Flash brief from the #greekrevolution | 130 comments (123 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Could a sufficiently determined assembly of protesters push their way into the legislative assembly? At what cost?

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 05:40:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 2)

If history is any guide, in general that happens when organized groups with knowledge of and access to heavy machinery join as groups. They can then remove blockades and can in general not be stopped by anything less then deadly force (or placing tanks in their way, but tanks tend to be in the stage of deadly force anyway). Miners has played this role at least in Serbia and Roumania.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 05:19:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 7)

Listen: Athens is home right now possibly to the highest ownership rate of gas masks per capita in the world. A surprisingly rapid dissemination of anti-police violence survival and counter-attack tactics, a small but vigorous nucleus of anarchist protesters having been practically raised skirmishing with the police and having all sorts of asymmetric street-fighting know-how, and the rapid increase of unemployment combined with the sort of quasi-Mubarak level police violence we saw yesterday is bound to increase the ranks of those ready, willing and able to fight. You see police throw tear-gas or charge the crowd and the amazing thing is that most of the protesters react quickly, but not panicky, as if they are seasoned veterans, very unimpressed by the riot-gear and the blatant readiness of the police to inflict grievous bodily harm to people of all ages. It is amazing to witness. You realize that people adapt pretty quickly to circumstances.

If the protesters weren't peaceful in their great majority yesterday, there is no way short of actually shooting people, that the police could stop them. Should the Communist Unions (who have a rather dim view of "petty bourgeois rebellions" such as what is unfolding in Syntagma) ever decide to act violently (not likely) they could storm the Parliament, in circumstances similar to yesterday's, in half an hour. Heck even the much less muscular unionists of SYRIZA and the extreme left could do it. Possibly with no casualties. They won't though. Most of the relevant parties are wedded deeply to representative democracy. Most of the left considers (with some justification) that establishing democracy after 1974 is its own doing. And they will not allow all Hell to break loose.

After all, the question would then be: what next? And there's the rub: no one has any idea what to do after storming the Winter Palace any more.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 06:35:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Listen: Athens is home right now possibly to the highest ownership rate of gas masks per capita in the world.

Outside Israel, I suppose...

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 06:50:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

You know, I wouldn't bet on that...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 07:04:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 3)

After all, the question would then be: what next?

With people who represent the 80%+ majority of the Greek people physically occupying the Parliament, demand that the Parliament dissolve itself and call for new elections within a month. Demand that the government order the police to stop attacking mostly peaceful protestors and in return the protesters will begin instead organizing for the coming election. Demand that ongoing discussion of economic alternatives be presented on TV and the internet with Yanis Varoufakis and others to rationally discuss what are and are not options.

That at least would constitute working towards a peaceful and functional resolution of the problem. Now all that exists are doomed projects that harm the Greek nation and people and the future looks very bleak. The current iteration of Greek democracy has already ended in a ditch. This would provide an alternative other than fascism, fascism administered by foreign fascists at that.

You are correct that no one knows what to do after storming the Winter Palace. So don't take that route. We know how that ends. The future is uncharted territory largely because it has been in the interests of the Serious People to never allow that territory to be charted. That territory is one in which a government is in fact accountable to the majority of the people instead of a clique of the wealthy.

The failing of previous revolutionary movements, from the revolution that led to the USA to the present is that they have not addressed the economic and social problems in a functional manner. The most important issue is likely to be the control and direction of monetary policy. Give Yanis Varoufakis and like minded Greeks a chance to present alternatives to TINA. Let TARA shine.

What is needed are policies that put the whole of society ahead of the profits of a few sociopaths. It is because of that sociopathy that attempting to do something sane seems crazy. As I have said: "If sanity be culturally normative, by the norms of this culture I claim insanity!" It is past time for new norms. My sincerest apology for the fact that the actions of my own government are one of the biggest obstacles to the development of a viable future. But we are all tainted by that same original sin.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:02:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

I was reading through this on another computer because I wanted to link to a dkos piece on Greece. As I was reading through it I liked it so much, especially the final paragraph, that I signed in just to recc the comment. Nicely done. It is a fight we all need to root for each other on.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

by NearlyNormal on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 01:01:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

It's not like the current occupants of the WInter Palace have a clue, either.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 03:04:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

No one knows what to do after storming the Winter Palace.

This is the very same situation the Parliamentarians faced in the 1640s in England. The existing thought system made it impossible to deal with a monarch who was bent on imposing Divine Right absolutism. Christopher Hill described the situation after the King had been captured pretty well. He said the Parliamentarians suffered from a "mind-stop" which made it impossible to contemplate the next step. But that "mind-stop" was overcome, to the detriment of Charles I. We have been through many iterations since that time.

It took another 45 years or so to arrive at another quasi-stable political solution, but the outcome of 1688 has served as the original part of the foundation for the current system in England, while allowing that foundation to be greatly expanded over time. Yet a similarly radical expansion is needed in the U.K. today. Likewise in the USA.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 09:24:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (4.00 / 2)

Aren't you missing out the Putney debates there?

The Debates

The Levellers wanted a constitution based upon manhood suffrage ("one man, one vote") and a fairer reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies. Further, they also wanted authority to be vested in the House of Commons rather than the King and Lords (with elections every two years) and "native rights" to be declared sacrosanct for all Englishmen:

freedom of conscience, freedom from impressment into the armed forces, everyone equal under the law and no penalties should be made for not going to church, or attending other acts of worship.

The Leveller's ideas had come to dominate the thinking of soldiers and officers in Cromwell's New Model Army. In October 1647, five of the most radical cavalry regiments in elected Agitators (Latin to drive) who were known as New Agents to represent their freethinking political and religious views.

The New Agents issued a political manifesto: The Case of the Armie Truly Stated, and endorsed the constitutional proposals drafted by civilian Levellers in the Agreement of the People.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 11:21:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 0)

Aren't you missing out the Putney debates there?

Yes, it was a simple gloss with no attempt to convey the marvelous diversity of ideas that emerged, however briefly, during the Civil War. Another question would be how the Restoration might have been avoided.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:44:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Greek v. Greek (none / 1)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/the-dark-side-of-acing-the-tests_b_887160.html

Train them from a young age to have a unidirectional mind.

Bruner's primary concern was that children are being pressed to do too much too soon. The negative effects of early academic work are several fold, he stated. Young children are too often asked to do things for which they are developmentally unready. This leads to frustration, stress and a potential aversion to learning. More debilitating, the early introduction of so-called academic work has a conditioning effect, perhaps unintended, but very powerful. Gradually, children in what we now call "high stakes" learning situations, whether at school or home, are conditioned to see learning as, and only as, the process of delivering the "correct" response to the powerful adult in whose presence they find themselves.
Children like to please parents and teachers. If extrinsic and intrinsic rewards are conditioned on giving "right" answers, children will indeed work hard to figure out what the adult will accept as the "right" answer. The process is self-perpetuating as the rewards are compounded over time. When strongly conditioned to see learning this way, qualities like imagination, skepticism, eccentricity, originality, invention and creativity will be extinguished. These are unreliable mechanisms for discerning "right" answers.

by Upstate NY on Fri Jul 1st, 2011 at 12:24:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Flash brief from the #greekrevolution | 130 comments (123 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden)

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