Have The Protests in Greece Been Hijacked By The Establishment?

Syntagma Square movement

not as grass-roots as it claims, maybe?

By Peter Schwarz

It is not easy to report on the “Indignants”, the protesters in Athen’s Syntagma Square. We spent almost an hour trying to find someone responsible who could tell us about the goals and character of the movement; without success.
First, we went to a stand where in big letters above it read “information”. But as it turned out, this was merely providing technical advice on creating and organizing new committees. We were referred to another stand, where in turn we were sent to the press centre of www.real-democracy.gr.

We thought we had reached our goal, but a woman there told us that nobody had the authority to act or speak on behalf of the movement, not even members of the Steering Committee. The press centre was merely tasked with recording the daily discussions and decisions of the Steering Committee and the “Popular Assembly“ and putting them online.

The composition of the Steering Committee changes daily—once it was 50-strong, another time 500. If we wanted information, we should consult the web site, which also contains many contributions translated into other languages. We could interview individual members of the movement, but these only spoke for themselves, she said.
There was no one willing to provide information about the objectives and purpose of the movement, and take responsibility for this. This game of hide and seek is not a coincidence. It is justified by reference to the principle of “genuine” or “direct democracy”, according to which the people take decisions directly, without the mediation of political representatives or parties. In fact, it serves to hide the real political objectives of the “Indignants.”
Already the so-called “Popular Assembly”, which takes place every evening at nine on Syntagma Square, proves to be a farce on closer inspection. What some of the pseudo-left celebrate as the reincarnation of the Russian Soviets, in fact rather resembles Speakers Corner in London’s Hyde Park. There is an indescribable din. The audience comes and goes. The speakers are drawn by lot. They are given just 30 seconds, and may not identify themselves as representatives of political tendencies.
Under these circumstances, a serious debate over political perspectives is just as impossible as taking a truly representative vote. Such things are unwanted. All those who find themselves accidentally on the square can raise their hands to vote. There are neither elected representatives nor mandated delegates. This offers plenty of opportunities for infiltration and manipulation.
The content of the discussions and votes revolves around organizational issues, such as the form and timing of the next protest action. Alternative models for the settlement of Greece’s state debt or proposals for a new constitution can also be discussed. However, a thought-out political strategy, like politics altogether, is taboo.
Its representatives constantly emphasize the supposedly non-political character of the movement. Asking where are the leaders of the movement produces a stereotyped answer: “There are no leaders, just ordinary people.” But in reality, the movement has a conscious political ideology and perspective. The rejection of politics serves to prevent any discussion of a different perspective—or, more precisely, of a socialist perspective.
Walking over Syntagma Square, anyone with a modicum of political experience soon notices that the organizers of the movement are seasoned politicians. Several reliable sources confirmed to us that they mostly came from the pseudo-left organizations like SYRIZA, ANTARSYA and the tendencies within them, but are concealing their political identity.
Yiannis Bournous, a leading member of Synapsismos, which is allied to the German Left Party, boasted in an interview: “We were the very first party to call upon its members, supporters and sympathisers to join the movement on the squares.”
And Stratos Kersanidis, the press spokesman of SYRIZA, confirmed to us: “We were all surprised by the movement here at Syntagma Square. It was much larger than we had expected. But we immediately gave it our support. We are always there and support this movement.”
The Greek pseudo-left organisations work closely together with SYRIZA and ANTARSYA. Among those groups affiliated to SYRIZA, (in which Synaspismos plays the leading role) was, up until a short while ago, the Greek section of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), which is linked to the SAV in Germany and the Socialist Party in England. Actively involved in ANTARSYA is the Greek section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST) and the Pabloite United Secretariat.
The leaders of these organisations are experienced practitioners of left bourgeois politics. They have their own connections to PASOK and work closely together at an international level. In Germany, their members are represented in the German parliament and meet regularly with representatives of the government and the SPD, who fervently support the newly proposed austerity measures for Greece. In France the Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party has operated for some time in leading circles of the political establishment. These people are in continual contact with one another by telephone, e-mail and SMS. They appear together at the same international gatherings and write for the same publications.
All sorts of semi-anarchic ideas and democratic illusions are to found amongst the rank-and-file activists assembled at Syntagma Square. Read the rest of this article... >>

Koko demonstrates levels of awareness similar to humans

EU Says it Will "Rescue" Greece in Exchange For €78 Billion in Austerity Measures

In Other Words, They're Robbing You Blind

By James G. Neuger and Jonathan Stearns

European Union leaders pledged to stabilize the euro-area economy, vowing to stave off a Greek default as long as Prime Minister George Papandreou pushes through a package of budget cuts next week.
“This is not only a green light but also a positive sign for the future of Greece,” Papandreou told reporters after the first session of an EU summit in Brussels late yesterday.
Greece’s next hurdle is to shepherd 78 billion euros ($111 billion) of austerity measures through parliament, after yesterday’s endorsement of the program by experts from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. Read the rest of this article... >>

The Bourgeois Dictatorship Grows Increasingly Insecure

What the, "war on terror" really means is,

'Look and anyone but me.'

 
Third (Communist) International

1. Faced with the growth of the revolutionary movements in many countries, the bourgeoisie and their agents among the workers are making desperate attempts to find ideological and political arguments in defense of the rule of the exploiters.
Condemnation of dictatorship and defense of democracy are particularly prominent among these arguments. The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument, relentlessly repeated by the capitalist media are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental principles of socialism.
2. Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of ‘democracy in general’ and ‘dictatorship in general’, without posing the question of the class concerned. This non-class or above-class presentation, which supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic tenet of socialism.
Namely, its theory of class struggle, which socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie recognize in words but disregard in practice. For in no civilized capitalist country does ‘democracy in general’ exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy.
And its not a question of ‘dictatorship in general’, but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their domination.
3. History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forcible suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters – a resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing.
The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the socialists who denounce ‘dictatorship in general’ and extol ‘democracy in general’, won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration.
In books, pamphlets, congress resolutions and propaganda speeches, socialists everywhere have explained thousands upon millions of times to the people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship.
That is why the present defense of bourgeois democracy under cover of talk about ‘democracy in general’ and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under cover of shouts about ‘dictatorship in general’ are an outright betrayal of socialism.
They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian, revolution, and defense of bourgeois reformism at the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and the war has created a revolutionary situation.
4. In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilisation, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels.
The most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists.
There is not a single revolutionary, not a single Marxist among those now shouting against dictatorship and for democracy who has not sworn and vowed to the workers that he accepts this basic truth of socialism.
But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie have granted the working people ‘pure democracy’, have abandoned resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the working people.
They assert that in a democratic republic there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a state machine for the oppression of labour by capital.

 

New, Hipster, Earthy,Marketed, Evangelical-Crap Exposed

Hey I got an idea, maybe focus more on the teachings of Christ and His Saints and not the sunglasses and laser shows, then maybe young Christians will stay (or they'll become Orthodox, which is just fine and dandy :)).

Folks, the purpose of the Christian life is to acquire the Grace of God, to acquire Theosis. Fully-realized it is nothing less, than to come into constant communion with God's Divine Uncreated Energies. The purpose of Christianity is not nor has it ever been to, market, advertise, sell, capitalize, create cultural shock-value, screen rated R movies, or any of the other new-fangled guitar rocking crap that goes on in Mega-Churches.

If I could deliver, from my small corner of the internet, a message to all those lost congregations and denominations it would be thusly;

For goodness sakes, stop! What are you doing? 1,000 years ago there was one Church and it worshiped one God, until one Roman Pope, decided to change the Nicean Creed without even informing the other Popes. When word got out, he anatomized them, and they anatomized him. Then, 500 years later, The Roman Church found itself in some scandal, yes, and it was an unfortunate business they'd gotten themselves into. But creating a whole new religion, a whole new Jesus, a whole new Church, this was not, nor was it ever, Martin Luther's intention. Martin Luther wanted to return his followers to the Christianity before the 1054AD split. He even wrote to the Patriarch of Antioch seeking acceptance. It was his followers, who decided they'd had enough of tradition (based on the Roman version of it) and decided they'd do away with tradition, the Saints and everything, and go it alone. And the Protestant Church has been nothing more than a political movement ever since.

There, I said it. Protestantism is not a religion beyond the fact that it is merely a protest against the Roman Church and also against Tradition.

Now here you are, sitting at your Starbucks meet, pouring over some verses here and there, nooooo, idea what any of them mean, it seems you've made it your life's mission never to open a single Homily by the Saints which would greatly shed light on the passages you seek answers to. But no, that's too, "traditional ", it's too, old-fashioned, to just ask the Church that decided what books to put into the Bible at the First Council of Nicea, what those books mean. No, no, you are scholars! That's what you need all that Coffee for right? To guide you through all those sleepless nights, pouring over 6-degree connections between some passage and whatever Democratic President we have at the time.

Stop the politics, stop the silly antics. Come back to the Church that wrote the Bible and your understanding will become much easier. You won't have to pour over paradoxes about how can a God Who is Love yet also have hate or Righteous Anger? Well stop the guessing and just ask the Church that wrote it, because that's where you'll find the answer. And then you won't be forced to practice the usual cognitive dissonance to try and explain to yourself that our God is both Loving and hateful, unable to question and unable to explain any of it simply doing more to disillusion your fellow men rather than enlighten them.

By Brett McCracken

‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort:

Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains.

There are various ways that churches attempt to be cool. For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated “No Country For Old Men.” For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials. Then there is the option of holding a worship service in a bar or nightclub (as is the case for L.A.’s Mosaic church, whose downtown location meets at a nightspot called Club Mayan).

“Wannabe cool” Christianity also manifests itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., for example, have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an “iCampus.” Many other churches now encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during their services.

But one of the most popular—and arguably most unseemly—methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking. What better way to appeal to younger generations than to push the envelope and go where no fundamentalist has gone before?

Sex is a popular shock tactic. Evangelical-authored books like “Sex God” (by Rob Bell) and “Real Sex” (by Lauren Winner) are par for the course these days. At the same time, many churches are finding creative ways to use sex-themed marketing gimmicks to lure people into church.

Oak Leaf Church in Cartersville, Georgia, created a website called yourgreatsexlife.com to pique the interest of young seekers. Flamingo Road Church in Florida created an online, anonymous confessional (IveScrewedUp.com), and had a web series called MyNakedPastor.com, which featured a 24/7 webcam showing five weeks in the life of the pastor, Troy Gramling. Then there is Mark Driscoll at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church—who delivers sermons with titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” and is probably the first and only pastor I have ever heard say the word “vulva” during a sermon.

But are these gimmicks really going to bring young people back to church? Is this what people really come to church for? Maybe sex sermons and indie- rock worship music do help in getting people in the door, and maybe even in winning new converts. But what sort of Christianity are they being converted to?

In his book, “The Courage to Be Protestant,” David Wells writes:

“The born-again, marketing church has calculated that unless it makes deep, serious cultural adaptations, it will go out of business, especially with the younger generations. What it has not considered carefully enough is that it may well be putting itself out of business with God.
“And the further irony,” he adds, “is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.”

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don’t want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.

It really bothers me when,

It really bothers me when someone reads the Bible 2 or 3 times and then goes about making themselves into some kind of Biblical expert, here to evangelize the masses to Atheism, and show a Church which has prevailed for 2,000 years, the error of its ways. Like when they go on some tirade about how can the Bible say God is Love and yet speak of His Righteous Anger at the same time, without having bothered to read St. John Chrysostom's perfectly logical explanation (bah, who needs tradition).

Dear Gamefly

Dear Gamefly, people with PC's play video games too. Please stop saying you have the largest video game library, because if you've preemptively excluded the whole PC platform and the PC genres that come with it, then you clearly don't have as many games as you advertise.

There, someone had to say it.

Israel Wants to Tear Down Alaqsa Mosque To Rebuild 3rd Zionist Temple, Temple of Solomon

Zionists plan to build 3rd temple, where Alaqsa Mosque currently stands.

The Temple of Solomon is also known as the, First Temple. It was the Temple in Jerusalem, located on the Temple Mount, or Mount Zion as it is also known, which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The site where the Temple once stood is now occupied by Alaqsa Mosque. Israel, in their attempt to rebuild the Temple, has been trying endlessly to find ways of removing Alaqsa Mosque from the site. They've been trying to tunnel under it, hoping it will become unstable, weak and collapse.

Free Palestine

 (Translated from Arabic via Google)

Urgent: Palestinian Information Center: development of a scale model of the structure of the alleged at the top of the door pillar on the wall of Jerusalem, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, calling the nation to move soon and the restoration of the Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem

_________________________________________________________________
I picked up lens photojournalist Afif Hanna Amira Thursday (2-6) image of an embodiment of a temple, a newly developed at the gate of Damascus, known as "Damascus Gate" A main doors of the Old City in Jerusalem.

The deployment of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights of the stereo image, and said that the subject manner that does not appear visible at this stage, because of the ongoing restoration work, and hidden by the crew of Zionism.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem, the Antiquities Authority Zionism you several months ago what it calls "the work of restoration and maintenance" of the ancient city wall of Jerusalem.

Seen Jerusalemites suspicion significant of those acts, which are interspersed in the last period changes are not visible on the stone wall, including the removal of stones from it and replace it with another, and the development of forms and figurative-style temple, as was the case in a section of fence near Herod's Gate

Egypt closes boarder with Gaza without warning or reason

Was it too good to be true? Or will Egyptians unite and protest the move?

Free Palestine

(Translated from Arabic via Google)

BREAKING: Egypt shuts down Rafah crossing !

Urgent: Egypt closed the Rafah crossing in a surprise without informing the Palestinian side and, without giving any reasons. and citizens with supporters of Hamas stormed the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing in protest against the policy pursued by the administration of prevention in Egypt.

Island: Reuters: Dozens of angry Palestinians storm Rafah crossing gate in Gaza after its closure by Egyptian authorities. Cheers for the citizens and people says wants to end the siege, and the police trying to disperse the demonstrators and onlookers now


UPDATE: The boarder, Rafah Crossing, has been re-opened.
(Translated from Arabic via Google)
Aljazeera : Egypt reopens Rafah crossing

Al Jazeera broadcast an announcement soon now that the Egyptian authorities decided to reopen after being closed for several hours