Excerpts from the steelworkers leader George Sifonias…speaking at the gates of the Factory last Sunday.
Today we have entered 126days of strikes and we determined to continue more dynamically more united up until our demands are met. Those who believe they can terrorise us with injunctions, with sackings, with prosecutors and police are being fooled.
They live in the dark all those who believe we are going to return to fire and steel for 400 and 500 Euros. What the bosses are doing to us making us live with less than what they spend for their dogs and cats. We have said it before, for the steelworker there is no going back, we aint living with 400 Euros.
Manesis (owner) believes that he can terrorise us with threats that he will shut the factory, that he will disappoint us as he refuses to meet with us. On the one hand he threatens us with the closure of the factory and on the other with the aid of the coalition government aims plans to open a private port, wanting a licence to employ 420workers for 365days of the year.
On the one hand he remains indifferent and from the other he aims to set up a strikebreaking force, he produces statements which show panic and not indifference. He understands that it will be difficult for him to find steelworkers to sell out this heroic struggle.
A few co-workers who were conned by lies and sycophancy and turned them against the union now most of them declare openly they were deceived, that they trust the union, its decisions and its mass meetings .
We declare openly that he will find a steel wall to every splitting and terrorist attempts against us. We are united and decided to have those who were fired to return.
They are lost the coalition of ND and PASOK and their hangers on if they believe we will be fooled by the Minister of Employment “does not understand the licence of the Minister of Environment for the port and that he will call Manesis and ask him what he seeks on doing. Trying to deceive us stating, cancel the strike and then we will discuss the matters that you have placed on the table…
Government and Manesis, government and industry, bankers, shipowners, big wholesales, big construction firms are all planning deciding and implementing all the anti-working class measures. They are opposite us the Greek TUC, POEM (Greek sailors union) generally government tradeunions. They were also praying we kneel over. They are opposite us, they are our enemies, they don’t deceive us they don’t fool us. It is a government of the plutocracy, we will fight with tooth and nail for it to fall one hour early.
They didn’t achieve in forcing us to kneel, to collapse us. They are fooled if they think that they can deceive us and that they can con the workers that support them. That we will always have them round our necks. The Greek TUC doesn’t belong to the workers, it is an arm of the capitalists.
Comrades, workers, unemployed, self-employed young and old.
We learn very clearly that the struggle is now more decisive and more difficult phase. As long as the employers are being confronted they will become more fierce. The state will provide services with prosecutors, the police and the repressive measures.
Now we are as steelworkers more strong more organised and more astute. During the 126 days of strikes we have learnt a lot, the power of our strength the power of class unity for the stance and the tricks of the employers for all those who are coming near us for who is coming to aid us and who to attack us.
We brought to the fore the worth of collective struggle, the power of united class struggle the power and the strength of workers solidarity. The steel, disciplined vanguard characteristics of the industrial worker.
We showed the two worlds, that of Manesis and his class, and the steelworkers and their class, where we have nothing in common, no common interest.
Now though we need bigger support and solidarity. We now believe that they are creating better conditions so as to light the fire of Steelworkers so the whole of Greece becomes a Steelworkers cauldron. Now the things are more simple. We either agree to rise up or decide to live on 300 Euros a month and get a pension of 70, to become slaves of the 21st century.
We call all the workers, the young to follow our example and rise up. To transform every place of work into a field of battle. To not allo the anti-working class measures to pass. To support our contracts, to demand pay rises. To continue until we take control everything that belongs to us”
Notes
This strike ended in defeat after all the factories weren't shut down in particular the Volos factory. This was blocked by the KKE leadership which didn't wan to be accused of racism as a majority of the employees there were immigrants.
Glezos and Theodorakis attending the Vote in Parliament
Kazakis
Whilst the allegatioin was that Glezos and Theodorakis were attacked on the the large demo in February which had over a million on the streets the reality is that they were escorted by the chief of police and a show was made to pretend they were attacked in order to justify their left profile.
They attended the voting session of Parliament with respect to the IMF measures Pt 2 or otherwise known as Memorandum 2 in Greece and were given top seat facing all the MP's in Parliament.
A letter has circulated by Kazakis from EPAM (ex-KKE economist) asking for unity between Sinaspismos and the KKE and to support the army to hit the streets.
"If we dont act quickly he states, blood will be spilt. Not only from the praetorian guards of the government but from the people itself who will have lost hope. If all these measures are implemented in the next two-three months half the Greeks will not have food to eat. When people are committing suicide daily when they see their children die as there are no gauzes in the hospital, how easy is it for the people to turn and we have a bloody conflict..."
This letter was sent also to the Head of the Army, the Police and the Public Sector Unions.
On the day of the big demo Kazakis was in a hotel lunching and watching the tear gas rip the Greeks apart
Kazakis in his own words http://www.attac.org/en/groups/centre-and-periphery-abolition-neocolonialism-working-groupcpwg/dimitris-kazakis-what-will
For over two years the unfolding drama which has become the EU and in particular its relationship with Greece, has been commented on by various writers in Weekly Worker or in the letters pages. As a general view there are two camps, those who remain committed to the ideals of big business (which they call a ‘peoples Europe’ as exemplified by Arthur Boughs letter where he praises the EU and its relationship with the UK in the tradition of all Europhiles) and those who want a real peoples Europe, by breaking up what Lenin called would be reactionary capitalist United States of Europe. The chickens though have come home to roost. As predicted two years ago Greece would inevitably default, and would leave the Euro. The implications for this from the mass media of lies and propaganda is that it is all the Greeks fault and that the role of the EU-IMF plays no part whatsoever. The fact that Germany one of the linchpins of the EU, which played its ingnoble role in the last century still to date refuses to pay Greece war reparations is an indication of the general anti-Greek climate by sections of the EU elite. They know their past history but as usual are doomed to repeat it.
For the EU to be sealed forever as an entity there is no reason for elections in any member states (this has now been one of the demands to Greece) unelected EU bureaucrats are to run member states like the Gaulieters of old and the nation states should just commit hara-kiri, as that is the interest of globalised big business.
What occurred last Sunday in Greece is a departure from the script. In their hundreds of thousands Greeks demonstrated in over 20 cities, for the first time they were early to Sindagma Sq and the crowds were such that the roads were full all the way to the other square Omonia where the KKE started its demo. The riot police sought to disperse the crowds using stun grenades and volley upon volley of teargas at the same time as around 30 buildings were torched simultaneously around Athens by their own agent provocateurs. Whilst the people in a section of the front ranks pushed to confront the riot police and break through to Parliament, the KKE instructed its members once more to leave the scene of the battle. In a regional town, Agrinio, due to the small amount of riot police the demonstrators broke through took, over the regional town headquarters and burnt down the files of the local tax office. In another town in Crete, they attacked the offices of the political parties that voted for the EU-ECB- IMF part 2 package.
Whilst the 3rd Reich was a tragedy of immense proportions the 4th Reich will collapse like a house of cards and very soon. The mood of the masses has now finally turned to one of confrontation and dynamism The fake Left will be unable to contain this confrontational mood. Mass unemployment, soup kitchens and a massive collapse in wages to those still privileged to have work, will force people into the path of general insurrection. We saw glimpses of that last Sunday. With official bankruptcy knocking on the door we will see many more and the fake Left in power managing collapsing capitalism, wont save the establishment.
In what appears to be the reason as to why they needed the murder of Alex in 2008 when they had coordinated burnings and lootings throughout Athens targeting mostly Greek businesses whilst attacking a few foreign multinationals to cover their tracks, yesterday they burnt Athens down in a tear gas chemical war as well as targeting many historic buildings, bookshops, cinemas whilst leaving along the offices of parliamentary deputies or the political parties that voted to support the new round of IMF measures.
Unable to control the size and dynamism of the demos they attacked all with teargas once more aiming to disperse the demo in Athens at the same time as unleashing around 30 coordinated fires throughout Athens in various buildings, businesses so the media the day of the demo could ignore the demo and focus on the …damage as a backdrop to mass propaganda.
The KKE as usual held its split demos starting in Omonia and then after heading to Sindagma Sq dispersing despite allegedly having 50,000 demonstrators. Its parliamentary deputies instead of leaving the IMF sham Parliament whose sole aim now appears to rubber stamp the loan sharks from abroad, had a few acts of theatrics for internal consumption when one of its deputies threw the 700 page new Memorandum at Eleftherios Venizelos and the leader of the KKE Papariga stated you are ‘testing our limits’, whilst the following day she said more measures are coming in July, in other words, advertising what the bosses are going to implement and that they will essentially do everything in their power to keep the movement divided.
The attack happened relatively early at 5.15 from more than one side of Sindagma and once they had managed to achieve a relative loosening of the crowds which were very closely packed like sardines due to the size, they then unleashed a second wave with their own praetorian guards who appear to attack the police in all quarters but the ones outside Parliament thus 'forcing' multiple waves of attacks agains the demonstrators.
Two historic leaders of the Left Glezos and Theodorakis solidified the charade by attending the vote (first was known as ripping down the flag in German occupied Athens during WW2) instead of walking out as if it was stagemanaged, which it was as they aren’t even MP’s. When a member of the public protested inside the Parliament he was manhandled and thrown out.
The scale of the disturbances was such that in other cities the state lost control. In Volos they took control of the Council building and also the Tax office and burnt down a section of the files. In Iraklion Crete they attacked the political parties of both Pasok and New Democracy. The government alleges they will hold elections in April after having previously stated they would have held elections this month, February.
199 quisling MP's from PASOK-New Democracy voted for the new round of measures which reduce the minimum wage by a further 25% and increase taxes on all further increasing the depression. Yesterday was a gallup on the Euro.
Millions of greeks are against it now even a recent gallup poll stated that 48% of Greeks prefer bankruptcy to any more austerity. Either which way both continued austerity and bankruptcy will be the outcome for collapsing capitalism.
...the barbarians, who forced beautiful Europe to get down Zeus’ “back” and made her a prostitute.
...the unworthy Europeans, who in 1945 “took Europe down” from “Mount Olympus” and in 2012 relinquished “enslaved” Europe to the Phoenician loan sharks.
The method to understand history is a lot similar to the one used for geography. It is easy or difficult to understand their gist depending on the “distance” one takes to examine their data. This particularity is the reason for some of their paradoxes …The common paradoxes. It is possible for someone to understand everything looking at just a few details and to not understand a thing even though endless data are available. This is true, no matter how weird it may sound. A simple person may understand totally the history of the human kind with just the minimum knowledge and a historian with endless knowledge may feel completely confused.
This is exactly why we compared it to geography. It is possible that even a totally ignorant person may look at a world map and be able to “understand” the meaning of huge “geographical” distance, like the one between Athens and Beijing and at the same time a person with rich knowledge on the matter may get lost in an urban forest in Beijing ...be unable to understand it as a total, because the means to change level may not be available ...in this case the necessary means may be just a map.
Things are simple. A walker looking at his/her feet may know absolutely “precisely” where he/she steps but he/she does not know where he/she is going; he/she may know the “cells” of geography, but he/she ignores its “organism”; he/she may know the “trees”, but he/she does not see the “forest”. All the supercomputers of the world are not enough to “save” the data for a step-by-step analysis of the route from Athens to Beijing and at the same time and exactly for the same reason, a paper towel may be good enough for someone to sketch the main data of this route. This is exactly what happens with history. In just a few words, if they are the appropriate ones, someone could understand things, that he/she may not discover on his/her own even if he/she “devours” libraries full of books.
What are we meaning to say with all these? That the evolution of human history is not as complicated as some would like it to be ...as some would like to make it look like, because it would be in their interest if it was complicated ...as some politicians would like to present it to justify their decisions that were disastrous for the people and beneficial for themselves ...as some bourgeois historians would like it to be so that they justify their scientific "earnings" ...all these people who have interest in its artificial complexity, since they benefit from the continuous repetition of the same things.
Some people can play it safe and pretend to be gifted “leaders” because of these repetitions. Some others pretend to be shrewd “investors” and others to be wise “prophets”, because of these repetitions. All these people make their living by supposedly “seeing further into the future” than the rest of the people, but in fact they can “see” nowhere, since history repeats itself in circles. Ridiculous "Magellans" looking at their soles and not the horizon ..."Semi-blind short-sighted" people, who can absolutely tell the difference between the mud, asphalt or sand they step on, but they cannot see where they are going to.
These are the people that the system has been training for centuries to lead the human kind. They are taught the complexities that are in the system’s interest but not the simple things that are in the humanity’s interest. People who know everything but the useful things. People who know what was the colour of Napoleon’s undershirt but don’t even suspect who were those who profited from the CDS of his defeat at Waterloo. All these happen in absolute safety, because it is a great "fraud" and the outcome is certain ...a great fraud covering immense interests ...interests that, if uncovered, will make people rise against their exploiters and kill them.
This is why we mentioned the similarity between geography and history. Someone with the appropriate knowledge can explain to people in just a few words the human history …can explain to them the role that they play in this (hi)story ...can explain to them exactly when and where they have accomplished great and important things and exactly when they had losses. Of course, here lays the phenomenon of verbal irony. The current failure to understand historic data leading to disaster has mostly to do with the people who is said to have the greatest “experience” in the world …the people of Europe …Europe that for the last two millennia ruled the Planet.
This “experienced” people reached a point to not be able to understand what is going on. The people who “invented” all the forms of modern imperialism is today imperialism’s greatest victim. The people who “invented” history science cannot understand how this works. The people of Europe cannot even understand the consequences of its own acts, because it has had the leading part for the last centuries in the global play. It cannot even understand when and how it “keeps failing”. It feels confused for the simplest reason that European people does not understand what is happening. It trusts traitorous leaders and does not have the criteria that would have been expected from its experience in order to avoid “thin ice”.
This people that “gave birth” to the most important and powerful people of the history, today is controlled by history's “trashes”. The people who once-upon-a-time “gave birth” to Alexander the Great, Pericles, Leonidas, but also Cesar, Traianus or Charlemagne, ended up to be controlled by the "prole" of the great "gutter" ...by illiterate "trashes" like Hitler and Stalin in the past or Merkel, Schauble, Cameron and Sarkozy today ...by the venal stalking horses of the Jewish ghetto “rats” in Berlin and Warsaw.
Within less than half a century this supposedly experienced people “lost” two great wars against two different enemies and didn’t even understand it. Europeans lost easily the battle for the global leadership to both the Americans and the Jews. The people who used to be invincible reached a point where it cannot even resist …a point where it does not even realize when it is getting attacked and by whom. The people that for more than two thousand years has been ruling the Planet, became its greatest "victim” ...a victim of its own fabrications and needs ...a victim of the “knowledge” it taught to sly “students”. It got “blinded” by those whom it taught to “see".
In 1945, in the name of "European” democracy, Europeans lost their freedom. Some others played with the fascists and they succeeded. In the name of the protection of the democracy in Europe from the Nazi or the Stalinists, European peoples surrendered totally to the Americans. They acquired a “guardian” and therefore they lost their freedom. Half a century later, Jews played the same sly game. Today, in the name of United Europe, European peoples lose their own countries.
The people who decided to “unify” their countries to serve one common interest, have finally lost their countries. Those who were not free due to their first defeat, now they are trying to be “unified” in the most absolute way under the guidance of their bosses. Actually, now they are “unifying” their debts, since they are the only things that really belongs to them. The prior victimizers of the Planet became its greatest victims. This is only reasonable. When you cannot understand the reason for which the loan sharks “push” you to the Union, it is impossible to understand the reason why, when you reach to it, the only thing left for you are debts. Jewish loan sharks are those who decided the European Union and today they are its masters.
Let’s take things up from the beginning to make clear to our readers what we have been meaning to say. We are starting by looking at a distant “map” of the European history …Distant enough to see its whole course but at the same time close enough to not lose track of its “leading roles”. So, we are starting from finding out which event is a really important historic event for Europe and which is not. We are starting from an elementary “clearing up” of the useless historic “floatsam and jetsam” that we are bearing in our heads and which has no importance. Out of the supposedly complex European history only a few dates are really important. What is described by the history science as “important”, it is usually an unimportant repetition that interests only those who are implicated in it and no one else.
For example, an important event for the European history was when Leonidas decided to raise his defence in Thermopylae against the Persian “storm” that was threatening Europe. An important event was when Alexander the Great “galloped” all over Asia. Charlemagne, Napoleon or Peter the Great were unimportant, as impressive as their accompanying phenomena were. Why is that? Because importance lays in the “course” of Europe and not in its interior “layout” that depended on the “galloping” of unimportant men in Europe. No matter how much blood was mixed with mud, the “unimportant” kings of the important Europe remain at the same level …The level defined by Europe itself and its position in the World.
This is the same logic used to judge not only the men but also the great events that were supposed to mark the history of Europe. The Battle of the Granicus River was important for Europe because it had set the grounds for its domination for over a millennium. The fall of Constantinople was unimportant because it just caused a change in the internal correlations of Europe. The battle at Waterloo was unimportant for the same reasons. Trafalgar sea battle was also unimportant. This means that a significant event for Europe and its history is considered to be whatever affects its position in the World and not its internal correlations.
Events and persons who change these correlations are of secondary significance and they are significant just for the peoples that benefit or are affected from them without this causing any change in the general European interests. The battle at Waterloo has without a doubt a great significance for the French and the British people, so does Trafalgar sea battle. But, on the European level these two historic events have no importance. They have no importance, because they haven’t affected the rank of Europe and its peoples in the global hierarchy. Europe would continue to rule the World whichever country had won at the mud of Waterloo or on the waters of Trafalgar.
However, to be able to understand and assess all these facts as they deserve, one should know the position of Europe throughout the human history ...One should know the changes in this position in connection with history ...should know the great key events of the human history and not the unimportant “stops” in between ...in the example in the beginning of the text one should know where "Athens" is and finally where "Beijing" is and he/she should not be affected by the in-betweens ...should not conceive a “blocking” outside “Ankara” as a “stop”. One should not be interested if a “train” got lost in the “Teheran” station or if a “bridge” collapsed on the road towards the end. All the in-between events are unimportant. They are unimportant because they do not affect the general situation. They could have taken place or not without bearing no affect at all to the development of things.
Through this “prism”, Europe is a great “station” in the human history …The “station” immediately after Asia where the great human power systems began. This is why Greeks were the absolutely important people for Europe. This is the reason why, Greeks were for centuries the model for the rest of the European people to compare with. It was the people who had the intelligence, the bravery and also the ability not only to resist the Asian attack, but also to strike back and take from Asia its world ruling position …to bring down its power and transfer it in Europe. It was the absolutely successful model for Europe …The “father” of Europe. Therefore this is why Greeks were also the “godfathers” of Europe. No one else could “baptize” Europe if not they who gave to Europe its global role.
It was them who protected Europe when there was a need and who put it on the top of the world when they could. Simple things like that. The Greeks, as a European people, managed to “defend” Europe all alone and it was them who attacked Asia looking for victory ...The Greek victory that was at the same time a European victory as well. These acts were important because the world –and therefore Europe- would have been different today, if the Greeks had lost the “war” to the Persians ...the world would have also been different if they had not won outside Babylon ...it would have been different, because Rome would not have existed and so would not have existed its affect to the human and the European history.
So 480 BC is an important year for Europe. Why is that? Just because the Asian world leadership could not get into Europe. It is a milestone because up to that point the battles between the “Titans” of that era had been set. The two leading empires of the ancient world have collided and they have “ended up” in a situation. Asian Babylon had imposed absolutely on the African Egypt and it was at last free to claim Europe as well. Its king was considered at that time as a living “God”. It was at the same time the king of Babylon and the Pharaoh of Egypt …The absolute ruler of the Afro-Asian world. He attacked Greece aiming at Europe. Greeks as the European defenders of the borderland resisted this almighty “God” and saved Europe.
323 BC, the year Alexander the Great died, was also important. Why is that? Because his death “locked” the new era. A European man gad “seized” the greatest empire of the World and the history of the human kind moved on to the next “chapter”. From the era of Asia we passed to the era of Europe. Europe up to that point had been threatened by Asia or African Egypt and now it became the absolute ruler. There was a transfer of the European human resources to the Asian territory and the “banks” for Europe’s subsequent ruling were created. European Greeks who moved to Asia and Africa as overlords were the ones who gave the time, the knowledge and the power for Rome to “build” the Europe we all know today. Rome “built” the Europe we know, because the Greeks have “blocked” the giants of the East. It is not pure luck that the Romans considered Alexander to be the thirteenth god.
This is the reason why the Greek awesome kid was a very important factor in the European history. This is why all the European legends and myths had Alexander as their reference point. The Greek and therefore the European ruler of the world was he, who led Europe to the “top” of the world. For more than two thousand years, Europe has been the absolute ruling power in the world. The power “moved” from one capital to another, but it always remained within the “walls” of Europe and its omnipotence was solid. Power moved from Rome to New Rome and from there it got to the rest of the capitals. The last holder of the European ruling was London …the Roman Londinium.
For two thousand years, Europeans collected unlimited profits from the “galloping” of Alexander the Great …from the “galloping” of the Greek “bull” who took beautiful Europe onto his back and raised her on the “Olympus” of glory and power. Latin, French, Spanish, British and Russian people saw the world from a “higher” position due to the Greek achievement. Even the Finnish people today, who are supposed to “reproach” the Greeks, we don’t know what type of igloo would they be in today, if it wasn’t for the Greeks.
All Europeans benefited from the Greeks. All European peoples collected profits from the Greek triumph. They had the whole world on their “sting” because the Greeks offered it to them. For as long as Europe remained on the “top” of the world due to the victory of the Greeks, its internal state had no importance. The inland wars –and therefore the battles between the kings of Europe- were battles among the heirs and these battles have a secondary importance when they do not affect the “throne” itself.
By looking at the current position of Europe in the global “chessboard” one could comprehend that this “throne” has been long gone. Europe is today the “shadow” of its former self. It has nearly ended up to be a “supporting actor” in the human history play. So what’s the conclusion? Something important and extremely tragic has happened at the expense of Europe and we just have not realized it yet. Something happened in between and we did not realize it. In the oversupply of unimportant historic data we lost what really matters. Human kind changed “station” and we did not even realized it. The global power has changed continent and we, the Europeans, never realized when was it that we lost the battle.
It is therefore a sure thing that something important has happened and the power of the planet moved to another continent. At some point Europe has to have lost the war so that American Washington decides for the future of the World. After the important Greek triumph there should also have been an important debacle for Europe. It is impossible to lose the world supremacy without a corresponding colossal defeat. There should have been a great mistake and we did not realize it. Somewhere between the unimportant wars, we lost the important one. One obviously stupid European offspring in his/her effort to change the internal correlations spoiled the “family” fortune. There is no other explanation. One of the many internal European battles should have consequences to the whole European presence in the world affairs.
Now you can understand the meaning of what we said before which might have seemed exaggerating ...what we said above that it is in the interest of some people to control suffocatingly the history "science". Some powerful factors of history are interested in mixing the important with the unimportant facts so that peoples don’t understand what is really going on. They have interest in making history appear as a totally complicated “science” that is only for the “scientists” and not for the common people. You can see that it is only reasonable for some people to have misinterpreted the historic facts because otherwise some leaders would have been executed in squares all over Europe.
Within the frameworks of this intentional historic wrong information we seek the reasons of the current historic ignorance of the European people. Within the needs of the new powerful people we seek the reasons for the “falsification” of historic details. It has resulted to the situation we are facing today. Europeans lost the battle of world leadership and did not even realize it. It is phenomenal and unheard not only for the modern people in the years of information but even unacceptable for the primitive people. It is as if an Asian man did not know what meant the seizing of Babylon by the European Alexander.
Where can we seek such a colossal defeat? But in a colossal war. The world leadership is not lost in a conflict at a random outpost at the border. A war of the same proportions is required for such a loss and that could be only a World War. Who does not know the World Wars that started in Europe? Even though one knows them, one cannot assess them. Why is that? Because there is a huge difference between them. The First World War was a completely unimportant interior European war, since it did not affect Europe’s “course”. On the contrary, the Second World War was the most important because it ruined Europe. What the Greeks had achieved in “Thermopylae” by stopping the attack from the East that the Europe had sustained from the Asians, the Europeans did not manage to do with the attack from the West that Europe sustained from the Americans
The Second World War was the “end” of the Europe’s world leadership and the “beginning” of the America’s world leadership. The Second World War meant for the European empire what the attack of Alexander the Great had meant for the Asian empire. It was the beginning of the end. If you understand the importance of this war, you can start seeing some things that many people unfortunately do not pay attention to. So, based on the new “point of view” –due to the “distance” taken- you can start detecting those responsible for the European “defeat”. Have the Americans ever attacked Europe? Of course not! Therefore who were those whose stupidity opened the “door” to the Americans and handed over the “sceptre” of Europe?
The only ones who really changed the “course” of the European history with their actions, were the Germans. But unfortunately for them they were the negative lead roles in this situation. They have changed the history of Europe at the expense of Europe, for the simplest reason that they were the most useless and unworthy Europeans. It was them whose actions and stupidities “brought” Americans in Europe and “dispatched” the supremacy to America …Exactly the opposite to what the Greeks had succeeded who are known to history as having the exact opposite characteristics. If the intelligence and the ability of the Greeks “had brought” Global power to Europe, then is the stupidity and the inability of the Germans that “lost” this Global power for Europe.
Why are we talking about stupidity? Because there is no other explanation for what we see. Their short-term “success” so much in the 40s as in our decade are nothing more than “supporting acting” to ephemeral “heavies”. Under the directions of their foreign and non-European “bosses”, Germans occasionally pretend to be the leaders because this is in their “bosses’” interest. We are talking about pure stupidity, because Germany is a European power. It is a separate entity, but it does not cease to belong to the European “family”. Its special interests might be different to those of the rest of the European people, but its general interests are still European. This means that it is in Germany’s interest to protect the German interests but mostly to protect the European interests.
This exactly is a delicate point. Here comes the elementary question, which, if answered, automatically reveals all the hidden roles of the leading men. European Germany serves or threatens Europe’s interests? The role Germany played in the historic course of Europe may be conceived using the simple legal method. There’s no need to make a historic analysis. Simple legal thought is needed to reveal everything. Qui Bono?, Who Benefits? It is of little importance what seems to be the answer when it is not answering the question itself. It does not matter whether Germany tried to “conquer” Europe for its own benefit. What really matters is what was the benefit of the one who made Germany try it. If for instance the American domination in Europe started right after Germany’s failure to dominate, some “questions” are raised since it was the Americans who financed Germany to start its effort.
Do you understand what we are meaning to say? When the one who benefits from the failed actions of another one, is the same one who suggested and financed them, then things are not what they look like …Someone is “fooling around” with the ambitions of a fool and takes advantage of the consequence of the fool’s actions …someone fools around with the instincts of a beast and destroys what the clever ones created. Things are simple. By playing it smart one "sets" a complex European china "tower" and someone sly goes and "pinches" the German idiot and moving instinctively he brings everything down.
A bunch of “kids” playing on the sand builds a great tower and admires it. It admires its creation and someone sly goes and “pinches” the silliest of them and “throws” this kid on the sensitive creation. This is what has happened in Europe. What took endless intelligence, heroism and ability for all the Europeans to build as a team, some stupid Germans brought it down in just a few years …Some illiterate Germans who growled weird “heil’s”.
It was easy for the Americans to take advantage all of them because the Americans knew their characteristics. And if it wasn’t them who knew them, there were others who did and were ready to cooperate with them …the Jews. They took advantage of the fact that Germany had been behaving like a mindless “beast” due to the social Marxism that was powered by the Jews and funded by the Britains. Germany with its educated urban and capitalist class fully stricken, it was an easy adrift of any ambitious imperialist. With the illiterate pleb of the pubs and the mines being the dominating social power of Germany, it was easy to lead Germany against Europe. Germany was the silly one who was standing really close to the European china “tower” of power, so it was really easy to “pinch” Germany and take advantage of its stupid reaction. It was easy to turn it against not its national enemies but against Europe.
And this is what they did. They financed illiterate and unschooled supporting actors –like Hitler and his gang- and they destroyed Europe. They had flattened it and therefore –with their “rights” as lender and ally- they set their “foot” on Europe. What Greeks had done in Asia using guns, Americans did it in Europe using money. They penetrated the “heart” of their enemy and took power from him. It was easy to take advantage of Germany and mislead it to its anti-European mistake, because they knew what they had to do.
They knew how they could take advantage of the Germans because they had their insiders. Even the imperialistic “fairy tales” of Germany were something they thought of …Most of them were created as an “alibi”. This means that what we know as Nazi “fairy tales” were not something the Germans thought of. They “had borrowed” them from the Americans and the Jews who were financing them …They “had borrowed” them from the Rockefellers and the Prescott Bushes.
We are talking about weird things of endless beauty. We are talking about illiterate supporting actors, who spent their intelligence in parades and marches. They only thing they knew was to salute. All the rest were given to them ready in “cribs”. When Hitler talked to the hailing German plebs, his bosses in Washington should have had a good laugh with it. These inebriated “twits” with the American and Jewish financing built the military camps in order to protect and also to give “alibi” and validity to the Jews in the after the war American era of Europe.
Those who pretended to be the “master” Aryan race, were in their majority what they accused the others to be …illiterate, homosexuals, perverts, deformed, bulimics, cripples etc… If someone looks at the leaders of Nazi shall understand who professed the “master” race. We are talking about true “Orcs” who destroyed the European achievement –which was founded by the Greeks- by promising at the same time Greek intellectual and physiological “vigour”. All these men were paid by the Americans so that the latter could “get into” Europe, without having to collide with it directly.
So, there is not a mystery regarding the European defeat. The stupid member of the “family” is to blame for the great “fiasco”. Germans were financed to undertake a war that was lost right before it even begun. The plan was to make Germany surrender to its lenders and Europe in its turn to its transatlantic “ally” It was something never seen before in the history of Europe and this the Germans’ achievement. The Germans were the first who opened the “gates” of Europe to the non-Europeans. They borrowed money from foreigners to make a war with their “brothers” and they did not know who would profit from it at the end. The result is what we face today …Americans conquered Germany and tutored Europe. It was in their interest that the secondary German actors undertook this a priori lost war. Therefore, this is why they took part in the war against the Germans. They fought against those whom they had been financing to lose …Things are simple …There is no mystery in that that requires for secret information or complex thinking.
This tragic “error” made the Germans a very important factor of the European history …as important as the Greeks but –unfortunately for them- having the opposite sign. This is why we use the “airplane” geographical approach of history. The whole world since 323 BC until the middle of the last century was still just outside “Athens”. Caesars, Napoleons, Charlemagnes of the Europe had their interfamilial “mess” in the “forests” of this “Athens”. In 1945 –because of the Germans- we “flew” to “Beijing”. The Greeks brought the human history to the “Athens” “station” and the Germans made it “fly away” from Europe and land to “Beijing”. Because of them, human history changed “station” and abandoned Europe.
If Greeks were the absolutely successful Europeans, Germans were the absolute failures. If Greeks have always been the absolute model for the rest of Europe, then German are entitled to become the absolute anti-model. If it was due to the Greeks that Europe gained everything, it is due to the Germans it lost everything. Because of them Europe got taken down from its “throne”. The world leadership has been lost for the Europeans. What Europe had won due to the Greek extreme effort has been lost because of the Nazi extreme stupidity …An extreme stupidity, that shall remain as a permanent German “disability” for as long as some people would nail Germany under the power of its Marxist plebs.
…An extreme stupidity that would become a “sacred” doctrine for the American dominants of Europe. They would not have allowed Germany to recover and become again a normal country in any way. Since 1945, German society has been absolutely controlled so that it did not produce anything. Whatever able or useful or dangerous is destroyed upon creation. If one tries to remember an important German of the second half of the last century, soon enough he/she shall come to the conclusion that there is none …Germany is not allowed to “produce” even great singers. There is a great lack of meritocracy in Germany which is absolutely planned by the people controlling them.
This is why such a vast and so populated country has no important people to show for the last century in all fields. Those presented as the “strong” Germans are just accountants and “screwdriver specialists”. This is why Germany is governed by people who could not even survive in other countries. Germany is a dead “land” ...A "sterile" mother, who cannot give birth to anything important since this is something that would threaten its owners ...condemned to “give birth” to Merkel, Schauble, Reichenbach and Fuchtel. We are talking for really deformed and retarded “Orcs” …Stupid men who are restricted by working hours, orders and regulations and the system has persuaded them that this is the absolute ability.
The latter is a really important aspect because Germany’s role would not have expended its resources in just serving the American interests. Its “infrastructure” is useful to imperialism. When someone really dump exists, this one is useful to all the foxies. As it one imperialist used this at the expense of others, every aspiring imperialist can use it too. Why would we say something like that? Because American world leadership is proved to be short …There is no comparison to the European domination for over a thousand years. Within less than fifty years, American world leadership showed signs of decay. Having faults in its “structure” right from the beginning, it could not have lasted longer.
Some usurpers saw this shortcoming and surprised America. All of a sudden, --in Europe’s absence—Americans got “attacked” within their territory. By whom? ...By their partners who were above suspicion ...By Jews ...By the Asia-originating Jews ...By the countrymen of Xerxes’ father in law, who had persuaded him to attack Europe and the Greeks ...By the sons of Esther, the daughter of Mordecai. We are talking about the absolute historic scenario. We are talking about the absolute “overthrow” that even Hollywood hadn't staged. The Asians who had failed to conquer Europe coming from the East, are trying again after thousands of years to do the same thing coming from the West. Today they are trying to do from America what they had been failing to do by being next to Europe.
This takes place at a time when Israel exists as a country in Asia and Zionism rules all over the Western world ...Israel that ceased to exist when the Greek overlords under the Antiochus’ guidance had "annihilated” it. This is the state in which today Jewish “raise” the New Order of Things …Asia is trying to take back the power that once lost by changing its tactics. After failing to conquer Europe using military means, Asia tries to do it now using money. In this pursuit, they need the Germans.
Germans are proved to be the easy solution to breach Europe’s "kerkoporta (a postern used in the fall of Constantinople)”. Whoever wishes to “set foot” on Europe and demolish it, the only thing he/she has to do is to “fool” the Germans. For a second time in less than fifty years, Europe’s idiots become the victims of foreigners and they serve their interests at the expense of Europe …it is for the second time that they take money from foreigners and they turn against their European “brothers” under their lenders’ orders …it is for the second time that the family’s fool takes “candies” from the “child abuser” of the neighbourhood in exchange to get him into the “bedroom” where the younger “siblings” sleep …In the “bedroom” which is common today due to the European Union.
Due to the German behaviour, Europe has become the “bedroom” where Jewish loan sharks rape the Europeans. The first time, they have served the Americans at the expense of the Europeans and the second time round they serve the Asian Jews at the expense of the European people again. It is because of them that in 1945 the American occupation of Europe started and in 2012 –again it is them to blame- the Jewish occupation begins …An occupation that did not come out of the blue but it was the result of a war attack. In 1989, Jew Greenspan levelled his “assault” against both USA and Europe from his position in FED …the cheap money “assault”, the result of which is now obvious. Cheap money destroyed the productivity of the western countries and forced them into unemployment. Peoples without employment got involved in huge debts and now, loan sharks are infesting their countries.
This is a game Jews couldn’t have played without the help of Germany …Without the first “willing” player. It is again because of stupid and unnecessary financing that Germany “fell into the trap” and turned again against Europe …the play is same, only this time it has different “bosses”. In the Second World War, Germany was financed by the American to start a world war that was a lost cause right from the start. It destroyed everything and at the same time it brought its American lenders to Europe. Today, something similar is happening. It got financed again by the FED that belonged to the Jew Greenspan to bring Europe to his countrymen loan sharks. The Jews by knowing Germany’s needs and complexes, they could play with them. This is why they put Germany in the adventure of reunification …the adventure of the so-called national “engagement” which was diligently made even more expensive. What for? …To finance it …To force the unified now Germany into unbelievable debts. Why did they over-indebt Germany? …to leave it with just one “way” of salvation.
This “way” is to over-indebt the rest of Europe’s peoples ...the peoples who did not have the criminal naivety to borrow money from the Jewish loan sharks of the USA on their own free will and without any reason. Germany was the insider who “captured” Europe on behalf of the Jews. In order to get free from its debt, Germany levelled an unseen corruption assault against Europe. There is no corruption affecting one European country that Germany is not behind it. Why is that? So that the Germany-corrupted European leaders would over-indebt their countries for Germany to be able to “sell” its products to them and therefore to be able to settle its debts.
…Germany betrayed Europe once again. Germany handed all the European countries over to the Jewish loan sharks, by naively believing that this way they would let Germany free. Germany put the European family at the “target” of the “markets” and it is collecting profits every time one of its members gets “executed”. The loan sharks who pretend to be the “hunters” are shooting safely in the European “hen house” because Germany has managed to “raise walls around” Europe. One after the other, Europeans are destroyed so that Merkel can pay the stupid and artificial German debts to the loan sharks.
As in all previous instances, once again its “fairy tale” is extremely misleading. Nazi Germany who used to destroy Europe in the name of the Greek ideals, does the same thing today. The surrendered, corrupting, competitive after receiving subsidies and extremely anti-European Germany pretends to be the unrivalled European power that fights for the European unity and against the corruption. This country that took advantage of the unification to serve its national interests, requires from the other countries to sell themselves out in the name of this unification. This country that even today keeps corrupting anyone around it, it threatens the corrupted ones. It “vomited” over a whole continent and now it is looking for the “spot” on its victims to punish them.
Nowadays, Germany raves on an everyday basis against Greece. The accusations of the Germans against the Greeks are on the agenda. Lately, the word “Griechenland” should be by far the most used word in the German political speech. German politicians –and not just them—make accusations against the Greeks on an everyday basis. They accuse the Greeks even in the most dangerous and unjust way regarding the collective responsibility. They accuse them using the same racist rhetoric that they used in the past against the Jews and this is what condemned them in the minds of the people all over the world. After apologizing hypocritically for a million times, they came back with their familiar characteristics. As soon as they regained their powers, they started again the same old games …”Greeks” are useless, lazy, thieves etc.
Why do they keep making this organized and unfair, of course, defamatory campaign? For many important and unimportant reasons ...Reasons that are relevant to the simple psychological needs of the supporting actors and reasons of great importance in practice for the leading actors as well. There are plenty insignificant reasons connected to the anti-Greek feelings of the German leaders. Reasons always existed and they shall exist in the future too. Besides, it is a usual phenomenon to target the famous and the able men and when talking about peoples the Greek people is such. As the Persian poet says …”Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees”.
This means that it is a purely psychological matter that Germans react so offensively against anything negative with regards to Greece. These reasons are even more useful in their analyses because they are usually the most revealing ones. Why is that? Because they are connected to the emotional and instinctive reactions …such reactions that do not take the time to get “filtered” through the pseudo-cultural filters of politically correct behaviours. They are reactions that are connected to envy which –when functions as “motive”- reveals other things as well.
In our opinion, the current anti-Greek hatred, that characterizes the ridiculous modern German leaders, is only normal. By managing the country, with the most unattractive and appalling history in Europe, they are trying to devalue anyone they consider having exactly the opposite features. Furthermore, there is a personal matter as well. Why is that? Because most of these leaders are ex-Stalinists and as such they hate those who invented Democracy. Most of them are “castrated” accountants and bureaucrats and therefore they are consumables for history and they cannot resist the temptation to “throw stones” at the immortal parts of it. If you are a nobody, there is a gain to connect your name with someone immortal even by insulting him.
Not even in her wildest dreams, a woman with “bad taste” named Merkel could have imagined to have the chance to upbraid and lecture the Greeks for some time in her skinflint life. It is obvious that she takes delight every time she uses the word “Griechenland”. It is obvious that this “bush pig” takes delight every time she reproaches those who adored Aphrodite and praised human beauty. The reason for that is simple. Castrates have always hated stallions. Those who finish last have always hated the first. The total losers have always been trying to defame the absolute winners. There no need for much explanation. German Nietzsche has explained this better than us.
Nevertheless, the important reasons that the organized anti-Greek hysteria that exists in Germany are different. They are related with the real needs of their real bosses and not with the psychological problems the supporting actors face. Germans may aim their “bile” at Greece but they would never dare to assault Greece using so much ferocity. They are too European to dare “attacking” Europe’s “womb”.
Actually, Germans are the first and simply the most enthusiastic “audience” for this anti-Greek mania. Those who really rave against Greeks are others. Germans’ bosses are those raving and not Germans themselves who are just pretending to “lend an ear” …Miserable willing audience. The few Germans appearing to blame the Greeks are just making their living. They are making “their living” like that poor adopted Vice-chancellor. All these people have to serve their bosses and execute their orders.
But why did the Jews create this anti-Greece mania? Europe’s “conqueror” fear of just one thing …they fear of the Greeks …They fear of those who not only did they resist to the Europe’s “falling” but they regained their forces and won all its former enemies. It is these Greeks the Jews are afraid of ...Asian Jews since we should not forget that they are the true children of Babylon that had attacked Europe and lost the war to the Greeks. These are the Greeks that the Asian Jews have as a target and simply the Germans as their most faithful European slaves are "engaged" to accuse their ancient enemies. The accusations against the Greeks are a salaried job for the Germans.
Why is it and Jews have a problem with the Greeks? Because they are entrapped in a dead-end. While in the first phase, they have managed to “pass” through the Greek "passage", they have to face a worse situation ...a situation that shall bring them to a new confrontation with them ...a much worse and more dangerous confrontation than the previous one. Why is that? Because the Jews know the Greeks. They know them better than anyone else because they have been walking along with them for thousand years. They know when Greeks may be dangerous. They know that they cannot be fooled twice with the same trap and certainly not when the elapsed time is not great. They also know that "pressure" works like “oxygen” for the Greeks. They know that Greeks become dangerous when they have to fight when they have no other choice. It would be easier for you to understand the difficulty that they have been facing, if you watched the movie “The Beast of War". Nothing else could have described the current situation better than this smart movie. How could you picture the situation? Jews, leaders of the almighty New Order “vehicle", initially passed very easily through the Greek “passage”. With the well known arrogance and pride that characterizes them, not only did they not respect the Greeks but also they have tried to humiliate them. They believed that it would not cause them any damage to offend them by walking all "over" them. They had available all armours and they did not hesitate to use them provocatively. All went well and they were not afraid of anything.
But they had not anticipated one thing …the most important thing …That after the Greek "passage” there was a dead end. They had not anticipated the chance that the New Order planning might not work. They had not anticipated the worst option that could happen to them ...the chance to get in a dead end and after having destroyed the Greeks to have to turn back to their own "places" ...which means that they would have to pass again their “narrow passage” but now the Greeks would be in a wild state of mind. This scares them and this is why we focused on the fact that they know the Greeks well enough. They know that when they meet again, things shall not be just difficult but it would a total nightmare for them.
Actually, they have already “lost" the war. We don't just profess that the Greeks SHALL win this battle ...Winning is not even at stake ...The Greeks have already won ...They won when the battle started ...When their “generals” realized what was happening and they undertook the management of the situation on their own. It does not matter what the common Greek citizen knew or did not know. What really matters is what the people who would undertake the management of the emerging crisis knew at that time. This has happened in the early 90s, when the New Order of Things have been levelling its global assault ...When Jews were planning the invasion of Prescott Bush’s son in Iraq ...When Jews were passing through the Greek “passage” by making Simitis and Papadimos to take the well-known swaps of Goldman Sachs.
However, this time is long gone. Jews are still “riding” the “vehicle” of the global banking system but this “vehicle" is not as powerful as it used to be …it is “crawling” having umpteen problems and has to pass “through” Greece …to “pass" either using Troika policies or PSIs. The “guns” that could not destroy this vehicle back then, now can. But guns are still the same. The victorious guns are the same ones since their “manufacture” regardless of the fact that they did not have the same “range” or efficacy back then, because conditions did not allow it. Do you understand what we are meaning to say? "Guns” exist already and the Jewish loan sharks cannot “leave” but they have to "return". But returning would signify their defeat. Simply, this is not visible right now. It is not visible for the ignorant people, but for those initiated, this is something more that certain. Knowledge ensures victory and the Greeks have already had this knowledge. Things are simple. A child is born when he/she gets out of his/her mother’s womb and not when neighbours see this child. What is the meaning of this in this case? That it does not matter when the world shall know this development and therefore when the battle shall take place. What really does matter is that the Greeks have already won this battle, even though they have not realized it yet. It is just a matter of time for the New Order of things to collapse and the human kind to get into the New Era …unfortunately for “Orcs” this New Era is the humanistic Aquarius age, and therefore it is the Greek era.
It is just a matter of time for the Planet to “see” the great battle between two of the top factors of the human history, the Greeks and the Jews. A battle bearing huge consequences since its outcome shall define the operation mode of the global system. Its outcome shall define the way in which the whole human kind and not just Europe shall live in the future. Now you can understand why all occultists all over the world consider the year 2012 so much critical. You can understand why “Armageddon” with its worldwide consequences shall take place at the Eastern “corner” of the Mediterranean sea.
Soon enough, many shall "bite their lips” and many lips shall be “sealed” because they dared to say unfit things. The solid and eternal meritocracy of history cannot be doubted by any clown because it is just in his interest. History shall repeat itself in a far greater scale and therefore the benefit for the leading roles shall be much greater. If ancient Greeks won the battle against the barbarity of the East in favour of Europe, then modern Greeks are those who are meant to win the battle against the barbarity of both Eastern and Western world in favour of the human kind. The world has become a little “village” and in this “village” everyone knows what the character of the others is.
The German traitors of Europe along with the Phoenicians from Asia may have forced Europe to get down from the "back” of the Greek “bull”, but it remains to be seen how they shall pull it through with the “bull”.
A departure from previous article these are from the bourgeois press but just as it has been announced that there will be no new elections in Greece in February its good to take stock of what is being reported in their press...
Elections will have to be aboloished it appears and with the new announcement by the KKE that they dont want state power it all fits into a neat Orwellian straightjacket: all are working for the IMF and the EU in their own neat way... VN
Greece in chaos Personally and collectively, the Greeks don’t understand and can’t cope with what’s happening now, let alone what will happen next. The welfare state is being swiftly and deliberately dismantled without any time to set up replacements by Noëlle Burgi
“Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” people ask in Athens, Salonika and right across Greece. There’s a sense of collective imprisonment, individual uncertainty and impending catastrophe. Yet Greece has had a turbulent history, and the Greeks have always seen themselves as a gifted people, sturdy and accustomed to adversity. “There have always been difficult times, and we always made it through. But now, all hope has been taken from us,” said a small business owner.
While the austerity measures are piling up, an avalanche of laws, decrees and edicts is sweeping aside the social, economic and administrative frameworks. Yesterday’s reality is crumbling. As for tomorrow — who knows?
Greek citizens are subject to a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with its incomprehensible, fluctuating regulations. Addressing colleagues, a civic employee in the Cyclades said: “People want to conform to the law, but we don’t know what to tell them, [the authorities] haven’t given us any details.” A man had to pay € 200 and present 13 papers and proofs of identity to renew his driving license. Salary cuts among public employees have disrupted the public sector. “When you call the police to alert them to a situation, they reply, ‘it’s your problem, you deal with it’,” said a retired engineer officer from the merchant navy. Tensions are rising. Reports show a big increase in domestic violence, theft and murder (1).
Salaries are falling (by 35-40% in some sectors) while new taxes are invented, some backdated to the beginning of the calendar year. Net incomes have fallen drastically, in many cases by 50% or more. Since the summer, a solidarity tax (1-2% of annual income) and an energy tax (calculated on the consumption of petrol and natural gas) have been levied. Further novelties include the lowering of the tax threshold from € 5,000 to € 2,000, and a property tax of € 0.5 to € 20 per square metre levied as part of electricity bills, payable in two or three instalments (failure to pay results in power cuts and penalties).
Since the start of November, pensioners and public and private employees cannot anticipate their monthly earnings. Many workers go without pay altogether. The state is reducing its workforce drastically as part of its restructuring programme. Between now and 2015, 120,000 public employees over the age of 53 have been earmarked for “semi-retirement”, the precursor to full mandatory retirement after 33 years of service, during which employees are obliged to stay at home, and only receive 60% of their basic salaries. Once fully retired, many public employees will be reduced to living on very little. A group of ex-railwaymen, aged 50 and above, said they used to earn between € 1,800 and € 2,000 a month, a relatively comfortable salary in Greece. They have now been posted to jobs as museum guards as part of a “voluntary transition” package (2) and their basic monthly income fluctuates between € 1,100 and € 1,300; semi-retirees are restricted to € 600. All are barred from taking on extra paid work to supplement their income — the penalty, immediate loss of revenue, is enforced. ’Insurance payments have stopped’
The loss of income is tearing society apart. Bills are not paid, consumption is down, stores are closing and unemployment rising. In May the official unemployment rate was 16.6% (10 points higher than in 2008) and 40% among the young. The actual rate is likely to be much higher. The social, economic and political crisis has shaken the national health service. Hospital and public health care centre budgets have been cut by 40% on average. More patients are admitted to the emergency room, others go to Doctors of the World health centres, and many choose to do without medical care altogether. People report being denied access to crucial medicine. One journalist said her father suffers from Parkinson’s disease: “His medication costs € 500 a month. The pharmacy told us it will stop supplying him, because insurance payments have stopped.”
Physical ailments (notably heart conditions) and mental illnesses are increasing at a worrying rate. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that heightened stress, exacerbated by high debt and prolonged unemployment, is generating “major depressive disorders, disruptions and generalised anxiety” (3), which account for a dramatic rise in suicides. According to unofficial figures discussed in parliament, the suicide rate increased by 25% from 2009 to 2010, with a further rise of 40% in the first half of 2011, compared to last year, according to health ministry sources. Figures published in The Lancet (4) reveal an alarming increase in prostitution, as well as infection rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (5). There are unprecedented numbers of homeless people, and they are no longer limited to alcoholics, drug addicts or the mentally ill. A recent study demonstrates that the middle class, the young and the moderately poor are now more likely to end up on the street (6).
The Greeks struggle to see a way out of what a social worker described as a return to a “barbaric” way of life. They feel abandoned and unable to cope. Strong family ties are buckling under the pressure of diminished incomes and a collapsing welfare state. Those who can leave, do so. The options for those remaining are limited. Some turn to the Church, which arranges soup kitchens and other social services. In Salonika, Father Stefanos Tolios of the Orthodox church, is swamped by desperate people looking for work. Residents of several cities (Volos, Patras, Heraklion, Athens, Corfu, Salonika) have set up community-based informal economies, based on local exchange systems. Families are bringing their elderly back from retirement homes, to recover the monthly charge of € 300-400.
No country could withstand this. Greece is worse equipped to deal with the social consequences of the austerity measures imposed with a “scientific cruelty” (7) by the national and transnational elites. Post-1945 Greece, with a weak state and clientelism, had neither the time nor means to build a resilient system of social protection. The existing safety nets are now tearing. “Everything is falling apart,” said Sotiris Lainas, a psychologist and coordinator of the Self Help Promotion Programme at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Salonika). Who’s to blame?
The previous government, under George Papandreou, scrambled to conform to the demands of the “troika” — the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank — for instance by cutting 210 budget lines in the health ministry. No thought was given as to how the budget cuts would undermine the ability of essential (and viable) services to function, such as the day care provided by the Panhellenic Federation of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders. Thus the transnational forces, which for nearly 30 years have worked to erode the welfare state, have passed on the task to national enforcers, themselves longtime beneficiaries of a nepotic, inefficient, corrupt system.
Responsibility for the crisis has been shamelessly dumped upon the Greeks. Accused, but not tried, they have been pronounced guilty because of their association with their inept leaders. Certain sections of the population are exposed to popular fury: seen as a privileged caste, public employees are stigmatised; doctors and shopkeepers are all suspected of untruthful tax filings. But the people know that the system and their leaders are at the root of the rot. Knowledge is not power, though, and the nation is left wondering what to do next.
Patronage and corruption have historical roots. Greece has never enjoyed a modern state with a relatively autonomous bureaucracy, free from private interests, with the capacity to shape economic and social development. Nor has it had a strong civic identity. Foreign powers have imposed their preferences since independence in 1830 (8), when Greece was forcefully integrated into the world capitalist economy in a peripheral position, kept servile and buffeted by various great powers. History has superimposed an artificial political model on a fragmented society traditionally centred on local loyalties, the extended family and community values. As a result, the Greek political system has always been authoritarian and centralised, denying the separation of powers, local autonomy or real democracy (9) — fertile soil for corruption and patronage, which serve the interests and entrench the domination of the elites. The Greeks have resigned themselves to all this.
They are not naive or ignorant of their and their country’s shortcomings. But they are destitute and disempowered. What hope is there for a nation that has proved “fundamentally incapable of forming a political community” (10)? Even if it wanted to return to the pre-crisis days, “when we were living a lie”, as Lainas put it, Greece would be unable to do so. It has been hit too hard, as the repeated calls for order and control make clear. Polls initially favourable to the new government formed by Lucas Papademos, the former governor of the Greek Central Bank replacing Papandreou as prime minister, point to the belief among some Greeks that a technocratic administration might be preferable to the disgraced political class. This does not imply an adherence to the austerity measures, but rather a willingness to set matters right. For some, a strong foreign authority, mentioned by Mario Monti before he became Italy’s prime minister (11), might guarantee an honest and competent government acting in the interests of the country.
But everything points against it. Having seen off their worthless leaders, Greeks may not know who the enemy is any more. “There is no enemy to fight,” said Lainas: “You can’t fight what you can’t see. Their strength lies in abstract governments. Such as the EFSF [European Financial Stability Fund]. The enemy may be abstract, but the tragedy is real. They are stealing our lives, depriving us of a future.”
Rule by troika by Serge Halimi
Former bankers Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti have taken over in Athens and Rome, exploiting the threat of bankruptcy and the fear of chaos. They are not apolitical technicians but men of the right, members of the Trilateral Commission that blamed western societies for being too democratic.
In November, the Franco-German directorate of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — the “troika” — were furious when the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, announced plans to hold a referendum. This, they said, would call into question an agreement reached in October to strengthen the economic policy that had brought the country to its knees. Summoned to Cannes for an interview during a summit that his country was too small to attend, kept waiting, and publicly upbraided by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (who were responsible for exacerbating the crisis), Papandreou was forced to abandon the plan for a referendum and resign. His successor, a former vice-president of the ECB, promptly decided to include in the Athens government a far-right organisation banned since the Greek colonels lost power in 1974. (The troika expressed no views on this.)
The European project was supposed to secure prosperity, strengthen democracy in states formerly ruled by juntas (Greece, Spain, Portugal), and defuse “nationalism as a source of war”. But it is having the opposite effect, with drastic cuts, puppet governments at the call of the brokers, and renewed strife between nations. A young Spaniard voiced his anger at having to go to Berlin or Hamburg to find work: “We can’t go on being Germany’s slaves.” The Italians find the French president’s high and mighty attitude offensive and wonder, rightly, what exceptional talents might justify this. some Greeks are complaining about the “occupation” of Greece, with cartoons depicting the German chancellor in Nazi uniform.
For people in countries suffering under austerity measures, the history of Europe provides some outstanding examples. In some ways, recent events in Athens recall Czechoslovakia in 1968: the crushing of the Prague Spring and the removal of the Communist leader Alexander Dubcek. The troika has played the same part in reducing Greece to a protectorate as the Warsaw Pact did in Czechoslovakia, with Papandreou in the role of Dubcek, but a Dubcek who would never have dared to resist. The doctrine of limited sovereignty has been applied, though admittedly it is preferable and less immediately lethal to have its parameters set by rating agencies rather than by Russian tanks rolling over the borders.
Having crushed Greece and Italy, the EU and the IMF have now set their sights on Hungary and Spain.
The immediate context of this book is, as the title suggests, the economic and social disaster unfolding in Greece. Solutions seem to be determined by how one perceives the immediate cause of the crisis.
Reviewing this book in a paper which proclaims, “Toward a Communist Party of the European Union” (not simply ‘Towards a European Communist Party’) tends to suggest a less than a warm welcome. In fact this is a fraught subject entirely as a result of what have become principled as well tactical approaches to the whole proposition of the European Union, the euro, plans for a European superstate and, for some, the creation of a European ‘national’ identity.
Gelis identifies the dilemma for the seething Greek masses, who have concluded that at least under present conditions - the autocratic rule and impositions of world bankers and power elites - they want little of it. Yet all the conventional political parties, as well as most of the far left, are, for ideological reasons, tied to the proposition of making it work and the impossibility of anything other than that. There is a vacuum of credible political leadership - strikes and riots rage, but all existing political formations are refusing to engage with the Greek masses’ central conclusions.
The book is not easily summarised, being a collection of articles, email exchanges, polemics (including exchanges in the Weekly Worker), leaflets and press and radio reports on the developing situation in Greece. This makes for frequent repetition, and a confusing chronology in relation to the tracing of the debt trajectory and the recording of events since Greece joined the EU. Elaborate calculations of how to engage with the challenge, putting forward dynamic, non-euro zone solutions to allegedly intractable problems are not easily condensed.
Suffice to say that this is a bold reflection of unfolding events and a historic record of the decimation of Greek society spelt out clear enough. Gelis traces the origin of ‘the debt’ to the ruling class’s preparations for entry into the European Economic Community in the 1980s. The supremacy of ‘market forces’ increased consumerism without a matching productive base, which resulted in disproportionality, a balance of payment deficit and an explosion of public debt to feed the widely promoted consumerist appetites.
Circle of debt
The creation of a welfare state was built not, as Pasok (Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, led by Georgios Papandreou) had promised, by a redistribution of wealth and taxing the rich and ruling class community of tax-dodgers, but by heavy borrowing. The circle of debt servicing started an ever worsening crisis. Public debt as a percentage of GDP increased by five times over six years from 8% in 1979 to 42% in 1985. The corresponding total external debt quadrupled within the same period from 13% of GDP to 50%. Government spending rose from an average of 28% of GDP in the 70s to 41.1% in the 80s. One third of this increase was due to huge increases in debt repayments, which more than tripled as a percentage of GDP. Since the 1980s both the public and external debt have increased again by three times, the Deutsche Bank suggesting that public debt today is 135% of GDP, while external debt is 150% (p18).
During this whole process, manufacturing and agriculture was dismantled and there was an ongoing and worsening balance of trade deficit. Entry to the EEC and later accession to European Monetary Union made what little Greek exports there were even less competitive. From the beginning of the decade to date the euro has become dearer by 20%. Needless to say, the rising debt hits the poorest much more than the richest, since the tax burden lays disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor - apart from the fact that the working class is actually the only sector of society routinely paying taxes. The whirlpool of deprivation gets worse, as public spending on education, health, welfare, etc falls to less than half of the European average.
Following this worsening situation the European commission moved in to take direct control, “with the most intrusive scrutiny of an EU member-state’s fiscal and economic policies and book-keeping ever attempted” (The Guardian, quoted p27). An intense and semi-permanent system of monitoring has been put in place, involving strict quarterly reports and the need to demonstrate that the plans externally produced are being implemented. Needless to say, none of the commission’s measures aim to lighten any burdens on the working class or bring about social safety nets and support. Gelis charges that the whole euro crisis and its current impact in Greece are inherent in the system:
“… as could be shown by both theory and historical experience, in any economic union consisting of members characterised by a high degree of economic unevenness (as is the case with the EU) the establishment of open and liberalised markets for commodities and capital would inevitably lead to a situation where those which primarily benefit from the free movement of commodities and capital would be the more advanced regions/countries (which have already developed high productivity levels and advanced technologies), at the expense of the rest. No wonder therefore that Greek productivity in manufacturing in the period 1980-84 was about 42% of that in Germany and that after almost 20 years of membership it was even lower at 38% in 1995-99” (p31). These advanced countries and economies did not proclaim the message of open economic frontiers and free movement until they had gained that position behind protected markets for themselves.
When Greece entered the EEC, 31% of the active population was in agriculture (as against 6% average in the metropolitan EEC centres), but between 1981 and 2006 this dropped to 13%. Gelis argues that 18% of the population were forced into the “parasitic services sector”. This displacement of agricultural labour was not due to rises in productive efficiency, as agriculture “completely stagnated” - production actually fell by 0.9% between 1990 and 2006 (p32).
The complete loss of democratically elected government in Greece, with not a single person in the cabinet elected by anyone, and a junta of technocrats imposed by the European Bank and International Monetary Fund to carry out a programme which has no endorsement by the people, amounts to a white-collar coup. Gelis, referring to the period just prior to this, talks of “a complete colonisation of the country by the transnational elite … to enforce compliance”. This is especially so when you consider that the elected government had stood on a quite contrary programme. At the same time the democratic deficit reaches rock bottom, with the entire political parliamentary spectrum standing aside and refusing to represent the mass opposition of the people to the dictatorship. The enforced measures are everywhere presented as unavoidable.
For the left there is a problem here. While claiming to be in favour of ‘extreme democracy’, it tends to the defence of the EU as a progressive entity - a harbinger of a new European identity - even when it is clearly autocratically and ruthlessly trampling on basic, never mind ‘extreme democratic’, rights. The attempt to ride two horses with one backside in scarcely tenable.
Sea change
One of the massive sea changes in my life has been the conversion of ‘the left’ in general from nigh universal opposition to whole idea of a capitalist EEC to one of support and defence. Way back in the 70s at the time of the national referendum on Britain’s entry to ‘the Common Market’, the pros and cons lined up pretty much along class lines. All the establishment political parties and the Confederation of British Industry supported entry, while the unions and the far left, along with the usual suspects like Tony Benn, opposed it. So too, of course, did their rightwing equivalent in the Tory party, and far-right racist groups who just hated foreigners. Only the Maoists supported entry - they were following Mao’s line of the “bloc of four classes”, surrounding the ‘main enemy’ and developing a bourgeois political and military bloc against US imperialism.
Universally the left proclaimed in its stead the Union of Soviet Socialist European Republics. We meant by that a federation of separate socialist nations increasingly united and integrating, but retaining their own national and regional identities and strengths. This as a prelude to a global soviet socialist world commonwealth and various versions of a world democratic supreme soviet council. The pro-Common Marketeers of the period would never have owned up to plans for the creation of a single currency, let alone a single capitalist superstate, with a single parliament and a new European ‘nationality’. Those of us on the left would have seen such a state not, as most of the left now do, as a stepping stone to the creation of a single socialist European revolutionary entity, but the consolidation of our class enemies, tipping the balance against organised labour and historic national and regional class identities, upon which we all stood.
For the bulk of the far left the concept of the EU, its logical progression to a single currency and even the creation of new single European identity have become wedded to concepts of internationalism, anti-racism even. This has led to a de facto defence of the EU as a structure which firmly resists any idea of the component nations breaking free of its strictures, which in turn has led to a crisis of leadership across Europe as to what to offer in terms of real, practical answers to the deepening crisis and democratic deficit spreading across the continent. For some, the world as it is, despite its horrendous consequences, has become some sort rational pain barrier we all have endure in order to consolidate the European proletariat and give us a single identity. To millions of workers across Europe, ‘the left’ now seems to stand with the bourgeois politicians in defending a political structure and economic programme whose existence can only continue at the expense of the social gains of a century. It is in this context that the book’s subtitle addresses itself.
Gelis demands as a bottom-line expression of democracy an immediate referendum on whether the Greek people endorse the measures being imposed upon them. Whether they endorse the right of “the Greek political elite on behalf of the European elite” to make such an imposition. One would have thought in a paper which demands self-determination for the Irish people as a whole, but also self-determination for the British loyalist minority within that, that the Greeks would be afforded some measure of unconditional self-determination too.
In the absence of an alternative, that means: • Leaving the euro and returning to a Greek currency (Gelis addresses head on all the theories of the skies falling in and being isolated by the world, etc, in far too much credible detail and argument than I could give justice to here). • Cancelling the debt, as Iceland has and Argentina did. Or “renegotiation of the debt (under the threat of an immediate stoppage of payments in case this is not accepted) aiming at a significant lengthening of the period of its repayment and a corresponding reduction of the present exorbitant amount”. •A highly progressive tax on wealth on and any kind of property with a total value exceeding €1 million, as well as deposits in foreign banks, with the state proceeding to confiscate any property of a corresponding value to the estimated tax in case property-owners declare inability to pay within a reasonably short period of time. • Strict controls of capital movements. • Fair, open and equal presentation of arguments in such a referendum against the bias and propaganda of the media.
Gelis writes: “… power is being transferred slowly out of the national terrain into the hands of the unelected EU-IMF vultures, with only a quisling role assigned to the governments of Greece and Ireland (and soon Portugal and Spain). It is becoming clear that the project for a European Union with a single currency but 17 different governments is unravelling right before our eyes. No serious commentator believes it will survive in its present form. The stage will arrive in the not too distant future, if it isn’t actually here already, that the blood required by the vultures of the EU-IMF will no longer be able to be given. Bankruptcy and default of all foreign debts will occur” (p124).
What are the consequences for democracy for such developments - when all such defaulting countries have their governments removed and replaced by a posse of non-elected bankers and technocrats? Before the cheering from the left at the end of ‘nation-states’ and individual national parliaments dies down, will they will be subsumed not by some super-European elected chamber, but a junta of IMF EU and World Bank directors, accountable to no one?
The majority of the ‘left’ in Britain today will see this little pamphlet as a scandalously seditious document challenging many dearly held perspectives. Admittedly there are things in it which make me feel uneasy - the highlighting of “mass illegal immigration” and its effect on the already straining system, for example - but comrade Gelis is not trying to put a gloss on anything, or smooth any sensibilities.
The crisis spreading through European capitalism requires that we on the left are at least honest, that there is an open and frank debate on the issues, not least that the views of the masses themselves be heard - and not ignored in the belief that we ourselves have already developed the medicine they all have to take, like it or not. For those reasons alone you ought to get this book and read it.
