Forum Post: World Socialist Web Site: Coup fears in Greece over referendum plan
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 2, 2011, 10:50 p.m. EST by SandyEnglish
(60)
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WSWS: Coup fears in Greece over referendum plan
Prime Minister George Papandreou sacked the Greek military high command Tuesday. The move came amid furor on the part of world governments and international financial markets over his proposal to submit a European Union bailout plan that spells years of punishing austerity for Greek workers to a popular referendum.
The Greek defense ministry issued a terse emailed statement that Papandreou had dismissed his chief of national defense, the Greek Army general staff chief, the heads of the Air Force and the Navy, along with 12 other senior officers.
The announcement fueled rumors in Greece of an impending military coup. These fears are founded on an understanding that the drastic cuts in employment, living standards and essential social services that have been demanded by Europe’s ruling elites as the price for a partial relief of the country’s debt burden cannot be imposed by democratic means.
If a coup is threatened, it is undoubtedly not merely a matter of domestic tensions. Rather it would stem from decisions taken in Berlin, Paris, Washington and NATO that the interests of finance capital require a Pinochet-style solution to the problems in imposing the decisions of the EU on a resisting Greek working class.
Fresh from its bloody success in Libya, NATO may well be preparing another exercise in “regime change,” this time in one of its own member states.
Don't worry about the military. Militaries have historically been known to side with their people. So don't worry about them.
If Iceland could give the banks the finger and still pull through as it has today, then surely the Greeks can do it too.
Give the banks the finger. The bailout is being cleverly named Greek bailout but it is actually a Banker bailout. The money is not going to the Greeks, it is going straight to the banks who made bad bets and lost.
Well fortunately once the neoliberal crowd installs a Greek Pinochet, the Friedman and Hayek droolers will be able to endorse him (or her - we haven't seen a right-wing strongwoman for a while).
http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2006/11/hayekian_dictat.html
And as the brutality begins they'll all hail the restoration of "liberty" to the birthplace of democracy. Newspeak ftw.
Leaving this here. Hope people will read the Moyers piece.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/excellent-speech-by-bill-moyers/
Cool. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM_L6_5X37o
No. Greece, France, Britain and Germany were never socialist in any sense of the word. (Neither was the old DDR, but that's a slightly different case).
The very fact that they were national states should indicate that they were capitalist economies. They are ruled by the financial elite, are a part of the world capitalist economy, and have the same basic social structure as the United States. All of these countries (and many others in the world) have prominent electoral parties that call themselves socialist, and often they have been the ruling parties. They are surrounded by a network of smaller, more left-sounding parties that give them support and cover up for them. (This is very much problem in Greece right now.)
But these parties (as well as the trade unions), including PASOK, in Greece, are staunch defenders of the 1%. They are implementing the austerity the banks demand, not fighting it.
In Europe, given the historically high political development of the working class, the super-rich cannot rule except by relying on parties that claim to speak in the name of the working class or call themselves socialist or communist. The Democrats in the US do something similar.
In other words, a Socialist United States of Europe with the genuine democratic control of the economy by the working class, the expropriation of the banks and nationalization of basic industries will only be accomplished exposing and politically burying PASOK and its ex-left allies, the SPD and Left Party in Germany, the Socialist Party and the NPA in France, the PSOE in Spain, and the British Labour Party.
This is basic.
Well basically you are wrong.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/21942/20100503/greece-braces-for-violent-modernization.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-greece-austerity-kindles-deep-discontent/2011/05/05/AFUQGy2G_story_1.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sanandaji/sanandaji13.html
http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/da_kings_men/2008/11/02/whats-so-great-about-european-socialism/
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/06/eu-set-to-implode-thanks-to-failed.html
This is mostly a potpourri of right-wing publications that equate the welfare state with socialism.
There were gains made by the European and American working class (Social Security in the US, National Health in the UK) after 1930s because of the the threat of much worse by the working class. For a relatively short period of time, they made concessions. The capitalists were afraid of losing it all, and they had a certain leeway in the postwar period especially. That leeway is gone now.
The whole system is in crisis and the old reformist "socialist" parties have gone over to the brutal austerity that the banks are demanding. There is no going back to the welfare state, however, it is possible to take all the wealth out of the hands of the super-rich and run the world economy democratically according to a scientific plan for human needs, genuine socialism, in other words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBXrD9_DK1g&feature=watch_response