The people of Greece passes through a new tragedy with the wild fires all over the country: 62 people dead ( for the moment, the number is increasing), dozens of villages completely burned, a big segment of the entire agricu ltural sector of Greek economy, particularly that in Peloponnesus, completely destroyed. Even Olympia, the sacred p lace of ancient Greek civilization, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, was and is still in danger.

All this is not a natural but a social catastrophe. The bourgeois government, the present one of the right, a nd the previous of PASOK, introduced all kinds of laws giving enormous impulse in real estate speculation; in the s ame spirit they want to change the article 24 of the Constitution forbidding building on forests burned by fire. Fr om the other side, the drastic cuts in social expenditures have nearly destroyed the firemen services. There is a t errible lack of personnel, of technical infrastructure, of measures of prevention. In a small country where billion s of US dollars are spent to buy F-16s and other military weaponry, there are just a few old airplanes to face a fi re disaster.

Now the government and the entire State apparatus showed its panic and total incapacity to face this crisis. E ven when the fire started in the mount Pentelikon, near Athens, during the disaster, the prime minister has chosen the moment to call for early elections on September 16! Everybody now is furious with his attempt of the right to s teal a quick electoral victory, without any real political debate or campaign and amidst of a major social disaster .

For this reason the government uses now all kinds of conspiracy theories, speaking, like Bush after 9/11, abou t an ?asymmetrical threat? of a mysterious al-Qaeda of Greek or foreign origin. They blame mainly the?anarchists, a s if the few hundreds of anarchists could organize so well a non stop wave of incendiary actions all over the count ry fro days and weeks!! They raise the ?terrorist threat? specter; some ministers and top officials of the Right da re even to blame ?PASOK to be arsonists!!!

In some areas under fire we participate in the common fight for self-organization of the people to face the dis aster.

Next Wednesday, August 29, MERA and EEK together with movements in neighborhoods( like Petralona, Kolonos, Vir onas etc.) organize in Athens a protest march demanding emergency economic measures for assistance to the victims ( the government gave just peanuts). The implications of this social disaster shadows now all the electoral process , our intervention as well.