Too bad Fassbinder is no longer with us. Few, if any, so astutely recognized the perseverance of fascist values in postwar Germany, sublimated in the guise of the bourgeois values of work and frugality than he did, with its attendant consequences resulting from the suppression of the libido. In films like The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola, he addressed the joyful, contradictory features of contemporary capitalism, one defined by the duality of austerity and excess. Through the character of Maria Braun, a smart, savvy women, who, reminscent of Scarlett O'Hara during Reconstruction, exploits the entreprenuerial spirit of the time to rise to great heights during the German economic miracle of the 1950s, he prefigured the rise of Merkel.

In Katzelmacher, Fassbinder exposed the enduring German sense of racial superiority in regard to the peoples of southern Europe, and the sexual jealousies connected to it, dramatized by means of the hostility of the young German working class characters to the Greek immigrant, Jurgos. Such attitudes have been on prominent display during the current Eurozone crisis, with Germans and the German media purveying crude stereotypes about the purportedly profligate Greeks so as to justify the colonization of the country by financial interests aligned with the German state. Merkel's proposal for a new Eurozone is based upon implicitly bigoted assumptions about countries like Italy and Greece, as revealed through the notion that Germans, through the administrative processes of the European Union, must seize power from them and act as their firm, disciplinarian parents.

Labels: Europe, Film Notes, Germany, Greece, IMF, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe

UPDATE 2: George Cicariello-Maher, a participant in the protests in response to the killing of Oscar Grant by BART police in Oakland in 2009, examines the complex sociology of riots such as those that convulsed London:

Essential to the imagery of the irrational mob is the insistence that the bulk of the destruction is centered on working-class communities, and here the logic is fundamentally colonial. The poor and the Blacks can’t be trusted: look what they do to their own. Incapable of governing themselves, they must be taught civilization, by blows if necessary. Here again Oakland resonates, as after the riots there a solitary African braid shop, one of many whose windows were smashed, became the media symbol of the irrationality of rioters hell-bent on destruction and nothing more. It is worth noting that the poor rarely own anything at all, even in their own communities.

To break this narrative, we must read the actions of the rebels as well as listening to their words. While working-class communities have indeed suffered damage (we should note that working-class communities always bear the brunt of upheaval), there has been less talk of more overtly political targeting: police stations burned to the ground, criminal courts windows smashed by those who had passed through them, and the tacitly political nature of youth streaming into neighboring areas to target luxury and chain stores. On just the first night, rioters in Tottenham Hale targeted Boots, JD Sports, O2, Currys, Argos, Orange, PC World and Comet, whereas some in nearby Wood Green ransacking the hulking HMV and H&M before bartering leisurely with their newly acquired possessions.

This tendency was seemingly lost on analysts at The Guardian, who were left scratching their heads when the riot locations did not correspond directly to the areas with the highest poverty. And it’s not just the lefty news outlets that let such details slip: Danny Kruger, ex-adviser to David Cameron observed that: The districts that took the brunt of the rioting on Monday night were not sink estates. Enfield, Ealing, Croydon, Clapham... these places have Tory MPs, for goodness’ sake. A mob attacked the Ledbury, the best restaurant in Notting Hill.

While refusing to denounce the rebellions, socialist thinker Alex Callinicos nevertheless suggests that such looting is a form of do-it-yourself consumerism… reflecting the intensive commodification of desires in the neoliberal era. This view misses the far more complex role of the commodity during a riot, which was as evident in Oakland as in Venezuela: not only is the looting of luxury consumer items far more complex than Callinicos suggests, but the argument of looting as consumerism would have a hard time explaining both the destruction of luxuries and appropriation of necessities that often ensues.

Referencing the attention to police misconduct engendered by the riots in Tottenham, Cicariello-Maher observes:

This isn’t the only time riots have worked, either: in 2009 Oakland, it was riots and only riots that led to the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of BART police officer Johannes Mehserle for the death of Oscar Grant.

UPDATE 1: lenin explains Starkey within the context of the racist right in the UK:

But this raises the question of what Starkey was trying to do. Clearly, he earnestly expressed his own views as a High Tory historian with a monarchist, nationalist bent. Yet, he evidently went farther than the political establishment, including the mainstream right, is prepared to go at the moment, and may well have gambled with his future television career. In fact, there would be a strong case for his being arrested and charged with incitement to racial hatred. There are two answers that make sense. The first is that is that the entire aggressively offensive performance was a calculated attempt to injure and smear the targets of its racialised invective. It was malice. And it was intended that racists should enjoy this degradation, uttered with relish as it was. The second is that the presentation, in its deliberately excessive way, invited the disgust and disorientation of the audience, such that, amid a generalised moral panic, he would recalibrate the scales of what is publicly acceptable in a radical way. The pathfinders of the racist right often seek the "chorus of execration", as Powell put it, revelling in the temporary ex-communication, enjoying the ambiguous status of the heretic and the prophetic. This is both because they expect to be vindicated, and because they can enjoy the spectacle of their execrators making use of the space of relative 'respectability' that their provocation has created.

INITIAL POST:

Why did British youth loot their neighborhoods after the killing of Mark Duggan? British historian David Sharkey has the answer. British society has been degraded by blacks and black culture, inducing whites to talk like illiterates and steal whatever strikes their fancy. Contrary to BBC claims to the contrary, the interviewer, Emily Maithis, allowed him to elaborate on his theories of racial contamination without criticism. Other participants in the panel discussion, Dreda Say Mitchell and Owen Jones, did challenge Sharkey, but in remarkably understated fashion. Personally, I think that they should have just walked out.

Such gentle inquiry was in marked contrast to how another BBC interviewer, Fiona Armstrong, treated Darcus Howe when he sought to explain the social conditions associated with the riots, going so far as to assert he had participated in a riot himself:

It was so bad that the BBC was forced to issue an apology. Expect a more and more blatant recourse to racism and xenophobia to mask the sub-proletarianization of Europe as suggested by these BBC interviews.

Labels: Dubstep Rebellion, Europe, Germany, Mainstream Media, Racism, United Kingdom

Clashes between protesters and the police in Athens in advance of a parliamentary vote tomorrow on intensified austerity measures required for additional IMF and European Central Bank funds are ongoing:

23.30 GMT+2 Up to this time, there are constant harsh clashes. Continually, medics run to help numerous injured protesters, transferring them from outside Hotel Grande Bretagne.

23.17 GMT+2 Dissent is generalized; there are people hurdling rocks to the police across the centre of Athens. In Stadiou Street police are now attacking demonstrators, and the clashes continue in Syntagma as before. Filellinon and surrounding streets are lined with police squads. There are at least 5-6 police units outside the Russian Church near Syntagma. At the Zappeion hundreds of DELTA motorcycle police forces. At the junction of Ardittou and Vouliagmenis streets, near First Cemetery of Athens, there are dozens of motorcyclist cops.

23.15 GMT+2 A huge crowd at Syntagma tonight, multiple times larger than the crowd at the general strike demo in the morning. Clashes between police squads and demonstrators forced the temporary halting of the concert. There are many stun grenades and tear gas thrown against demonstrators’ heads.

Such confrontations have been taking place for hours:

17.00 GMT+2 Demonstrators move away, so the tension shifts to the lower side of the square. Othonos Street has re-opened and is gradually filled with people. The area is under continuous attack from tear gas and shock grenades.

16.50 GMT+2 Syntagma: A lot of tear gas inside the metro station, from Amalias Street. The majority of anarchists are not present at the time, but comrades remain near Syntagma. Police raid en mass the upper side of the square; melees between demonstrators and cops. From Othonos Street a minor militant group with football fans’ distinctive features throws stones against the numerous repression forces. Several organizers of the Syntagma Assembly, possibly along with far-right ‘300 Greeks’, are offering Maalox in order to protect people from chemicals.

16.40 GMT+2 Ongoing clashes; tear gas thrown now in front of the Unknown Soldier Monument. The majority of the people have split away from the place. It is estimated that approximately 2,000 remain gathered. Nevertheless, demonstrators do not leave the square.

16.05 GMT+2 According to reports, three people have been detained at Syntagma – one of the detainees is a trade union member.

15.57 GMT+2 Protesters are taking back the area around Filellinon Street, at the lower side of Syntagma square.

15.45 Athens: Police squads evacuated Amalias Street by a savage chemical warfare operation; asphyxiant gases were poured inside the metro station and thrown even against the Medical Centres’ tend in Syntagma square.

For updates, go here and here.

Obscured by the pyrotechnics of the immediate confrontation is the probability that the Greek government will approve the austerity measures by a slight margin. Upon such approval, the conflict will enter a new phase, mass resistance to the implementation of the austerity and privatization program. European capitalists are already aware of this prospect, as reflected in this article in the Guardian last week:

There is doubt, though, over whether the measures can be imposed on an increasingly unhappy population.

Everything depends on Greece implementing the measures, Lord Brittan, the former vice president of the European commission, told the BBC's Today programme. Legislating is one thing, implementing is another, and Greece's history of implementation is not a happy one, Brittan added.

Jane Foley of Rabobank International agreed, saying there was widespread scepticism in the bond markets about the ability of the Greek political system to implement the reform.

In effect, investors are beginning to imply that regime change will be necessary to ensure the repayment of Greek debt to French, German, British and American financial institutions. Or, to put it more bluntly, a coup, whether initiated by the military, or by a government of national unity within the existing political system. So far, Prime Minister Panpandreou and the Socialists have been unable to reach agreement with the rightist opposition, but the EU, the IMF and the ECB may soon broker such a marriage to preserve the constitutional legitimacy of the austerity program and the repression required to execute it.

No doubt, the EU, the IMF and the ECB are desperate to avoid the installation of a new junta in the service of international capital, given the grave damage that it would inflict upon the project of a united Europe, but, if necessary, they will accept it. Supposedly, Greek media outlets have been disseminating alarms over the possibility of military intervention in recent days. Proposed new border controls within the EU, prompted by fears of a mass migration from North Africa, will also serve the purpose of keeping most Greeks incarcerated in their newly created debtor's prison. One hopes that the Greeks are already planning beyond this week to resist these measures.

Labels: Activism, Anarchism, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, France, Germany, Greece, IMF, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe

Someone, perhaps it was the ubiquitous Sasha, asserted that if people from Mexico attempted to force their way across the border with the US, the US would respond with force equal to, and possibly even greater than, the force used by Israel against Palestinians on Sunday. I tend to disagree with him for several reasons, primarily because of the economic relationship between the US and Mexico as well as the social unrest that it would ignite within the US itself, particularly in states like California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. But he has revealed an important aspect of the occupation that deserves more than the scant attention that it commonly receives, with the recognition of it limited to academia and international providers of security services.

Sasha has implicitly associated the occupation with broader issues of global border contral, and despite his Zionist stance, he is correct in doing so. It is an emerging narrative of the occupation that is as important as the dominant one regarding the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians for the land of Palestine. There is, in fact, a frightening symmetry between the evolution of the occupation and international methods of border control, so much so that the occupation often serves as a testing ground for policies and technologies utilized elsewhere, especially in the US. Prior to the mid-1990s, there was a time when the occupation took a somewhat more benign form in terms of the intrusiveness of social control measures and technologies, but, in the immediate aftermath of Oslo accords, Israel commenced the installation of a system of border checkpoints that has culminated with the ongoing construction of what critics have called the Apartheid Wall, as well as the militarization of daily life. The part of this process that gets ignored, possibly because it is contrary to the tendency of many around the world to hold Israel solely responsible for the abuses of the occupation, is the effort to integrate these measures into other border control situations.

One of the most obvious examples of this process was the attempted construction of a border fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative network, or SBInet, by the US along the border of the US and Mexico, cancelled last fall. Not surprisingly, the US looked to Israel in 2006 for its construction before abandoning the project:

For the SBInet project, the Boeing/Elbit consortium proposed the radical idea of 1,800 towers equipped with cameras and motion detectors stretched across the border. For possibly the first time ever, the words Israel and border are in the same sentence and it doesn't have anything to do with its own borders. The talent and expertise that Elbit Systems (NASDAQ ELST) has employed for years in protecting Israel's borders will now be put to use on US borders to keep Americans safe.

Kollsman Inc., an American-based subsidiary of Elbit, has been selected as a member of the winning consortium by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) to supply technology to identify threats, to deter and prevent crossings, and to apprehend intruders along the US borders with Canada and Mexico.

Kollsman, headquartered in Merrimack, New Hampshire, is a development, manufacturing and support organization providing advanced electro-optical and avionics systems to the commercial aerospace, military and homeland security markets. The company's expertise includes enhanced vision systems, flight displays, head-up displays, thermal imaging systems, fire control systems, and advanced security and surveillance solutions.

The Secure Border Initiative is the latest attempt by the United States government to use technology to secure its borders, stop smuggling, and prevent illegal immigration. After September 11, illegal immigration is not just seen as a social problem, but also a national security issue. A unique aspect of this initiative was that Homeland Security gave the bidders total freedom to create new ideas of how to apply both new and old technology to secure the US borders.

Except that it is not really accurate to say that the US looked to Israel, as the consortium of corporations involved in the aborted construction of the fence, Boeing and Elbit, are transnational, with both companies listed on US stock exchanges. Accordingly, it is more appropriate to say that transnational corporations, many headquartered in the US and Israel, have utilized the occupation as an experimental testing ground for technologies with an anticipated global application. Given the proliferation of surveillance cameras and airborne surveillance in the United Kingdom to the extent that it is considered the most surveilled society among industrialized countries, I would not be surprised to discover that UK corporations are playing a prominent role in this effort as well. Of course, the deployment of technologies originally developed for border control for the purpose of mass surveillance shouldn't surprise anyone. Hence, the occupation, and the technologies associated with its imposition, are part of a global, transnational corporate effort to maintain the separation of the poor of the Global South from the wealthy of the Global North and monitor virtually every aspect of our daily lives. In this respect, Chicano activists in California have much in common with the Palestinians enclosed within the occupied territories, and they have supported the actions of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California, as most recently expressed through the support of MECHA for the Irvine 11.

Furthermore, as you may recall, the US engaged in extemporaneous forms of occupation inspired border control within Iraq during some of the most intense periods of Iraqi resistance. Starting in late 2003, the US partitioned Iraqi cities, creating, in the words of Robert Fisk, a controlled populace. By August 2004, Toufic Haddad described US methods as synonymous with those of the occupation:

. . . the use of aggressive techniques of urban warfare with an emphasis upon special units, house to house searches, wide scale arrest campaigns (almost 14,000 Iraqis are now in prison), and torture; the erecting of an elaborate system of watchtowers, military bases, check-points, barbed wire, and trenches to monitor, control, and restrict transportation and movement; the clearing of wide swaths of land next to roads; the use of armored bulldozers to destroy the homes of suspected militants; the razing of entire fields from which militants might seek refuge; the heightened relevance of snipers and unmanned drones; and the attempted erecton of collaborator networks to extract information from the local populace about resistance activities -- both military and political.

Accordingly, an ethnic, sectarian emphasis upon the nature of the conflict in Palestine, while appealing to those seeking to organize among nationalistic Americans seeking to avoid US culpability in the actions of Israel, doesn't come close to addressing the real dimensions of the struggle.

Meanwhile, in regard to Europe, the occupation is consistent with an ideological belief in the necessity of rigorous border control to prevent the entry of people characterized as culturally dangerous. The governments of Italy and France are expressing alarm over the possibility of an influx of North Africans in the absence of Gaddafi's willingness to interdict them, but such xenophobia is not a recent development, as demonstrated by periodic statements by German politicians about the purported inability of Turkish immigrants to adopt German values, as if this matters. Several years ago, Behzad Yaghmaian spent two years in Europe interviewing Muslim immigrants, many of them imprisoned within refugee camps, and published a book about what they told him, Embracing the Infidel. In this book, he humanizes his subjects while exposing an impersonal system of social control across the European continent that restricts them to ghettoes and refugee camps. In a sense, the police methods of stopping people for their identity cards, detaining them and incarcerating them in refugee camps evokes a bygone era, one that predates the accelerated technological modernization connected to the occupation and US military operations in lesser developed countries, but it retains the cultural superiority and xenophobia at the heart of this project. Last week, the suppressed brutality of it erupted on the streets of Athens, as right wing Greek mobs attacked the undocumented.

Labels: American Empire, Europe, Germany, Greece, Immigration, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Palestine, Police, United Kingdom, US Military, Zionism

UPDATE 4: Sarkozy and Erdogan are still going at it:

Nicolas Sarkozy has belittled Nato's role in the military operations against Muammar Gaddafi, re-igniting the row over who replaces the Americans in charge of the campaign in Libya.

Senior Nato officials said the alliance would decide within days whether to take over the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces and David Cameron announced that Nato would "shortly be providing the command and control and the machinery" for the attacks on ground targets in Libya.

The Nato decision is expected by Monday, before foreign ministers meet in London on Tuesday to discuss Libya. Senior officials were confident that the alliance would agree to assume command of all three elements of the campaign against Gaddafi – the air assaults, as well as the no-fly zone and arms embargo already under Nato command.

Turkey and France have been embroiled in a bitter row all week, with Ankara demanding that the Nato alliance, of which it is the member with the second biggest army after the US, takes over and Sarkozy opposed.

Sarkocy wants NATO to provide the force, while leaving the decisions as to the deployment of it to the eleven countries taking part in operations, thus excluding Turkey. Is this an indication that ground troops may soon be necessary? What are the consequences for the future of NATO if Sarkozy prevails? Germany is already on the sidelines, and Turkey may soon find itself there.

UPDATE 3: Libyan airstrikes have brought the economic ambitions of competitors, such as Turkey's Recip Tayyip Erdogan and France's Nicholas Sarkozy to the surface:

The clash between Turkey and France over Libya is underpinned by acute frictions between Erdogan and Sarkozy, both impetuous and mercurial leaders who revel in the limelight, by fundamental disputes over Ankara's EU ambitions, and by economic interests in north Africa.

The confrontation is shaping up to be decisive in determining the outcome of the bitter infighting over who should inherit command of the Libyan air campaign from the Americans and could come to a head at a major conference in London next week of the parties involved.

Using incendiary language directed at France in a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said: I wish that those who only see oil, gold mines and underground treasures when they look in [Libya's] direction, would see the region through glasses of conscience from now on.

President Gül reinforced the Turkish view that France and others were being driven primarily by economic interests. The aim [of the air campaign] is not the liberation of the Libyan people, he said. There are hidden agendas and different interests.

France is, of course, adamantly oppposed to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

UPDATE 2: Oh, by the way, could someone just tell Dennis the Menace to shut up and go away? He seems to have forgotten that he further embarasses himself every time he purports to represent an ethical liberal position in public. He'll stick with his assertion that the President should be impeached over bombing Libya until . . well, you know, until the President takes him for a ride on Air Force One again. And, then, there are sell outs like Juan Cole and David Corn.

Cole has always been phony. Years ago, in 2006, I posted a comment on his blog in response to his post about his sadness over the fact that the son of the Israeli novelist David Grossman had been killed during the Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon, emphasizing Grossman's opposition to it. I responded with a comment to the effect that Grossman did not oppose the Israeli attacks upon Lebanon until he was afraid that his son was going to be ordered to participate in the pending invasion. I also observed that, according to press reports, Grossman expressed no remorse over the loss of Lebanese lives as a result of the Israeli air strikes and ground assault. Cole deleted it, of course, and I thereafter stopped paying attention to anything he had to say.

UPDATE 1: A provocative commentary by Vijay Prashad:

Such options are no longer central, or even on the table. Qaddafi’s rule might fall in a week or a month. In the interim, he is a caged animal, and his loyalists will not dissolve easily. In the short term, he may conduct some kind of spectacular attack on a tanker in the Mediterranean, or else, as he himself warned, inside Europe. This is precisely the kind of pretext that the warmongers seek. The Gulf of Sidra will stand in for the Gulf of Tonkin. Ships of war will dock at Benghazi, and the ground troops will slide along the road that was once the graveyard of Field Marshall Montgomery and Rommel (their half tracks and tanks still litter the road outside Tobruk). Such an assault, which might be inevitable, will revive the debacle in Iraq that lasted from 2003 to 2007, with loyalists now underground in a brutal insurgency against the foreign troops and the people of the east, a defense of their realm and a sectarian conflict at the same time. If this were the scenario, then, as Michael Walzer put it, it would extend, not stop, the bloodshed.

The forces of counter-revolution line up with the West. The Gulf Cooperation Council hastened to pledge its unequivocal support. The United Arab Emirates is sending twenty-four aircraft and Qatar will send as many as six. They will also help fund the between $1-2 billion/month cost of the enforcing the no-fly zone. Saudi Arabia’s troops remain in Bahrain. Their air force is geared up, and it too might fly alongside the French over Libyan skies. No Tunisian and Egyptian planes are on the offer. It is a telling sign that only the counter-revolutionary regimes are excited at the prospect of this battle. They know that it is precisely the best opportunity to stop the tide of the Arab Revolt of 2011.

Meanwhile, Germany is staying out of it as arguments over the mission erupt within NATO. And, not surprisingly, Steven Erlanger and Judy Dempsey of The New York Times are hysterical over this continuing newfound German assertion of independence from the US and France.

INITIAL POST: No doubt you've noticed that I haven't posted anything about the US, French and British airstrikes against Gaddafi's forces in Libya. There is a good reason for it. I don't understand it, so maybe some of you out there can help.

I've heard a number of explanations as to the objectives of the participants, but I've yet to be fully convinced of any of them. Let's go through them. First, there is the claim that the US, France and the British want to assist the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi so as to increase their influence in the country, a country with the largest known oil reserves in Africa, with much of it being easily refineable, high quality crude. There is a superficial logic to this, except that the US and Europe had a good working relationship with Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was playing by the rules of the game by kleptocratically investing his oil profits in Europe, so much so that he counted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi among his friends. He also provided assistance to Berlusconi in regard to preventing African immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean through Libya. As for the US, he was a staunch supporter of the so-called war on terror.

Perhaps, the US, the French and the British believe that they can cut a better deal on the sharing of profits from future oil exploration and sales than they had with Gaddafi. Much of the oil is supposedly in the eastern regions of Libya under rebel control, and, by this line of reasoning, a line in favor among some on the British left, they would be satisfied with a de facto partition of Libya that resulted in the rebels taking control of much of the country's oil reserves. Possibly. But there are some obvious problems with this, most importantly the fact that the rebels remain more unpredictable in their future dealings with the US and Europe than Gaddafi would have been. So, there is no certainty that the rebels would supply oil on terms more favorable than Gaddafi. Furthermore, there is also no certainty as to how the rebels would put their oil profits to use. There is still a possibility that they would put them to the sort of mischievous use for which Gaddafi and the Iranians have been known. One wonders if the US and Europe expect the rebels to conduct themselves in a manner similar to the mafiosos of Kosovo, with whom they have a good relationship.

Second, there is the belief that the Libyan airstrikes are a sort of camouflage, an intentional effort to distract attention from the US/Saudi efforts to suppress democratic movements in Yemen and Bahrain. Here, again, there is a superficial logic, but it assumes that there is a necessity for the effort, a necessity that I fail to perceive. In the US, there is no significant outcry about the violence inflicted upon protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, indeed, few Americans are even aware of it. To the extent that they are aware, they have, at least in regard to Bahrain, accepted the new propaganda line that the protesters must be suppressed to contain Iran. Apparently, even the Europeans have accepted it, with a European Union foreign policy advisor, Robert Cooper, recycling US fears of the Iranians by expressing alarm over the prospect of a Shia government there. As for the crackdown itself, he concluded accidents happen. His boss, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, is impressed by the offer of talks by the Crown Prince. No one has been willing to touch the most taboo subject of all, the question as to whether the Iranian social model, as seriously flawed as it is, would constitute a significant improvement in the lives of everyone in Bahrain with the exception of the wealthy elite that runs the country. In any event, there is no indication that a Libyan distraction is required.

Third, there is the possibility of another, potentially more compelling distraction. Both Europe and the US are imposing harsh austerity programs after having channeled trillions of dollars of through transnational finacial institutions to preserve them and the investments of the people who purchased their financial instruments. Clearly unable to resist the cuts of a Republican House of Representatives, President Obama shows that he can stand up to that evil African Gaddafi. Similarly, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is implementing a harsh austerity program that will inflict the most punishment upon the poorest people in society. Reminscent of Thatcher'as response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he has also been the most strident advocate for military action. Meanwhile, the last member of the intervention triumvirate, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, finds himself extremely unpopular, so he may believe that the airstrikes will improve his domestic political prospects. French pilots flew the first missions over Libya. It is, however, a doubled edged sword. In addition to the possibility that the intervention will fail, people are beginning to notice, at least in the US, that the military operation is substantially eroding the proposed savings from domestic budget cuts proposed by Republicans, placing the credibility of the austerity effort at risk. For now, though, it is merely an indication that the accumulation of capital through the military industrial complex still works as it has done since the beginning of World War II. After all, governments have to purchase those weapons somewhere.

Labels: American Empire, David Grossman, Europe, France, Germany, Gulf States, Libya, NATO, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe, United Kingdom

Rarely is it so obvious:

President Obama's proposal to boost the research tax credit for businesses is widely seen as necessary to bolster American competitiveness in the global economy.

But even if the $100-billion plan is approved, it won't begin to address the fundamental question of how to turn that research and new technology into jobs and renewed prosperity for Americans.

Over the last two decades, U.S. scientists and engineers have discovered or pioneered the science behind one blockbuster product after another — from flat-panel screens and robotics to the lithium batteries that run next-generation power tools and electric cars.

Yet in almost every case, production, jobs and most of the economic benefits that sprang from those breakthroughs have ended up overseas.

America's innovative spirit may still be the envy of the world — major steps forward in nanotechnology and biomedical fields, among others, continue to be made in U.S. labs. But without more effective policies to translate those achievements into gains at home, the fruits of America's creative genius will probably continue to be reaped by others.

And new reports show that during the recession American companies ramped up investment overseas for plants and new hires, as well as research and development — even as they cut back domestically.

Foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations increased their spending on research and development by more than 7% in 2008 from the previous year, pushing the total to nearly $37 billion. But these same multinational companies sliced R&D expenditures in the U.S. that year 2.2% to $199 billion, Commerce Department data showed.

A similar but less dramatic difference was evident in hiring: Employment at these overseas units rose 1% in 2008 — and a stunning 15% in China — but was down 2% for the U.S. elements of the 2,200 multinational firms the Commerce Department studied.

Some of these jobs were lost to automation, but Obama and many independent economists said a big factor was the sharply different policy approaches of U.S. and foreign governments.

For decades, Washington has taken a largely hands-off, or laissez faire, approach, sometimes even adopting tax and other policies that critics said actively encourage the movement of manufacturing and other business activity overseas.

By contrast, export giants such as Germany, Japan and South Korea have embraced government policies — and even pressure tactics — that push businesses to maintain operations at home.

You mean, say, something like this?

Government officials here are confident they found the right approach, including a better solution to unemployment. They extended the Kurzarbeit or short work program to encourage companies to furlough workers or give them fewer hours instead of firing them, making up lost wages out of a fund filled in good times through payroll deductions and company contributions.

At its peak in May 2009, roughly 1.5 million workers were enrolled in the program. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently estimated that by the third quarter of 2009, more than 200,000 jobs may have been saved as a result.

The German economy’s comeback is visible in smaller towns like Memmingen, in the historic region known as Swabia. The brightly painted market square in this prosperous town is straight out of a German fairy tale, but it is beyond the medieval fortifications of the old town that Memmingen’s part in the nationwide rebound of employment, which Chancellor Merkel has likened to a small miracle, took place.

After a record year in 2008, the family-owned firm Magnet-Schultz watched orders for its electromagnetic products plunge. Nearly one-third of the company’s more than 1,500 workers in Germany were put on the short-work program. Only 57 were laid off.

The firm’s chairman, Wolfgang E. Schultz, whose grandfather founded the firm nearly 100 years ago and whose son Albert joined as a vice president in January, said that his goal was to maintain the company in the long term by losing as few skilled workers as possible. He promised to try to rehire those who were let go when times improved. Forty of those workers have been rehired already.

It is essential to observe that the issue here is not a nationalistic one, but, rather, one as to whether the government is pursuing policies that benefit workers or capital. In the US, the Obama administration continues to emphasize programs that benefit capital, international capital, in fact, as shown by the research and development tax credit proposal, as well as by TARP, which expended funds that went to European as well as American banks. Indeed, it is almost impossible for the US to structure economic measures solely for the benefit of domestic capital, given the overseas units of US companies and the operations of foreign firms in the US.

Conversely, the German government, while unabasedly capitalist, did implement some policies that softened blow of the global recession upon the workforce, such as the one described in the New York Times article. Of course, one should not go too far with this, as German governments have imposed austerity measures upon workers in recent years. Even so, such governments have recognized that the preservation of a skilled workforce is essential for the future prospects of a manufacturing economy. Apparently, policymakers in the US, no longer so concerned with the manufacturing sector, consider such measures unnecessary, believing that the provision of services, including well compensated professional ones, have become fungible in a global economic system.

Perhaps, the conflation of the needs of the US economy with those of international capital explains the development of deficit reduction policies, with an emphasis upon social programs, Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that they are minor contributors to the deficit:

Capitalists requires subsidy, so the US government has assidously provided it over the last 40 years, regardless of its impact of the federal budget. Capitalists also require the use of military force, or the threat of it, to open new markets and initiate the ruthless process of accumulation, so, again, the defense budget has grown, without concern as to the fiscal consequences. Meanwhile, social programs (roughly equivalent to the Domestic Discretionary Programs in the chart), Social Security and Medicare (pejoratively described as Entitlements in the chart) find themselves in the firing line, with everyone from President Obama on down frightening the populace about a non-existent crisis in the growth of such spending. Meanwhile, the various forms of subsidy provided to the financial sector through the Federal Reserve and the Treasury since 2008 remains an inappropriate subject in polite company.

Labels: American Empire, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Germany, Neoliberalism, Second Reagan Revolution, Sub-Proletarianization of America, US Military

The imposition of austerity measures in Greece has resulted in an economic catastrophe:

(snip)

The government's draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country's budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.

The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country's economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country's gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.

(snip)

Prime Minister George Papandreou's austerity package has seriously shaken the Greek economy. The package included reducing civil servants' salaries by up to 20 percent and slashing retirement benefits, while raising numerous taxes. The result is that Greeks have less and less money to spend and sales figures everywhere are dropping, spelling catastrophe for a country where 70 percent of economic output is based on private consumption.

A short jaunt through Athens' shopping streets reveals the scale of the decline. Fully a quarter of the store windows on Stadiou Street bear red signs reading Enoikiazetai -- for rent. The National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (ESEE) calculates that 17 percent of all shops in Athens have had to file for bankruptcy.

Things aren't any better in the smaller towns. Chalkidona was, until just a few years ago, a hub for trucking traffic in the area around Thessaloniki. Two main streets, lined with fast food restaurants and stores catering to truckers, intersect in the small, dismal town. Maria Lialiambidou's house sits directly on the main trucking route. Rent from a pastry shop on the ground floor of the building used to provide her with €350 per month, an amount that helped considerably in supplementing her widow's pension of €320.

These days, though, Kostas, the man who ran the pastry shop, who people used to call a penny-pincher, can no longer afford the rent. Here too, a huge Enoikiazetai banner stretches across the shopfront. No one wants to rent the store. Neither are there any takers for an empty butcher's shop a few meters further on.

A sign on the other side of the street advertises Sakis' Restaurant. The owner, Sakis, is still hanging on, with customers filling one or two of the restaurant's tables now and then. There's really no work for me here anymore, says one Albanian employee, who goes by the name Eleni in Greece. Many others have already gone back to Albania, where it's not any worse than here. We'll see when I have to go too.

As the author of the article, Corinna Jessen, concludes: The entire country is in the grip of a depression. Not surprisingly, the suicide rate has increased significantly:

According to Aris Violatzis of the NGO Klimaka, the number of suicides have doubled if not tripled over the past year. Violatzis said the rate had increased to more than two suicides per day this year, as compared to one per day in 2009. And these are just the suicides that are recorded, Violatzis said, adding that the real number was likely to be higher as the stigma attached to suicide means they are often not reported.

Klimaka, which operates the 1018 telephone helpline, said it was receiving around 25 calls a day, compared to an average of 10 per day last year. Asked whether the spike in suicides was linked to the financial crisis, Violatzis said he believed it was a contributing factor. Suicide is a multifaceted phenomenon – we cannot link it exclusively to the crisis, he said, noting however that the environment influences our actions. As for the profile of most victims, Klimaka said they are chiefly productive people with responsibilities, financial obligations, families, loans. According to Violatzis, many of the victims are men who are no longer earning enough money to provide for their families and feel they no longer have a role to play – people who are going through an identity crisis. There are also many who take their lives due to deep-seated psychological problems or depression, he added.

For an example of this gruesome phenomenon, consider:

The tragic news was published in a local newspaper of the city of Volos (original article in Greek here) on July 23d, a few days before the strike. According to the article the 67-year old, who had been working as a truck driver for four decades, had tried to sell his truck recently without luck. Early on the morning of July 22nd he hanged himself off a bridge crossing over a motorway, where he was later found by passers-by.

Perhaps, you aren't that concerned about what is happening in Greece. It is a small, faraway place that rarely intrudes into our consciousness. But, then again, maybe you should be. Because there is no certainty that the plague has been contained within Greece. Despite the efforts of our Prince Prospero, President Obama, to protect ourselves from it, the global economy remains sickly:

From the previous quarter, Japan grew 0.1 percent, the slowest expansion among the six biggest economies. The U.S. grew 0.6 percent, the U.K. 1.1 percent, Germany 2.2 percent and France 0.6 percent. While China doesn’t release quarter-on- quarter GDP figures, it expanded 10.3 percent from a year ago.

None of the world's largest economies, with the exception of China, are generating sufficient growth to reduce unemployment. Of course, China, as a developing country, should have a substantially higher growth rate, and even it may now have a growth rate lower than the 10% to 14% range that has characterized peak performance in recent years. While subject to debate, there has been a general consensus that China requires growth rates higher than the more mature economies that have been accepted as members in the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, somewhere north of 6%. Finally, observe that the previous quarter, the spring quarter, was a more favorable period for economic growth than this one and upcoming ones.

Labels: China, France, Germany, Greece, IMF, Japan, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe

UPDATE: It is all a matter of priorities: The Pentagon said it was conducting an investigation into whether information in the logs placed coalition forces or their informants in danger.

INITIAL POST: Click on the link for a useful interactive feature that the Guardian has provided to enable readers to found some of the more interesting reports, such as, for example, this one. Others can be found in an article summarizing civilian casualties inflicted by CIA forces that the US refuses to acknowledge to this day. Some of these incidents, such as the one contained in this article, were already known to many, including readers of this blog, but the release of the sanitized report itself illustrates how many casualties have been concealed. The primary benefit of the release of these reports by wikileaks is that it will tend to confirm what many critics have said about the war in Afghanistan.

Curiously, the release of bureaucratic reports seems to instill a credibililty in terms of the description of past events that didn't previously exist. It is also very damaging to the Obama administration, as it proceeded to order the escalation of the war with full knowledge of what was contained in them. One suspects that the most immediate consequence of the release will be increased pressure within Germany to remove troops from Afghanistan, as the deployment has been very contentious there.

Not surprisingly, the Guardian has covered the extent of civilian casualties extensively, while another recipient of the reports, the New York Times, has emphasized national security concerns, such as the possible association of the Inter-Services Intelligence with Taliban resistance, an article highlighted at the top of its webpage dedicated to the logs. Afghan civilians don't count for much in relation to the Times perspective on the conflict, only becoming a problem when they undermine support for the occupation.

Labels: "Support the Troops", Afghanistan, American Empire, Death Squads, Germany, New York Times

An interesting article for what it reveals about the increasing economic stress now being experienced by the EU and the eurozone:

Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to abandon the euro unless Angela Merkel dropped her hostility to the EU's €750bn safety net for the single currency, sources in Brussels and European capitals said yesterday.

In a confrontation between Europe's two most powerful politicians, the French president said he would walk out of the talks and warned of lasting damage to the Franco-German relationship unless the German chancellor backed the plans.

It was a standup argument. He was shouting and bawling, said one official in Brussels. It was Sarkozy on steroids, said a European diplomat. He's always very energetic. This time he was very emotional, too. The French leader banged his fist on the table, according to yesterday's El País newspaper in Spain.

DeGaulle's departure from NATO in the 1960s made Sarkozy's threat a credible one.

Labels: Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Europe, France, Germany, Global Recession, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe

The severity of the crisis within in the European Union can no longer be concealed. There is no way to dismiss it as a creation of a vocal minority within Greece, or, even a restive majority there, any longer, It is an economic catastrophe that threatens to engulf much of the EU. Investors made it official today, requiring newspapers of record like the New York Times to acknowledge it when they sold off billions of dollars of equities. Spain is next, and, then, after that, the UK, and then, after that . . . well, who knows?

Moody's summarized the situation today:

The banking systems of Portugal, Spain, but also Ireland, the UK and Italy are increasingly moving into the focus of the markets. Although the challenges in these six countries are different, the potential for contagion from their sovereign [credit profile] as observed in Greece is also spreading to some other countries and to the extent this affects these countries it could dilute some of the inherent differences in the banking systems and impose a common threat, Moody's said. Moody's said the concerns over Greece could spread to Portugal – which is at the forefront of investor concerns – but also Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece and the UK. A key factor ... will be the market's view of likely success or otherwise of the recently agreed IMF and European Union support package.

Success in this context is most definitely a relative term. All of the countries involved will, even in the best case scenario as defined by financial markets and transnational economic institutions, have to substantially reduce public sector spending during one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory. For example, in the UK, the Institute of Fiscal Studies describes the cuts proposed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats as the most severe since the 1970s, while the ones proposed by the Conservatives will be worse than any since the World War II. Predictably, there is an expectation that some of the work performed by sacked civil service workers will be outsourced. And, of course, from the standpoint of both investors and workers, there is the fear that such austerity measures will cause the decline in demand to spiral out of control, as they did in Eastern Europe and the former republics of the USSR in the 1990s.

Is it any wonder then, that the streets of Athens erupted yesterday, as the Greek Parliament was about to vote upon austerity measures imposed by the IMF and the EU? On a percentage basis, the approximate number of protesters in Greece was equivalent to 3 million ones in the US. People around the world were shocked at the massive turnout, the attacks upon institutions of authority and the death of 3 workers trapped in a bank set afire with Molotov cocktails, but they shouldn't have been. Greece has been socially turbulent since the time of the military dictatorship, and appears to be heading in either one of two directions. First, there is possibility that it will follow a trajectory similar to the one experienced in Argentina in late 2001, a default upon its debt, and a dissolution of the existing political system, subject to a subsequent reformulation of electoral democracy. It has a surface plausibility because Greece, like Argentina, has a well developed anti-authoritarian resistance potentially capable of rendering governance in conformity with the demands of the EU and the IMF impossible. Given the economic and monetary integration of the EU, all of which serve capital, in contrast to the more collaborative ties within South America, and the willingness of left leaning regimes there to support one another during times of crisis, it is hard to comprehend how this could be accomodated by anything other than the expulsion of Greece from the eurozone.

Second, there is the more sinister alternative of martial law, justified as purportedly necessary for the preservation of Greek democracy. One already gets the sense from much of the coverage in American and British media that such a move would be welcomed. There is a clear subtext to these articles to the effect that there is a silent majority in Greece that is being terrorized by a violent, out of control minority. But a crackdown presents a lot of problems. Within Greece, there would be massive resistance, and possibly even a refusal by many in the military to follow orders. Others within the civil service would either actively or passive resist, rendering the country ungovernable. After all, the EU and the IMF are requiring cuts in public sector salaries and benefits as a condition for receiving assistance, something that makes about as much sense as a means of preserving social order as the US discharge of Baathists from the Iraqi military after the 2003 invasion. Within Europe, the imposition of martial law for the purpose of collecting debts for German and French banks would probably ignite continental resistance as well. Accordingly, a more likely prospect is a sotto vocce increase in financial assistance for the Greek police and military so as to enhance their ability to suppress protest, a process that will be blandly described as a modernization.

For the left, the events in Greece present new challenges. While it is too soon to know who is responsible for the 3 deaths at the Marfin Egnafia bank, and one can never fully dismiss the prospect of agent provacateurs, the overwhelming likelihood is that people who identify themselves as part of the more violent anti-authoritarian movement in Greece are responsible. Even if we subsequently learn to the contrary, it is a good time for reflection, something beyond the informed Marxist critique presented by Louis Proyect. Proyect makes a number of good points, especially in regard to the likelihood that the anarchist movement in Greece (and, perhaps, now, Europe, as well?) will experience even more aggressive law enforcement attempts at infiltration and provocation. His reference to statements made by Stathis Gourgouris at the 2009 Left Forum to the effect that there was a growing nihilism among young Greeks, a sense that even left politics had been corrupted, such that acts of pure rage and violence were being celebrated, is worrisome.

Anarchists should not allow an understandable distaste for Proyect's hostility towards spontaneous action to avoid confronting the tragedy at the bank. Anarchism, in its most popular manifestations, forged bonds with workers, and interacted with them in their communities, participating in the forging of new, proletarian cultures of lifestyle and resistance. Each creatively influenced the other, to the extent that, in many instances, it became difficult to distinguish between the community and anarchism. Most importantly, anarchists prized the importance of education, believing that they could reach people and persuade them to embrace a future without wage labour and hierarchy. Property destruction can, in appropriate circumstances, facilitate this educational process by exposing the absurdity of property and commodity relations. In marked contrast to Christians and Marxist-Leninists, with their emphasis upon vanguardist forms of organization, anarchists believed that people possess within themselves the capacity of creating a compassionate, egalitarian society, and, moreover, that there is no other way to do so.

If the people who attacked the bank identify as anarchists, they became estranged from these essential aspects of anarchism. No doubt, there are moments when violent resistance to the predations of the state are necessary, but, in this instance, they didn't attack the state, they firebombed a bank with the employees still inside. Anarchists of the past would have considered them their allies, and sought to engage them. Undoubtedly, there are many contemporary anarchists within and without Greece who did as well. Already, the individuality of the victims is being erased, as there is a rush by the Greek state and the transnational media to exploit them for their own purposes, much as the 9/11 victims were exploited to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sadly, it seems that some anarchists expect this depersonalization to relieve them of the need to respond to questions of accountability. For example, there is the rationalization that the bank should have been closed, as they apparently often are during protests. Or, similarly, denunciations of the owner of the bank as the murderer of the victims. In the linked report, we encounter the expropriation of the lives of the victims in the service of the anarchist cause, even though they were apparently killed by anti-authoritarian, possibly anarchist, protesters. Beyond the offensiveness, it comes across as credible as claims of the Chicago police that the Black Panthers were responsible for the death of Mark Clark. One of the reasons why anarchism has been ascendant in recent decades has been the unwillingness of its adherents to reduce the populace to fungibility, as Marxist-Leninists, such as Stalin and Mao, did. Now, we see some anarchists, dismayed by what happened, and yet, incapable of responding coherently, participating in the same process.

Proyect analogizes the Greek anti-authoritarians to the Argentinian piqueteros, the mass movement of the unemployed that emerged in the late 1990s, asserting that both display a fetish against politics. A better example might be what transpired in Barcelona in Spain in the early to mid-1930s, when, according to Chris Ealham, in his just released book, Anarchism and the City, CNT and FAI anarchist militants initiated a cycle of insurrections that sapped much of the strength of anarcho-syndicalism in the city prior to the 1936 coup. The CNT lost so much support as a result of the repression that it increasingly relied upon bank robberies to finance itself prior to the Popular Front victory. Ealham implies that the failure of the CNT to carry out a revolution in the city after the coup was partially attributable to this loss of strength as well as the sectarianism of many militants.

It is understandably difficult for many anti-authoritarians to address this while still under assault from the police. But is there any choice? One Greek said that the Germans considered Greece a black goat, meaning that they didn't believe that it was necessary for Greece to remain in the EU. But if you take a look, there are quite a number of black goats around these days, people and institutions transforming themselves into pariahs through their response to the Greek crisis, Merkel, the EU, the IMF, PASOK . . . . and the anarchists could become another one in the herd. And, that's one of the worst things that could happen, because that really would open the way to a nihilistic response to the crisis, not just in Greece, but throughout Europe.

Labels: Anarchism, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Germany, Greece, Marxism, Neoliberalism, Police, Political Violence, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe

Over 100,000 people on the streets of Greece today, with protesters rioting in central Athens, resulting in the deaths of 3 bank workers, and Merkel, the German chancellor, is threatening the country, and by extension, Spain and Portugal, with additional punitive measures. The previous Christian Democrat Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, helped push the Balkans into a vicious cycle of ethnic conflict when he unilaterally recognized Croatia in 1991. Now, Merkel, displaying a similar ethnocentric blindness, persists in intensifying conflict within the eurozone, increasing the prospects of a chaotic dissolution of both the eurozone and the EU.

Meanwhile, the Guardian captures the intensity of what is happening in Greece:

At 2.03pm today, on the third floor of a neoclassical building in the heart of Athens, three people died – and Greece changed. As the bank employees tried to beat back the flames, ignited by a firebomb tossed into the building by protesters, the economic crisis enveloping the debt-stricken country not only claimed its first lives: it shifted from bewilderment and disappointment into violence carried on an unpredictable current of rage.

The young bank employees, a man and two women, one of them four months pregnant, died in the fire which came within an hour of irate protesters laying siege to the Greek parliament.

All of us are angry, very, very angry, bellowed Stella Stamou, a civil servant standing on a street corner, screaming herself hoarse, a block away from where the bank had been set alight.

You write that – angry, angry, angry, angry, she said, after participating in one of the biggest ever rallies to rock the capital since the return of democracy in 1974. Angry with our own politicians, angry with the IMF, angry with the EU, angry that we have lost income, angry that we have never been told the truth.

Across Athens today the signs of that anger were everywhere: in the central boulevards and squares that resembled a war zone, the burning cars, the burning hotels, the burning government buildings and rubbish bins and shattered windows and pavements.

How many more cities does Merkel want to go up in flames? If her statements yesterday are any indication, there is no limit, as long as they remain outside the boundaries of the Federal Republic.

Labels: Anarchism, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Europe, Germany, Greece, Neoliberalism

For thirty years, with the exception of the United Kingdom in 1976, structural adjustment was only for lesser development nations. The United States, Japan and the European Union preserved more generous salaries and benefits for workers, as well as social welfare programs. But that division is now coming to an end:

Prime Minister George Papandreou said Sunday that Greece had reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union on a long-delayed rescue package that is expected to be worth as much as €120 billion. The deal aims to help the country avoid debt default and prevent economic contagion from spreading throughout the region.

Greece’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, at a news conference in Athens on Sunday.

In a televised statement to the nation, Mr. Papandreou urged Greeks to accept “great sacrifices” to avoid “catastrophe.”

“I have done and will do everything not to let the country go bankrupt,” he said, appearing sober and resolved in front of his cabinet and appealing to Greeks to show patriotism at a moment of deep crisis. “I want to tell Greeks very honestly that we have a big trial ahead of us.”

He signaled that public-sector employees would see their salaries further reduced, while pensions for retired civil servants would be scaled back. He said members of Parliament would do without their bonuses. He added that in tough negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, the government had succeeded in avoiding cuts to private-sector salaries.

Public reaction was predictable:

Athens erupted into violence as traditional May Day festivities turned into a bitter protest against draconian austerity measures aimed at tackling Europe's worst debt crisis in decades.

For the tens of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in rallies that quickly descended into clashes with riot police, the show of force was just the beginning – a prelude of the storm that will rock Greece if its Socialist government "caves in" to the dictates of the IMF and enforces policies that have been likened to "the coming of Armageddon".

To make the point, scores of stone-throwing youths chanted "people don't bow down, it's time again for revolution" as a petrol bomb set fire to a police officer in the heart of Athens.

"They say the only way of salvaging our economy is more austerity, but that's a total lie," said Nicolaos Danizis, a 60-year-old shipyard worker participating in a Communist-led demonstration outside parliament. "These latest measures have been cooked up by outsiders and are totally outrageous. They are aimed not at the rich but at the poor. What we are saying here today is that they will pass only over our dead bodies."

As one protester explained:

"The IMF deals with injustice. It never targets the rich, who have deposits abroad and luxury cars and are buying properties in London. It always targets the poor," said Maria Koumoundourou, a retired bank employee as she joined the marchers. "Its involvement in our affairs is truly offensive and very worrying. It has made us very angry."

It is hard to imagine how these measures can be put into effect without forcing Greece out of the EU. For a photo gallery of the protests in Athens, go here.

It is easy to blame the Greeks, after all, bankers are very good at blaming their borrowers for their own excesses, but there is more to it:

It is tempting to view the Greek debt crisis as an isolated example of national profligacy and financial ineptitude from a country that should never have been allowed to join the euro. With a record of economic mismanagement and political instability – not to mention a propensity to "cook its books", if you believe the country's most vocal critics – it is hardly surprising that Greece has been forced to seek an international bailout.

But that analysis is probably unfair to Greece, whose excesses are only a few notches higher than other developed nations. And it misses the wider issue of a sovereign debt time bomb that stems from the credit boom of 2003-7.

After all, it was French, German, Dutch, British and Swiss banks that happily bankrolled Greece's debt-fuelled binge, one that has landed the country with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio on the continent and which lies at the heart of the country's woes today. Of course, Greece's own banks have played a big role in all this as well.

And where does it stop? Spain? The United Kingdom? The United States?

Labels: Anarchism, Europe, Germany, Global Recession, Greece, IMF, Neoliberalism