A taste of things to come?‏

Greek workers fighting to defend pensions have called a one-day general strike for 20 May http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B1SH20100512

On the same day that the UK austerity happy government claimed they were establishing an "independent" public sector pensions commission to examine their "affordability", Greek workers called the strike as the latest in a series of protests against planned pension cuts linked to conditions imposed by bankers on an international 110-billion-euro ($139.7 billion) loan.

Our brothers and sisters have vowed to stop the attacks on their pensions a key demand in the financial stitch up plan for Greece agreed last week with the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"The IMF will not stop thirsting for workers' blood," said Yannis Panagopoulos, chairman of Greece's main private sector union GSEE. "Its recipes are a disaster and the government must turn them down."

Civil servants and public sector employees, who have vowed to step up protests, will march to parliament late on Wednesday to protest against austerity.

Once again politicians are playing the bankers tune, they have an alternative, they can demand that the European Central Bank credits the Greek government with money without interest and buys back its bonds in return. This is exactly the method used by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank to give the banks money and stop them going bust, but it was hidden behind the term 'quantitative easing'. See http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/jargon/Q/quantitative-easing

Quantitative easing is sometimes described as 'printing money', although the central bank actually creates it electronically 'out of nothing' by increasing the credit in its own bank account. But the bankers prefer to see assets devalued and workers impoverished so that they can profit later by buying them up and by the lower wages paid to workers.

We must demand proper and effective debt reduction through the issuing of government credit and mount a militant campaign to protect our communities. For we, alongside the Spanish and Portuguese, are next in line.