Anche Monti contro l'austerity? Troppo tardi!!

E così, secondo l'articolo del Guardian riportato qui sotto, anche Monti si sarebbe convinto che l'austerity fa più male che bene. Si potrebbe dire, meglio tardi che mai. E invece no. Troppo tardi. Per 18 mesi ha governato in Italia, con una maggioranza schiacciante - che come si è visto non corrispondeva certo ad una maggioranza nel Paese. Da quella posizione avrebbe potuto contribuire ad una svolta nelle politiche economiche. Invece Monti è stato più realista del re, seguendo alla lettera le indicazioni di Bruxelles, salvo accorgersi solo ora che non tutti lo fanno e che forse, in fondo, era meglio non farlo neanche noi. Capaci tutti di capirlo, quando non c'è da fare battaglie politiche. Monti è molto più adatto a fare il Grillo parlante, come quando criticava il podestà straniero, salvo poi farne il paggio. Che torni a scrivere sul Corriere e lasci la politica ad altri, più coraggiosi e intelligenti di lui

Mario Monti: EU faces backlash over austerity measures

dal Guardian


Italy's outgoing prime minister has warned European leaders that the rigid austerity policies of the past three years have generated mass disaffection with the EU and a populist political backlash.
In a bitter valedictory statement to a two-day EU summit that ended in Brussels on Friday, Mario Monti, who was crushed in the recent Italian election – a result that stunned the EU elite – pleaded for greater scope on economic and fiscal policy in the crisis.
He complained that other countries such as France and the Netherlands were being granted more breathing space on their spending targets than he had been given over the past 16 months, and said that he had followed EU orders in his policymaking, an admission he did not emphasise during the election campaign.
In the letter, Monti, a liberal reformer who was the darling of Brussels but roundly rejected by Italian voters, voiced disappointment bordering on a sense of betrayal at the way he was treated by fellow EU leaders, most notably in Berlin and Brussels.
"Since November 2011," when he replaced Silvio Berlusconi as caretaker prime minister, "Italy has been delivering on all the policy objectives set out by the EU. In the meantime, some member states have been given extra time to reach their budgetary objectives," he complained.
"Not only has Italy not requested any extra time to perform its adjustment, but it did not request any financial assistance from the EU or any other international organisation. On the contrary, Italy has contributed to the financial assistance of other EU countries in need."
Attending his final EU summit, Monti warned that the leaders were not acting strongly and fast enough to combat record mass youth unemployment, storing up trouble for themselves at the ballot box.
"Public support for the reforms, and worse, for the European Union, is dramatically declining, following a trend which is also visible in many other countries across the union," he said. "To revive growth and fight long-term and youth unemployment would be the best message to counter the mounting wave of populism and disaffection with the European Union, showing that Europe is listening to people's concerns."
While pursuing an agenda of fiscal and structural reform in office, Monti regularly pleaded with Berlin for more flexibility over the eurozone crisis. Ironically, the summit finally agreed to adopt more room for manoeuvre in the application of the eurozone rule book, although this will do little more than soften the harsh edges of the austerity medicine.
Monti also called for the swift application of a German-inspired stick-and-carrot regime, which would see countries commit to "contracts" with the European commission on structural reform in return for funding rewards pegged to progress.
The details of the scheme are to be devised by EU authorities by June. But already the scheme has run into trouble – no decisions are expected in June and several countries are balking at the surrender of sovereignty entailed.

La fanta-tavola rotonda degli economisti....

Simpatica l'idea del Guardian di organizzare  una fanta-tavola rotonda tra grandi economisti defunti per discutere della crisi. Qui di seguito riportiamo l'articolo del giornale inglese che, pur se preso alla leggera, ci racconta cose interessanti su quello che dovrebbe esser fatto e che invece viene sistematicamente ignorato in questi tempi di crisi.

The ultimate Davos debate: Marx takes on Keynes, Friedman and Schumacher

If you could construct the best panel at a World Economic Forum debate, this would be it. But what would they say about present problems? Read on …

Imagine that you could construct the ultimate Davos panel. From the annals of history you can choose any quartet that could put the world to rights in an hour-long talk, the format beloved of the World Economic Forum.
Klaus Schwab, the man who has been organising the forum since 1971, ensured there were plenty of stellar names strutting their stuff in the high Alps last week. Davos attendees could watch Nouriel "Dr Doom" Roubini cross swords with Adam Posen, recently a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee about the merits of quantitative easing. They could listen to Mark Carney, soon to take over from Sir Mervyn King at Threadneedle Street, warn that the global economy is far from out of the woods. George Soros held forth on drugs; Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg spoke passionately about sexual stereotyping; David Cameron called for the G8 to act against tax avoidance and corruption.
But how about this for a panel? Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Fritz Schumacher, all no longer with us, kept in line by the IMF's Christine Lagarde, thankfully still alive and kicking, and one of the standout performers last week.
Lagarde kicks off our fantasy discussion with a few words of introduction. She says business leaders have left Davos in a slightly better frame of mind not because of the millions of words spouted in Davos, but because of three little words spoken by the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, in London in July. Those words were "whatever it takes", a commitment by the ECB to buy up the bonds of troubled eurozone countries in unlimited quantities. That has removed one of the big tail risks to the global economy – a chaotic break-up of the eurozone. But, she adds, any recovery in 2013 will be fragile and timid, and there is a risk of a relapse. "Turning first to you Karl, how do you see things".
Marx: "The capitalist class gathered in Davos has spent the last few days wringing their hands about unemployment and the lack of demand for their goods. What they seem incapable of recognising is that these are inevitable in a globalised economy. There is a tendency towards over-investment, over-production and a falling rate of profit, which, as ever, employers have sought to counter by cutting wages and creating a reserve army of labour. That's why there are more than 200 million people unemployed around the world and there has been a trend towards greater inequality. It is possible that 2013 will be better than 2012 but it will be a brief respite."
Lagarde: "That's a gloomy analysis, Karl. Wages are growing quite fast in some parts of the world, such as China, but I'd agree that inequality is a threat. The IMF's own research shows that inequality is correlated to economic instability."
Marx: "It is true that the emerging market economies are growing rapidly now but in time they too will be affected by the same forces."
Lagarde: "Maynard, do you think things are as bleak as Karl says?
Keynes: "No I don't Christine. I think the problem is serious but soluble. When we last faced a crisis of this magnitude we responded by aggressive loosening of monetary policy – driving down both short-term and long-term interest rates – and by the use of public works to boost aggregate demand. In the US, my friend Franklin Roosevelt supported legislation that allowed workers to organise. After the second world war, the international community created the IMF in order to smooth out balance of payments imbalances, prevent beggar-my-neighbour currency wars and control movements of capital. All these lessons have been forgotten. The balance between fiscal and monetary policy is wrong; currency wars are brewing; the financial sector remains largely unreformed, and aggregate demand is weak because workers are not getting a fair share of their productivity gains. Economics is stuck in the past; it is as if physics had not moved on since Kepler."

Lagarde: "I gather from what you are saying, Maynard, that you do not approve of the way George Osborne is running the UK economy."
Keynes: "The man has taken leave of his senses. Britain has a growth problem, not a deficit problem."
Lagarde: "I daresay Milton that you disagree with everything Maynard has said? You would make the case, presumably, for nature's cure?"
Milton Friedman: "Some of my friends in the Austrian school of economics would certainly favour doing nothing in the hope of a cleansing of the system, but I wouldn't. Unlike Maynard, I wouldn't support measures that would increase the bargaining power of trade unions and I've never been keen on public works as a response to a slump.
"But I would certainly support what Ben Bernanke has been doing with monetary policy in the US and would support even more drastic action if it proved necessary."
Lagarde: "Such as?"
Friedman: "Well, I think monetary policy should be set in order to hit a target for nominal output – the increase in the size of the economy unadjusted for inflation. If that growth is too high, central banks should tighten policy. If it is too low, the trend since the crisis broke, they should loosen it. In extreme circumstances, I'd favour policies that blur the distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. That's what I mean when I talk about helicopter drops of money into the economy."
Lagarde: "Fritz, you have been sitting there patiently listening to Karl, Maynard and Milton. How do you assess the state of the world?
Fritz Schumacher: "I am greatly disturbed by the way the debate is being framed. There is an obsession with growth at all costs regardless of the environmental costs. Climate change was rarely mentioned in Davos: this after a year of extreme weather events. It is frightening that so little attention has been paid to global warming, and almost criminally neglectful of governments not to use ultra-low interest rates to invest in green technologies.
"As has been the case in the past, recessions have pushed green issues down the political agenda. In good times policymakers say they are in favour of sustainable development, but the pledges are forgotten as soon as unemployment starts to rise. Then it is back to business as usual: more roads, expanding airports, tax cuts to encourage consumption. When scientists are warning that global temperatures are on course to rise several degrees above pre-industrial levels on unchanged policies, this is the economics of the madhouse."
Lagarde: "Maynard, what's your response to that?"
Keynes: "I agree with him. If I were advising Roosevelt today I would be calling for a Green New Deal. I find it hard to envisage a world without growth, something that is politically unacceptable in the developing world in any case. But Fritz is right, we need smarter, cleaner growth. As you yourself said last week, Christine, if we carry on as we are the next generation will be 'roasted, toasted, fried and grilled'."

Schumacher: "I couldn't have put it better myself."

fonte: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/jan/27/ultimate-davos-debate-marx-keynes


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Il fallimento economico del neoliberalismo

Pubblichiamo di seguito un articolo dello scrittore George Monbiont, uscito recentemente sul Guardian. Il pezzo è un duro, coerente e chiaro atto d'accusa al neoliberismo. Racconta in termini accessibili a tutti come questa teoria economica che aveva promesso ricchezza, crescita e lavoro abbia in realtà fallito su tutta la linea. O forse no. Ha funzionato benissimo, ma solo per una piccolissima elite che ha tolto poteri alla democrazia per trasferirlo ad economisti e mercati finanziari, trasformando l'Occidente in una oligarchia dove le decisioni sono prese da pochi e solo a vantaggio di loro stessi.

If you think we're done with neoliberalism, think again

di George Monbiont
da Guardian

How they must bleed for us. In 2012, the world's 100 richest people became $241 billion richer. They are now worth $1.9 trillion: just a little less than the entire output of the United Kingdom.
This is not the result of chance. The rise in the fortunes of the super-rich is the direct result of policies. Here are a few: the reduction of tax rates and tax enforcement; governments' refusal to recoup a decent share of revenues from minerals and land; the privatisation of public assets and the creation of a toll-booth economy; wage liberalisation and the destruction of collective bargaining.
The policies that made the global monarchs so rich are the policies squeezing everyone else. This is not what the theory predicted. Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and their disciples – in a thousand business schools, the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and just about every modern government – have argued that the less governments tax the rich, defend workers and redistribute wealth, the more prosperous everyone will be. Any attempt to reduce inequality would damage the efficiency of the market, impeding the rising tide that lifts all boats. The apostles have conducted a 30-year global experiment, and the results are now in. Total failure.
Before I go on, I should point out that I don't believe perpetual economic growth is either sustainable or desirable. But if growth is your aim – an aim to which every government claims to subscribe – you couldn't make a bigger mess of it than by releasing the super-rich from the constraints of democracy.
Last year's annual report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development should have been an obituary for the neoliberal model developed by Hayek and Friedman and their disciples. It shows unequivocally that their policies have created the opposite outcomes to those they predicted. As neoliberal policies (cutting taxes for the rich, privatising state assets, deregulating labour, reducing social security) began to bite from the 1980s onwards, growth rates started to fall and unemployment to rise.
The remarkable growth in the rich nations during the 50s, 60s and 70s was made possible by the destruction of the wealth and power of the elite, as a result of the 1930s depression and the second world war. Their embarrassment gave the other 99% an unprecedented chance to demand redistribution, state spending and social security, all of which stimulated demand.
Neoliberalism was an attempt to turn back these reforms. Lavishly funded by millionaires, its advocates were amazingly successful – politically. Economically they flopped.
Throughout the OECD countries taxation has become more regressive: the rich pay less, the poor pay more. The result, the neoliberals claimed, would be that economic efficiency and investment would rise, enriching everyone. The opposite occurred. As taxes on the rich and on business diminished, the spending power of both the state and poorer people fell, and demand contracted. The result was that investment rates declined, in step with companies' expectations of growth.
The neoliberals also insisted that unrestrained inequality in incomes and flexible wages would reduce unemployment. But throughout the rich world both inequality and unemployment have soared. The recent jump in unemployment in most developed countries – worse than in any previous recession of the past three decades – was preceded by the lowest level of wages as a share of GDP since the second world war. Bang goes the theory. It failed for the same obvious reason: low wages suppress demand, which suppresses employment.
As wages stagnated, people supplemented their income with debt. Rising debt fed the deregulated banks, with consequences of which we are all aware. The greater inequality becomes, the UN report finds, the less stable the economy and the lower its rates of growth. The policies with which neoliberal governments seek to reduce their deficits and stimulate their economies are counter-productive.
The impending reduction of the UK's top rate of income tax (from 50% to 45%) will not boost government revenue or private enterprise, but it will enrich the speculators who tanked the economy. Goldman Sachs and other banks are now thinking of delaying their bonus payments to take advantage of it. The welfare bill approved by parliament last week will not help to clear the deficit or stimulate employment: it will reduce demand, suppressing economic recovery. The same goes for the capping of public sector pay. "Relearning some old lessons about fairness and participation," the UN says, "is the only way to eventually overcome the crisis and pursue a path of sustainable economic development."
As I say, I have no dog in this race, except a belief that no one, in this sea of riches, should have to be poor. But staring dumbfounded at the lessons unlearned in Britain, Europe and the US, it strikes me that the entire structure of neoliberal thought is a fraud. The demands of the ultra-rich have been dressed up as sophisticated economic theory and applied regardless of the outcome. The complete failure of this world-scale experiment is no impediment to its repetition. This has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with power.

fonte: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/neoliberal-theory-economic-failure

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Grecia: il fascismo è alle porte

Continuiamo con una serie di articoli sulla Grecia e sulla terribile avanzata di Alba Dorata che sembra interessare assai poco i media italiani - e soprattutto i leader europei, interessati solamente a tagli e licenziamenti.
Questa settimana presentiamo un articolo del Guardian - Paura e delirio ad Atene - che ben descrive l'avanzata di Alba Dorata, le sue origini e le sue tattiche squadristiche.
Il secondo pezzo, di El Pais, fornisce un buon riassunto di come la destra greca stia ormai occupando le strade e guadagnando consenso a ritmo frenetico.

Fear and loathing in Athens: the rise of Golden Dawn and the far right

di Maria Margaronis

You can hear it from blocks away: the deafening beat of Pogrom, Golden Dawn's favourite band, blasting out of huge speakers by a makeshift stage. "Rock for the fatherland, this is our music, we don't want parasites and foreigners on our land…"
It's a warm October evening and children on bicycles are riding up and down among the young men with crew cuts, the sleeves of their black T-shirts tight over pumped-up biceps, strolling with the stiff swagger of the muscle-bound. They look relaxed, off-duty. Two of them slap a handshake: "Hey, fascist! How's it going?"
Trestle tables are stacked with Golden Dawn merchandise: black T-shirts bearing the party's name in Greek, Chrysi Avgi, the sigma shaped like the S on SS armbands; mugs with the party symbol, a Greek meander drawn to resemble a swastika; Greek flags and black lanyards, lighters and baseball caps. I lean over to talk to one woman stallholder, dressed in Golden Dawn black with thickly kohl-rimmed eyes, but as soon as she opens her mouth a man in a suit strides up: "What are you writing? Are you a journalist? Tear that page out of your notebook. No, no, you can't talk to anyone."
Tonight is the opening of the Golden Dawn office in Megara, a once prosperous farming town between Athens and Corinth. The Greek national socialist party polled more than 15% here – double the national average – in the June election, when it won 18 seats in parliament. (One was taken up by the former bassist with Pogrom, whose hits include Auschwitz and Speak Greek Or Die.)
Legitimised by democracy and by the media, Golden Dawn is opening branches in towns all over Greece and regularly coming third in national opinion polls. Its black-shirted vigilantes have been beating up immigrants for more than three years, unmolested by the police; lately they've taken to attacking Greeks they suspect of being gay or on the left. MPs participate proudly in the violence. In September, three of them led gangs of black-shirted heavies through street fairs in the towns of Rafina and Messolonghi, smashing up immigrant traders' stalls with Greek flags on thick poles.
Such attacks are almost never prosecuted or punished. Ask Kayu Ligopora, of the Athens Tanzanian Community Association, whose premises were vandalised by around 80 "local residents" on 25 September after police walked away. He's lived in Greece for 20 years; for the first time, he says, he's thinking about leaving. Or Hussain Ahulam, 22, who told me how four men with dogs and a metal crowbar left him bleeding and unconscious by the side of the road as he walked home one day. Or 21-year-old HH, a Greek citizen of Egyptian origin, who was beaten on 12 October by three men with chains as he stepped off the trolley bus, and whose sight may be damaged for good.
Or ask @manolis, a blogger for Lifo magazine, who on 11 October went to photograph Golden Dawn's attack on a theatre showing Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which casts Christ and the apostles as gay men in Texas. He says four or five people surrounded him in front of the riot police, hit him and spat on him, and put a lit cigarette in his pocket. "A known Golden Dawn MP follows me, punches me twice in the face, knocks me down," he tweeted. "I lose my glasses. The MP kicks me. The police are exactly two steps away." Another MP, Ilias Panagiotaros, stood on the sidelines ranting in front of video cameras: "Wrap it up, you little faggots. Wrap it up, arse-fuckers. You little whores, your time has come. You fucked Albanian arseholes." A third, Christos Pappas, was filmed releasing a man from police custody. He is the only one now under police investigation.
In Megara, as the light fades, people are gathering: families, children, grandmothers. A woman in a long green dress and high-heeled silver mules is choosing a black T-shirt; another asks the price of a Greek flag. Suddenly there's shouting, a thunder of boots on asphalt: 50 yards from the stage, a group of braves have pushed a man off a red motorbike and are kicking and punching him as he lies on the ground. His arms are protecting his head; I can hear the boots go in. No one stirs until an older member calls them off: "Come back to our space, fellow fighters. The Leader is on his way." The Leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, squat in a baggy suit, threads his way through the crowd accompanied by the party's spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, a former commando with five criminal charges pending, famous abroad for assaulting two women candidates on TV in June. On talkshows, Kasidiaris scowls and slouches like a delinquent teenager, but tonight he looks expansive, almost rock star cool. The office door is flanked by men in camouflage trousers, with crash helmets and Greek flags rolled around wooden staves; more stand guard on the balcony and the roof.
Standing among the citizens of Megara as Michaloliakos addresses them, I feel as if I've slipped into a parallel universe. As a Greek, I've known these people all my life: middle-aged women with coiffed hair and well-upholstered bosoms, men in clean white shirts and neatly belted trousers. They're the people who run the cafes and corner shops; who work hard every day, often at two or three jobs; who pinch children's cheeks and won't let you pay for your coffee; who were always cynical about politicians' promises. I never thought they could fall prey to fascist oratory. Yet here they are, applauding Michaloliakos as he barks and roars, floodlit against a low white building next to the petrol station. We could almost be back in the 1940s, between the Axis occupation and the civil war, when former collaborators whipped up hatred of the left resistance.
Michaloliakos has his populism down pat. His message is pride, and purity, and power. He lambasts the other parties for selling out the country, for their lies and corruption, with special attention to the left party, Syriza. Golden Dawn, he says, are the only patriots, the only ones who haven't dipped their hands in the honeypot. He praises Megara, which used to supply all of Greece, "before we started eating Egyptian potatoes, Indian onions and Chilean apples". Then he turns to "the two million illegal immigrants who are the scourge of this country", who sell heroin and weapons with impunity. "Voting for us is not enough," he says. "We want you to join the struggle for Greece. Don't rent your house to foreigners, don't employ them… We want all illegal foreigners out of our country, we want the usurers of the troika and the IMF out of our country for ever."
After the fireworks and the flares and the national anthem, Efthimia Pipili, 67, gives me her reaction. "Foreigners have come twice to my house to rob me in the night," she says. "If I didn't have my rottweiler, I'd be dead by now. I used to vote for Pasok [the Panhellenic Socialist Movement]. Last time I voted for Tsipras [the leader of Syriza] because I thought he was different. But Tsipras wants to protect the foreigners. I have €100 to last for the next three weeks. I owe €400 to the electricity company; they're going to cut me off. Why shouldn't I be for Golden Dawn, my love?"
Golden Dawn is many things: a party, a movement, a subculture; a vigilante force; a network inside the police and the judiciary. Vasilis Mastrogiannis of the Democratic Left, a former senior police officer turned politician, describes it frankly as "a criminal organisation". New Democracy MP Dimitrios Kyriazidis, who founded the Greek police union, calls it a "political excrescence". "Because of my past in the police, I know very well where these people come from," Kyriazidis says. "Most declare their profession as 'businessman'. But one has to pause at that."
The party's founder and leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, served time in the late 1970s for assault and illegal possession of guns and explosives. While inside, he met members of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, but his political views, as expressed in Golden Dawn, the magazine he started when he was released, were well to the right of theirs. Breaking the boundaries of "acceptable" rightwing nationalism, Michaloliakos published paeans to Adolf Hitler, arguing that Greece should have been at the side of the Axis in the second world war. The magazine, its covers periodically adorned with portraits of the Führer and his acolytes, served up a weird amalgam of Nazi propaganda, antisemitism, traditional nationalism and pagan fantasy. The party that now courts and counts on the Orthodox church once advocated a return to "the faith of the Aryans" – the Olympian gods – claiming that Christianity had "grafted Jewish obscurantism on to the trunk of European civilisation". In the one interview I was allowed with a Golden Dawn official, MP Panagiotis Iliopoulos told me that, as a young man, the magazine expressed his ideas completely. Have the party's views changed since then? "Not at all," he said. "There are no neo-Nazi articles in the magazine. Only historical ones."
Golden Dawn first drew attention in the early 1990s, when the dispute over the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia fuelled an upsurge of Greek nationalism. It found fertile ground in the anti-immigrant sentiment that spread through Greece with the first wave of migrants from Albania and eastern Europe; it gathered strength as the failures of Greek and European policy turned Greece into a lobster trap for refugees and migrants coming from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. As thousands struggled to survive beside impoverished Greeks in neighbourhoods shattered by the economic crisis, Golden Dawn vigilantes began to "clear" Athenian squares with fists and clubs and knives; to storm unofficial mosques; to sell protection to shopkeepers; to escort old ladies to the supermarket. In 2009 the party polled a mere 0.29% in the national election. In 2010, Michaloliakos was elected to the Athens city council; he celebrated his arrival with a fascist salute.
As the crisis deepens – 25% unemployment, and 54% among the young; a third of the businesses in central Athens closed; savings gone and faith in the two old mainstream parties lost; violent scenes erupting even in parliament – there is a smell of fear in Athens, as well as one of numb depression. In June, many voted for Golden Dawn as a protest against the parties that brought the country down: "I want them in parliament to beat the others up." Now they are turning to it because hope is exhausted; because things are out of control and they want someone to take charge; because it's "doing something". "It's not that Greece is going to be saved," one voter said to me. "Greece can't be saved." What, then?
The Golden Dawn office in downtown Athens is open three evenings a week. Most of the visitors are middle-aged women with dull eyes and sunken cheeks, faces too old for their bodies, hardened, tired expressions. More than 50 come in an hour. Quietly, they ask the bouncers, "Are they giving out food inside?" "Third floor," the bouncers say; but most of the women come out empty-handed save for a mauve piece of paper with the Golden Dawn logo on it. There's only enough today for voters from this ward; they'll announce the next distribution on a poster, in the papers, if you phone.
Away from the door, Maria Kirimi tells me she's been locked out of her flat with all her things inside since 29 July; the family are crowded at her mother's now, seven people surviving on €400 a month. "We're the living dead," she says. Isn't she troubled by Golden Dawn's violence? "The boys in the black shirts are the only ones I'm not scared of. I feel they'll protect me." I ask her mother, old enough to remember the junta, what she thinks of their far-right views. "I heard Michaloliakos say on TV that their sign isn't Hitler's sign but a patriotic one," she says, and then looks down at her feet. "It does upset me a bit. But I haven't heard of anyone else giving out food."
For the young people drawn into its inner circle, Golden Dawn means much more. Vetta has Celtic crosses on her collar points, a pack of Stuyvesants and a can of Red Bull clutched in her left hand. Her kohl-rimmed eyes dart back and forth as she speaks, but she is open, friendly. The 33-year-old says she helped to "clear" Aghios Panteleimon square three years ago and was stunned by people's gratitude. She's a member now, one of 20 chosen each year for their contribution to the cause and given lessons in ideology and behaviour: "We have to welcome everybody, to be polite but serious." There's a dress code for women – no heels, low-cut tops or bare backs – and a growing Women's Front, which offers training in self-defence. "But there's no difference between men and women here. We all sweep and mop. And, yes, the men make coffee."
The Golden Dawn office in industrial Aspropyrgos is in a flat above an empty garage, next to the old elevated motorway. The stairs are lined with crash helmets, black shields and Greek flags rolled on to wooden staves, ready to snatch up at a moment's notice. The walls are hung with the slogans of Greek nationalism – "Macedonia is Greek soil" – and a blown-up photograph of Golden Dawn supporters fighting the riot police. Arete Demestika – six months pregnant, ponytail down to her waist, earrings like black roses – waxes lyrical in praise of the party: "It's an attitude, a way of life, it's what's called Greece. It awakens new parts of you and makes you stronger, it arms you with knowledge, it's a secret school. We learn our true history, the lore of the nation, because the Greeks are a superior race. And it's given me my family – I met my husband here – and made me feel I'm not alone in the struggle for our country."
But outside, as the sun goes down, 27-year-old Costas, a black-booted Golden Dawn cadre, slips out from under the rhetoric and speaks in his own words. He's an inspector now in the Eleusis oil refineries, but that's not his vocation. He's a craftsman, a marble carver; he used to work at the Acropolis, but the pay was terrible and you couldn't get a decent contract if you weren't in the right party. His face softens and sweetens as he talks about working the marble, learning the craft as a boy, and I realise that he comes from a village I know well. Suddenly we're two people – two Greeks – talking about a place we love, a place full of memories, almost as if things were normal.
Deliberately, inexorably, Golden Dawn is moving into the gaps left open by the crippled Greek state. Its strategy is a blend of seduction and extortion, the exploitation of need backed by the threat of violence. To its existing "solidarity projects" – "Food for Greeks only" and "Blood for Greeks only" – the party has now added a third: "Jobs for Greeks only". Golden Dawn members are visiting workshops and factories, counting and publicising the number of foreign workers there, "encouraging" employers to hire Greeks instead. But its biggest success has been the provision of "security", with the collusion of the authorities: the intimidation of migrants, protection of Greek shops, vigilante patrols.
Adept at spectacle, the party claims new territory with a show of black-shirted strength, fireworks and flares and fanfare, masculine energy. Physical fitness is a big part of its culture. There are Golden Dawn gyms that don't admit foreigners; Golden Dawn security firms. MP Panagiotaros owns a shop called Phalanga that sells military memorabilia; bovver boots and black gloves; ultra football shirts; kit by Pit Bull and Hooligan. Members of the military junta beam from photos on the wall. The heavy stuff is said to be kept in a back room.
Yianna Kourtovik acts for victims of racial attacks. Photograph: Eirini Vourloumis for the Guardian As middle-class Greeks have fled the centre of Athens, immigrants have moved into their empty properties. It's common knowledge that if you want to get squatters out of your flat, you call Golden Dawn, not the police, who at best will quietly pass you a Golden Dawn telephone number. The story has become a staple of dinner-party conversation; in the version I heard from unemployed journalist Julia Iliakopoulou, the Golden Dawn heavies who cleared the Pakistanis out of her friend's flat by "beating them black and blue" made them clean it up and paint it afterwards. "Don't upset yourself," they said. "We're Greeks helping Greeks."
It's hard to measure just how deeply Golden Dawn has penetrated the police. In Athens wards where the police vote in large numbers, the party polled 19-24% last summer; Panagiotaros crows that 50-60% of the force is now with the movement. What's obvious is that rightwing violence almost always goes unchecked, even when it happens under officers' noses or on camera. Early in October, anti-fascist protesters told me they had been tortured in the Athens police headquarters: burned with a cigarette lighter; forced to strip naked, bend over and spread their buttocks; filmed by officers who said they'd give the pictures to Golden Dawn. As I tried to interview some of them in a public lobby of the Athens courthouse, an officer grabbed me by the arm and pulled me roughly away. A police spokesperson denied the protesters' allegations.A senior police officer claims successive governments in Greece allowed the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party to infiltrate the country's police force.
Lawyer Yianna Kourtovik is familiar with Athens' most notorious police station, Aghios Panteleimon, which in 2010 was censured by a United Nations special rapporteur. She tells me that migrants trying to bring complaints of racist violence are routinely threatened with counter-charges and held in the cells; that local supporters of Golden Dawn wander freely in and out of rooms where complainants are giving statements; that she has had to prevent a friend of accused attackers from removing evidence. "If that isn't giving cover to Golden Dawn, I don't know what is," she says. A few weeks ago, she was egged by Golden Dawn outside the station while the police looked on. Then: "The other day, as I was walking down the road, two uniformed officers behind me started chanting, just loud enough for me to hear, 'Blood! Honour! Golden Dawn!'"
Why are such allegations never investigated? The usual response from those on the left is that Golden Dawn is "the long arm of the state" – that the government tolerates it to discourage immigration and keep people in a passive state of terror. But Golden Dawn is now much more of a threat to public order than protesters against austerity. There is also the fear of further alienating a desperately underfunded, underpaid and demoralised police force. New Democracy's Kyriazidis has led efforts to isolate Golden Dawn in parliament and, as a veteran union organiser, has intimate knowledge of the old militarised, post-junta police. But when I put the question to him, he hesitates: "Now that Golden Dawn is a legal party in parliament, we can't do anything… If there is an investigation, it has to be done internally, to remove individuals who act in this way but not weaken the police as a whole."
Through some lethal cocktail of intention, incompetence and inertia, the state has let a violent, anti-democratic force take control of law enforcement.
Greece has bitter experience of what can happen when the far right infiltrates the security services. But the Democratic Left's Mastrogiannis thinks what is happening now is more dangerous than a coup. "With the junta, you knew the enemy," he says. "But these people are acting inside society, undermining the system from within. People doubt that democracy is alive. They see it as something that works only for the few, who exploit it to make money. And the circumstances are not transient. This situation could go on for 15, 20 years."
Already Golden Dawn's success has moved the agenda to the right. Speaking in Paris last month, prime minister Antonis Samaras compared his country to 1930s Weimar. Trying to win back ground before the last election, he launched an ill-thought-out campaign (Xenios Zeus, or Zeus the Host) to round up illegal migrants, and spoke of taking back Greece's city centres. "I try to tell myself that he meant from criminals," says Dr Yunus Mohammadi of the Greek Forum of Refugees, "but really he meant from migrants."

People quickly become inured to hate speech and violence. Panagiotaros now speaks openly of a "new kind of civil war" between Greeks and "invaders", nationalists and leftists. Two years ago, a friend who sits on the Athens city council came in late to find only one empty seat, beside Michaloliakos. He hesitated, but the Golden Dawn leader waved him over. "Do sit down," he said. "Fascism isn't contagious." At the time, we thought it funny.

fonte: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/golden-dawn-greece-far-right?intcmp=122

La ultraderecha griega gana la calle

di Mariangela Paone

Son las seis y media de la tarde del miércoles. Las oficinas abren a las siete pero en la puerta hay al menos 20 personas. Muchos ancianos. Una mujer de pelo blanco con un carrito de la compra. Una pareja de mediana edad y un señor de unos 70 años bien trajeado que lleva una pequeña chapa en el cuello de la chaqueta. Es un meandro, una especie de esvástica, y es el símbolo del partido neonazi griego Aurora Dorada. El edificio frente al que estas personas esperan es su sede central en Atenas. Todos los días, durante dos horas, está abierta para atender al público. Es aquí donde, día tras día, Aurora Dorada construye el apoyo popular sobre las ruinas económicas y políticas del país. Si se votara hoy, según todos los sondeos, sería el tercer partido de Grecia.

Sin mirar a la red que el partido ha construido en los últimos dos años no se entiende cómo la formación, que en 2009, en las elecciones europeas, obtuvo menos del 0,5% de los votos, haya podido ganar 18 de los 300 diputados en los comicios de junio y el doble si se celebraran comicios ahora.

En la sede central, cerca de la estación ferroviaria de Larissa, se reproducen los mecanismos de funcionamiento de las más de 40 oficinas locales. En medio de la depauperación de la clase media griega, Aurora Dorada se presenta como capaz de llenar los huecos dejados por el Estado. En la página web oficial y en las de los grupos locales se anuncian distribuciones de comidas, servicios de asesoramiento para la búsqueda de trabajo, visitas a residencias de ancianos o fábricas en crisis. Todo bajo el lema “Solo para los griegos”.

A las siete, cuando se abren las puertas, Dimitri es de los primeros en entrar. Ha venido a buscar un libro: Hitler para 1.000 años, del ideólogo nazi León Degrelle. Tiene 20 años. Guardan la entrada del edificio dos hombres que lucen músculos debajo de dos apretadas camisetas negras. Podrían ser dos gorilas de discoteca si no fuera por la bandera que se entrevé a sus espaldas: el símbolo negro sobre un fondo rojo. “Damos comida, intentamos ayudar a buscar trabajo. La gente nos cuenta los problemas con los inmigrantes que la policía no puede solucionar y nosotros actuamos con nuestros métodos”, explica Alex, que como la mayoría de los voluntarios viste un pantalón militar de color verde oscuro y una sudadera negra. “Para empezar que sea claro: ni fotos ni entrevistas a los que están dentro”, advierte. Es la condición de la visita.

La organización reparte comida, busca trabajo y asiste a desvalidos

De las intervenciones de Aurora Dorada hay rastros en Internet. El 8 de septiembre varios miembros y dos de sus diputados asaltaron un mercadillo de inmigrantes en Rafina. Hace dos días, la Red contra la Violencia Antirracista, una organización de 23 ONG patrocinada por el Alto Comisionado de la ONU para los Refugiados, presentó el primer informe de un proyecto piloto para registrar el aumento de casos de violencia contra los extranjeros. Entre enero y septiembre documentaron 87 episodios, la mayoría en Atenas y en lugares públicos. Las víctimas, que en muchos casos han sufrido lesiones importantes, hablan del uso de armas, bastones, tijeras, botellas rotas, cadenas. “En algunos casos”, se lee en el informe, “las víctimas o los testigos de los ataques han reconocido entre los responsables a personas asociadas a Aurora Dorada”.
“Dicen que somos nosotros pero no”, dice Thomas, 35 años, encargado de la pequeña tienda que se encuentra en la primera planta de la sede. ¿Podéis negar el uso de la violencia? “No instigamos. Pero no podemos evitar que nuestra gente se defienda”. En más de una ocasión los miembros del partido han negado ser los autores de los ataques. El miércoles, en una entrevista en la televisión Skai, el líder, Nikolai Michaloliakos, cuya primera declaración tras ser elegido fue “todos los inmigrantes fuera”, volvió a negarlo a pesar de los vídeos. El Parlamento quitó la inmunidad a dos de sus diputados por participar en el ataque de Rafina. La medida también ha afectado a un tercer diputado, imputado por un robo a mano armada en 2007. Es el portavoz del partido, Ilias Kasidiaris, famoso por haber agredido a dos parlamentarias de izquierda durante un debate en televisión en junio.
Thomas está en el paro. Trabajaba en una gran empresa farmacéutica griega que se declaró en bancarrota hace unos meses. Ahora vende aquí el material de propaganda del partido. Al lado de la tienda hay dos estanterías semivacías, la biblioteca del centro. Theodorus, 25 años, traduce los títulos: “Este va de la negación del Holocausto. Estos son escritos de Julius Evola. Este otro son poemas de nuestro líder. Y aquí tenemos discursos de Goebbels”. Theodorus, que trabaja de guardaespaldas en una empresa privada, dice: “Los inmigrantes tienen que irse, el problema de Grecia no es la economía sino que hay un millón de inmigrantes que nos quitan el trabajo. La mezcla entre pueblos no es buena”. En la sala el trajín de gente sigue. Para las consultas también hay una especie de asistencia telefónica: dos jóvenes contestan a las llamadas desde otros puntos del país y remiten las peticiones a las oficinas locales.

Los programas de ayuda tienen un lema: “Solo para los griegos”

“Nos definimos nacionalistas griegos. Cómo nos llamen los demás no nos interesa”, contesta Thomas, cuando se le pregunta por la definición de nazi. Llega un señor de unos 50 años y saca del bolsillo una cartilla de cartón azul claro y el símbolo de Aurora Dorada. “Con esta le damos comida. Tienen que demostrar que están en el paro o que tienen familia numerosa”. Sobra decir que hay que ser griego. “Ahora tenemos un nuevo servicio. Muchos empresarios han venido para decir que quieren contratar solo a griegos, nosotros les ponemos en contacto”. El señor de la cartilla, que está en paro desde hace tiempo, coge una de las tarjetas que el dueño de una lavandería ha dejado en la sede.

Thomas dice que la relación con la policía “no es ni buena ni mala”. “Creo en todo caso que el 50% de los policías nos apoya”, añade. Lo mismo dijo a la BBC hace una semana el diputado de Aurora Dorada Ilias Panagiotaros. En septiembre, el diario The Guardian reveló el testimonio de algunos de los 15 anarquistas detenidos después de un enfrentamiento con miembros de Aurora Dorada, que denunciaban torturas en comisaría por agentes simpatizantes del movimiento. El ministro del Interior, Nikos Dendias, ha anunciado una demanda contra el periódico británico. Pero las críticas a las fuerzas policiales por las actuaciones durante las acciones de Aurora Dorada son cada vez más frecuentes. Una de las últimas ocasiones fue el 11 de octubre: la violenta protesta de un grupo de fanáticos cristianos apoyados por miembros del partido impidió la representación de la obra de teatro Corpus Christi, en la que los apóstoles son homosexuales. A Thomas le parece justo: “Uno no puede decir lo que quiere y pensar que no pasa nada por ello”. Desde el piso de arriba se oyen aplausos. “Hoy hay una conferencia sobre el imperio bizantino”.

fonte: http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2012/10/25/actualidad/1351190059_449972.html

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