Bulletins and News Discussion from March 3rd to March 9th, 2025 - Austerity And Its Consequences - COTW: Greece

Image is of a crowd protesting in Athens.

Last week, on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Greeks poured into the streets to strike and protest on the second anniversary of the deadliest train crash in Greek history, in which 57 people died when a passenger train collided with a freight train. On this February 28th, public transportation was virtually halted, with train drivers, air traffic controllers, and seafarers taking part in a 24 hour strike - alongside other professions like lawyers, teachers, and doctors.

The train crash is emblematic of the decay of state institutions brought about from austerity being forced on Greece in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession, in which the IMF and the EU (particularly Germany) plundered the country and forced privatization. While Greece has somewhat recovered from the dire straits it was in during the early 2010s, the consequences of neoliberalism are very clearly ongoing. Mitsotakis' right-wing government has still not even successfully implemented the necessary safety procedures two years on, and so far, nobody has been convicted nor punished for their role in the accident. The austerity measures were deeply unpopular inside Greece and yet the government did not respond to, or ignored, democratic outcry.

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546 comments

Only time Dems clapped was when Trump was talking (negatively) about sending weapons to Ukraine
- The Democrats didn't even clap for the kid that had brain cancer and was made an honorary cop/secret service agent, but they clapped for Ukraine getting weapons lmao. Hell, they didn't even clap for getting Fogel back to the USA and free from a Russian prison.
  Yeah I know ACAB and all that, but the poor kid is just a kid after all, who wants to be a cop for the same reasons most kids want to be a cop, or soldier, or firefighter, etc. And the poor kid probably won't even be alive in the next few years, and surely showing some support for the kid would be less bad than cheering on the endless bloodshed in Ukraine...
  Overall the whole speech was a showcase on how Republicans won the election, they do this new wave of fascist propaganda in an extremely effective manner, and get their opponents to double down and pout on losing positions in a way that looks weak.
  
  The Dems suck but not clapping for Trump is fine, it would be weaker to clap for every little PR stunt he pulled especially since they were peppered into a clearly very antagonistic speech.