Politics: I’ve Done a Complete, 180 Degree Turn

I’m interested! I’m passionately interested, because by now it has become clear what is going on, what everybody here in Greece except Demetrios and me seems to have caught onto some time ago. And it’s so appalling and we have been soooo naïve!

Our first clue came when we heard the German leader, Angela Merkel, speaking, and she said the EU was seeking “a long-term solution for Greece.” Well, now, that’s the last thing Greece wants, a long-term “solution” to what Greece desperately hopes will be a short-term problem. The Greek people heartily resent the foreign Troika dictating all this country’s policies, and want that to stop as soon as possible.

The second clue came when we heard that various other countries are making much more “progress” with their debt problems than Greece is. Whaaaat? How so? What are they doing that Greece has not? Are they complying with as harsh measures as Greece has been? Have they been subjected to such hardship? Well, I’ll tell you how other countries have made better progress. Take Italy, for example. Mr. Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, says Italy is ready to give up all sovereignty and independence if that’s what it takes to solve her debt crisis. Ah, now there’s “progress”! There’s the example to be followed. The Greek leaders are equally willing, they just don’t (yet) dare say so. Well, actually, the president of the Parliament did say exactly that five years ago and there’s a video of him on Youtube saying it. You just have to pay very, very close attention to catch these little morsels of truth.

The “long-term solution” means the EU is figuring out how to control Greece – indeed all of the EU countries – completely and indefinitely. It means the EU countries are supposed to cease being sovereign states, cease having their own ethnic identities, and all unite under one imposed government (under the guise of democracy, of course, and world peace). That’s why the borders of all the EU countries are wide open, and Paris is now more like a North African city than anything French, and London is described in one encyclopedia I saw as a multi-cultural metropolis on the River Thames. That’s why proper Greek is not taught in schools. That’s why history books are being re-written. That’s why so many, many things. All in the interest of a pan-European government, and of course, eventually, a world-wide government. (Don’t laugh; we’ve just watched a Youtube clip in which the Greek Prime Minister actually says, “We need a world economic government,” three times.) It all suddenly makes sense when viewed through that lens.

Greece is just the hardest nut to crack in Europe, because the Greek people are stubborn. And not stupid. Greece is to the EU what Iraq was to NATO: the one take-over that must not fail. Have to get Greek compliance or the whole thing falls apart, because other countries might follow a Greek example. That’s why Greece is being singled out.

Now there’s a group of retired military officers who have formed an organization, and this organization says the Greek government, having sold out the people, has to go. And if they don’t leave, this group says they will force the government out. How they plan to do that I don’t know; the classical way would be to make sure the key people in the military and the police are on your side, then move in during the middle of the night and arrest all the top government officials and declare a coup in the morning. That would make very little difference to Greece in one way; it would only be moving from an implicit to an explicit dictatorship, from a covert to an overt one. At least it would be Greek rule, not foreign. But then again, such a move would be terrible for Greece in another way, because all the Western countries would be so outraged, would go on and on about how Greece is the cradle of democracy and how intolerable to have a dictatorship there, and they’d profess to feel called upon to liberate the Greek people – and occupy or at least control Greece indefinitely. Greeks of course are incompetent to deal with their own problems. Not a few Greeks, succumbing to propaganda, have come actually to believe that.

If Greece were to default on her debt and/or secede from the European Union(which EU officials have already said Greece cannot do), the EU would find ways to punish Greece very severely, making an example of her. It can no more be done than Hungary (1957) could break away from the control of the Soviet Union.

So the Greek people are hunkering down. Along Delphon Street here in Thessaloniki, a major shopping street, at least 1 in every 3 shops is closed, with a “For Rent” sign in the window, but nobody has the capital to start up a new business, so the shops stay empty. (Furthermore, taxes on small business are now exorbitant.) The State, which pays the salaries of Orthodox clergy (as part of a deal made years ago, in which the Greek Church ceded to the State about 94% of her property and a third of her income from offerings) , is talking about cutting those clergy salaries in half, and only paying for one new priest for each hundred who retire or die. That’s one of the troubles, isn’t it, with making a deal with the devil. He never feels obliged to uphold his end of the bargain! New property taxes are included in one’s electricity bills, so anyone who thinks of protesting by not paying has his electricity cut off. (However, we’ve heard that there are employees who, when they come around to cut off your electricity, come right back and turn it on again, their method of resistance.)

I know of very little other resistance so far; nobody knows what to do. I have learned that our recent problem with garbage collection is because protestors have occupied the city dump, so there’s no place, or very little place, to put the garbage. People aren’t complaining because they sympathize with the protestors. But how disrupting the garbage service is supposed to help anything I do not know. The Orthodox bishops have, as a synod, also stood up rather courageously, saying the people shouldn’t pay all these new taxes.

The KKE, Communist Party of Greece, is organizing, it’s ready to fight. But of course, they’re a hopeless bunch and most people consider them totally out of touch with reality. They still want a Soviet-style government, as if that sort of thing hadn’t been thoroughly discredited decades ago, as if anybody could possibly still take communist ideology seriously. And of course if the communists ever do get control of Greece, that’s another scenario that will cause the Western nations to take swift action to “liberate” the Greek people.

Qui bono? Well, France benefits and Germany, especially, because they are the two major EU powers. People are saying what Germany couldn’t achieve in two world wars she is now achieving by economics through the EU. Much of Europe stands in a fair way to become, in effect, Franco-German colonies. The European leaders all benefit, too, because they are handsomely paid off for their cooperation, including the Greek leadership. But all the foregoing is relatively small potatoes. The major benefit goes to multi-national corporations, especially banks, because all the new laws and regulations and so forth are written to benefit them, allowing them to rape and plunder the people and the land, and because one government is easier for them to deal with than many, and because, in the case of the banks, they’re the creditors (who lent the money knowing this would happen, and they’d be bailed out). Okay, it’s not actually the banks and corporations themselves that benefit, either, because they are only tools for the gaining of personal advantage by their executives. It’s those top executives who are the main beneficiaries of all this, sometimes even if they ruin the company to get rich. They are the elite who run this world. Israel benefits too, because while many people within the multi-national gang care only for profit and thus have no national loyalties at all, the many more who do are loyal usually to Israel and they share their wealth and wield their influence accordingly.

Demetrios found our Greek flag, which we usually only fly on national holidays, and put it up, out over our balcony. It will stay there for the duration.