Cleaners escalate protest actions & call for public support

English translation of the protesting cleaners' announcement by @inflammatory_ 

Bold & capital letters as seen at the original text

Cleaners staying overnight in a tent outside the Finance Ministry protesting layoffs & austerity measures
pic via @dromografos

REDUNDANT CLEANERS OF THE FINANCE MINISTRY

We are 595 female cleaners that have been working for many years at the Finance Ministry. Since September 18, 2013 we've been under the labour reserve scheme* and on May 18, 2014 we are losing our jobs, WE ARE GETTING SACKED.

We are all WOMEN, the gender discrimination is evident, most of us are over 50 years old and very close to retirement but will NEVER MANAGE TO GET a pension. Many of us are single parents and we've been providing this income for our family. 

The bailout policies compromise our right to work and live. The Greek unemployment overall at the moment is 27% and 62.8% specifically for women.

WE DON'T HAVE ANY HOPE TO FIND A JOB  

(WE HAVE) NO RIGHT FOR HEALTH CARE

Until 2005 we've been engaged under a "contract for service". Following a EU legislation and a fine for Greece, our contracts switched to "open-ended". The government is dismissing us to reduce the deficit, as it says. The truth is that we cost to the Greek state much less than the private cleaning services they are using now instead. For the Greek government and the Troika we are numbers, not humans.

For 8 months -since September 18- we 've been protesting every day outside the Finance Ministry. It has been an immense struggle that faced violence & clampdown by the Greek government. 

They thought we would make ourselves easy target and weak link especially because we are women at the bottom of the working class. However we fight on a daily basis along with thousands of other laid off people, against the measures of the Greek government and the Troika that destroy our lives and lead us to utter misery.

We continue our struggle:

• We stage a sit-in protest from today (May 7, 2014) outside the Finance Ministry
• We won't stop until we get justice
• We demand the right to work, social security & pension
• We fight with other workers altogether to abolish these policies that bring us to poverty 
• We demand the obvious: a life of dignity through our humble job

We are calling for solidarity with our sit-in protest

We can make it altogether 

* under the labour reserve scheme they get 75% of their salary for 8 months and then they get sacked for good

Golden Dawn's controversial video on prime minister's aide Baltakos, raises questions

by @inflammatory_

Government general secretary & prime minister’s close aide Takis Baltakos was secretly filmed describing to Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris the politics behind the clampdown on the party following the murder of Pavlos Fyssas. The transcripts release, forced Baltakos to resign and triggered drama in the corridors of the parliament as his son stormed inside the Golden Dawners’ office and attacked 3 lawmakers who allegedly failed to respond swiftly because -based on looks- they considered he was "one of them".

The video subtitled  by @kalergisK shows a friendly chat between the two men and Baltakos revealing that the allegations lacked sufficient evidence whilst the crackdown was an effort to tackle the switch of New Democracy voters to Golden Dawn. Frankly this is not news, but an old hot topic of analysis across alternative media sources back in September. However when it's allegedly admitted by a government official who is secretly recorded by a lawmaker, then the story enters a new chapter and raises a few questions: 

1. The video material appears to be legit but it's edited and 3 bits appear to be deleted (1:42' - 2:01' -2:28'). Was there any juicy info missed? If yes how would that affect the story?
2. If the video was recorded months ago why did Golden Dawn choose now to release it? 
3. Since Golden Dawn engages with such practices, there is room for assumptions about other video or audio materials available. In case thery actually are, how could these shape further developments ahead of elections and party members' trial? Should other public figures start worrying? Would this mark the beginning of a bluffing game or blackmailing and secret negotiations?
4. What lies ahead for a governemnt and above all for the people it is supposed to serve amid allegations of political interference at justice? 
5. The boundary between the far-right and the center right has become porous. For example the views and background of New Democracy's Kranidiotis, Voridis, Georgiadis or Plevris -to name a few- give strong evidence although they have made numerous efforts to play it down. Samaras also expelled Sotiris Hatzigakis for raising the issue back in 2011. Baltakos would bear even greater responsibility as the government's general secretary. Is this video a hint of collusion between people of New Democracy and Golden Dawn?

Video transcript in English can be found here 

#rbnews weekly bulletin 13-19 July 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 20 July 2013 - Health in the time of the crisis

This week on #rbnews international, radiobubble contributor @Jaquoutopie and I discussed the Greek health system in the time of the crisis: the chronic issues, the cutbacks, and their impact on the population. Deep down, we wondered if the Greek health system is still serving its purpose of providing care but also protection for patients.

You can listen to the podcast after the jump.

Greek Health Minister says he will not repeal health provision that led to forced HIV tests, says he welcomes proposals

The debate over a controversial health provision, which led to forced HIV tests on vulnerable social groups in Athens in 2012 continued this week in the Greek Parliament.

Health Provision 39a which was reinstated last week by newly-appointed Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, one month after its repeal by former Deputy Minister Foteini Skopouli, has caused a fierce reaction from Greek and international human rights organizations, medical groups and prominent individuals in HIV/AIDS policy; among them Public Service Europe, Human Rights Watch and most recently The Lancet medical journal, which accused the Greek leadership of “repeating past mistakes” in an editorial.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 06-12 July 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 13 July 2013: reactions to the case of Kostas Sakkas

For this week's #rbnews international show, we asked netizens from Greece and abroad to send in their reactions to the case of Kostas Sakkas, who was released on Thursday 11 June after 951 days in prison without a trial and 38 days of hunger strike.

Many thanks to all those who sent in a short sound clip, and apologies to those whose clips we couldn't broadcast due to a lack of time.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

Police attack on a demonstration for K. Sakkas (and my arrest for a video) - by @_giant_

By @_giant_, re-posted from Omnia TV and translated from Greek by @potmos

On Wednesday, July 10, a demo near the Acropolis was arranged in order to inform people about Kostas Sakkas’s hunger strike.

During the march, in which were about 150 people, slogans were written and leaflets were distributed, mostly in English, since the place is mostly a tourist destination.

When the march was stopped from continuing towards the Acropolis by police forces, it went on to Thissio through the pedestrian road, without an incident.

After a while, under the pretext that slogans were being written on walls, the march was attacked by a motorbike-mounted police force (DELTA), and arrests were made.

People protested the arrests and were attacked with flash-bang and teargas grenades.

Italy's Collectivo Prezzemolo's solidarity release for Kostas Sakkas

Collectivo Prezzemolo from Italy issued the following release for Kostas Sakkas: 

We demand the immediate release of Kostas Sakkas

"Kostas Sakkas is on hunger strike for 36 days. He has been held in preemptive detention for more than 30 months. His ongoing detention is violating the Constitution and the legislation, which do not allow for more than 18 months of imprisonment without a trial.

Kostas Sakkas is accused of arms possession and participation in the organization “Fire Cells’ Conspiracy” despite that both himself and the arrested members of the organization deny it. In an official announcement, the governing party of New Democracy is accusing Sakkas of “anarchism”, in an attempt to penalize his ideas.

At this point, his health is considered to be in a very critical condition, as the doctors have stated that they consider not only the possibility of permanent health damage, but also his death, as a potential outcome of the hunger strike. He is determined, though, to go forward with it, until the end.
Despite the above, a decision issued last week by the Judiciary Council of the Appeals’ Court stated that his preemptive detention can be continued. The Amnesty International, the Lawyers’ Boards and many other relevant institutions have identified many shortcomings in the legal procedures that were followed.

The Greek State, blindly following the Troika’s diktats, appears once again ruthless and insensible. Having adopted a strategy of extreme repression in order to apply a disastrous neoliberal economic policy, it once again chooses to ignore its own legislation and is ready to let a human being die in prison, without even officially confirming what he is accused of.

The Greek state promotes a logic that permits it to penalize any kind of struggle, to invade the homes of anti-mine activists in Skouries, to send the riot police inside the Rectorate of the Athens University in order to arrest protesting students, to condemn a whole society in “slow death” through the extreme austerity measures. It is this exact logic being applied in the case of Kostas Sakkas.

Because the Greek government’s disastrous economic policy and frontal attack to labor rights cannot be applied without extreme forms of repression and liberties’ suppression.

We won’t let them murder Kostas Sakkas! We won’t allow them to kill the Greek people!

We demand the immediate liberation of Kostas Sakkas."

Guest post: ‘Days of Junta’ in the University of Athens

By Panagiotis Sotiris[1]

For anyone watching what was happening at the central building of the University of Athens on July 8 2013 the feeling was one of reliving images from the 1967-1974 military dictatorship, especially if we take into consideration that collective memory in Greece is still haunted by the image of a military tank crashing the gate of the National Polytechnic University during the November 1973 student uprising.

Tens of riot policemen and special police units in full gear surrounded and stormed the building and arrested 31 students who were peacefully protesting against changes in the administration of Greek universities and especially the introduction of ‘University Councils’ as the main governing bodies of Greek Higher Education, as part of the latest wave of university reforms.

University Councils, modeled after the new forms of academic management spreading all over Europe, are comprised of academics and representatives of ‘society’ and the ‘business community’ and have been criticized as undermining academic democracy and enhancing an aggressively entrepreneurial conception of Higher Education. Both University Teachers’ Unions and Student Unions have waged a long battle against university councils and the July 8 protest was part of this battle.

However, this time the president of the University of Athens Councils, Prof. Dimitri Bertsimas, an MIT professor, chose to call the police, stating that he and the other members of the council were in danger. The call to the police was made by Vaso Kinti, a philosophy professor well known for her support to aggressive neoliberal reforms.

Since the Right of Asylum in Universities, the explicit ban on forces of order to enter University premises has been lifted, as part of the latest wave of university reforms, there was no legal obstacle to the police invasion. The police stormed the building and arrested the students. Police were even ready to use an angle grinder to open another door and arrest the rest of the protesting students, when under the protests of union representatives and members of parliament they were ordered to withdraw. In the end all students were set free and no charges were pressed against them, but the problem of a brutal police attack against a legitimate student protest remains.

This case highlights the motivation behind the decision to abolish University Asylum. For many years those supporting giving police the right to intervene inside university premises (including the US Ambassador in Athens!) insisted that this is a necessary measure to prevent violent rioting. In contrast, supporters of the university sanctuary warned that such a measure would lead to the police invading universities in order to arrest protesting students and striking professors. It is now becoming obvious that we are witnessing an authoritarian institutional transformation of Greek Higher Education, aiming at restricting the ability of the student movement and the university movement in general to raise obstacles to the shift towards a more entrepreneurial Higher Education.

The Greek Student Movement has a long history of successful struggles in the past 35 years, governments have been forced to repeal laws or even the 2007 constitutional reform under the pressure of mass student movements, and all these can explain why radical student practices are now being targeted as part of the broader undemocratic and authoritarian turn that has accompanied the austerity packaged and the EU-IMF-ECB supervision.  It is the same authoritarian turn that led to shutting down Greek Public Radio and Television (ERT) and keeps hunger striker Kostas Sakkas in prison for more than 30 months without trial.

Hopefully, students, university teachers and other higher education personnel have insisted that they are not intimidated  by such developments and that they will continue struggling against the neoliberal transformation of Higher Education, including struggling against any attempts to make ‘University Councils’ the main governing bodies of Greek Universities. The fight is far from over.

---

[1] Panagiotis Sotiris teaches social theory and social and political philosophy at the Department of Sociology of the University of the Aegean. He can be reached at psot@soc.aegean.gr

#rbnews weekly show 06 July 2013 - The failure(s) of democracy in Greece

This week on the #rbnews international show, we asked lawyer Crystali Bourcha from the Movement for the Liberties and Democratic Rights of our Times (Greek acronym KEDDE) and journalist Mariniki Alevizopoulou from Unfollow Magazine to comment on the items that we included in our news bulletin of the week, which all seem to point towards the failure of democracy in Greece.

You can listen to the podcast and read the news bulletin after the jump.
The interviews were taken by phone. We apologize for the poor quality of the sound, especially in the case of our interview with Crystali Bourcha. For some unexplainable reason, the recording device was particularly intent to add parasites to her speech. 

Reinstatement of controversial Health Provision slammed by HIV and Human Rights Groups

A legal provision that led to mass arrests of HIV-positive women in Greece in 2012 has been reinstated, causing widespread condemnation by local and international organizations and human rights advocates.

Provision No 39A was voted by former socialist Health Minister Andreas Loverdos in April 2012 and led to an unprecedented case of HIV criminalization a few weeks later when the Greek police in cooperation with the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, KEELPNO, rounded up hundreds of women from the center of Athens and force-tested them for HIV inside police stations. 

#rbnews weekly bulletin 22-28 June 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 29 June 2013: Culture in the time of the crisis, part 4 - The ERT musical ensembles

This week on #rbnews international, we continued our series about culture in the time of the crisis with a show dedicated to the musical ensembles of Greece's public broadcaster ERT. The government's  sudden decision to shut down ERT on 11 June 2013 caused a public outcry in Greece and internationally. Much attention has however been focusing on issues pertaining to freedom of the press, and little to ERT's contribution to Greek cultural life at large. The ERT musical ensembles include a symphony orchestra, a contemporary music orchestra and a chorus, and are widely considered to be among the best in the country. A petition to save these musical ensembles can be found on Avaaz.

The show is based on interviews with conductor Michalis Economou (Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, Athens Municipality Orchestra, guest conductor at the ERT symphony orchestra), contrabassist Theo Lazarou (ERT symphony orchestra) and tenor Loukas Panourgias (ERT chorus).

The pieces of music included in this podcast (Elgar's Nimrod, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Verdi's Dies Irae, and the overture of Mozart's Magic Flute) were performed during the solidarity concert organized at ERT on 14 June 2013, with participation from all the major orchestras of the greater Athens area. You can watch a partial video of this concert here.

And of course, you can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

Kostas Sakkas: Three years on remand in order to… make an example

Translation of Katerina Kati’s article for The Editors’ Νewspaper, 03 June 2013

Re-posted from eagainst.com

He has been on remand for 3 years and was prosecuted twice for the same offence, despite the fact that his name doesn't even appear in the case file.

The maximum time he should spend on remand expires tomorrow; and he chose this date to start a hunger strike, clarifying that “this is not an act of desperation, but rather to keep up the fight.”

Guest post - Greece: the battle for ERT and the difficult but necessary path from protest to political change

By Panagiotis Sotiris [1]

After the June 2012 election in Greece one of the main preoccupations of both the Greek government and the Troika (EU-IMF-ECB) representatives was to present an image of a strong government that would stand firm and would not succumb the pressure coming from a society in despair. For some time this tactic seemed to work, aided by the inability of mass protests to produce concrete positive results and the choice of the SYRIZA leadership to opt for a “ripe fruit” strategy regarding governmental power. However the ongoing struggle over the fate of Greek Public Television and Radio (ERT) has put an end to this fantasy of a strong government in a position to smoothly pass socially devastating legislation.

In the struggle for ERT, for the first time we have had a mass movement that led to a significant political rupture. The combination of  a defiant stance from ERT employees who decided to occupy the premises and continue broadcasting, even in the form of web TV, creating a tangible example of the quality of public service that self-management can bring, with a broader social and political mobilization in support of ERT and in opposition to the authoritarian turn of the Samaras government that led to the mass presence outside ERT headquarters and local stations, intensified a deeper governmental crisis that had its roots in the social and economic crisis and the inability for the Greek government to offer an exit from the vicious circle of recession, austerity and unemployment. Contrary to the prevailing myth, even within the forces of the Left, that people are disappointed and that it would be difficult to urge them to go back in the streets, the struggle over ERT brought forward the potential for solidarity, mass mobilization and support of an important struggle. The struggle over ERT became the metonymy for all forms of aggression against not only social rights, but also against democracy per se. The black screens became the symbol of the aggressive, undemocratic character of both contemporary neoliberalism and Troika supervision that dictate political measures. This can explain the extent and the duration of the protests about ERT.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 15-21 June 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 22 June 2013: Happy birthday Mr. Prime Minister

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the formation of the coalition government in June 2012 (and of the day when it lost one of its three member parties), we discussed its achievements (or lack thereof) over the past year with @tsimitakis and @YiannisBab.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

More truths and lies about ERT: was government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou an ERT employee?

In the statement he delivered in the evening of Tuesday 11 June on behalf of the government, when the shutdown of Greece's public broadcaster ERT was officially announced, spokesman Simos Kedikoglou justified the government's decision by saying, among other things: "The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, ERT, is a typical case of unique opacity and incredible waste of public money (...) It is governed by opacity in the sector of contract management."

The irony of this statement was not lost on ERT staff, who were prompt to note that Simos Kedikoglou was himself recruited as an ERT journalist in 1995, at a time when his father, Vasilis Kedikoglou, was a member of parliament with then-governing party PASOK. This was also denounced by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, in response to whom Kedikoglou's office published a statement, that was reported by To Ethnos newspaper on 14 June:

As noted by his collaborators, Mr. Kedikoglou was never appointed at ERT. Quite the opposite, he worked at ERT on a fixed-term contract, "and his first job was a night shift from midnight to 6 am during the first Gulf War."
"ERT was then looking for journalists who speak foreign languages, who were uncommon at the time, for the needs of its round-the-clock coverage, and Mr. Kedikoglou speaks fluent English, French and Russian." (...) [1]

In an article published today on tvxs.gr, former ERT news director Giorgos Kogiannis chose to expose Mr. Kedikoglou by releasing the document that ratified Mr. Kedikoglou's recruitment by ERT on an open-ended contract - meaning that Mr. Kedikoglou was recruited by ERT as, essentially, a civil servant with tenure.

Kogiannis further notes that Kedikoglou's recruitment came at a time when hundreds of ERT employees were on two-month contracts and were being paid with delays of several months. By the time a decree by then-Minister of Interior Prokopis Pavlopoulos gave permanent positions to temporary workers in the civil service in 2006, some journalists had been on short-term contracts for 25 years (implying, also, that these journalists constantly risked being fired if they didn't toe the government line). In 1995, no open-ended positions were available in the Greek civil service at large, meaning that Kedikoglou's position was created specifically for him. Kedikoglou was subsequently sponsored by ERT to attend training with CNN, before finally joining a talk show on private TV station MEGA.

[1] Editor's note CORRECTED: This post initially mistranslated the Greek expression "γερμανικό νούμερο" as "German-language coverage" It actually means night shift. 

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An ERT cellist on the shutdown: “They don’t realise what they do.”

By @kixes, re-posted from #spuddings

The performance was short. Extracts from Mozart’s Requiem, voices interwoven with the melodies and harmonies from strings, brass and woodwinds. When it was over there was a short silence before the applause, and members of the chorus raised their arms with the ‘V’ sign. The applause went on and on, and one by one audience members stood up to give the ERT orchestra a standing ovation.

Considering that one of their last official concerts drew a crowd of 1,200, Tuesday night’s reception was a modest one. But the applause went on and on, a rhythmic clap as the orchestra stood for their bows and the conductor hugged the concert master.

After all, who knows how long more this orchestra can go on?