ANARCHIST MAGAZINES/ECONOMIC CRISIS:

WILL OBAMA'S STIMULUS WORK ?:

There is a lot of controversy about whether the economic stimulus package of the Obama administration can actually work to bring the USA (and the world by extension) out of the present recession/depression. Molly has to admit that most of the discussion is way over her head, particularly as it revolves around unknowns that are actually way over anybody's head. In an interesting "optical trick" both radical leftists and American conservatives inform their guesstimates with the hope that it will fail in a mirror image of each other. Still, the subject has to be discussed.

The following is from Z Communications, the publishers of Z Magazine. After a preliminary "infomercial" they send an article by Jack Rasmus on the limitations of Obama's bank bailout. This may be particularly useful for those who are under the illusion that all that is needed is more and more government cash thrown at the problem. It is also useful for those who want to think about both the justice and the practicality of Obama's plan.

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Z Magazine April Preview -- Jack Rasmus on the economy:
Z Magazine's April issue is currently being mailed around the world to subscriber mailboxes and independent newsstands. We will post all the articles online around March 31, but we are sending you an email preview this week with Jack Rasmus's article, "Obama's Busted Bank Bailout."

Jack Rasmus has been writing for Z Magazine for years, dissecting the welfare-for-the-rich economics which funnels up and (sometimes) trickles down. He has accurately predicted the current crisis for more than a year while pointing to progressive solutions. Here, Rasmus describes the latest corporate giveaways masquerading as help for "main street": Public-Private Investment Funds, TALF, and HASP,

For 21 years, Z Magazine has offered an enduring venue for the best analysis of an unjust system, activist efforts for change, and alternative visions. Please consider subscribing to Z Magazine in print to keep this method of getting a left message out to the public thriving.

To subscribe to Z Magazine, click here to use the secure online form, or click here for a printable PDF form that you can mail or fax to us. Alternatively, you can call us to subscribe at 508-548-9063. Subscriptions placed within the next few weeks will start with the May issue, but you can call us to order the April issue for $5 each (plus shipping cost if sending overseas). Print subscribers and Sustainers also have access to Z Magazine Online.

"This is an essential publication for people who refuse to be spun by evasion or euphemism and who want to help strengthen movements for social justice and peace. Z Magazine is present-day radicalism at its best."

— Norman Solomon

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Obama's Busted Bank Bailout:
By Jack Rasmus, from the April 2009 issue of Z Magazinewww.zcommunications.org/zmag

In February 2009, economic data across the board revealed an accelerating decline of the U.S. economy, both in its financial and non-financial elements. Gross domestic product (GDP) data for the U.S. economy for the fourth quarter 2008 was revised downward, showing the U.S. economy had contracted by more than 6.2 percent.

Unemployment levels from November 2008 through February 2009 show an official rise in joblessness of nearly two million, according to official U.S. government data. When properly adjusted, however, to include the six million new underemployed since the recession began, plus discouraged and other workers not recorded in the official data, the actual U.S. unemployment has risen by at minimum three million since November. Properly calculated, there are now more than 13 million unemployed in the U.S. By December, the unemployed will very likely exceed 20 million.

Meanwhile, in January-February 2009 the balance sheets of banking and finance giants like Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Fannie Mae, and more than 250 regional banks now on the FDIC's official danger list continued to deteriorate badly. As the financial crisis continues to drag on unresolved, a rapidly growing number of once financially sound banks and financial institutions entered the growing ranks of zombies (i.e. banks in name only and not performing the functions of banks in fact), while previous zombies became virtual cadavers—many of the latter are the top 20 largest banks in the U.S.

In an attempt to stabilize the financial decline the Obama administration proposed a four-part recovery program. The first part was the $787 billion fiscal stimulus bill passed in February. Of equal import to the fiscal stimulus package were three proposals to try to stabilize the financial system. These include the so-called PPIF (Public-Private Investment Fund), the TALF (Term Asset Backed Securities Lending Facility), and the HASP (Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan).
20 Million Jobless vs. $3 Trillion More for Banks
The Obama $787 billion fiscal stimulus bill designed to resurrect the non-financial economy—now in virtual freefall—provides only $180 billion in total spending in 2009. Only $26 billion of that is allocated for job spending, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. New jobs created in 2009, given that level of spending, will be in the low hundred thousands at best, while simultaneously a minimum of five to seven million new unemployed will be added to the jobless rolls in 2009. That's less than a half-million new jobs compared to 13 million new unemployed.

One thing is thus quite clear about the Obama fiscal stimulus plan: it is not designed to create anything near the number of jobs that have been, and will soon be, lost. That key fact means the Obama stimulus package will not appreciably slow the collapse of consumer spending currently underway in the U.S. Job loss is at present the main driver of that collapse, along with other forces previously driving the decline of consumption—collapse of 401k and defined pension plans, freefall in stock and homeowner equity, and sharp reductions in hours and earnings for the 90 million non-supervisory and production workers in the U.S. still with jobs.

Constituting more than 70 percent of the U.S. economy's GDP, consumption has literally fallen off a cliff since October 2008. For the first time in data collecting history, consumption declined absolutely in the U.S. the past year while the index for future consumer spending hit a postwar low at 35 out of 100. Business spending has fared no better. Business plans for capital expenditures show a decline of more than one-third. At the same time, exports and world trade are contracting at the fastest rate in decades.

The $787 billion represents a stop-gap program to try to offset in part the magnitude of consumption collapse, not a spending program to turn around the economy. Fully 38 percent of the stimulus is in the form of aid measures to offset job loss income with unemployment, food stamps, medical costs assistance, and various grants to state and local government. While worthy and necessary, it will not create any jobs. Another 38 percent of the stimulus is targeted for tax cuts, which will have no net effect on consumption. In fact, as many economists now note, the multiplier effect of the tax cuts may actually be negative—that is the tax cuts will produce spending in an amount actually less than the value of the cuts themselves. That leaves only 24 percent remaining for spending on potential jobs projects. Plus, the vast majority of the jobs that might be created will be longer-term, capital-intensive, infrastructure jobs in alternative energy and public works.

Both the magnitude of the direct spending on jobs creation ($26 billion in 2009 and less than $200 billion over the life of the package), as well as the composition of the jobs creation, are grossly deficient. Measured in terms of jobs, consumption, and general economic recovery, the stimulus package represents "too little too late." The likelihood is therefore high that a second stimulus package will be necessary within the next 12 months.

In sharp contrast to the paltry spending for jobs is the virtually unlimited, rapidly disbursed, and open-ended flow of funds now underway from U.S. government coffers to banks and other financial and quasi-financial institutions. This uninhibited flow includes a second $200 billion injection for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac now that they ran out of the first $200 billion given them last August; another $60 billion for AIG, American Insurance Group, bringing its total to more than $200 billion to date; tens of billions more for Citigroup and Bank of America; hundreds of billions more for brokers of commercial paper and money market funds, for foreign banks holding U.S. securities, for credit card company giants like American Express, for auto companies, plus a long list of others waiting in the wings. The grand total is at least $3 trillion thus far—and rising—disseminated to the banks, the broader financial sector, and beyond. That includes $1 trillion designated to the PPIF for buying banks' bad assets; another $1 trillion to TALF for resurrecting the shadow banking system of hedge funds, private equity firms, and the like (the people who gave us runaway speculation in securitized assets, excess leveraging, and debt run-up, which underlies the continuing collapse of the financial system); and another $275 billion to HASP, which will be used primarily to subsidize mortgage lenders, servicers, and investors.

What follows is an assessment and critique of these three elements of Obama's bank-finance bailout, showing why the bank bailout won't succeed in stabilizing the financial system and why a totally new kind of restructured banking system is required before the real economy halts its accelerating decline.
Public-Private Investment Fund (PPIF)
The PPIF is the inheritor of the failed TARP program launched in September 2008. Then Secretary of the Treasury Paulson panicked Congress into granting him a check worth $700 billion in order to buy the bad assets on the balance sheets of banks. Cleaning up the bad assets was necessary, he argued, in order to get the banks to begin lending again—to homeowners, the mortgage markets, and to general business.

Paulson was given the money and then did nothing about buying bad assets. He instead threw $125 billion at the 9 biggest banks, followed by another roughly $125 billion to scores of regional and smaller banks. Another $80 billion or so went to AIG in several installments. Tens of billions more to Citigroup. Nearly $20 billion to auto companies. Further billions were disbursed here and there, so that by February 2009 less than $190 billion of the $700 billion remained, none of it expended to purchase bad assets.

The reason why it was never used to sop up the bad assets is because Paulson faced the dilemma of buying the assets at their market price, which was virtually worthless. Since the banks were keeping the assets on their books at inflated, above market prices, they had no incentive to sell them at market prices and register even greater losses in doing so. They wanted Paulson to buy them at above market prices. If he did, however, he would be charged with providing a windfall profit to the banks. So he used TARP to purchase preferred stock in the banks, in the hope that it would at least partially close up the black hole on bank balance sheets that was ever-widening as the value of housing prices, mortgage bonds, and other securities continued to collapse. The fall in housing prices was in turn due to the flood of houses coming onto the market as a result of foreclosures.

In other words, pumping money into the banks via TARP addressed the symptom of collapsing balance sheets and not the cause. All the measures of the Treasury and Federal Reserve since the crisis began in 2007 share the common strategic error of throwing liquidity (read: taxpayer money) at the balance sheet hole while ignoring solutions to stop the cause of the hole's constant expansion.

PPIF and Geithner face the same dilemma, namely how to get the banks that are refusing to lend to begin doing so. Geithner's plan is TARP with a twist. The idea is to subsidize the price of the bad assets at government expense, and, by doing so, provide an incentive to both the banks to sell and investors to buy at well above their market price.

Here's how PPIF will work: Geithner will put in what remains of TARP ($190 billion) plus additional money up to $1 trillion (which will likely be expanded eventually well beyond $1 trillion). This trillion will be used to pay the banks the difference between the low market price and whatever the new price might be. In addition, the government will pay the investors another amount at taxpayer expense to entice them to purchase at a price above the market value. An auction-like event will be held. Whatever the seller (banks) and buyer (investors) end up with as a price, the government will subsidize the difference for both. That will, theoretically, establish a new market price at which subsequent assets might be sold.

But how much bad assets are out there that must be sold in order to clean up bank balance sheets? The estimates range from $3.6 trillion according to New York University professor Nouriel Roubini (who has been accurately predicting the crisis for more than a year now) to $4 trillion by Fortune magazine to $6 trillion by Treasury secretary Geithner in a talk he gave in June 2008 before becoming Secretary. So there's at least $2.5 to $5 trillion more that taxpayers may have to fork over to the PPIF before it's over.

The flawed premise of PPIF is that enough investors will enter the market if subsidized to buy such a huge amount of bad assets or that the banks will agree to sell at the auction-determined price or that the U.S. government will be able to throw in $2.5 to $5 trillion more.

Another problem is that the root cause of the bad asset price decline—i.e. the collapsing housing and other asset prices—will still continue despite PPIF. The $2.5 to $5 trillion is what the bad assets are worth at the moment. Those values can potentially fall further, as in fact they have for the past 18 months. Housing prices have fallen by 25 percent to date and may fall at least another 20 percent. Foreclosures are rising, as are delinquencies and defaults. Moreover, they are spreading from subprime to Alt-A to prime mortgage loans and bleeding into the commercial property mortgage markets as well. Homeowners with negative equity will also walk away from properties, throwing more supply on the market and further depressing prices. Then there are the millions more now experiencing unprecedented job loss. They too will add appreciably to the delinquency, default, and foreclosure downward pressures on home prices. Bank assets will continue to erode in value and bad asset totals will rise. The fundamental problem is thus still not addressed, let alone resolved.

This scenario is not unique or unprecedented. The same happened in the 1930s. Housing prices did not stop falling for more than five years into the Depression, until the Roosevelt administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corp (RFC) and revitalized the Home Owners Loan Corp (HOLC) and went into the mortgage market directly. The RFC arbitrarily determined a price and enforced it. It dissolved bad banks and wrote off their worthless assets. It forced mergers with those banks that could be saved. The HOLC then directly renegotiated with homeowners, resetting their interest and principal. That finally stabilized the housing market. It quickly produced an equity/stock market resurgence in 1935-36.

The day after Geithner's PPIF announcement, the press panned the plan and the market fell significantly. The spin in the business press was that the plan was not explained clearly. But the opposite likely occurred. The markets knew full well what the plan represented. They didn't believe investors would sufficiently enter the market to buy enough of the bad assets. This would mean the government would eventually have no alternative except to reluctantly engage in rolling nationalizations of the banking sector. That's why a debate on the meaning of bank nationalization emerged in the general business and political press, which still continues.
TALF As Plan B
Another problem with PPIF is what was the alternative if PPIF did not succeed in cleaning up the bad assets? How much longer and further would Congress and the public support throwing more money down the black hole of bank balance sheets? Enter TALF (Term Asset Backed Securities Lending Facility) as Plan B. TALF is another $1 trillion plan for financial bailouts at taxpayer expense. The idea originated at the Federal Reserve in the closing months of 2008 but was put on hold. Originally funded at $200 billion, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke held the program back until the Obama administration assumed office.

Unlike PPIF, TALF is envisioned as a plan to resurrect the shadow banking system and the securitized asset markets that collapsed after 2007. Approximately one half of total lending in 2007 ($5.65 trillion) occurred in the securitized markets. This declined to $160 billion in 2008 and to a mere several billion by early 2009.

The shadow banking system, a network of non-bank financial institutions, was responsible for much of the speculation driving the subprime and other asset markets until they busted in the summer of 2007. It is thus ironic that the Fed and Treasury now pursue via TALF the resurrection of those same markets and that same system.

The idea of TALF is to loan $1 trillion or more to the shadow banking system to have its various institutions (hedge funds and private equity in particular) buy up securitized assets that bundle auto loans, credit card loans, student loans, and even commercial property loans. These latter consumer credit markets are about to collapse and in doing so provide a subprime-like magnitude of losses for financial institutions, including banks. Credit card companies, for example, estimate that defaults on payments will rise from around 4 percent in early 2009 to 8-10 percent or more. TALF is designed to prevent the collapse of these securitized asset backed consumer credit markets.

But TALF represents something more significant. It represents the lack of confidence on the part of the Obama administration that the regular banking system can lead a lending recovery and restore financial market stability. The logic of TALF, moreover, is that if the shadow banking system does not rise to the incentive and finance the consumer credit markets, then the Federal Reserve will have to do so itself directly. Should that happen, the Fed will not only evolve from lender of last resort and lender of first resort (since 2007), to lender of primary resort—at least in the consumer credit markets. There is no other alternative. The consumer credit markets cannot be allowed to collapse. To do so would precipitate a bona fide depression given the current weakness of the economy and financial system.

The question is whether the hedge and private equity funds can sufficiently participate. Hedge funds in particular have lost half their value in the past 18 months due to losses and withdrawals. Once a $2 trillion industry it is now barely $1 trillion. Similar declines have characterized the state of the private equity funds. Furthermore, it is hard to see how the securitized asset markets can be revived, given their toxic reputation and the virtual total collapse of these markets.

Should the Fed have to go it alone, that would represent a major shift in banking structure. There is also the possibility that TALF and the Fed would serve as a holding action to buy time for the implementation of a Swedish Model of bank nationalization, such as occurred in that country in the early 1990s when the government took over the banks directly, and then spun them off to private interests again in a kind of capitalist form of nationalization.
HASP—Obama's Housing Recovery Proposal
Obama's housing plan has two parts. The first is another $200 billion funding set aside for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a continuation of prior arrangements under the Bush-Paulson period. The two companies were partially nationalized in August 2008 and provided with $200-$300 billion to buy home mortgages. By February 2009 they had run out of those funds, and now another $200 billion is allocated as part of the Obama plan. The problem with Fannie/Freddie, however, is that they own only roughly 26 percent of the $12 trillion residential mortgage market. The major problem with subprime mortgages and foreclosures is occurring totally outside Fannie/Freddie's reach—in the securitized residential mortgage market segment.

Another major problem with this first part of the Obama Housing Plan is that any homeowner that is delinquent, in default, or in foreclosure proceedings is not eligible. Those who need it the most are thus excluded. And if the market value of your home has fallen more than 5 percent below the mortgage owed, forget it. You don't qualify. In other words, Part 1 is a subsidy to the industry, a gimmick to help lenders refinance safe mortgages and thus generate refinancing income for lenders; it is not a program to help homeowners in distress or to stop housing supply continuing to flood the market and depress housing prices.

As of late February, data show that the U.S. home price index has fallen 27 percent from its peak in 2006, for the 30th consecutive month. The last three months show an accelerating rate of decline. Should prices continue to fall at the rate registered between last November and January 2009, it will mean another 33 percent fall in median home prices this coming year, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

A second part of the Obama housing program would provide a further $75 billion. These funds are committed to subsidizing mortgage lenders to lower their interest rates on new mortgages to 4-4.5 percent on average from current higher market rates at around 5.5 percent. Under Plan 2 loan principal may also be lowered to 31 percent of the homeowners' gross income, but only as a very last resort and for a temporary period of up to five years. And the government will pay (i.e., subsidize) the lenders the difference between the 31 and 38 percent, or 7 percent of the loan for that period. Part 2 may apply to homeowners who are delinquent, but it is still largely a voluntary program dependent on the agreement of lenders. If they are unwilling to modify rates and principals when requested by the homeowner, too bad for the homeowner. While progressive Democrats in Congress are attempting to give bankruptcy judges the power to force lenders to modify loans if they refuse after requested, that legislation has been vigorously blocked so far by industry groups like the American Bankers Association.

Who are the financial institutions that will benefit most from Plan 2? The banks. Two thirds of all the home loans in the U.S. are serviced by Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. Once again, we have a subsidy to the same institutions set to benefit from the PPIF. It is another version of trickle down, in which government-taxpayer money is given to companies to entice them to lower rates, which they should be doing on their own in the first place.

Like prior Bush initiatives, the HASP approach is to try to stimulate housing demand and in that way to slow the collapse of housing prices. But the supply of houses coming on to the market is massive, swamping any tepid attempts to put a floor under housing prices via a demand-side approach. Housing supply has been and will continue to overwhelm housing demand, with the consequent decline of housing prices continuing. Thus far no credible approach has been offered to check housing supply and stem price declines. In the end housing price decline can only be contained by a nationalization of residential mortgage markets and a fundamental reset of both interest and principle for homeowners in stress, much as was done in the 1930s.
Summary and Predictions
The fiscal stimulus side of the Obama program fails to address the central need of massive job creation. It lacks in both magnitude and composition of its focus. A second stimulus package within a year is inevitable.

The bank and finance stability measures of the Obama program are no more likely to succeed. They do not focus on housing asset price collapse directly. PPIF attempts to create a market for bad assets by subsidizing banks and investors at taxpayer expense. That expense will eventually have to exceed the initial $1 trillion by several more trillions using the PPIF approach. Other less costly approaches exist and pursuing the PPIF virtually prevents any real stimulus spending. TALF represents a wild gamble that a revived shadow banking system and a resurrection of the securitized asset markets will somehow be able to prevent the collapse of the consumer credit (auto, student loan, credit cards) and the commercial property markets which will have to refinance more than $170 billion in 2009. This is unlikely to happen, given the declining condition of hedge funds, private equity, and the rest of the shadow banking community.

The cost of all this excess bank rescue spending to the U.S. taxpayer is a minimum of $4 to $5 trillion over the next few years. A recent study by two University of California economists, Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale, projects annual deficits of $1 trillion or more for each of the next 10 years. It is highly doubtful the U.S. economy can sustain that kind of deficit spending for that period of time without seriously threatening the U.S. Treasury markets and causing an eventual collapse of the U.S. dollar in world markets.

The U.S. and world economy are on the knife-edge of a transition from an epic recession to a bona fide depression. Any number of several severe events could precipitate this. A series of sovereign debt crises in Europe are a real possibility. A likely scenario is the collapse of one or more east European countries that might pull down, for example, Austrian and then Italian banks and spread thereafter to other banking institutions. Another scenario might be the continued escalation of job loss beyond 20 million in the U.S., TALF failure to rescue consumer credit markets, a collapse of the Treasuries markets, and the like. Another precipitating scenario might be the global collapse of bond markets, in particular investment grade bonds, or a severe crisis in the credit default swaps market globally as well. There are, of course, other potentially serious scenarios that might serve as precipitating events.

A new, alternative plan will have to be proposed and implemented before the end of 2009. That effort now moves to the battle lines being drawn over the Obama budget. The Obama administration will have to get much bolder and aggressive, as its enemies on the right, in corporate boardrooms, and among evangelical interests are now gathering forces. It will be interesting to see whether the Obama team can make the transition from a vision that is much like 1993 to one that is more like 1933.
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Jack Rasmus's forthcoming book is Epic Recession And Global Financial Crisis (Pluto Press).

His articles, speeches, and interviews are available at www.kyklosproductions.com

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-RUSSIA:

ANARCHIST CONTACTS IN RUSSIA:

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The people at the Russian anarchist news site Avtonom have put together a list of anarchist contacts in Russia. For the full list see THIS LINK. Here's their announcement of the list from their English language section.

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Anarchist and related contacts in Russia and Belarus:
This updated contact list has been gathered from Abolishing the Borders from Below - journal and Anarchist Yellow Pages (http://ayp.subvert.info). A more regularly updated version of the list in Russian language is split into three sections in our website

http://www.avtonom.org/index.php?nid=867

- for contacts of Autonomous Action

http://www.avtonom.org/index.php?nid=2367

- for other anarchist and related contacts with "offline existence" http://www.avtonom.org/index.php?sid=9
- for anarchist and related internet projects and other links. Check these if you want more updated lists.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR/INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-GERMANY:

SUPPORT THE WORKERS OF BABYLON CINEMA:

The following appeal is originally from the anarchosyndicalist FAU of Germany. It comes Molly's way via the Anarkismo website.

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Support the workers of Babylon Cinema in Berlin:
On March 11, Benoit Robin, a projectionist at Babylon Cinema in Berlin and an activist of FAU, was fired from his job. He was in the midst of organizing for improved working conditions in the cinema.

In January a FAU group was organized at the cinema. The workers there have poor wages: from 5.5-6 euro per hour, 6.4 euro for projectionists. This is a very poor wage in the industry. Many of the workers are precarious and have no contracts. They have no paid holiday or other benefits. By comparison, workers in another cinema chain receive 8.5 euro per hour plus 30 paid paid vacation.

Currently 27 people work at the cinema.

The cinema cannot be said to be in poor financial condition. As an art cinema, it receives a large government subsidy - almost a half million euros per year. Despite this, the workers in Babylon Cinema get extremely low wages - even less than in some workplaces known for their extremely poor work conditions.

The workers at the cinema organized a protest during the Berlin film festival. A month later, Robin was fired. It is believed that he was fired due to this organizing campaign.

Robin was not the only comrade ever fired from Babylon. Last year one comrade was fired for no reason but later received compensation for this. He is currently involved in the protests and organizing campaign.

The workers of the cinema have a blog: http://prekba.blogsport.de

There is also an online petition you can sign: http://prekba.blogsport.de/solidaritaets-erklaerungT

here is a video here (in German) with a machine translation of an article about the situation, but you can get the sense.

http://freundeskreis-videoclips.de/en/arbeitskampf-kino-babylon-berlin-mitte/

FAU is asking people to send letters to the cinema:

Neue Babylon Berlin GmbH

tgrossman@kinoundkonzerte.de

hackel@babylonberlin.de

Tel.: 0049 (0)30-24 727 804

Fax: 0049 (0)30-24 727 800

Re.: Dismissal of Benoit Robin

It has come to my attention that staff at the Babylon Cinema and the FAU-IWA, which has a presence there, have been opposing the precarious working conditions at the cinema.

I was sorry to learn that projectionist and union member Benoit Robin was fired just before he would have become entitled to job protection. This message is a strong protest against that unfair labour practice. Beyond the issue immediately at hand, I urge you to desist from interfering with organizing in your shop.

Best Regards

Copy of your letter to: faub5@fau.org

AMERICAN LABOUR:

UNIONIZING COLLEGE SPORTS:

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Here is one that many people may not know much about-the situation of athletes in college level sports today. While you may think that athletes are vastly overpaid, the megastars are merely blips on a screen that conceals exploitation as the rule. Here, from the Working Families E-Activist Network is an appeal for help from the underclass of athletes.

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MARCH MADNESS-WHO PAYS THE PRICE ?:

The amount of money in college athletics is astounding.
Did you know CBS pays the NCAA more than $6 billion to air March Madness and that many coaches and administrators enjoy six- and seven-figure salaries? Meanwhile, college athletes are left without many basic protections.

So many high school athletes have a dream: a full-ride college athletic scholarship and the chance to hoist a championship banner. But too often, the reality doesn't live up to the dream.

Athletes who have worked hard to earn a college education often find that a "full-ride scholarship" doesn't fully cover their college expenses, leaving them scrambling to pay for their next meal or, even worse, trying to pay costly medical bills for sports-related injuries. Some even have their scholarships taken away without reason—all while the NCAA, college administrators and coaches cash in on their talent, hard work and dedication.

Tell the NCAA to match athletes' hard work and help them fulfill their dream.

College athletes, just like workers around the world, need to fight for their protections, but they do not currently have the right to form a union. Fortunately, that doesn't mean no one speaks for them. The National College Players Association (NCPA), an organization of 10,000 current and former college athletes, is working to change these injustices. The NCPA already has won significant victories for college athletes nationwide, but it needs your help to do more.

Today we call on you to speak out with the NCPA to help gain more protections for college athletes and make sure they get the education for which they've worked so hard.

Here's your chance to speak out to an industry that treats its workers without the respect that we all should have. Join the NCPA and sign a petition that will go to the NCAA and its top three corporate sponsors: Pontiac (GM), AT&T and Coke.

Let them know that a fraction of the billions of dollars
In solidarity,
AFL-CIO Working Families e-Activist Network

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THE PETITION:

Please go to THIS LINK to send the following petition to the NCAA.

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NCPA Petition:
College athletes generate billion of dollars a year and the NCAA should act immediately to implement policies that will provide these athletes with basic protections. With administrators and coaches enjoying six and seven figure salaries, it is unethical to subject college athletes to unnecessary physical, financial and academic risks.

Therefore, we, the undersigned are calling on the NCAA to adopt rules that will provide the following basic protections to college athletes:

1.Prohibit universities from refusing to renew a scholarship of a player that suffers a permanent injury in his/her sport.
2.Require schools to pay for any medical expenses resulting from sports-related injuries that an athlete would otherwise have to pay.
3.Allow universities to put their multiple year scholarship offers in writing.
4.Allow universities to offer scholarships up to the cost of attendance.

CANADIAN POLITICS-INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS:

REJECT THE CANADA/COLOMBIA FREE TRADE DEAL:

Last Thursday our ruling Conservative government introduced a motion in the House of Commons calling for a free trade deal with Colombia. Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist, as the following story from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) makes plain.

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CUPE to opposition parties: reject deal with Colombia:
This morning, Trade Minister Stockwell Day introduced in the House of Commons a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

“We are urging opposition parties to reject this bill. I cannot understand why Prime Minister Harper is prepared to sign agreements with a country that sees trade unionists murdered at a rate more than the entire world experiences in total, or with a country where the drug trade, and the paramilitary forces have a grip on a $6 billion illegal business,” said CUPE National President Paul Moist.

Moist, who visited Colombia with other Canadian public sector union leaders, is suitably convinced that the Colombian government does not respect human or labour rights.

Today, Jorge Enrique Robledo, a member of the National Senate in Colombia met with CUPE officials in Ottawa to ask for Canadians' support in denouncing the bill.

Harper says that workers’ protection has been written into the trade deals. But whether these stipulations will be enforced is another story. “More labour leaders are killed every year in Colombia than the rest of the world combined,” said Moist.

The Colombian government has consistently failed to investigate these murders, largely because most are committed by government-linked paramilitary death squads. The paramilitaries work on behalf of powerful land owners, the right-wing political establishment, and even some transnational corporations.

“I know CUPE will remain aligned with Colombian workers and we will not stop seeking the justice they so very much deserve,” said Moist.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR-IRAQ:

APPEAL FROM THE IRAQI TEACHERS' UNION:

The following appeal for online solidarity has come Molly's way from the e-solidarity site Labour Start.

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Iraq: Teachers union faces threat of government takeover:

The Iraqi Teachers' Union is under attack from the Iraqi Government. The government has authorized an official body to take over the union under the pretext of forcing the union to hold elections. It is worth noting that the ITU has already held several national conferences since 2003 and had elected an ITU leadership openly and democratically. The government attempts are illegitimate, unacceptable and a blatant violation and interference in the internal democratic affairs of the union. They also violate the Iraqi constitution which guarantees workers the right to organize. The ITU leadership has refused to hand over the union and is ready to struggle to preserve the independence of the ITU. Because of this, its leaders are under the threat of arrest. The ITU is organizing another national protest with major demonstration in central Baghdad on 28 March 2009 and it needs your solidarity and support.

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THE LETTER:

Please go to THIS LINK to send the following very short and sweet letter to the Iraqi authorities.

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"I call upon the Iraqi government to cease its interference in the internal affairs of the Iraqi Teachers Union."

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Well, you can't get shorter and to the point than that-Molly

AMERICAN POLITICS:

THE AMERICAN WAR AGAINST IMMIGRANTS:

The following was originally published in the New York Daily News. It comes to Molly via the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Seems that in the "land of the free" some are freer than others.

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ICE locks 'em up, throws away key: immigration becomes a human rights scandal:
A report released Wednesday by Amnesty International exposes - once again - the human rights scandal that immigration has become.

"Tens of thousands of people languish in immigration detention facilities every year without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted," said the report, titled "Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA."

This report reveals the human rights violations associated with the dramatic increase in the use of detention as an immigration enforcement mechanism.

The number of people in detention has increased exponentially in the last 10 years - to about 300,000 annually, the report says.

On any given day, there were more than 30,000 people in custody in 2008, and the number is bound to go up in 2009, the report says.

Those detained include the documented and the undocumented, asylum seekers, trafficking victims, children and even U.S. citizens - people like 37-year-old Hector Veloz, a resident of Los Angeles.

"My case was so ironic," said Veloz. "I am a U.S. citizen, but was held for 13 months and placed on deportation procedure. Because the prison is in Arizona and my family lives in California, I didn't see my son Geronimo even once in those 13 months."

Veloz's father is a U.S. citizen, a Vietnam vet who was awarded a Purple Heart. His mother is an immigrant from Mexico. The couple met in the U.S., but when his father was shipped out to the war, his expectant mother returned to Mexico for support, where Veloz was born.
She came back to the U.S. with the 4-month-old Hector, and he grew up in California living at home with both parents.

Hector Veloz was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after serving a six-month-jail sentence for receiving stolen property. Released on parole, Veloz was picked up by ICE the day of his release and flown straight to the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, where he remained from June 2007 to July 2008.

The detention center is one of several operated by the profitable Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private corrections company in the U.S.

"I showed them my birth certificate and that of my father, my parents' marriage certificate. But they wanted more proof and kept processing me for deportation, even if none of my documentation was ever contested," said Veloz.

ICE said Veloz had entered the country illegally. Veloz appealed and finally was released.
"It was a terrible prison," he said.

Confined in prison like facilities, detainees are held under civil immigration laws, under which they are neither accused nor convicted of a crime, the report said.

With no right to counsel, they are often subject to mandatory detention without the right to judicial review, and face challenges in their use of habeas corpus.

With the release of the report, Amnesty International launched a campaign to protect the human rights of immigrants.

"Immigrants, especially Latinos, have become the boogie man, the new whipping boy," said Rosa Clemente, Amnesty's campaign director for human rights. "Right now, we are focusing on the report, but the campaign will deal with immigration reform, immigrant rights, all the issues around immigrants."

Clemente said that Amnesty had drafted a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the abuses in detention centers.

"This cannot wait. This is a situation that should be taken care immediately," she said.
aruiz@nydailynews.com

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-GREECE:

GREECE STILLS SIMMERS:

The following longish article originally comes from a left communist group Blaumachen, based since June 2005 in Thessaloniki Greece. The English translation below is from the LibCom site. While I do not agree with the general politics of "left communism" I find the following narrative remarkably free of its prejudices and a very interesting perspective on the recent events in Greece. So...

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Greece unrest: Like a winter with a thousand Decembers - TPTG/Blaumachen
Reflections on the recent unrest in Greece; "The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements"...
‘VIOLENCE means working for 40 years, getting miserable wages and wondering if you ever get retired…

VIOLENCE means state bonds, robbed pension funds and the stock-market fraud…

VIOLENCE means being forced to get housing loans which finally you pay back as if they were gold…

VIOLENCE means the management’s right to fire you any time they want…

VIOLENCE means unemployment, temporary employment, 400 Euros wage with or without social security…

VIOLENCE means work ‘accidents’, as bosses diminish their workers’ safety costs…

VIOLENCE means being driven sick because of hard work …

VIOLENCE means consuming psycho-drugs and vitamins in order to cope with exhausting working hours…

VIOLENCE means working for money to buy medicines in order to fix your labour power commodity…

VIOLENCE means dying on ready-made beds in horrible hospitals, when you can’t afford bribing.
Proletarians from occupied GSEE, Athens, December 2008

Last December, the wind of insurrection blew over the cities in Greece. The joyful and festive atmosphere of Christmas was set on fire together with the Christmas tree on Syntagma square. The assassination of the 15-year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos by a special police guard on the 6th ignited the spark.

In general, the social unrest of December can be characterized as a violent proletarian rebellion which had a sudden, mass and wild burst that gradually gave way to less violent, more imaginative and more political acts but with fewer people involved.

As far as the class composition of the rebellion is concerned, it ranged from high school students and university students to young workers and unemployed. Some of the students and the workers were second-generation immigrants (mostly Albanians, although there were also some immigrants of other nationalities) and there were also some older workers with more or less stable jobs.

As for numbers, gradually more and more people participated in actions that took the form of an insurrection. On the first day there were just a few hundreds of antiauthoritarians around Exarchia -the place of the murder- that started the violent confrontations with the cops. Later in the night, a spontaneous demo took place after an initiative of students and leftists – around 2,000 people participated and started riots in Patission and Akadimias Avenues, while one hundred people smashed Ermou st, the most commercial street of Athens. Riots also broke out in the streets of Thessaloniki where a spontaneous demo headed for and attacked the city’s central police station.

On the second day more than 10,000 appeared in the streets (mostly students, antiauthoritarians again and people from left parties and organizations); on the third day more than 20,000 in Athens, 7,000 in Thessaloniki and many thousands all over Greece joined demos that were soon turned into riots. Those involved in street fighting with the police were a lot; 10,000 seems to be a rather moderate calculation. There were a lot more all over the country, particularly on Monday, the third day of the riots. On this day, banks, public buildings and mostly big stores were either smashed, looted or burned down. Those involved in the violent acts of this day were not a homogeneous mass: they were a multitude of young people -high school and university students, waged workers, unemployed, immigrants, football hooligans, drug addicts- with only a portion of them having connections with the antiauthoritarian milieu. Precisely because of the motley composition of the multitude and its violence, a lot of politicos (even some organized anarchists) found it too ‘uncontrollable’ and refrained themselves from what happened. From Monday morning and during the next days there were attacks against the police stations all over the country that were mainly made by high school students. Some of those attacks were very violent with police cars being overturned and use of Molotov cocktails (mostly in the west suburbs of Athens and the port of Pireaus) but demonstrating outside the police stations became quite generalized all over Greece, even in some posh areas or small towns, with milder forms of protest. It was actually through the spontaneous violent protests of high school students that the riots spread and thus took nationwide dimensions. When we talk about clashes with cops, we are mostly talking about barricades, throwing stones and molotov cocktails and not physical combats. Generally, not only the rioters, but also the police preferred not to engage in “close-combat” making excessive use of tear gas instead.

As for immigrants, second generation young Albanians who took part in the riots are so well integrated into society that only when they started talking Albanian to each other you could tell that they were immigrants. Most of them have grown up here and that is the reason why they could take part so extensively in confrontations with cops, in attacks against state buildings and banks and lootings as well alongside Greek young proletarians. They felt more ‘comfortable’ doing such acts than other immigrants, mostly Asians and Africans who still live on the fringe, isolated in their ethnic communities. It was mostly fear that prevented other immigrant communities from joining the violent confrontations outside their neighborhoods and not ‘lack of conscience’. It was easier for them to participate in the riots through looting or frequenting the open National Technical University occupation in the centre of Athens where big communities of them live; when the riots erupted near ‘their’ neighborhoods, that was their ‘contribution’ to them. On the other hand, they received the most violent onslaught from both the police and the media propaganda. They were presented as ‘plunderers’ and ‘thieves’ and in some cases there were pogrom style attacks against them by fascists and undercover cops in civilian outfits.
In general, you could say that, apart from high school and university students, those who had a more active role in the revolt were generally young workers, most of them having precarious or ‘flexible’ jobs. In the streets there were young (or not so young) workers from various sectors like schools, construction, tourist and entertainment services, transportation, even media. As far as factory workers are concerned, there are not any accurate estimations about their individual participation in the riots, since no reports from such workplaces became known. During the GSEE occupation, there were some ideas about distributing leaflets to factories and calling workers from specific workplaces to come to the occupation, however the splits among the participants (mentioned briefly in our chronology of the events) made any further action -apart from intervening in nearby call centres- difficult and thus several opportunities were missed. Shortly after the immigrant cleaner Kuneva, one of the workers that had visited the occupied GSEE to meet the squatters, was attacked with sulphuric acid, the ‘insurgent workers’ alongside other people organised the first solidarity activities. They even managed to get some unions into solidarity activities in January. The riot, in general, was not felt in any significant way in the workplaces, in the sense that no strikes were called to support it. The only exceptions were the teachers’ strike on the day of the funeral of young Alexis and the big participation in the strike demo against the state budget on the 10th of December. Apart from these, the rebellion left workplaces untouched.

Judging from the slogans and the attacks against the police, an overwhelmingly anti-cop sentiment was dominant during the days of the rebellion. The cop stood for power and particularly the brutality and arrogance of power. However, it was as symbols of a certain power - the power of money, the power to impose the exploitation of labour and deepen the class lines separating Greek society- that big stores, banks as well as state buildings (town halls, prefecture buildings, ministries) were attacked, burnt down or occupied. So, we could speak of a dominant and widespread anti-cop, anti-state, anti-capitalist feeling. Even the intellectuals of the left acknowledged the class element of the rebellion and some mainstream newspapers admitted that ‘young people’s rage’ was not expressed only because of police violence. The cops were rather the most visible and crudest tip of an iceberg made of government corruption scandals, a security-surveillance state - armoured after the 2004 Olympics - that does not even hesitate to shoot in cold blood, a continuous attack on wages, an increase of working class reproduction costs through the gradual demolition of the previous pension and health system, a deterioration of work conditions and an increase of precarious jobs and unemployment, a load of overwork imposed on high school and university students, a tremendous destruction of nature, a glamorous facade consisting of abstract objects of desire in malls and on TV ads, obtainable only if you endure a huge amount of exploitation and anxiety. In the first days of the revolt you could almost smell all these reasons in the air and then a lot of texts, articles, leaflets followed, written both by insurgents or sympathizers and ‘commentators’ to acknowledge that there was ‘something deeper’. This ‘deeper thing’ that everybody was talking about was the need to overcome the individual isolation from real, communal life [gemeinwesen], an isolation that all the above historical reasons have created. The spontaneity and uncontrollable nature of this insurrection was proven by the absence of political proposals, thus by an explicit rejection of politics. It was mostly leftists that insisted in particular demands like the resignation of the government, the repeal of the anti-terrorist act, the disarmament of cops and the disbandment of special police forces. However, the feeling that there lay ‘something deeper’ in all that was so dominant that it alone explains the helplessness of some parties of the opposition, leftist organizations, even some anarchists as mentioned before. There were no specific political demands and this, combined with their ferocity, made the riots all too threatening for the usual forces of recuperation and manipulation.

From the very first days of the revolt three universities got also occupied in the centre of Athens: the National Technical University of Athens, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics. Each one of them was occupied by a different tendency in the movement. The National Technical University, which is the nearest one to Exarchia square was the main place for organising clashes with the police. Its occupants were almost a cross-section of the rebels in Athens: young workers (immigrant or Greek), students and marginalised elements –and many of them anarchists. The occupants of the Faculty of Law, mainly leftists and some anti-authoritarians, organized demos and discussions. In one of them, leftist unionists gathered in order to organize and ‘spread the rebellion’ to workplaces, without actually doing anything apart from putting out some flyers. The Faculty of Economics was occupied mostly by anarchist groups and antiauthoritarians who wanted to use the building for counter-information purposes. A lot of emphasis was put on the organization of everyday activities. They took over the restaurant of the university and workshops were formed in order to run the occupation and to organize actions outside. The expropriated resources of the university were also used in other activities, serving as an infrastructure. Many comrades took part in actions organized from there, even if they did not take part in the occupation itself. All occupations served as ‘red bases’ of the movement from which subversive actions were organized and where rebels could seek refuge, if necessary. In Thessaloniki, there were two such occupations in the city center: the School of Drama was occupied by anarchist militants and drama students, while the offices of Thessaloniki’s Bar Association were occupied until the fourth day of the rebellion by students, mainly leftists.

We should also mention here the dozens of occupations of university departments voted for by students’ general assemblies and the hundreds of occupations of high schools all over the country.

Gradually, the violence of the first days proved to be creative in the sense that it was the necessary presupposition for more imaginative and organized actions that followed. After the first five days of rioting, there was an occupation at the Town Hall of Ag. Dimitrios (a southern suburb of Athens) organized by local anarchist groups and some of the workers working there (predominantly blue collar ones). The occupants organized meetings with local people, called ‘popular assemblies’, trying to broaden the revolt organizing local actions, always connected to the revolt. They even tried to let certain services run in the building without the mediation of the municipal authorities. The next day, an information desk of the Ministry of Interior at Chalandri, a northern suburb of Athens, was occupied and demonstrations and actions always connected with the revolt were organized.

In Thessaloniki, in Sykies, a working-class suburb of the city, the Town Hall was partly occupied for a few days, and some days later there followed the occupation of a municipal library in the Ano Poli district of the city of Thessaloniki which served as a place where ‘popular assemblies’ and demonstrations were organized. In all these activities, the common new characteristic was an attempt to ‘open up’ the rebellion towards the neighbourhoods. These assemblies were understood as ‘neighbourhood assemblies of struggle’ or ‘people’s assemblies’, as they were called. In most cases, there appeared distinct tendencies inside this social ‘opening’, particularly as the rebellion was simmering down. One tendency wanted to organize a community of struggle broadening the issues of the rebellion, another one preferred a kind of activity more orientated towards dealing with local matters on a steady basis. In the beginning, the assemblies looked pretty innovative and lively. There was not a formal procedure of decision making or majority rule and initiatives were encouraged. However, by the end of January, the occupations of buildings - whether public, union or municipal ones - did not flourish anymore and it is not clear if there is going to be a new movement coming out of this short-lived practice.
Among the ‘population’, or better say the working class as a whole, there was sympathy towards the rioters not only because it was their children fighting and demonstrating out there, but also because they felt that it was a just fight. Particularly the burning of banks was very popular since thousands of people are deep in debt. Looting was not accepted, at last not overtly, because of the strong respect for private property – or, in the case of leftists and some anarchists, for morality reasons. Generally speaking, there was a lot of sympathy and interest for the insurgents but very little active involvement from the part of the ‘population’.

From the very first moment after the killing on December 6, state and media mechanisms were activated to confront the explosion of the proletarian rage. Initially, they attempted to put possible reactions under control exploiting the spectacular submission of the resignations by Pavlopoulos and Chinofotis (the Minister and ex-Deputy Minister of the Interior, correspondingly), the Prime Minister’s promise that anybody responsible for the death of the 15-year-old kid will be ‘exemplary punished’, all oppositional parties’ and many journalists’ disapproval of the government and the ‘discreet stance’ of cops against demonstrators. However, very quickly, they unleashed every form of repression: threats of declaring the country in a state of emergency, mobilization of fascists and para-governmental organizations of ‘indignant citizens’, dozens of arrests and beating of demonstrators, more shootings by cops in Athens. All bosses’ parties in a body (with the Communist Party [KKE] being the most vulgar amongst them) and the TV scamps attempted to spread fear. Similarly, the two major union confederations, GSEE and ADEDY, cancelled the routine strike demonstrations against new year’s state budget when they suspected the danger of those demos being transformed into riots. However, against union bureaucrats’ jabber about government’s failing to ensure social order and peace, demos did take place during the general strike day and were indeed wild. Thus, reality was different: bosses were those who were afraid. When the foreign minister of France stated from the very first days of the insurgency ‘I would like to express our concern, everyone’s concern about the progress of conflicts in Greece’, he would express bosses’ fear for the possibility of this social explosion to be circulated, since solidarity demos to insurgents in Greece were taking place in many cities all over the world. Particularly in France, the Ministry of Education withdrew the impeding reform in secondary schools, thus giving an end to an emerging movement of high school kids applauding the flames of insurgency in Greek cities and towns.

On the side of state and media propaganda, the dominant strategy was that of separation of the subjects of the insurrection. They were either presenting the insurgency as an adventure of teenagers, whose inherent sensitivity due to their age gives them a right to rebel against their parents’ world (as if proletarian parents wouldn’t rightfully desire this world’s destruction) or they were mobilizing racist reflexes using the fake separation ‘Greek demonstrators - immigrant looters’. They were mainly attempting to separate demonstrators between good-peaceful ones and bad-rioters. The right of demonstrating was affirmed by bosses and their lackeys only to suppress the insurrection. Because they wanted to avoid any further socialization of violent behaviours in the streets, they sought by all means to present them as actions of ‘antiauthoritarians’ or ‘hooligans’ who intruded into demonstrations of otherwise peace-loving civilians. Smashing as a proletarian action declared the everyday existence of police departments, banks or chain stores as moments of a silent war. It also manifested the rupture with the democratic management of social conflict, which tolerates demos against this or that matter, provided that they are deprived of any autonomous class action. Invoking the ultimate political rampart of capital’s dominance, that is democracy, the prime minister declared that ‘social struggles or the death of a teenager cannot be confused with actions against democracy’. Democracy of course approves devastating cities and the countryside, polluting atmosphere and contaminating water, bombing, selling weapons, creating dumps of human beings, forcing us to stop being humans in order to become objects-that-work (or look for work, since more and more people are or will be unemployed because of the crisis). He thus implicated that some people can destroy anything they want as long as new chances for profit are created and development is promoted. However, doing this against private property constitutes the ultimate scandal for a society which has established this essential right from its early birth. Burning and smashing constitute wounds to this society’s legitimacy. The ‘hooded rioters’ is an empty notion, intended for police use exclusively. Police monopolize the shaping of the threat’s profile. We should add here that since the shooting of a riot-cop in Exarchia on 4 January police repression against demonstrators has escalated. Locals who defend a park in the city of Athens, farmers who intend to drive their tractors to the parliament and demonstrators against the imprisonment of those who have been arrested up till now have been attacked not only with tear gas but with grenades as well.

For the image-producing machine, the very opposite of the ‘hooded rioter’ (that is, the image constructed to separate proletarians) was the ‘peaceful civilian whose property was destroyed’. Who was this celebrated ‘peaceful civilian’, enraged by smashing? In this occasion, ‘peaceful civilians’ were the small businessmen, the owners of ‘small’ stores, the petit bourgeoisie. The state has been fooling even them, since many of them are being destroyed by the capitalist crisis. During last December, turnover was half of that of December 2007, not only for streets with expensive stores, but also for open-air markets; yet no such market was attacked during the riots… Bosses claimed that smashing stores had made many people lose their jobs, while at the same time one hundred thousand layoffs are to be announced soon in Greece because of the crisis. However, whatever smashes of ‘small’ stores were not carried out by hooded state servants were commented by workers in such stores in a leaflet written by the ‘Autonomous Initiative of Shop-assistants of Larisa’: ‘We denounce whoever attempts to terrorize and convince us that defending some properties stands above human life and dignity; besides, these properties have been created by precarious workers’ unpaid, black and surplus labour; no small properties have been damaged during symbolic attacks against banks and public buildings [indeed, this is true for Larissa and other provincial cities]. If they really care about shop-assistants, they should increase the miserable wages they give them, they should learn what social security is and they should create human working hours and conditions’.

The parties of the left were taken aback by the riots and had a varied attitude towards them. SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), a coalition of Synaspismos and other minor leftist organizations, kept a balanced attitude towards the rebellion. The top leaders of the party machine did not hesitate to keep their distances from the violence of the rioters, even to denounce them, however, in a moderate way compared to the frenzy of the KKE. On the tremendous night of the 8th of December demonstrators of Syriza abused violent demonstrators without however trying to prevent them. Ordinary members or voters of Syriza were very sympathetic in most cases towards the rebellion although presenting it as a ‘youth explosion’ and consequently as something external to them. Students of Syriza took part in the demos against the police and they had a milder attitude towards them, in most of the cases. KKE, understanding perfectly that it was their very political power as a part of the political system which was at stake, chose to adopt a cop-like attitude resembling more the far-Right, condemning rioters as a whole as ‘provocateurs’, manipulated by domestic and foreign ‘dark centres’. As for leftist parties and organizations and KOE in particular (a member of the SYRIZA coalition), they were in favour of the rebellion as an explosion ‘expected’ by them, but one without ‘positive’ demands. That’s why they were eager to present a list of demands asking the government to resign so that they could exploit politically the change of the political personnel. From the various trotskyist groups some were more active than others and participated in the Faculty of Law occupation and KKE M-L had a rather positive attitude towards the rebellion, abstaining of course from the clashes with the police. In general, leftists, except for few groups, had a rather superficial relation to the rebellion taking mostly part in demos but not in other activities.

The strength of fascists in Greece cannot be compared to that of the fascists in Italy during the 70’s. The main neo-nazi organisation (Chrisi Avgi –i.e. Golden Dawn) can count on a few hundred militants all over Greece. There’s also LAOS, a far right populist party which is the fifth party of the Greek parliament with 3,8% of the vote, but it’s hard to calculate its militant basis. Although right-wing militants took part in the repression of the revolt in the cities of Patra (mostly) and Larissa (to a lesser degree), it’s impossible to make a comparison between the situation in Italy and the situation in Greece because fascists in Greece are less organized. It was one of the state’s resort when media propaganda and cop repression were not sufficient but only in Patra they have an organisational basis (one with a long tradition, indeed –Temponeras, a high-school teacher was murdered in one occupied school in Patra in 1991 by the then secretary of the Youth branch of the right wing party, which is now in government).

The riots were connected with a particular political subculture, that of anarchists and anti-authoritarians in Greece, who played a very important role during the first two days of the riots and especially the first one. Their immediate violent reaction to the murder triggered off a social explosion that surpassed them and spread all over Greece. Because of the activities of students and other parts of the proletariat who left their own marks on it, the rebellion of December cannot be reduced to the rituals of street-fighting this sub-culture seemed traditionally so keen on and trapped in, as well. (Molly Note- the authors of this piece are being unfair to the Greek anarchist movement by this characterization. There is indeed a section of the Greek movement, the Autonomists, who have reduced anarchism to nothing more than "street fighting" and petty vandalism. The majority of the movement, however, has a much more intelligent idea of "what is to be done.)

Although the rebellion has ended, there are still visible traces of it. Some occupations remain, solidarity to those arrested and the spirit of the rebellion still unites various elements who took part in the insurrection (although certain sectarian and ideological signs appear), new struggles emerge with more radical characteristics and violence against the state seems to be a lot more legitimized.

The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements. Politically, those left parties and organisations that were taken by surprise and stood in awe of the rebellion will not offer much. They are just hoping for new members and seem rather untouched by the rebellion. The unions, both as a form and content of struggle, small or big, remained untouched by the insurrection or even hostile to it. The mainstream parties cannot hide their fear confronted with such powerful gestures of disobedience and attack on all institutions. There are certain signs of a return to the normality of both everyday life and politics as usual but also traces of new alliances and practices which will need time to get a clearer form and content.
TPTG, BLAUMACHEN

4 February 2009

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The fight on the part of the state and the political parties to recover "lost ground" after the rebellion goes on today. The following, also from the LibCom site, tells one tale of resistance to this project.

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Lawyers General Union against anti-anarchist legislation in Greece:
The Lawyers General Union of Greece has condemned and is threatening to mobilise against the police-state measures proposed by the Ministry of Justice.

The general council of Lawyer Unions of Greece has expressed its opposition to the criminalisation of masking and hooding and the return of the fascist law regarding "insulting authorities". The emergency assembly of the council headed by the president of Greek Union of Criminologists published its decision on Tuesday 24/3 after new totalitarian proclamations by the Minister of Justice who claimed that protesters arrested with 'distorted features' will have no right to monetary exchange of their penalty nor will the universal right for probation be applied to their cases, even after appeal court procedures. The Lawyer's General Council, the highest organ of solicitors in the country with powers ranging to striping individual lawyers of their soliciting permits, has announced that it is ready to mobilize against the police-state legislation.

It is widely beleived that the proposed legislation is designed to target and criminalise the ideological scene of anarchism, effectively returning to the 1930s "Idionimo", a law that criminalised communism and led to the displacement of thousands to concentration camps in the greek islands. It is telling that Nea Dimokratia, the ruling party, had in 1979 proposed a law for the displacement of homosexuals in concentration camps. The law collapsed under international pressure and social mobilisation at the time.

The General Council of Lawyers condemned the 'anti-hood' law as "deeply undemocratic" and as purely an instrument of propaganda. Regarding the 'insult of authority' law, the rep of the Athens Lawyers Union has expressed bewilderment before "an anachronistic mindset that amidst the crisis is trying to resurrect such laws, which have been condemned in the people's conscience"

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MOLLY NOTE:

The successes of the Greek rebellion were important and inspiring. The failures, however, were at least as glaring. The authors of the above piece allude to them, especially as to the refusal of the general population to join the rebellion. Some of the reasons for this refusal are obviously out of the control of the rebels. Others, however, are not. As left communists the authors of the above would undoubtedly condemn any preliminary organization as "bureaucratic". Be that as it may the events in Greece plainly show the need for preliminary organization to act as beacon for the rebels. NOT to direct it but to give ideas in a coherant form that can be acted upon with the maximun possible speed. Perhaps most importantly rebellion without a positive program will remain only...rebellion. By its very nature it cannot ask the majority of the population to join in unless there is some viable ideal that can be pointed too, an ideal expressed with more than vague genralizations. This is intimatedly connected to the question of organization. The Greek movement has performed admirably, but it cannot expect to do the work of decades in a few short weeks. It is important that these lessons be learned and acted upon.