for their hearings on the US budget. I placed them here as I don't have at
hand any for Europe, but they are in even worse shape. I may use these
again in my next dometic economy emailing but save them as broad indicators
of where the current, almost world-wide capitalist economy is heading.
Ed
From: Mitchel Cohen
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 3:10 PM
Greece in flames: the prelude of the European Revolution
by Savas Michael-Matsas <eek@ath.forthnet.gr>,
The worst fears of the ruling classes of Greece and Europe are becoming
true: an uncontrollable social explosion is under way in Greece.
When these lines are written, late in the night on February 12-13, 2012, the
violent clashes and street fights between demonstrators and the riot police,
in the center of Athens and in other cities all over the country, still
continue. The phony "majority" that just voted in Parliament the new package
of measures of social cannibalism imposed by the troika of the EU, the
European Central Bank, and the IMF cannot and will not stop the Greek social
wild fire to expand in the country and spread beyond Greece, all over Europe
and internationally.
The popular rally in Syntagma Square Sunday, February 12 was literally
gigantic: nearly a million people converged in the Square in front of the
Parliament from all the neighborhoods of the Greek capital, in a mass
mobilization that superseded in magnitude and fighting spirit every previous
one, including the huge rallies during the General Strikes of June and
October 2011.
Last week, already two General Strikes had taken place, on February 7 and on
February 10-11 but many factors -- lack of preparation, bureaucratic
opposition to a real mass mobilization, extremely bad weather conditions --
although significant, they had nothing in common with what happened on
February 12, when the masses flooded the streets in Athens and nearly all
other cities giving a nearly insurrectionary character to the mobilization.
The riot police, with a prepared plan, attacked the people in Syntagma from
the early moments of the rally, at 5.15 pm. When the well known composer
Theodorakis and the hero of the anti-Nazi resistance Manolis Glezos, both
nearly 90 years old, advanced to enter the Parliament to make a joint
statement of protest, the riot police attacked them and all the
demonstrators in the Square with tons of chemicals. From that moment the
center of Athens was transformed into a battlefield, while people continued
to come en masse from all directions. In front of the Parliament itself,
they have resisted and remained until 10.30 pm some contingents from the
EEK, ANTARSYA, and the youth of SYRIZA. But all the streets and avenues from
Omonia to Syntagma and even around Acropolis were packed by people resisting
the savage police brutality until late after midnight.
Barricades were erected in some of the streets. Banks, big shops, cinemas
etc., about 40 buildings, were set on fire. The police station in Exarchia
was attacked. A hundred citizens from all age groups were injured, some of
them seriously and brought to the hospital. Another hundred were arrested,
including the demonstrators who had occupied the Town Hall of Athens. The
center of Athens looks today like a bombarded city.
It is noteworthy the fact that the Stalinist KKE one more time held its own
independent rally in Omonia Square (they claim to have assembled 50 thousand
people) but they avoided to join the many hundreds of thousands of people in
and around Syntagma Square because of the clashes of the demonstrators with
the police, and they remained far way from the battle, finally dispersing
peacefully their contingents. According to the Stalinist mantra every
violent clash with police forces, and any form of direct action is "a State
provocation".
The popular rebellion is not limited to Athens. In other cities, all over
Greece, from Corfu in the North West and Thessalonica in the North to Patras
in the West and Creta in the South, were and are taking place mobilizations,
demonstrations, occupations of public buildings, town halls, prefectures
etc. Attacks by angry demonstrators against the political offices of
bourgeois members of parliament took place: in Corfu (North West, Ionian
Sea), Agrinion (Western Greece), Iraklion (Creta, South Aegean Sea) the
offices of all local deputies were destroyed.
The fury of the rapidly impoverished and ruined people was reflected even in
the Parliament, blowing up the bourgeois parliamentary political system as
it used to be the last 38 years, after the fall of the dictatorship.
Although, a two thirds majority of deputies voted for the barbaric
Memorandum imposed by the troika and the current Papadimos government, the
negative vote of an unprecedented large number of deputies was followed by
massive expulsions from the ruling parties supporting Papadimos -- 46
deputies, including founding members or parliamentary spokesmen of their
respective parties, ministers etc., were expelled in the middle of the night
from the neo-liberal "socialist" PASOK, the right wing New Democracy and the
far right LAOS. Now in Parliament the second in numbers party is the "Party
of the Expelled," 63 deputies from the beginning of the crisis (PASOK now
has 130 deputies from the initial figure of 158, and the New Democracy 62.
The total number of the deputies is 300).
The far right LAOS, seeing its influence shrink dramatically in the polls,
voted against the new bail out, expelling two of its leading members who
remained in the government as ministers and voted in favor. Nevertheless the
Fuhrer of the LAOS, Karatzaferis, said that he will continue to support the
Papadimos government to "save the fatherland from communism!"
A similar statement was made by the leader of the right wing New Democracy,
Antonis Samaras saying that his Party is the last rampart against "mob rule"
-- by "mob" meaning the rebelled masses that lean more and more to the left.
The political personnel of the bourgeoisie is decimated. Many attempts were
made in these last months to create new bourgeois political parties -- and
more attempts certainly will come in the next period with so many bourgeois
politicians becoming homeless"
after their expulsion -- but they had no success at all so far, disappearing
nearly after their first public appearance.
The political challenge comes to the Left. But the Stalinist KKE continues
its self-centered policy focusing mainly to its own electoral and
organizationally strengthening and keeping the slogan for a workers people's
power" a vague slogan for a very distant future; the Synaspismos, main force
in SYRIZA, looks to the remnants of the excluded from PASOK to build a kind
of "popular front"
coalition with governmental ambitions; and the "Democratic Left," the right
wing split from Synaspismos, thanks to its good results in the polls,
becomes a pole of attraction for all refugees from the right wing of PASOK,
hoping to become a junior partner in a future bourgeois coalition
government, replacing perhaps the far right LAOS.
The lack of any real radical alternative to the collapsing system from the
parliamentary and from the centrist extra-parliamentary Left, makes the
re-groupment of the vanguard fighters, particularly from the young
generation, in a revolutionary internationalist Party of the proletariat the
main challenge and urgent task for our own Party, the EEK.
As the social-political explosion is under the way, we keep fighting with
even more determination for an indefinite General Political Strike to
overthrow the government, to break with the dictatorship of the EU and the
IMF, to cancel the debt to the international usurers and to re-organize the
entire economy on new, socialist bases, under workers power. Our hopes are
focused in our class brothers and sisters in Europe and all over the world
to join us in revolutionary struggle as well as in a revolutionary
International needed now more than ever before.
Athens, 13 February 2012
Savas Michael-Matsas
Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen
***
From: Bill Totten
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 10:13 PM
Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Mind-Blowing Charts ...
... from the US Senate's Income Inequality Hearing
by Josh Harkinson
Mother Jones (February 09 2012)
In another sign that Democrats have embraced income inequality as a cause
celebre, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing {1} on the subject
today. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, managed
to look concerned during two hours of testimony about the kneecapping of the
Middle Class - not that it should have been all that difficult. Here are
some of the hearing's most striking charts:
Mother Jones readers have seen this one {2}:
http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/household-income.png
The Philippe Dauman {3} chart:
http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/ceo_to_worker-pay.png
The one percent hasn't controlled such a large share of the economy since
the eve of the Great Depression:
https://motherjones.com/files/images/top_1percent_share_of_income.png
But as the rich have earned a larger share, they've paid a smaller and
smaller share in taxes:
https://motherjones.com/files/images/income_inequality_redo.png
A major source of inequality in the tax code comes from how it treats
investment income. Just ask Mitt Romney, who paid 13.9 percent of his income
in taxes in 2010. Most of his earnings came from capital gains, which only
get taxed at fifteen percent. Proponents of the loophole argue that it helps
spur investment, but it also disproportionately helps the rich:
https://motherjones.com/files/images/capital_gains_redo.png
Though America's wealthy are supposed to pay a higher tax rate than the poor
(what's known as a "progressive tax code"), they now benefit from so many
loopholes that the tax code has, in practice, become increasingly regressive
(the Gini Index is a common measure of income inequality):
https://motherjones.com/files/images/taxes_exacerbate_inequality.png
Links:
{2}
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-g
raph
{3}
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/10-most-ridiculously-overpaid-ceos
If You Liked This, You Might Also Like ...
SOTU: It's the Inequality, Stupid
Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America. Sounds like Obama's
ready to try and fix the imbalance.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-g
raph
Yes Indeed, Income Inequality Really is Growing
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/yes-indeed-income-inequality-reall
y-growing
Inequality Kills Growth
Why a country with a declining middle class is like a sinking ship.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/study-income-inequality-kills-economic-g
rowth
Yet More Grim Inequality News from the CBO
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/yet-more-grim-inequality-news-cbo
Major Study Links Decline of Unions to Rising of Income Inequality
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/07/strong-link-found-between-decline-unions
-and-rise-income-inequality
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/mind-blowing-charts-senates-income-inequ
ity-hearing
TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the
appropriate link at the top or bottom of
http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/mind-blowing-charts/
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