The Greek No Vote Marks a Victory for Humanity

You could almost hear the collective sound of hearts being lifted across Europe in response to the Greek No ('Oxi') vote to the Troika's bailout demands, making it a moment to savour in itself. The hope that resonates with the defiance shown by the Greek people has been a long time coming for people suffering the weight of austerity, measured in the lack of fight to what has seemed a juggernaut of despair rolling over the lives of millions without respite.
Not anymore.

What this unfolding Greek crisis has exposed is that austerity is not so much an economic theory as an ideological concept - a code for class war, waged by the rich and their political servants against working people and the poor in order to maintain the wealth, privileges and profits of those who crashed the global economy with their unfettered greed and recklessness in the first place.

In calling this referendum, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and his Syriza government delivered a masterstroke, counterposing democracy to the tyranny of global capital, specifically the European Central Bank, IMF, and the European Commission, otherwise known as the Troika. The pressure arrayed against them in the process, both from without and within Greece by the country's privately owned media was inordinate and unprecedented. Yet despite this the people delivered a resounding No, thus plunging the Troika into crisis as Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and exit from the EU.

More by John Wight on Huff. Post.

In Brazil, a dual struggle against neoliberalism

In Brazil, students and the indigenous may be fighting different fights, but they are ultimately part of the same struggle against the neoliberal state.

While the world has been watching Turkey, another country is experiencing revolt: Brazil. Just like Turkey, Brazil has recently experienced relative success in economic terms. But just as in Turkey, the spoils of this economic growth are divided extremely unequally. Just like in Turkey, a relatively small provocation has sparked a much more widespread chain reaction. Unlike in Turkey, that provocation is a direct attack on living standards. But the anger exploding as a result of it appears to run just as deep.

According to the BBC, “the demonstrators were mostly university students, but the authorities said there were also groups of anarchists looking for a fight.” The idea that some students might be anarchists by conviction, and that some anarchists go to college because they like to learn, apparently does not occur to either “authorities” or the BBC. And the ones “looking for a fight” were above all the rabid police troops themselves, who used excessive amounts of teargas and rubber bullets against mostly unarmed demonstrators, some of whom did attack shops and set fire to tyres. But that’s what desperate people do if you make their lives even harder by rising the prices of public amenities in a context of rapid inflation.

Overall, more than 50 people were left injured and the number of arrests exceeded 200. According to the BBC, “police say they seized petrol bombs, knives, and drugs.” Sure. And yes, “police acted with professionalism”, according to the state governor. Obviously. After all, repression is their profession.

More on ROAR Magazine

Former Mubarak man appointed Egyptian prime minister

Egyptian state media reported that 78-year-old Kamal al-Ganzouri, who served under Mr Mubarak from 1996 to 1999, had agreed in principle to lead a “national salvation” government after meeting with the head of the ruling army council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

While the appointment is highly unlikely to find favour in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, other Egyptians are likely to approve the choice of a man seen as a moderate. Nonetheless it will be seen as an act of desperation by the military.

More on Telegraph

Fuck You Papan­dreou

Riot Granny

After Loukanikos the Riot Dog, Athens, Greece gets a new symbol of hope and global resistance that makes its way into the limelight...the Riot Granny.

Ordinary Greeks turning to NGOs as health system hit by austerity

It is unheard of for aid groups such as Medecins Sans Frontieres or Medicins du Monde to have to take over the role of providing basic medical services from normal state or private providers in a Western country.

But in the era of ever-tightening EU-IMF austerity, that is what is happening in Greece now, as the unemployed and HIV patients begin to turn up at temporary clinics that had been intended to come to the aid of migrants and refugees.

According to Apostolos Veizis, the head of programmes for MSF Greece, this is the new reality that the country is waking up to.

EUobserver.com

4 p.i.g.s and a square

Μultimedia documentary of Athens Syntagma square Media Center. Starring Pigoulinos, representing the people of P.I.G.S.

There is a plan to strangle financially the nations so that the rich become richer and the poor poorer. A "select" few want to control entire states. To start with, the banks set in motion in each country the plan for the extreme accumulation of debt, assisted by corrupt governments.
Then comes the I.M.F. ...

See: http://realdemocracygr.wordpress.com/ 
and http://www.amesi-dimokratia.org/

DEBTOCRACY

For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.

Bankers Laugh As Athens Burns

Greece's ruling socialist party has passed a second austerity bill needed to implement an austerity package to secure more funds from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The vote saw 155 members of parliament voting in favour of the bill, 136 voting against and five abstentions. Politicians voted on Thursday on the second of two austerity bills that are key to receiving funding, after endorsing an initial law on Wednesday to slash $40bn off the national debt.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

The Strauss Kahn Frame-Up: The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward

Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn’s book is that he was far ahead of America’s French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

Paul Craig Roberts on Infowars

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Strauss-Kahn sex scandal obscures real IMF story