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Pro-austerity blow in Greek vote, neo-Nazis gain seats
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jGARYCZXVDb5hosnp3ZKL9SThAGQ?docId=CNG.dcf83fd76a13c941c4681353fe595c6d.6b1ATHENS — Greece's two main parties suffered big losses in elections Sunday, exit polls showed, rocking the eurozone state's austerity plans after a strong showing by protest groups including the neo-Nazis.
Anti-austerity parties could have won up to 58 percent of the vote between them, the exit polls showed.
<snip>
But with voters angry at the austerity cuts demanded in response, many of the smaller parties, including possible kingmaker Syriza, want to tear up the agreements.
The communist KKE party want to leave the eurozone and the neo-Nazis say they want to stop servicing Greece's debts, an aim shared by Kammenos who wants to turn to Russia to prop up the country.
Greece's anti-bailout Tsipras seeks left front
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-greece-leftistbre8440e5-20120505,0,7008823.story
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's youngest political leader, Alexis Tsipras, is seeking a united left front that will call time on the harsh austerity that comes with an international bailout keeping Athens afloat.
He calls the ultimatum thrown down by mainstream parties, bailout or bust, a scare tactic to force people to accept painful cuts in pay and pensions.
The leader of the Left Coalition, one of four parties vying for third place, Tsipras, 38, is appealing to the KKE communists, the Democratic Left and others to team up at May 6 elections to vote out policies driving Greeks into poverty.
"We want to form a government that will lead the way out of this destructive austerity and deep recession, the policies that face a dead end," he told Reuters before a speech to voters in Volos, a port city in central Greece.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-06/greek-exit-poll-casts-doubt-on-new-democracy-pasok-majority.html
“Greece needed this election like it needed a hole in the head,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said in an e-mailed note. “The exit polls confirm what has been patently clear for some time: there’s no political consensus for the kind of reforms that Greece must implement if it wants to remain in the euro zone.”
The results, if confirmed, may mean that New Democracy and Pasok won’t have enough support for a majority of at least 151 seats in the 300-seat parliament. Pasok won general elections in 2009 with 43.9 percent of the vote and New Democracy came second with 33.5 percent. This is Greece’s first national election since it helped trigger the European debt crisis, receiving two bailouts with pledges worth 240 billion euros ($314 billion) in return for pension and wage cuts and higher taxes.
Greece must continue spending cuts to keep disbursements flowing. Failure to do that may determine whether the country has a future in the euro area.
Too bad you can't eat euros.
“Greece needed this election like it needed a hole in the head,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said in an e-mailed note. “The exit polls confirm what has been patently clear for some time: there’s no political consensus for the kind of reforms that Greece must implement if it wants to remain in the euro zone.”
The results, if confirmed, may mean that New Democracy and Pasok won’t have enough support for a majority of at least 151 seats in the 300-seat parliament. Pasok won general elections in 2009 with 43.9 percent of the vote and New Democracy came second with 33.5 percent. This is Greece’s first national election since it helped trigger the European debt crisis, receiving two bailouts with pledges worth 240 billion euros ($314 billion) in return for pension and wage cuts and higher taxes.
Greece must continue spending cuts to keep disbursements flowing. Failure to do that may determine whether the country has a future in the euro area.
Too bad you can't eat euros.
There's that Lenin quote "Fascism is capitalism in decay"...but watching it actually rise again is pretty fucking alarming.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Rise-of-far-right-in-Greece-worries-mainstream/tabid/417/articleID/252475/Default.aspx
The party has a barely veiled sinister side, and has been blamed for vicious attacks on immigrants. Members skirt questions about violence, saying they have no knowledge of such incidents.
"We don't do anything, we protect the Greeks," said Epaminondas Anyfantis, a mild-mannered, 59-year-old candidate who looks the antithesis of many of the young, muscled and shaven-headed members. "Now, if in protecting the Greeks, a foreigner might get a slap or a kick or something, I think that's in the framework of the protection of the Greeks. ... Because unfortunately the Greeks at the moment have come to the point of asking Golden Dawn for protection."
<snip>
Immigrants are increasingly concerned.
"We are worried very much," said Javed Aslam, the head of the Pakistani community in Greece, during a recent anti-racist demonstration. "This is very bad. You can imagine one political party with weapons, with knives, they are going out in the roads, and this is politics? This is not politics!"
<snip>
...they don't hide their admiration for many of Hitler's policies, saying he eliminated unemployment in Germany. Golden Dawn members often give fascist salutes at marches and rallies featuring nationalist slogans and burning torches, pictures of which adorn walls in party offices.
The last time there were Nazis fighting in the streets of Greece, things got pretty gruesome. I'm hoping the left coalition proposed in the second article I linked in the OP comes to some agreement. I'm not sure if Greece can do something similar to Iceland at this point...but the austerity must be eased.
I can't shoot to save my life, and marching for 20 minutes makes me winded and sweaty. 
I must have misunderstood what I read. The KKE is an ML party, which would follow Lenin's observations of the course of other Socialist parties in the participation in their countries' governments:
One of the evident reasons was the erroneous tactics of the German Communists, who must fearlessly and honestly admit this error and learn to rectify it. The error consisted in their denial of the need to take part in the reactionary bourgeois parliaments and in the reactionary trade unions...
He recommends all methods of struggle, even the boringly legal ones.
Boycotting isolates your party from the masses.
I love Aleka Papriga too!
