Sunday, February 12, 2012

Greek General Strike: Day Two

[Updated]

I do not have much info on striking workers or demonstrations as of now. But I know that occupations have continued across the country:

In the capital of the North, Thessaloniki, a cinema was occupied by the Antiauthoritarians (Worker Autonomy):



In Heraklion, a TV station was captured at least for a while by the Anarchists (video of the emission in Greek language).

The Law School of Athens is still occupied by students. They issued a second  communication:

LET’S TURN THE SOCIAL EXPLOSION INTO REVOLUTION

The era of ‘prosperity’ is over. The dream of access to consumption and advancement, as expressed by the triptych ‘show-off, consumption, career’, has suddenly become the ultimate nightmare. But now there is no turning back. The times when the employers squeezed the foreigners at farms and construction sites, the periods when you boasted as a proud volunteer for the Olympic Games and you had maids as your slaves at home, will never come back.

You see the place in which your racism has put the migrants all along, now coming for yourself and your children. And you dread this fact. When the destruction of other societies, such as Eastern Europe or Iraq, shielded your privileges within the international competition, cynically you benefited the most.

Is it perhaps time to give up capitalism, nationalism and consumerism? To stop thinking like a householder, and understand who your real enemies are? The State, the bosses, the cops, the very system of political economy…
For it is not you who loses a job, but it is your job that disappears as a potential. For it is the destructive force of capitalism that threatens the mere existence of us all.

The only potentials for survival which capitalism leaves us lie either in the soup kitchen queues, the scavenging for food through garbage, or looting of supermarkets.

For this, the only solution is Social Revolution. So as to have a life, and not survival alone.

This requires that we rise up against all economic and political institutions; and that we take our measures during the uprising, such as abolishing the State, property, nation, sexism and patriarchy, in order to bring revolution in everyday life.

WILDCAT STRIKES, SELF-ORGANIZED OCCUPATIONS,
WIDESPREAD REVOLTS EVERYWHERE
FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Occupied Law School
February 10th, 2012
__________________________________________________

(Update) Contra Info reports that during the day there was a police siege against the occupation and that everyone who attempted to enter the School was registered. They also report on a number of various demonstrations through the country, none of them too numerous (5000 reported in Athens at the Parliament for example).

However Occupy London appears to think that people is preserving their forces for tomorrow's demos. After all it has been a long week of struggle in Greece and the end is not in sight at all.
__________________________________________________


Occupy London also reports that, among those arrested yesterday, three (a minor aged 16, a 20 y.o. French exchange student and a third person who suffers serious health problems) have been charged with one felony and three misdemeanors each. Other five people are charged only with misdemeanors, three have been released and two not yet. One of them, N.P., is in hospital with broken ribs and serious injuries through all the body because of the beatings by the police (right?)


Government instability

As I already mentioned four ministers resigned yesterday and a fifth ones days before. Among the dissident ministers, two are social-democrats, one of which emphasized that she resigned in protest against the fixation of EU with destroying labor rights. 

Three however belong to the Christian-Fascist party LAOS, which has moved out of a coalition that was damaging its prospects of gaining votes at the expense of the conservatives. Simultaneously they have waved rumors of military coup, which is most unlikely, much less to succeed at all where an elected government is failing. 

The coalition still should have enough votes to pass the imposition by Brussels but their position is being weakened as we speak. Based on the polls I could find online, if there were elections right now, of all the coalition members only the conservatives of Nea Demokratia (the ones who organized all the fiasco and the main culprits) can expect to hold positions, all the rest will simply collapse (PASOK and LAOS would not get more than 6% each, although some of the social-democratic vote would go to a brand new dissident party, the Liberal Democrats, who unavoidably will form part of the next coalition government to enforce IMF's dictates).

Elections are supposed to be held in the Spring (by the national coalition agreement).
That is why LAOS has moved out of the government after a symbolic participation, because they and their partners realize that they need a pseudo-radical entity to do the dirty job and be ready to replace the ruling clique and also ready to throw around all the state terrorism you can imagine. 

Beware!

Serious Left parties like the Neo-Stalinist KKE or the Radical Left coalition Syriza remain opposed to all this macabre circus against the Working Class, as do the extra-parlamentarian but strong Anarchist and Antiauthoritarian movements, who lead the protests often.
 
Partial sources not linked in-text: Al Jazeera, Occupy London.

See also the report on the first day of the General Strike.

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