If I understand this item from today’s Guardian properly, Greek public workers, angry about cutbacks and layoffs, have decided to stop working. Own goal, you might say. But there’s more, of course. The unworking public workers also want to grace workers in the private sector — and in Greece, that means tourism — with the blessings of worklessness.
In a step not seen since the return of democracy in 1974, unions announced a 48-hour strike to coincide with what is expected to be a raucous debate in parliament over the cuts. The walk-out, which begins on Tuesday, is expected to paralyse the country at the height of the tourist season.
On Monday, as the 300-seat parliament prepared for the vote, communist militants stormed the Acropolis, unfurling protest banners from the ramparts. As holidaymakers ascended the hill to the fifth-century BC site, they were greeted by the slogan: “The peoples have the power and never surrender. Organise. Counterattack.”
The extent of hostility to the four-year austerity plan, which includes tax increases on everything from property to soft drinks, and loss-making public utilities being privatised at a rate of one every 15 days, appears to have unnerved the socialist government. Prime minister George Papandreou’s majority has been whittled down after a series of defections.
“Loss-making private public utilities” run by loss-making public employees are fortunate to find private investors every two weeks, if you ask me. But it seems particularly mad to make tourism — one of Greece’s few profit-making enterprises — impossible. The whole country’s in ruins, and that’s good. Now, if only they could sell postcards of an economy that resembles the Parthenon, roofless, crumbling.
Yesterday, at the Estoril Political Forum in deficit-rich Portugal, my Fortnightly Review colleague, British philosopher Anthony O’Hear, explained to the attendees the link between the mobs of Athens and those in the Middle East and elsewhere. (His remarks are here.) Plato, he pointed out, had a name for street-choking mobs: he called them the “great beast.” Those who succeed in riding its back are often taken to unexpected destinations.
"The whole country’s in ruins, and that’s good"
Remember socialism is the way station to communism. They remember all too well that it was through anarchy that the Soviet Union was created - so what we are seeing is by design. Anarchists are the shock troops of the Left and the socialists are all too happy to engage in such behaviour if it moves the country towards their end goal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen I was in Athens a few years ago, they were trying to rebuild the Parthenon. I wonder how that's going.
I also recall the irony of street protests being enacted by the most organized and disciplined anarchists I'd ever seen.
Historians tell us that democracy was born in Greece. (A PBS video I saw even interviewed a moustached VDH.) Too bad the politicians can't say "You, the people, don't want any cuts? OK, here's the budget; *YOU* figure it out!" But the Greeks I remember were very good at ducking responsibility.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder if this mentality of "give us jobs and benefits, you have only to pick more cash off of the Money Tree in order to do so" is truly indicative of Greeks as a whole?
I was about to comment on Greece, but the remembered our own brand of greedy, benefits-beholden mobs in Madison, WI.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI misread the headline as "The Beastliness of Geek Crowds" and was envisioning a fierce battle among system admins.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd how is this going to look when it plays out here in the US?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo, how is that Egyptian tourist industry going these days? The Greeks seem to be happy to destroy the only profitable enterprise in the third-world country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWatching the news yesterday evening, I was sent into laughing hysterics by this business in Greece.
First, as I missed the intro to the news segment, I found myself asking if the WTO was in town. Looked like a typical scene on some metropolitan downtown streets when "trade" is on the docket of discussion.
You know how feisty the "anti-globalization" crowd that worships at the altar of the United Nations and the ICC can get when the uninhibited flow of goods and capital is being discussed!
Then, they interviewed a store owner along the coast. I could not help but think, "God, that woman is so fortunate! Look at the scenery she gets to enjoy while doing business every day."
Well, she sent me into my laughing fit. The interviewer wanted to know what she thought of the public employees rioting and protesting.
"Of course they're rioting!" She said in PERFECT English.
"If the firm goes private, they'll actually have to work!"
Socialism on display. And a diamond in the rough who grasps the full reality.
Is it any wonder Obama wants another Stimulus and higher taxes?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow do you punish a government for not having enough money? Make sure is has less, of course.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was stationed in Greece in the mid-80's as a member of the Air Force. Great scenery, good regular folk, the worst government in free Europe. The EU and Euro doomed itself to collapse when it included that corrupt disaster in the portfolio.
One headline today indicated these riots have brought Greece to a standstill. Very misleading, as that implies Greece was moving forward. Greece may have been the birthplace of democracy, but it really hasn't done much to distinguish itself in the last 2500 years. And that single bullet statement is looking pretty stale on the national resume.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm confident ACORN and SEIU and the other labor mobs will do an excellent job of copying Greece's labor unrest.
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