Democracy's Long Full Circle
by C. L. Cook
 Fittingly, withered Democracy has returned home to die. Today marked the third general strike action in Greece in less than a month. Greek police, like the fascist police forces across the former free world, chose to brutalize the citizenry, at one point tear-gassing them like so many South African miners. (Gas you may recall was used by the former Apartheid regime to force striking gold miners back into the mines, that the stream of lucre they produced for their pale overlords would continue unhindered.)
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Like their fellow wage slaves in the African gold mines, the Greeks are forced to swallow their new penury to benefit the rich. While Greek prime minister, George Papandreou traveled Europe seeking aid for the crumpled economy, his government announced it would carve a further 4.8 billion euros out of it.
That 4.8 billion coming on top of a more than 11 billion chop announced last month. This comes with internationally mandated austerity measures that will see sales taxes rise, as pay and pensions for civil servants are frozen.
At the heart of this crisis is the American capital firm of Goldman Sachs, the same recipients of billions in U.S. taxpayer bailouts, who employed some of its creative accounting and investment instruments to fool the European Union overseers sitting in judgment of aspirant Greece's bid to enter the EU.
The New York Times reports, Goldman Sachs managed to move billions in debt a column or two over in the Greek balance books, just enough to bring the country into line with European Union deficit rules. For this Goldman Sachs received a cool US$300 million in fees. Now, Greece owes the world banking system more than 300 billion bucks, a debt, like that of America's big banks, is thought too big to be allowed to go unpaid.
And that's where the the Greeks in the streets come in.
Last week, violence erupted following the second mass walk out in Greece. Police came out in force, though some of their own members, and members of the air traffic controllers and fire fighters too, joined the strike mobilized by the country's primary private sector union, GSEE and joined by sister union, ADEDY. The two unions represent more than 2.5 million workers.
Schools, hospitals, and airports shut down, while even media failed to report, its workers striking alongside them.
The BBC reports some 25,000 took to the streets of Athens, while other cities around the country saw demonstrations. They're angry at the prospect of being stuck with a bill they didn't run up. They threw stones and hurled insults at police, but the authors of this disaster where far out of range.
Despite the rage in the streets, the government says it will not be moved, swearing allegiance to international finance. In its effort to reduce its debt, the government is mandating cuts to the public sector, a raising of the retirement age, increased sales taxes, with more likely to come as these measures fail. But the government says there is no options but to make the changes.
The Associated Press quotes GSEE union head, Yiannis Panagopoulos saying;
"They are trying to make workers pay the price for this crisis. These measures will not be effective and will throw the economy into deep freeze."
Another strike is scheduled next week.
The natives are getting hot in Iceland too. Last Saturday the Icelanders held a national referendum and voted to refuse to bail out one of the nation's oldest and largest banks in a 93% repudiation of socializing private sector debt. Even so, the country's prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir dismissed the will of the people, promising ahead of the vote to work something out for Icesave and the foreign banks that led it down the path to debt disaster.
The message here is the same for Icelanders, Greeks, and the rest of us who believe the people are not responsible for the sins of the ruling class, and will soon too face the same dilemma:
"Tough luck; you're on the hook for this, so get back to work before the men with the gas masks get here."
Ain't democracy grand.
Independent Icelandic News - The Icesave Fraud Case
"The public was deliberately lied to and the deception was complete. The banks fell, the Brits and Dutch, and Germans too are pissed off and we Icelanders have to loose our savings, our homes, our jobs, our dignity. We also have to pay for the Germans, the Dutch and the Brits.
"We are only starting to 'feel the cold dead hand of the neoconservatist financial free market monster' that tore through the world and is still squeezing the Icelandic nation, even after its death. We don’t get a recession, we get a complete collapse." June 23, 2009
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