Greece 'far right' rejects austerity after 'socialists' capitulate!

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Greek police union is talking like it isn't going to listen to orders to block strikes/protests.  this could get very fun very soon.

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some footage from the class war:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-13/greece-votes-in-favour-of-austerity-plan/3826308

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This is why I am supporting Melenchon this year. The European 'left' has been a disaster and more neo-liberal than the neo-liberals.

this is only because elements of the right in Europe have to at least pay lip service to xenophobic/anti-European sentiment that is crucial to their base of popular support; meanwhile the bourgeois left has been entirely bought and sold and markets the prevailing version of firm-driven faux-internationalism without reserve.  if the right is right, it's for the wrong reasons -- of course, it is perfectly fine to support forces which are right for the wrong reasons (Saddam in 2003, the Iranian theocracy in 2009, Gaddafi in 2011, Ron Paul in 2012 among the notable examples).

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some footage from the class war:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-13/greece-votes-in-favour-of-austerity-plan/3826308

Law enforcement needs to start responding to deadly force with deadlier force, or the whole nation is going to be up in flames before you know it.

kinda tough when the 'law enforcement' is getting its wages and pensions put on the chopping block too, they're bound to change sides:

Greek police union is talking like it isn't going to listen to orders to block strikes/protests.  this could get very fun very soon.

of course you can always turn to military dictatorship after that (and they may have to) but you run into major global PR problems if you go that route.

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At this point, if I were in Greece, I would be voting KKE. They might be unreformed Stalinists, but the cult of Marx is better than that of Market.

I'd be voting for SYRIZA; DIMAR is filled with too many Europhile sentiments for my tastes and I would never support an outright Communist party.

the important thing that would swing me to KKE are its direct ties to the trade unions.  but I won't pretend to actually know anything about Greek politics.

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they're right because they control areas not circumscribed within the hegemonic international neoliberal order.  Iraq is a blueprint for what happens when Western aggression moves in and creates or otherwise fills a power vacuum and it's absolutely horrific.  (granted there was no Western aggression as such in Iran 2009 but only because the West concluded there was no serious vulnerability on the part of the theocracy.)

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What reason would any Greek have to accept this system? They're being reduced to destitution for the sins of their rulers to appease a distant owning class. How does Greece benefit at all?

I don't get this notion that the Greek people have done nothing wrong. This isn't about one leader, it's about an entire system that has been thoroughly corrupt.

I appreciate that plenty of Greeks are innocent in some sense, but in a democratic country the people are ultimately responsible for the acts of their leaders.

oh man.  you unreformed True Believer.

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the real 'Other' option would be to leave the EU, default and return to drachma, and exit world capitalism and join up in a trading partnership with ALBA.  if they did this though they'd probably get invaded or bombed by NATO.

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Markets pretty much appear as soon as society grows beyond some very small number of people and have thus been around for a very long time. There's quite a bit of interesting research on them, for example on the Mahgrib traders of Northern Africa.

But maybe capitalism refers to something beyond markets.

'beyond markets' could be defined in Marxian terms as something like 'mass commodity production for the purpose of exchange', including a specialized division and labor, and so on.  Weber identified six conditions for 'rational capitalism': modern firm, free market, rational state, rational law, rational technology (technological development unified with the process of production), rational attitude to life and economy (ie commodity fetishism).

while we can always argue what is capitalism? around the margins, playing ironically-dumb like economics professor ag just did is pure obfuscation.

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if that's the case I redact it unconditionally.