Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling.

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

To prevent more mass demonstrations and rioting in the streets of Athens, it will take much more than Greek Prime

 

 

Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling.

 Minister George Papandreou's empty offer to step down to form a new national unity government. The timing of his ill-fated announcements, in that, he plans to reshuffle his cabinet to ensure that tough and severe austerity measures will pass, along with a canny statement that economics should not be politicized, will more than likely escalate tensions between Greek citizens and their government.

But this is what happens when austerity measures meet autonomy movements. Papandreou's plan, backed by a worrisome European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that has incurred 55% of Greece's debt, is to push through a new five-year plan to raise taxes, cut spending for social and educational services, and sell-off state property. He must do this in order to receive EU and IMF aid. While many of the tax increases are aimed at working classes, cuts in services and education will hurt the poor.

Simmering just underneath Greece's-and Europe's-austerity measures is another force, another power, another economic plan. This one being the Autonomous Movement. The Autonomous Movement, which dates back several centuries, is a loosely connected alliance of European groups and communes that have rejected feudal and more traditional economic, political, and social organizations. It also regards the state as a corporation where individual identities of the citizens are subsumed, even destroyed.

European leaders have always found the Autonomous Movement difficult to control or to destroy, specifically since they reject hierarchical organizational patterns, class distinctions, and personality-political cults. Individuals in this grassroots movement seek to control their own destinies by avoiding political institutions. When government starts to dismantle or harm beneficial and life-producing services, the "politics of the first person" will protest, riot, commit acts of sabotage-nonviolent and violent, and even declare war.

In the 20th century, the Autonomy Movement has helped secure many workers rights and educational opportunities. It also initiated radical feminism, leading the way for European nations to elect female leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany, Tarja Halonen of Finland, Segolene Royal of France's Socialist Party, Susanna Camusso of Italy's largest labor union, and Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega Sanz of Spain who has advocated against corruption and for more transparency, multiculturalism, and a deeper social consciousness.

Greece's and Europe's Autonomy Movement has also been instrumental in turning back neo-Fascist groups and parties that have attempted to again hijack European societies. At the same time, the movement has tried to establish a nuclear free Europe while questioning the legitimacy of nuclear power. It has also occupied vacant municipal buildings and houses, have fought pitched battles with the world banking system security forces, and have resisted locally the adverse affects of multinational corporations.

In any society, the polis and economic lifelines are the people, the citizenry. Retirement plans should not be cut, neither should the working classes be punished for the sins of corrupt financial institutions and predatory multi corporations, which are usually protected under austerity measures. When violence is concentrated in these structures, it will be met with autonomous violence. These are the reasons angry youth are hurling petrol bombs at the Finance Ministry and tens of thousands of protesters are flooding the streets in Athens.

While booming sounds of stun grenades fill the air in Athens, and even now as plumes of smoke arise from burning garbage bins as police fight running skirmishes with autonomous youth and their rocks and clubs, institutional anger will be met with individual anger and austerity measures will be met with autonomous movements. Governments that squander the hopes of future generations and that crush the working classes with their corrupt lifestyles and politics, will be met with: "Thieves, traitors! Where did the money go?"

Papandreou, and others like him throughout Europe and even the United States, should understand that where there are autonomy movements, obedience to a law one prescribes for oneself is freedom. Neither is the Autonomy Movement and its ideals going away anytime soon. Greece's political leaders, who are planning to implement severe austerity and privatization measures that will mainly be paid for by the working classes and the poor, should be very cautious, for they are treading where even the gods fear to tread.

Dallas Darling ([e-mail])

 

 

 

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