Great article by the BBC online today:
Greek conservative Antonis Samaras has three days to form a coalition, faced with EU warnings to keep to the tough terms of international bailouts.
Two-thirds of Greek voters backed parties opposed to the EU/IMF deal, renewing fears that Athens may default on its debts and leave the eurozone.
Germany’s Angela Merkel has made clear that Greece’s reforms must go on.
Is that only me, or is there some kind of bizarre disconnect here?
Let’s read it again.
TWO THIRDS of the Greeks voted AGAINST the pro-financier political parties, yet its the CONSERVATIVE leader which has three days to create a new ruling coalition (presumably maxed out 1/3 of the popular vote?) and the sacking of Greece (aka “reforms”) MUST go on?
Hey, what about vox populi? Have the European ruling elites now officially given up any pretense of “democracy”. 2/3 of Greeks vote “no” and the reply by the elites is “hell yeah!!”.
Europe is rapidly loosing its thin veneer of sovereignty and openly turning to a pathetic colony, as bad as any African colony was in the 19th century. This is not a situation which can be remedied by votes or demonstrations. Greece, and any other country in Europe which does not want to be a US colony, needs a revolutionary independence movement because the ruling elites will not be simply voted out of office. Only an insurrection will toss them out of power.
Where are the color-coded revolutions when we need them? (just kidding, of course!)
The Saker
You can have democracy or you can have the dictatorship of the financial markets and the commissars in Brussels but you can’t have both
@Robert: you are absolutely correct, of course. But what baffles me is the brazen arrogance of the EU oligarchy which OPENLY dismisses the unequivocal will of the majority by, in essence, saying: “you guys can have all the votes you want, we don’t give a fuck and we will keep on doing what we want”.
It is both sad and amazing for me to see how absolutely openly most Western leaders have shown that the regime we live under is not a democracy, but a plutocracy barely disguised as a democracy.
More than ever before I believe that the solution to the world’s plight is not in government change, but in *regime* change and that the latter cannot be accomplished peacefully. Frankly, for me this is a very scary thought, but look at the stolen revolution in Egypt, look at the Obama “change we can believe in” swindle, look at the elections in Greece – they all point to the same inescapable conclusion: no election and no vote will ever remove the plutocrats from power. They simply leave the 99% of us no other choice.
I find that disgusting, scary and rather depressing…
The problem is that the plutocrats can threaten to move their money out of any country that tries to enact radical left reforms. There is also the tyranny of the bond markets threatning to raise the rate at which governments can borrow money. I don’t have a solution to this except to suggest that a continental economy like Europe might be harder to blackmail in this way because while it is relatively straightforward to play off one small country against another finance and big business cannot afford to boycott an economy as large as the EU and lose out to their competitors.
In principle I am all in favour of a united federal Europe as long as it is democratic. And that’s the problem – the present EU is a neoliberal horror and there seems neither the will nor the ability among the politicians to reform it. Also the alienated populations of Europe are turning to nationalism and don’t want to give up their sovereignty although in a globalised neoliberal world national sovereignty is a delusion.
http://www.left.gr/article.php?id=759#.T6plByQvISY
@anonymous: thanks a lot, very interesting document!!! It is good to see such forces becoming more influential and I hope that Greece will have a ‘domino effect’ on the rest of Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/11/europe-needs-greece-syriza-austerity