Majority of Greeks support more protests: polls

[Joanne98]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - A majority of Greeks support further protests against austerity measures agreed by the government in exchange for billions of euros in EU/IMF aid, two polls showed on Saturday.

A survey by polling group Public Issue for the Kathimerini newspaper showed that 68 percent backed more strikes and protests against the measures, which include deep cuts in wages and pensions, although a smaller number -- 39 percent -- were prepared to take to the streets themselves.

Another poll, from Kappa Research for To Vima newspaper, showed 53.2 percent in favor of more protests, compared to 45.3 percent against.

The Kappa poll was conducted on Thursday, a day after some 50,000 people marched in Athens and three people were killed in a petrol bomb attack in the worst unrest to hit the country since riots in 2008. The Public Issue survey was carried out the day before the deadly march.

Those polls contrasted with a third by ALCO for newspaper Proto Thema, which appeared to point to stronger support for government plans.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64718W20100508

[pscot]

1. As I understand this

the Greeks have been enjoying benefits they can't pay for. Their creditors have balked at lending them more money, and the debts are now being called in. The people don't want to give up their bennies, so they protest.

[msongs]

2. like the USA except corporations and military are getting all "the bennies" thanks to our govt nt

[stuart68]

15. Yeah, those greedy military guys

they have such great health-care (military medicine for amputate limbs) and great housing, etc. They are sucking up all the benes as opposed to the $250K/year guys ate the SEC surfign porn as the market imploded.

get a grip.

[JDPriestly]

17. The guys in the military are not the greedy ones.

It's the defense contractors and military material suppliers that overcharge and grab the money. By military, people are not referring to members of the military necessarily.

[stuart68]

21. Great assumption, but still an assumption

[JackRiddler]

7. Sadly your understanding seems to come solely from the right wing propaganda.

Greeks have suffered above all from 1) the practice of the rich avoiding taxes and moving their wealth abroad and 2) from trying to sustain a currency that brings them into direct competition with the likes of German and French industry.

The fairly generoous pension payments are a much better alternative to what would exist without them: higher unemployment, more poverty, greater economic depression. The problem is not that Greece takes care of its own people (thus raising net labor costs) but that other countries do not, and therefore gain an advantage in attracting international capital which cares only for profits and does not care at all for the fates of peoples.

Greece needs to default (tough to the creditors - in most cases an amount equivalent to principle was already paid off). Greece needs restore their own currency, devalue it, and generate and keep its own capital in-country. Greece needs to achieve a historic withdrawal from the neoliberal globalist project. It will be tough going but the country needs to achieve autonomy against the omnipotence of capital flows.

Europe as a whole needs to spank the bastard speculators who are looking to destroy countries as a means of making fast windfalls. Fuck the international banks and hedge funds. As soon as the Greek crisis is considered resolved, one way or another, the speculators will immediately pounce on Portugal or Spain or Italy as the next target of their international class war. They are the real problem and they need to be stopped.

[customerserviceguy]

23. If Greece defaults

it will take the rest of the world economy with it. We will surely go into double dip recession, and this time, there will be no political will to bailout the US banks that are tied to the European ones that will lose on a Greek default.

[JackRiddler]

27. Good. A system that fragile needs replacing.

Read your own post. If it's true that a default by a country as small as Greece sets off a domino effect that "takes the rest of the world economy with it," then the problem clearly lies with the dominoes, and not Greece. Larger countries have defaulted on greater debts because this was the only way forward for them. If the demented globalizers set up the system like you say, then they are the ones who must be punished, not the Greeks.

[customerserviceguy]

31. Admittedly, it needs replacing

but when the shit hits the fan, it's always the folks at the bottom who suffer. I think 2008-2009 was proof of that. Even with job numbers up a bit, there's still a huge amount of pain out there, and with a Greek default, even more is coming, this time possibly more severe.

[Doctor_J]

66. If it gets bad enough that the Hate Radio-addled Americans act like the Greeks

and take to the streets, some suffering will occur at other levels besides the bottom. Which is exactly what needs to happen to bring things into alignment.

[girl gone mad]

30. Thank you, Jack

Very well said. I concur 100%

[sabrina 1]

54. I couldn't agree more. Greece needs to default and yes, restore

their own currency, leave the EU. That's what the Global Capitalists are so worried about. Other European countries are now wondering if the experiment, the EU, was a failure. If Greece starts the ball rolling, others may join them.

It was the speculators who brought Greece down and I do not know why this is not illegal. Thank you for your post, it is really depressing to see people here fall for the propaganda that the people are to blame for the crimes and greed of global capitalists.

[JackRiddler]

58. It's not at all the EU that is a failure...

it's the euro that expresses a set of interests contrary to those of many of the peoples who now use it. From the perspective of German and French capital, the euro is a success. Any talk about how it would advance the interests of the people in a place like Greece was bullshit from the git-go. When Greece finds itself bankrupted, what's failed from the point of view of the euros' architects is the PR, not the reality.

[dotymed]

11. I doubt that the average Greek

citizen has benefited from "benefits", I imagine that the banksters, corporations, etc.. have benefited greatly. Now, it's time to pay the fiddler. just like it will soon be here. The ordinary citizens are being told "now, you're gonna get even less." Less of what they never got? Wile the elite profiteers move on. Power to the people.

[JDPriestly]

18. One of the strangest critiques I have heard is that the Greeks

are so careless, they pay people 14 months of wages for 12 months of work. Paying extra months of work, giving generous vacations and setting the retirement age at least in some industries lower than the U.S. age are perks workers get in various European countries.

The extra two months of pay just means that you get less per month during 12 months and then a bonus at the end. Lots of American companies give bonuses. Think Wall Street.

Many of the traders get bonuses each year that are many, many times the entire year's salary of ordinary workers.

The shocking fact about Greece is the role that Goldman Sachs played in hiding the bad state of the Greek economy prior to the recent election.

The misrepresentations that were made in Greece about the true state of their economy are similar to those made here during the Bush administration. And the same people enabled and engineered the misrepresentations -- the same people in major banks and brokerage houses around the world.

In fact, wages around the world have not risen for middle and lower class people nearly as much as they have risen for the wealthy. The wealthy in the world have been grabbing since about 1980, maybe even 1973-74. (The first oil crisis.) We shall see whether those same wealthy are smart enough to realize that they have made some bad mistakes.

[JackRiddler]

32. Yeah, this "14 months" propaganda is infuriating.

All it means is that they get their annual salary in 14 paychecks, instead of 12. It doesn't mean that this salary is just, or that workers therefore deserve to have their salary cut by 1/7! The state as employer negotiated it that way so that they could, indeed, pretend that 1/7 of employee salaries were just frivolous bonuses. Now we see the propaganda payoff this brings.

[sabrina 1]

53. Your understanding is wrong. But it's what you are supposed to

believe, just as we were supposed to believe that it was the home buyers who crashed the economy here. The working class is to blame for the corruption that brought down the world economy! That's the rightwing propaganda that seems to be working even on progressive boards like this.

Greece, like the U.S., had enough money to bail out their banks, now they want to make the working class pay the debt the government ran up.

This is an attempt to slam social programs, to attack the 'left' or any kind of New Deal policies because when the elderly, disabled and the sick get some help from the government, that money is not going to the elite.

Greece should have refused this bailout from the IMF, kicked out the government that got them into this mess and then with the people's support, worked on collecting taxes that are due, and make cuts where necessary until the debt is paid off. They should leave the EU so that they can get back to exporting their own goods without restrictions.

Venzuela paid off its debt to the World Bank and are now free from that oppression, which is one of the major reasons why the West, Global Capitalists, hate Chavez. He started a movement away from the decades long history of Sought American countries being under the thumb of Global Capitalists.

Maybe you should listen to what the PEOPLE of Greece (and other countries) are saying themselves. They are refusing to pay for the bailing out of the failed banks. I wish the American people would learn something from them.

[dkf]

3. Who do they think should pay for their benefits? The Germans? We Americans?

I don't see them protesting to let them out of the euro or anything. I really don't get where they think this magic money is coming from. Maybe they live in lala land.

[JackRiddler]

6. They themselves, in their own national currency.

No worries that "We Americans" are on the hook for anything in Greece.

Germany has benefited from getting Greece into the euro and should either pay the price for its benefits now or accept that Greece needs its own currency that it can devalue and control.

Greece suffers from high unemployment and if it wasn't generous with pensions and the like, the only difference would be even higher unemployment and a more depresed economy.

If Greece defaults it won't be the first country that did so, survived, and later prospered again - thanks to the default. Default is the intelligent way here, just as bankruptcy often is for individuals. (If it was good enough for Walt Disney and Henry Ford, it should be good enough for Greece and Argentina!)

Default is not doom - it is the only way to deal with the problem at this point. Look to Argentina as an excellent example.

[hack89]

9. Who is the biggest contributer to the IMF?

American tax payers are on the hook for a lot of that money.

[JackRiddler]

25. Whom has the IMF ever benefited?

Those complaining about Greece are enabling the bankster divide-and-conquer.

This isn't about "irresponsible" spending by Greece, or by California (same situation), or by the UK and many other nations. This is about whether sovereignty should reside with capital flows or peoples. All of these countries may have overspent, but at the same time they are under attack by speculators who care for absolutely nothing except cashing in.

[hack89]

39. When the government of Greece goes to Goldman Sachs

with the express purpose of hiding debt so they can still obtain favorable credit, it is hard to paint the Greeks as unwilling innocents.

[JackRiddler]

43. Nice little conflation of "the government" with "the Greeks" you perform.

Not even the opposition knew what ND was arranging with GS. Let alone "the Greeks."

[hack89]

45. OK - so what?

kick out the government and start over. Now what do you do about that debt? Default? Sure, why not as long as you don't expect to ever get credit again.

[JackRiddler]

48. It's the better choice than debt slavery.

Many countries that defaulted - or forced new terms on their creditors - have recovered and even gotten credit again, down the line. Is it better to have the as-yet unborn paying interest on the interest to predators 20 years hence? More to the point, is it better to force Greece into a death spiral of continuing deflation right now? Greece like other countries needs countercyclical spending.

Have a look at Ireland. They took the austerity pill, they're meeting their payments, and they're worse off now than before.

[JackRiddler]

34. Oh, and in case you didn't get it...

I'm saying Greece should reject the IMF plan, so American taxpayers wouldn't be paying anything.

[hack89]

37. I agree - they should sink or swim on their own. nt

[Flaneur]

8. Totally unsurprising post from this poster.

[Democat]

12. Maybe they actually want to bankrupt their own country for some reason?

Not sure how that's going to work out for them, but it doesn't sound too good.

[JackRiddler]

29. Their country is bankrupt.

Given that this is the capitalist norm - every country goes bankrupt sooner or later, next on the list may be the UK - the question now is whether the Greeks get to default and free themselves from having future generations pay interest on the interest, which is the intelligent way to deal with this problem, or whether they will be forced into debt slavery. Argentina showed how to do it, and they're much, much better off because of it.

[G_j]

14. you know, they are all lazy welfare queens...

:sarcasm:

[Joe Chi Minh]

36. We live to work, they work to live. Good luck to them. Happy siestas, friends!

Makes a change from the socialism for the rich we're used to.

[fascisthunter]

65. way to spin shit

be honest, you hate people protesting

[sharesunited]

4. Greece just had their general elections last October.

There doesn't appear to be any mechanism for a "no confidence" vote to dissolve their parliament and call for new elections.

Protest and rebellion are going to be the only outlet for the people.

[JackRiddler]

33. Yes, these are what set off the crisis...

The new government discovered just how completely the ND (with help from GS) had faked the numbers. From that moment the country was bankrupt. They should have defaulted immediately, instead of trying to enforce an IMF plan.

[William Z. Foster]

5. right wing propaganda

All of the right wing propaganda about this - that the crisis is the fault of the working people, that they aren't paying their taxes, that they are being irresponsible, that they are looking for a free lunch, that they need to suffer now - has been utterly demolished, revealed for what it is and completely debunked. Those peddling this propaganda cannot defend it, and do not even try to stand by their assertions when they are challenged. They merely move from thread to thread repeating the same lies over and over again as though they had not been and could not be refuted.

That is no longer "giving an opinion" that is no longer part of a discussion or a debate. It is spamming the board with talking points, it is exploiting the nature of Internet boards for the purpose of disseminating those talking points. This turns a board that is dedicated to supporting the political left into a platform for effective and efficient distribution of right wing propaganda.

In this manner, racist anti-immigrant screeds and racism in general, promotion of every right wing economic idea from trickle down to privatization to regressive taxes, every possible attack on working people and on poor people all get "airplay" and disproportionate representation and visibility here.

One cannot post about sexism without someone saying :"hey what about guys, they have it rough too!?

One cannot talk about racism without then hearing all of the right wing "reverse racism" propaganda.

One cannot talk about the plight of working people without someone defending the wealthy, and accusing others of fomenting class warfare.

One cannot talk about homeless people without someone posting malicious and false stereotypes about homeless people - drugs, mental illness, etc.

Those are all extreme right wing positions, not to mention bigoted and racist. Why do they get equal time and consideration? Why is the burden placed on those who try to refute and debunk those right wing lies, rather than on those promoting them?

[hack89]

10. Majority of Greeks support ice cream and free ponies. nt

[G_j]

13. point being?

:shrug:

[stuart68]

16. Ben Franklin

"When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic."

[JDPriestly]

19. Since 1963, the rich have taken over the government of this country.

The poor and middle classes have steadily lost ground -- especially since 1980.

Our problem is not that the ordinary people are voting themselves money but that the very rich are voting themselves more and more and more of the money.

The rich throw crumbs at the poor and middle classes. The middle class accepts the share it is given until the rich become too greedy, and the middle class begins to lack things it needs just to maintain a decent standard of living. The people on the streets in Greece are not poor ragamuffins. They are middle and lower-middle class. They want to have enough to continue their lives in dignity.

Wealthy people need to wise up. They need to re-read their history books.

[stuart68]

22. so the very rich get extra votes ?

you comment makes no sense. The very rich only get what they get when the majority vote for it. Immigration is a great example. All the noise an BS about the law in AZ is a means to avoid fixing the issue, and people fall for the rhetoric from our leaders (yes, Obama). Fix it. Make them all legal and their wages will go up as well as stanard of living. Lock down the border and the wages of US citizens will go up and unemployment will go down. Keeping them in the shadows makes sure there is cheap labor to mow expensive lawns. So with a dem president and dem house and dem senate, we cannot fix this ? They do not want to fix this. The people ultimately want the free ride, but unfortunately, nothing is free.

[G_j]

24. who wants a free ride in AZ?

[stuart68]

47. Not referring directly to AZ, but since you ask

the people who come across the border illegally want free access to services and citizenship without going through the system, and even moreso, the people who hire them want a free ride - it is easy to keep employees in line when you can threaten them with arrest if they complain.

[JDPriestly]

52. The rich give the big donations that make it possible for the politicians

to run for and stay in office. A rich American who plays that game gets many times the number of votes of the poorer person who makes no or modest donations to political campaigns.

Who do you think owns the media in this country? Wealthy people.

Do they back both parties? Yes.

Does either party represent the interests of the poor and middle classes at this time?

No, not really.

Ordinary Americans do not want a free ride. They want a fair ride. Right now, it is the wealthy who are getting the free ride. The free ride of the wealthy is paid for with the work, anxiety and sacrifice of the poor and middle classes in the country.

The oil spill is an excellent example of who wins and who loses in politics.

The CEO of BP earned the big bucks before this incident occurred. He is still flying around in his jets, making speeches on TV and wearing expensive clothes.

Meanwhile, the workers who died or were injured by the defective rig, and the many, many people who have lost their livelihoods for the foreseeable future thanks to BP's carelessness and failure to have a rescue plan in place (See Greg Palast's article posted on DU on why BP is responsible for the failure to minimize the oil spill) never earned that much and, if they came out alive, will be much the poorer for BP's reckless disregard of their rights and needs.

Who is getting the free ride here? The CEO of BP, or the fishermen who are unable to earn a living in the Gulf?

If you don't know how big companies influence the decisions of regulatory agencies not only about the content of the rules but also about their enforcement, then you do not know how D.C. works. The wealthy run this country. Our elections are a sham. We do not get meaningful choices. We are not allowed to know the truth.

[stuart68]

57. that's a long winded way of saying the masses are stupid or don't care

if people wanted to change something, it is a simple process. Are you telling me that the repub in MA had more money and sponsorship than the Kennedys ? Not likely.

The working class can turn this upside down in 1 day if they simply use their heads, but we have union folks in IL protesting budget cuts - why ? Do they want a more accountable government, more productivity, less corruption (3 of the last 5 govs are in jail) ? No, they want the benes they want. When I was in Flint MI, Buick offered to return 2,000 employees to full time jobs, but it would mean the current employees would see a cut in OT. Go figure - the employees voted no. Now none of them have a job.

We are in a lot more control of our destiny than you would think, and if we're not, God help us.

Remember, the country was founded against incredible odds, but they seemed to get it done...

this is my biggest disappointment related to our current leadership. They are capitulating as opposed to leading (aka, that healthcare joke that they call an historic event).

[JDPriestly]

59. Yes, the election result in Massachusetts was an excellent example

of the wielding of money in the sense I am suggesting.

In fact, the entire Teabag movement is the result of a very few wealthy, wealthy people taking the natural anger of people, sponsoring (meaning paying for) an organization that figured out an ad campaign strategy and persuaded ordinary people that the Teabag movement was their idea. Many Democratic politicians, especially the whole Blue Dog crowd, are the product of the same kind of moneyed manipulation.

The news media is, for the most part, controlled by people who wield money to shape political opinion. Fox News is a prime, but not the only, example.

It is in that way that wealthy people get many votes for each of the votes of ordinary people. The rich buy the right to control the information we get. That determines how we vote. If we really had free access to information, we would probably vote our own interests, and the outcomes would be very different.

[stuart68]

62. not likely...

that in Kennedy's own district, and with his death, and with the push for hc that simple ad campaigns hypnotized the masses to make a dramatic change. If that were true, then that strategist needs to run presidential campaigns.

I have a sense that what ever question I raise, you will simply reply, they bought that election. Was Obama's election bought by the rich ?

[Dappleganger]

64. Well said! nt

[hack89]

20. Demanding expensive services on one hand

and evading taxes on the other is a bad thing.

[G_j]

26. how do you know so much about Greece?

[JackRiddler]

28. Read it in attack pieces by the organs of Anglosphere banking, of course.

What else does one need to know?

Or maybe heard about it from Moody's, that non-partisan fount of objective wisdom.

Or maybe picked it up here!

[G_j]

35. the last possibility

being the most discouraging...

[hack89]

40. Or maybe through life experiences beyond DU? nt

[JackRiddler]

41. Like what? Did you visit the Acropolis while there?

Your cliched anti-Greek, pro-bank hit-and-run posts, which is all I've seen on this thread from you, bespeak little in the way of deep experience.

[hack89]

46. And your reflexive, cliched anti-capitalist shtick

is demonstrative of some deep, nuanced world view? Pull the other one!

[JackRiddler]

49. If you look around this thread...

You'll find several places where I bothered to lay out my views in detail, with factual backing. It forces me to figure out what I'm saying, and whether it makes sense. Try it yourself and see whether your own views cohere.

[hack89]

38. The Navy took me many places. nt

[JackRiddler]

42. Clearly, no better way to learn about the world than from an American base.

[hack89]

44. No - we lived on the economy.

what's the point of living in a foreign country if you don't actually live there.

[sabrina 1]

56. Keep repeating those rightwing talking points, if you do it often

enough, people will believe them! :eyes:

No, they won't, because the anger in Greece is just the beginning.

Since you are so informed, tell us. what caused the collapse of the economy in the U.S., in Iceland, in Ireland, in Spain, Italy, Great Britain? Do you have a talking point that blames the people of each of those countries also? We know the one they tried to use here in the U.S. How about all those other countries? Were they all 'tax evaders' who 'wanted expensive benefits but didn't want to pay their taxes'? Looks lie you are one of those who oppose progressive policies and are using this situation to make a point of some sort. The problem is, it is a lie. Tax evasion did NOT cause the problems in Greece.

I have to give credit to the PTBs. They get their talking points out quickly and there seems to be no shortage of stooges on the internet willing to repeat them without bothering to check for themselves just how much truth there might be in any of what you read or see on the media.

[sabrina 1]

55. 'ponies' ~ another word from the script

disseminated by the DLC crowd, who are the rightwing of the Democratic party. Why do people repeat these words like robots? Do you have no thoughts of your own without using ridiculous, childish propaganda like that, especially since it doesn't work?

Stop wasting your time spreading rightwing garbage. Everyone with a brain knows what happened to Greece, to Iceland, to Latvia, to the U.S. and Britain, to S. America (until they finally rose up against it). It is called 'Capitalism'! Across the globe people are realizing that it is a system that benefits only a few. Now it's time to end it, we the people of every country in the world, cannot afford to support these rich welfare queens any longer.

[unkachuck]

50. K&R....n/t

[Unvanguard]

51. They've been screwed and it isn't particularly fair, but there isn't really an alternative.

When the markets won't lend to you, you can't keep spending money.

[JackRiddler]

60. So you're saying the "markets" are a dictatorship of the world.

And I say they're a paper tiger. National governments could join together to end the reign of the speculators. Individual nations can pull themselves out of this system, control their own currency, and develop autonomously. They won't be richer, but they can be freer. As more nations choose this risky course over the certainty of debt slavery, the room to make it work will expand.

[Unvanguard]

61. And under global capitalism, they basically are.

There will not be a sudden simultaneous expropriation of all the world's banks and investment capital. It would arguably be a good idea, but it is not going to happen. So any country that intends to escape will only provoke a financial crisis, and will only be able to maintain its independence via autarky, which is not a very sensible economic policy.

In the Greek case, they could have conceivably escaped this by not joining the euro (which now seems to have been a terrible idea), but it's too late now.

[JackRiddler]

63. There's sudden, and there's serial...

Countries can start by reclaiming the capital that they themselves generate. The chain reaction of defaults that should have started decades ago in the third world can begin now in the developed countries under siege.

It's not true that a country that defaults is therefore worse off. The recent example is Argentina and their default turns out to have been very well advised. It is a generalization that autonomy is not a "sensible" economic policy. Clearly, accepting the dictates of capital-driven "globalization" has been an insane economic policy. It has burned the world. In most countries, it means reliance on a couple of commodities or monocultures for export and no independent development. The countries who have done better economically are the ones that chose development over "trade." Development has always involved protection.

Finally, it is untrue that "it's too late now." It's never too late. Greece can leave the euro. That's a better alternative than pledging to have future generations pay off the interest on interest on interest. The creditors have received most of their principle back.

This is not only Greece of course - a microcosm and a scapegoat for the situation in many other countries.

[JackRiddler]

67. bumpity - in lieu of the thread I should start about "Greek Mythologies" ....

1) Greeks work more hours on average than any other EU country!

2) Supposed bonus-and-easy pension culture is merely a way of supporting a population that would otherwise be unemployed and impoverished.

3) Corruption at the top encouraged rich to put their capital outside the country, but now the workers are supposed to pay the price.

4) Austerity will screw both Greece and the EU countries that have markets in Greece.

5) Greece and the other high-debt EU countries need to default and renegotiate. The euro was too ambitious in including mismatched countries.

6) A reasonable credit restructuring - such as one has seen in many other cases without disaster - needn't be the end of the euro, let alone the EU.