Syriza

The genie of political anti-imperialist rebellion in Europe is out of the bottle & cannot be repressed

The Syriza chief is blissfully ignorant of the history of the euro. The horror of austerity is not the consequence of Greek profligacy – it was designed into the euro’s plan from the beginning, writes GREG PALAST
The post Trojan hearse: The Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony appeared first on BSNEWS.

Leader of Greece’s left-wing Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras, casts his ballot at a polling station in Athens, January 25, 2015 Press TV – January 25, 2015 Exit polls show anti-austerity party, Syriza, has won Greece’s general election, which can affect the course of austerity policies in the European country. The exit polls announced on Sunday […]

As you may have heard, Greece will be holding national elections this Sunday, January 25. I’m not here to talk about the election itself, however—I’d rather focus on how the for-profit media has skewed their reporting on the election to imbue everything they write with a clear anti-Syriza bias. And this is an important issue to keep in mind, because as Malcolm X once observed: “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece’s parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25.
Syriza promises that, if elected, it will cure Greece of leprosy.  Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony. That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.

Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”

The balance sheet for 2014 and the prospects for 2015 provide us with a complex panorama of negative and positive outcomes. In most cases the advances, are not earth-shattering but open possibilities for further progress. The negative developments, however, have greater and more threatening systemic outcomes.

In 1964 my wife was 18 years old, too young at that time to vote in England, where she lived. She was nevertheless present when her boss – she worked for an advertising agency in Manchester – assembled the staff and told them to vote Tory, implying dark economic times would accompany the arrival of a Labour government and hinting at possible redundancies.

Greece is experiencing a triple crisis which has a profound impact on the economy, society and political system. The economy has experienced a deep, prolonged depression lasting six years and continuing. Workers and employees have suffered a 40% loss in income and a commensurate decline in medical, pension, educational and welfare benefits. The political system has witnessed a precipitous decline in electoral support for previously dominant right and center left parties and the rapid rise of radical democratic-socialist and fascist parties.

The double Greek elections of May 18th and 25th – municipal and regional on 18th and the European Parliament elections together with the second round of municipal and regional ones where necessary on the 25th – will undoubtedly influence decisively the course of the country. They will reflect the evident as well as underground trends in Greek social and political life developed in the period after the elections of May and June 2012.