By Corinna Jessen - 08/18/2010

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back...A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society..."Things are starting to simmer here...And at some point they're going to explode."

By Nikos Raptis - August 08, 2010

As always, history is a useful instrument to help one understand what is going on in this (rather tragic) world...On April 21, 1967, a group of Greek army officers, as instruments of the CIA, established a brutal dictatorship in Greece. The moment that the army tanks rolled in the streets of Athens the military handed to the police a "list" of men and women of the Left that were to be arrested immediately. There were more than 15,000 names on that list. The people arrested were imprisoned in concentration camps.

By Apostolis Fotiadis - August 02, 2010

While public debate in Greece is focused on austerity measures to cut the country's ballooning budget deficit, little attention has been paid to the societal impact of growing unemployment and how these harsh measures are squeezing the salaries of ordinary citizens..."[T]his is the future they want to give us."

SchNEWS - Friday 30th July 2010 | Issue 733

Greece has been left paralysed by strikes as fuel tanker drivers, air traffic controllers and parliamentary workers oppose austerity measures.

By Dimitris Fasfalis - June 10, 2010

Workers in Greece today stand in the forefront of the converging European class struggles against big capital's attempt to make working people pay the costs of its crisis...“We're sending from Athens a message of struggle and resistance to workers of all the European countries, against the barbarism of capital markets, governments and the European Union. The government, the IMF and the European Union have decided to drive the workers, and Greek society, to the most savage social barbarism that we have ever known...”

By Chris Hedges - May 24, 2010

Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country...They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks...Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare...The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.

By John Pilger - May 21, 2010

The crisis that has led to the “rescue” of Greece by the European banks and the International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system which itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war that is rarely reported as such and is waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial rich...What makes Greece different is that within its living memory is invasion, foreign occupation, betrayal by the West, military dictatorship and popular resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that dominates the European Union.

By Jayati Ghosh - May 19, 2010

The Greek government is being asked to implement austerity measures that will cause a major decline in incomes and employment not just now but in the foreseeable future, and which will not correct the existing imbalances but actually worsen them...The heavily-indebted poor countries...of Africa could tell the Greeks a thing or two about this process...They could tell them about their own experience of several lost decades of economic retrogression, which could have been avoided had the debt restructuring taken place much earlier and a different set of policies for economic recovery been pursued.

By Alex Lantier - May 13, 2010

The Greek general strike and continuing mass protests against the European-IMF austerity package...are a sign of coming class struggles in Europe and around the world...There is bitter opposition among Greek workers to [Prime Minister George] Papandreou’s policy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are to be cut, workers will take initial pay cuts of 20 percent or more, and social services and pensions are to be gutted.

Wednesday, May 05 2010 - Infoshop News

[The] tragic deaths in Athens [of three bank workers] leave little space for comments – we are all very shocked and deeply saddened by the events. To those...who speculate that the deaths might have been caused purposefully by anarchists, we can only reply the following: we do not take to the streets, we do not risk our freedom and our lives confronting the Greek police in order to kill other people...That being said...we want to publish a rough translation of a statement by an employee of Marfin Bank – the bank whose branch was set alight in Athens today, where the three employees found a tragic death.

By Rick Wolff - May 5, 2010

The political conflicts and street battles in Greece today foretell what is coming to many countries...The struggles are basically over what the government spends on and who pays the taxes. Governments in such societies often turn to borrowing...as ways to defer and postpone the political problems of resolving class struggles...Problems arise when lenders...demand much higher interest payments or refuse to lend more. Then rising national debts can no longer postpone resolution of the underlying class struggles.

By Ingo Schmidt - April 27, 2010

The neoliberal tricks...might not work this time. Economists are already warning that the €45bn rescue package for Greece may be insufficient to meet payments on all outstanding debt and that the targets for spending cuts being demanded will, instead of guaranteeing Greece's solvency, lead to further economic collapse in Greece.

SchNEWS - Friday 30th April 2010 | Issue 720

Greece is further troubled as government officials get ready to announce IMF imposed wage cuts that will resonate across the country’s entire public sector. Emergency demonstrations were held across the country...in protest against the cuts by grass-roots trade unions, leftist and anarchist organisations.

By Mark Weisbrot - May 01, 2010

...[T]hese 19th-century-brutal pro-cyclical policies don't make sense. They are also grossly unfair, placing the burden of adjustment most squarely on poor and working people. I would not wish Estonia's "success" on any population...No government should accept policies that tell them they must bleed their economy for an indeterminate time before it can recover.

[Translated from GegenStandpunkt: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift]

The bankruptcy of Greece is, as far as the country itself is concerned, the price it is paying for joining the European Union including the Monetary Union, and for meeting the resulting demands on its national economy.