancy pay, lower contribution to the pension and health funds and the working hours also will depend on their will. Finally the employers are not obliged to follow the national agreement if they do not want to sign it!

There are also further increases in indirect taxes, measures against the income of farmers, redundancies in the public sector and total flexibility of the public servants. The package contains further privatization of the public sector, enforcing also further privatization of hospital treatment which includes a price for hospital admission (a patient who will need to be admitted to a hospital will have to pay 25 Euro just to start with). This, for a country with more than 30% unemployment, means that thousands of people will not be able to afford medical treatment.

 

Greece, November 6th and 7th: General strike

A 48-hours general strike was called in Greece by the general confederation of the Greek unions for 6th and 7th of November.

On Tuesday 6th of November, first day of the general strike, a few thousand people gathered in the morning at the strike demonstration gathering point at the national museum near to the Polytechnic school. It seems that the strikes in the transportation sector and the continuous general strikes during the last period prevented people from attending. Despite the presence of a lot of riot police squads, undercover policemen and motorcycle police units in most streets and side-streets leading to Syntagma square, demonstrators marched toward the square and they filled it until 1 o' clock when they started to leave the place. It was a quiet and quite disappointing day of strike!

On the second day things seem to be different. There were several calls for gathering outside of the parliament in the afternoon when the measures package will be voted. Plenty of strikers have been detained by the police as its units attacked and blocked demonstrators who were trying to go to the gathering point. Additionally metro stations in the center of Athens were ordered closed by the police and policemen on several occasions made preemptive detentions, in order to prevent demonstrators from reaching syntagma square.

Despite the police mobilization at least 100.000 demonstrators managed to gathered at 18:30 in front of or next to the Greek parliament. At 19:00 demonstrators started pushing the metal fence and the barriers which protected the parliament and as soon as they managed to destroy a small part of it riot police units attacked people. Molotov Cocktails (petrol bombs) were thrown by the demonstrators in order to defend themselves from police attacks. Huge amounts of teargas and stun grenades were used by riot police squads in order to force demonstrators to abandon the square. But people wanted to stay in the square and they regrouped again every time they were forced to disperse by the teargas. The pressing from demonstrators was so  intense that police officers decided to use water canons for the first time against people during a strike.

There were clashes outside the parliament and around syntagma square for hours until the rain started. It was amazing to see that people did not want to leave the area! But the combination of the teargases with the rain turned the whole area into an unbearable field for the majority of the demonstrators. Most of them started to leave under the continuous attacks by the riot police squads. As the blocks of strikers were leaving the area, police units attacked, causing a lot of people to be wounded. There were reported at least 40 injuries, some of them helped by striking doctors and nurses in a kind of DIY health clinic inside a hotel in the area.

After a final attempt to re-take syntagma square, riot police units finally cleared the area from the strikers under heavy rain around 10:00. There were reported to be 103 detentions, 5 arrests, at least 40 injured demonstrators and 7 injured policemen.

The package of severe austerity measures has passed through the parliament  after a midnight vote.  

 

group of libertarian communists

Athens

About yesterday in Athens

Cops with APCs, with chemicals, with guns, with motorcycles. At the
same time that inside, Parliament voted for the slashing of wages and
pensions, for the dismissal of thousands of people and many other
shameful things (in a shameless manner), outside another giant police
operation of repression unfolded against the demonstrators. Even in
the rain, the cops choked Syntagma Square in tear gas to disperse the
protesters who had remained. For all that, the state certainly has
money. It has money to enforce a police state in the streets. It has
money to purchase tons of chemicals and APCs. It has money to armor
like lobsters the special units of repression.
As long as people are not willing to lose even one day's wages, to
risk two or three most basic things, then their misery, physical and
moral, is certain. This whole system of suppression, the spraying with
tear gas, the cordoning of the streets around the Constitution by riot
police lined like laces, is aimed at nothing more than to force us to
stoop our heads and shut up. Its aims are that we empty the streets,
stay at home immersed in depression, or head to the mountains, or
board a plane and emigrate.
But this place does not belong to them. The struggle for this land and
its freedom is a struggle that we have been fighting for years now. No
matter how many cops they put up, this struggle is not going to stop.
No matter how many measures they take, how many electoral backstops
they have in parliament, nothing is finished, and nothing will end the
way they want it.
We have nothing else to do than to give a way to rage, as a recent
anarchist slogan goes in an athenian street ...

Antifascist Action

Three videos of antifascist action in Greece, today


Anti-fascist network in southern Attica
 

 Attack at Golden Dawn's nazi party offices

 Antifascist patrol in the center of Athens

 

Greece: Urgent call for international solidarity!

Comrades,
The purpose of this message is to inform you briefly about what is happening the last days in our country and to appeal an international call of solidarity to all anarchists worldwide.

Greece is at a critical turning point, and many critical changes are taking place in a societal as well as a political and economic level. The disintegration and dissolution of the dominant – until recently – model of power and exploitation is more than evident, so it defines what is commonly called ‘crisis.’ What we are experiencing now is the total failure of a system that is unable to secure any longer the social consensus, thereby is engaged in a frontal attack that is unconditional and with no pretext.

Initially, at the beginning of this condition which was called ‘crisis,’ the attack occurred in materialistic terms. With the devaluation of labour, the horizontal reduction of wages, the ‘flexible’ working conditions, the institutionalization of insecurity, the increase of the price of consuming goods and public utility bills, the increase of taxes and the cuts in welfare benefits. At the same time, the sale of public wealth to private individuals, the widespread police presence on the streets, the auctions, the rising of unemployment began…

In addition, the unprecedented attack by means of propaganda was unleashed. The mass media controlled by the State and Capital unleashed a staggering rate of catastrophology and publishing of disaster scenarios and production of calendar milestones of ‘disclosure’ such us… ‘If Troika does not approve the next installment of the loan, we will fall apart…’ With all these, the communicative mechanism of Power manages continually to blur the water and maintain a state of terror ensuring the paralysis of society via extortion.

However, the resistance has never stopped for a part of the Greek society and the proletariat. Occasionally, declarations for general strikes are surrounded in a different degree by people who actively resist and express their willingness to fight against the conditions imposed by the State and Capital.

At the general strike of May 11th in Athens, once again thousands of protesters marched and voiced their opposition to the Greek government’s new anti-social measures which effect the workers and the majority of people. During the demonstration, while a big part of the protesters had passed by the parliament and were heading to an end, the cops attacked without provocation and viciously the most radical demonstrator blocks – anarchists and anti-authoritarians, neighborhood assemblies, rank-and-file labour unions, extra-parliamentary left – beating them with unprecedented savagery and firing hundreds of tear gas against them, until these blocks were dispersed. More than 100 demonstrators were hospitalized, while others underwent surgery.

Comrade Yannis was the protester whose health right now is in the most critical situation. Having suffered a murderous attack by the cops which caused him severe head injuries, he was transferred to the hospital in an antemortem (pre-death) situation –according to the medical report issued later. After the doctors ascertain the breadth of internal head bleeding, he immediately underwent surgery; he has been intubated in the intensive care clinic since. His situation remains critical but stable, without having escaped the danger for his life or health.

It is obvious that these murderous attacks against demonstrator strikers on Wednesday, May 11th, had a single purpose: to intimidate people and all those who resist to the attacks of Power and capitalist State. It was an act for exemplification aiming at the subjugation of people that seemed to send the following message: stay home, quit and disciplined.

In the content of this very procedure the sovereignty recently enlists more and more the right-wing and/or its parastate offshoots. The outbreaks of racist violence recently multiplied across the country, and reached a climax last week. In the light of the cold-blooded murder of a resident in the centre of Athens with intent to robbery, for which many immigrants have become a target, an unprecedented pogrom against migrants has been unleashed. Groups from organized and/or autonomous fascists, racists and extreme rightists took the opportunity to gather every evening to attack immigrants, injuring several while the death of an economic migrant also seems to have resulted by them. At the same time, the neo-Nazis alongside with the police also attack squats in the city centre, leading comrades into a condition in which we have to defend ourselves at the risk of our lives against police and fascist brutality.

The gravity of the situation is obvious. Once society accepts an unprecedented attack in materialistic terms the most radical political parts – one of the main being the anarchist milieu – are under police and fascists attack (literally this time, if one considers the murderous rage).

This is the reason why we urgently call for international solidarity!

Solidarity has always been one of the value features of anarchists. We always count on solidarity to support our struggles and fight back the logic of isolation and retirement into private life promoted by the state power, and also the capitalist condition of individuation and dismantling of the collective notion.

Now that the Greek society and the proletariat suffer a strain with unprecedented deterioration of living conditions, now that anarchists are under such an oppression that takes dimensions of actual attempted murder, now that the anarchist political milieu is being at the sight of state violence and fascist threat, we need to see our comrades around the world to call actions and stand in solidarity to our struggle; by organizing events, demonstrations, marches, protests, by writing texts, via words and actions; anything that the comrades deem most appropriate; any expression of revolutionary solidarity that only anarchists know and want to demonstrate, will vitalize our spirit and strengthen our struggles.

With comradely greetings,

Group of libertarian communists (Athens)

Eutopia journal

See also the following internet links:

http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/ additional information about recent events in Greece

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1288989 video: police attacks the demonstration

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1290982 video: fascists and police in co-operation attack immigrants

http://www.demotix.com/photo/688561/demonstration-stabbed-greek-turns-riots-and-racist-acts photos: nazis attack immigrants

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1288923 photos: police attacks the demonstration

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1289018 photos: police attacks the demonstration

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1289114 photos: police attacks the demonstration

Athens, gym of anarchy

In the last month, we have an enormous attack from the government (of PASOK) with very hard economic measures against the employers. Especially, the first economic measures focus on the wages of the civil servants.

As the mass-media are writing, “the debt-ridden country is under intense pressure from both markets and the European Union to reduce its deficit from 12.7 percent of economic output in 2009 to 8.7 percent this year. Last week, Greece introduced a harsh $6.5 billion austerity package that cut civil servants' wages, froze pensions and raised consumer taxes”.

The percdentage of the duty of the greek state only to four greek banks arrives the 23%, while the previous government (of Nea Dimokratia), before almost 8 mounths, gave to all the greek banks enormous economic amount for supporting them.

The first strike was done on 10 February and was organized only from ADEDY, the union of the syndicates of the civil salaries. The next one was on 24 February and it was organized both from ADEDY and GSEE (the general confederation of the trade unions in the private companies).

Another general strike was done in 5 March with the participation of about 25.000 people in the central manifestations in Athens. We have to point here that the trade unions that are controlled from the stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE)  and have formed the PAME (from the words “panworking front”) always make a different manifestation in all the centers of the greek cities. In the manifestation of that general strike, we had clashes between the police and protesters. Also, in this manifestation, leftists and anarchists attacked against the president of GSEE, who is a member of PASOK, and hit him. In the some manifestation, the old left militant Manolis Glezos, 88 years old, while trying to save a protester who had been arrested, accepted an attack from the special forces of the police with tear-gas and went to the hospital, fortunately without serious problems (Manolis Glezos, with another comrade of him, had brought down the flag of the Nazis from the hill of Acropolis, when Hitler;s troops had conquered Greece).

On 11 March, we had in Greece the last general strike with a satisfactory amount of employers and servants participating in it. In the two central manifestations in Athens, the protesters were more than 30.000 and in Thessaloniki about 14.000. Also, in this manifestation, the tension between the protesters and the huge special forces of the police was not missed. We had clashes body-with-body between protesters (usually, anarchists-antiautoritarians) and policemen, broken banks and big shops and 9 protesters arrested. The commands at the police forces were not to tolerate attacks from the protesters. In some cases, the policemen attacked very violently against protesters (and especially groups of anarchists) without a several reason, and so we had as a result also injured protesters.  

It is true that the social-democrat government of G.Papandreou, that has the power the last 6 months, has still not so the support but the tolerance of the society. The people want to believe that the state and the big capital couldn’t be to  prepare a very bad future for the greek society.  They do not want to believe that they will not live as now but with much more bad salaries and conditions. So, they can see the attack of the government but they avoid to face it with very massive manifestations in the streets.  On the opposite site, there is -not a large but- an important part of the society, that faces in the streets and the manifestations the straight class attack of the greek and European bosses against the employers and the civil servants. It is characteristic that after the last manifestation, the police couldn’t  dissolve all the protesters and for two hours, there were sporadic clashes with the police in the streets, especially in the area of Eksarheia.

In the last three decades, the syndicalists of PASOK and KKE had the total control in the workplaces. Now, the syndicalists of PASOK preserve the control of the most of the syndicates of civil servants and in the trade unions they divide the control with the stalinist communists of KKE. The leaders of the syndicates are professional syndicalists and basic members of the big parties and the people do not trust them generally but support them only for solutions of the daily problems of the work. Nevertheless, in the last 5-6 years, something has started to change. Some new syndicates of base, like those in the employers of the bookshops, the couriers, etc have started to create a new form of syndicalist action, a form of the syndicalism of base. In parallel, some other groups of workers-employers from the extreme left and the anarchist-antiautoritarian political space, have made some efforts to strengthen the class struggle forwards a destination of the syndicalism of direct action.      

The state knows that the anarchist militants in Greece have started to have presence and influence not only in the youth (like until 2000) but also in several  neighborhoods and working places. In parallel, the anarchist-antiautoritarian movement in Greece preserves a dynamic presence in the streets and responds –with more or less successful and clever methods- to the police repression. So, in the first three months, the basic propaganda of the government was against the “criminal violence” of the anarchists and the way to face it. The creation of an enormous new part of policemen with motorcycles (group Delta) in the center of Athens is one of the new police anti-anarchist measures. Of course, the state wanted to dissolve every point of out-of-resistance before bringing this –and of course another- packet with heavy economic measures. But, it succeeded it only in a part and not totally.

We know that the days that are coming will be very difficult. The new measures hit not only the economic possibility of the society but also the way of life. The fear of the unemployment and the presence of almost one million immigrants, especially from countries from Asia and Africa, provoke dangerous social conditions and we do not know how many poverty we have to face and also which will be the destination of the social hate that is increasing. We have to create new forms of struggle and also new forms of solidarity and mutual aid between the people. The social-class war must find us united in the next difficult years that will come for European south (and of course not only). We have to believe in a society that seems not to believe in itself and this is a very dangerous point also for the anarchist movement. So, we have not only to wait from the society but, through the new forms of struggle and organization, to create new social relations.   

Eutopia

Libertarian  communists Group

Athens, 14/3/2010