Ten days ago, I
read somewhere that there are now 20,000 homeless people living on the streets
of Athens, Greece. Eating out of garbage bins in the freezing Siberian cold.
Ten years ago I
read something else. I was told that the Euro was a godsend. That it would
bring us wealth, prosperity, growth, booming international trade, stability,
accountability, freedom, equality and brotherhood…
Of course, it
speaks for itself that such a miraculous panacea for all our ills, such a
fountain of eternal economical youth, must be preserved at all costs. Hence we
all agree, I hope, that to plunge a few million Greeks into misery, and starve a
few hundred thousand of their old folk and children, is only a small sacrifice when
it comes to saving the Euro. For the Euro is Good. The Euro is Benign. The Euro
is what really matters. The Euro is – let me just whisper it - God!
It is, forsooth,
an apt irony that Democracy is at present being strangled in what is reputedly
her own cradle. Let there be no misunderstanding: I know the Greeks brought it
upon themselves. Yes, they have shown themselves to be overspending, corrupt,
nepotistic, untrustworthy freeloaders, who lied and cheated, who lend and spent
idiotically, who danced through the spring without a thought for the morrow. So
it is only fair to call them to account.
But no
population, no matter how ill-behaved, deserves the sort of treatment that is
now being visited upon the Greek nation.
The devilish
combination of international financiers and Brussels Beurocrats finally have
what they’ve been after for so long: sovereign European democracies are now being
treated the way we used to treat Third World Countries in the 70s and 80s. You
wanna know how it’s done? This is how it is done: first we allow them to
overspend to their heart’s delight, giving easy credit by the shovelful, to buy
weapons, or votes, or Swiss bank accounts for the top 1%. Then, as soon as they
run into dire straights, due to a change in the markets or the interest rates
or a financial slump, we sent in the World Bank and the IMF. These make the
troubled people an offer they cannot refuse: we will grant you new loans with
which to pay off old interest, but in exchange, every penny of social spending must
be squeezed out of the national budget. What if people starve? What if children
die of malaria? What if the Lumpenproletariat
eats the rags from the shirt on its back? Once translated to the dispassionate
forms of statistics, those are actually healthy economic developments.
This we used to
do to African countries. To our shame and at the cost of our karma. And this is
now being done to Greece. Behold the spectacle: a troika (now doesn’t that
sound cheerful and folkloristic?) – a troika, then, of unelected Brussels
beurocrats, joined by unelected European Central Bank officials and unelected
IMF agents, have been negotiating a deal to plunge Greece back into the 19th
century with an unelected Greek Prime Minister, who incidentally is a former
ECB bigwig who helped setting up the Euro, and was put in – Colonial Office
style - when his predecessor had the audacity to propose a referendum on the
austerity measures. Democracy at work in Athens, 2012 A.D.
And what may be
the name of that fine fellow, the PM of Greece who is so happy to sell his own
nation down the river so that the Euro may survive? Ah, here history shows
itself a great wit once again. The man is called Lucas Papademos… The latter of
which means, unless my Greek is rusty beyond redemption, Father of the People. And Lucas? Well, Lucas, dear reader,
ultimately goes back to Lykos. Wolf.
How apt! How very
very apt. For yes: the Greeks are scoundrels. But these Eurogues are many times worse! And
what we are assisting at, is a pack of jackals cornering a rat. Yet you wanna
take care, little jackals of mine: rats bite back at times! And – take it from
an old man who’s been around - by treating the European peoples like dirt, by
putting your monetary pet projects before the well-being of your citizens, you
are asking for guillotines in the Grote Markt of Brussels, on the Place du
Chateau in Strasbourg, and on the Willy Brandt Platz in Frankfurt.
Stop wrecking
our democracies. Stop starving our poor. And stop repeating history.
Mr. Mittington. You are a bit of a leftwing bigot.Much as I like you and respect your intelligence.Sorry to say.
ReplyDeleteSuch demagoguery as you use about Greece, and worse: about the third world in the seventies.
I am completely ignorant of economics beyond the banal notion that everybody who asks for money should give it back-and I have had a very nasty experience with a polish woman pilgrim whom I met briefly on the Camino de Santiago and months later phoned me in great distress asking for a large amount of money and I was foolish enough to lend her a proportion of it, a large sum for my modest income, as she offered to pay back soon and I have never got a reply from her since by mail or phone- I feel strongly therefore at the moment on the issue of debts unpaid. And if you told me that she was living in the streets of Paris and eating out of garbage bins my reserve of compassion would be short indeed!
¿Do the greeks owe money? They should pay it back.Obvious.
And, by the way, why don´t you write instead of about spanish, greeks or germans, about the faults of your own country, and specially, of your coreligionist leftwingers, like in this ugly story:
?http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/05/dutch_courage.html
Dear Mr Anonymous nº 3 (why are people so afraid to identify themselves truthfully?)
DeleteYou say you are completely ignorant of economics. I concur.
In economics it sometimes happens that one person borrows, and another one gets evicted for not paying it back.
Other than that: remember that your Good Deed, no matter how unworthy its recipient, will be paid back to you in good karma and fewer millennia in Purgatory. I hail a gentle soul!
Alfred.