Wednesday 8 June 2016

The elephant with the red nails

You know the joke about the elephant painting his nails red? Let me remind you of it.

"Why does an elephant paint his nails red?
To hide among the poppies.
Have you ever seen an elephant hide among poppies? No?
See how good the elephant hides? "

Now, I know this is an old joke among children, but it contains in a nutshell the truth about the Greek crisis.

Some of you will think, "Greek crisis, old news, get over it". Well, the Greek crisis may be  just a piece of news for most people, but for most Greeks it is still a painful reality. And the way it goes it is going to be for a long-long time, since the current government has sold out all public assets for 99 years.

So it is a painful reality for me as well. I am not going to get into any personal details, after all the facts that I can still afford a computer, an internet connection and time to write, is proof enough for some people, that I can't be suffering that much. Despite the fact that I have been unemployed for a good part of the last 6 years, that my country was sold despite the huge protest, that pensions and salaries have plummeted beyond the "decent life" limit. And most of all because the country was sold - actually given away, without us even being asked. How are we supposed to live when all ways of producing are steadily being taken away from us, with each new memorandum? And if we are unable to live, how are we even supposed to pay back the debts? (I am not going to talk about the legality of the debts, refer to my previous posts for facts)

And it is exactly for this particular reasoning that I am still writing. Because many of my fellow human - citizens, no longer can afford to write, to speak their mind, to tell their stories, to present their opinion, to state their truth. Because, for the last 6 years the rapid decline of income in Greece and lately the big sell out of public property, means that it is only a matter of time for many voices opposing to the systematic sell out of Greece and the handling of the crisis from all the governments since 2009 (and before that, but let's stick to the actual handling of the crisis for a while),  to be silenced.
 
I have been communicating with lots of people inside and outside Greece for the last 15 years or so. Since the beginning of the crisis, my main goal was to find and understand how people conceive the crisis in Greece and based on what information. After a while, I understood, that a vast majority of the people believed that the Greeks bear solely the responsibility for the crisis. What's more they base this belief on bloated stereotypes that were circulated through influential news networks, all over the world. Of course, most people, tend to believe in such stereotypes, for two reasons: they do not think that they concern them, being someone else's  problem far away from their countries and secondly, even if it was to concern them, they don't have the time to dig deeper and find the percentage of truth in those stereotypes. So it is the human nature that takes the easy way. Blame the others.

But the facts are easy to find.

Some interesting facts.



How can a small country like Greece and a debt of 300 billions, be a threat to anyone? 

USA has a debt of over 15 TRILLION $, France has a debt of over 2 Trillion Euros, Italy a debt of more than 1,5 TRILLION Euros, the UK and Japan follow suit. 

The global economic tidal wave did start in 2007, from the bubble of mortgages in the USA. Greece's bonds sunk, like the bonds of many countries, under the pressure of big hedge funds that bet against it, so Greece was unable (actually denied) to sell any new bonds in order to pay the older ones. 

EU and ECB, led by Germany and France, did prevent and stall any viable solution in 2010 (before the first memorandum), in order to save their own PRIVATE banks, that had to face both the toxic USA mortgage stocks and the Greek bonds. They forgot that EU is a Union, and preferred to sacrifice Greece instead of some stock holders, that has being making money out of thin air.

And some random facts about the Greek debt and how it was created in the first place. (for more details, look at the previous posts)  The obligatory money we had to spend on "protection" during the Olympics, to US and Israeli companies. The technology Greece had to buy EXPENSIVELY, just to keep up with the new regulations that G7 impose, while at the same time the products of Greece were completely crashed by the cheap labor Chinese ones, which USA politics first allowed in the World Trade Organization. Or the EU decisions to embargo Russia, without consideration for the consequences, start wars with Libya on false pretenses,  allowing war in Syria to get out of hand and destroy a whole nation, sending millions of people in exile and then refusing to accept refugees. (France, Belgium and several other countries have been selling guns to everyone involved, there) And these are only the headline news. There are silent wars in  Kenya, Nigeria, well, Africa in general, Pakistan, well Asia in general and Latin America as well. 

The first thing I thought a patriotic Greek government should do, was to try and change the way the world looks at Greeks. Unfortunately, no government did that. Simply because the truth about Greece should not be heard. Because if it did, other people around the world, would be able to connect the dots and realize that EXACTLY THE SAME THING IS HAPPENING IN THEIR COUNTRY. Because it is not just Greece. It is a world phenomenon that Greece had the bad luck to be the first piece of domino -  western "developed" country to fall. 

And it is exactly this elephant among the poppies that is hiding so well, that everybody knows, yet nobody can see and deal with once and for all. And part of the problem, the poppies,  are most of the current governments of the world. 
 
   




No comments:

Post a Comment