Thousands of students took to the streets nationwide last Friday, with protests held in the capital Athens, the second city Thessaloniki as well as in Larissa, Patras, Serres, Volos, Chania and Heraklion.
Syriza’s popular support has collapsed. One survey conducted by Real Polls last week has it polling in eighth place, at 3.6 percent.
Millions in various sectors are angered at stagnating wages and attacks on conditions amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis, expressed in the wave of strikes this month by many thousands of workers across different industries.
Fires in Greece are part of a wider trend across the continent, which is sweltering under a heatwave that has led to blazes in Albania, Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, Sardinia and North Macedonia.
Deaths from COVID have been steadily increasing with the latest report recording 35 new fatalities, up from the average of 23 over the previous four weeks and twice the same time last year.
The most high-profile eviction case was that of Ioanna Kolovou, a retired journalist. She was evicted from her home along with her 28-year-old disabled son at the end of January this year. According to reports a large crowd gathered outside her home which was attacked with tear gas by the riot police who then arrested Kolovou and her son.
The New Democracy government’s attacks on the working class have earned it widespread praise from the global financial elite Standard and Poor’s has updated its outlook on Greece from “stable” to “positive”, while German business interests speak of Greece as a new model.
The statues and friezes, which formed part of the Parthenon temple built in the fifth century BC, are known in the UK as the “Elgin marbles” because they were removed in the early 1800s by Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
Kasselakis was an unknown in Greece until this year, having lived in the United States. He worked first as a trader at Goldman Sachs and then ran several shipping companies.
Sixteen people have been declared dead following the flash floods which hit Greece early last week. With a fifth of all arable land on the Thessaly plain under water, the economic devastation wrought counts in the billions of euros.
The most significant attack is on the right to strike. The Bill outlaws the prevention of “the free and uninhibited entering or leaving a workplace” by scabs, as well as occupying “workplace areas or entrances”.
The latest mass fatalities of refugees off Greek islands happened just days after at least 86 people drowned when a boat carrying refugees from Lebanon sank off the coast of Tartus, Syria.
Students and education workers were protesting the introduction of a new campus police force—the University Institutions Protection Teams (OPPI). The OPPI were set up by the conservative New Democracy (ND) government to patrol university campuses.
The fallout has prompted calls from within the EU parliament and Greece’s parliament for an inquiry probe into the spying allegations. Probes in such sensitive issues are typically set up in order to pacify public anger and conclude with no real light shone, under the pretext of “national security.”
Opposed to re-introducing measures to contain the spread of the virus, the conservative New Democracy government blames the high number of deaths on the World Health Organization’s definition of deaths due to COVID-19, which ND now plans to ditch.
The surge in Greece is down to the premature lifting of virtually all public health measures in anticipation of the summer tourist season.
The pushback operations are conducted not against the EU’s wishes but with its direct approval and participation.
The camps being built in Greece, with the fulsome praise of bourgeois politicians across the continent, are prisons, enforcing total surveillance and control over detainees.
The camps being built in Greece, with the fulsome praise of bourgeois politicians across the continent, are prisons, enforcing total surveillance and control over detainees.
Greece’s COVID mortality rate currently stands at 8.98 per million, which is the second highest rate in the eurozone and almost double the average death rate across Europe, 5.86 per million.
