{"id":466,"date":"2011-06-18T13:36:34","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T11:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/main.cse-initiative.eu\/?p=466"},"modified":"2015-11-11T13:38:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T11:38:38","slug":"democracy-vs-mythology-the-battle-in-syntagma-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/main.cse-initiative.eu\/?p=466","title":{"rendered":"Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOURCE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this:\u00a0The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake \u2013 the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough.\u00a0Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.<\/p>\n

The powers that be have suggested that there is plenty to sell. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel\u2019s party, recently made the helpful suggestion<\/a>\u00a0that we should sell some of our islands to private buyers in order to pay the interest on these loans, which have been forced on us to stabilise financial institutions and a failed currency experiment. (Of course, it is not a coincidence that recent studies have shown immense reserves of natural gas under the Aegean sea).<\/p>\n

China has waded in<\/a>, because it holds vast currency reserves and more than a third are in Euros. Sites of historical interest like the Acropolis could be made private. If we do not as we are told, the explicit threat is that foreign and more responsible politicians will do it by force. Let\u2019s make the Parthenon and the ancient Agora a Disney park, where badly paid locals dress like Plato or Socrates and play out the fantasies of the rich.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is vital to understand that I do not wish to excuse my compatriots of all blame. We did plenty wrong. I left Greece in 1991 and did not return until 2006. For the first few months I looked around and saw an entirely different country to the one I had left behind. Every billboard, every bus shelter, every magazine page advertised low interest loans. It was a free money give-away. Do you have a loan that you cannot manage? Come and get an even bigger loan from us and we will give you a free lap-dance as a bonus. And the names underwriting those advertisements were not unfamiliar: HSBC, Citibank,\u00a0Credit Agricole, Eurobank, etc.<\/p>\n

Regretfully, it must be admitted that we took this bait \u201chook, line and sinker\u201d. The Greek psyche has always had an Achilles\u2019 heel; an impending identity crisis. We straddle three Continents and our culture has always been a melting pot reflective of that fact. Instead of embracing that richness, we decided we were going to be definitively European; Capitalist; Modern; Western. And, damn it, we were going to be bloody good at it. We were going to be the most European, the most Capitalist, the most Modern, the most Western. We were teenagers with their parents\u2019 platinum card.<\/p>\n

I did not see a pair of sunglasses not emblazoned with Diesel or Prada. I did not see a pair of flip-flops not bearing the logo of Versace or D&G. The cars around me were predominantly Mercedes and BMWs. If anyone took a holiday anywhere closer than Thailand, they kept it a secret. There was an incredible lack of common sense and no warning that this spring of wealth may not be inexhaustible. We became a nation sleepwalking toward the deep end of our newly-built, Italian-tiled swimming pool without a care that at some point our toes may not be able to touch the bottom.<\/p>\n

That irresponsibility, however, was only a very small part of the problem. The much bigger part was the emergence of a new class of foreign business interests ruled by plutocracy, a church dominated by greed and a political dynasticism which made a candidate\u2019s surname the only relevant consideration when voting. And while we were borrowing and spending (which is affectionately known as \u201cgrowth\u201d), they were squeezing every ounce of blood from the other end through a system of corruption so gross that it was worthy of any banana republic; so prevalent and brazen that everyone just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it or became part of it.<\/p>\n

I know it is impossible to share in a single post the history,\u00a0geography\u00a0and mentality which has brought this most beautiful corner of our Continent to its knees and has turned\u00a0one of the oldest civilisations in the world from a source of inspiration to the punchline of cheap jokes. I know it is impossible\u00a0to impart the sense of increasing despair and helplessness that underlies every conversation I have had with friends and family over the last few months.\u00a0But it is vital that I try, because the dehumanisation and demonisation of my people appears to be in full swing.<\/p>\n

I read, agog, an article in a well-known publication which\u00a0essentially\u00a0advocated that the Mafia knew how to deal properly with people who didn\u2019t repay their debts; that \u201ca baseball bat may be what\u2019s needed to fix the never ending Greek debt mess\u201d.\u00a0The article proceeded to justify this by rolling out a series of generalisations and prejudices so inaccurate and so venomous that, had one substituted the word \u201cGreeks\u201d with \u201cBlacks\u201d or \u201cJews\u201d, the author would have been hauled in by the police and charged with hate crimes. (I always include links, but not in this case \u2013 I am damned if I will create more traffic for that harpy).<\/p>\n

So let me deal with some of that media Mythology.<\/p>\n