Recently I came across several opinions and articles from the big mainstream newspapers and websites (mainly from the right wing political side), that clearly classify the vast majority of Greek people as “babies that need to grow up” or sometimes “lazy crooks”. I am sure, most of the people have been informed about the current political and financial situation in Greece. Indeed, the truth is quite different from what mainstream news channels broadcast. Billions of euro have been wasted by politicians reluctant to keep their promises to their voters and some rich high class taxpayers who cheated and lied. The working class people and the 99% of the total population are not responsible for the crisis. This is a fact that most of the news agencies knowingly hide. Perhaps they are annoyed by the huge demonstrations that take place almost everyday in the main big cities of the country and feel unsafe, that someday a similar rebellion will brake up anywhere else, close to the town where they live making them loosing their power.
For those who think that “Greeks are like babies”, they should be informed that, the Conservatives at 1979 did not ask the people to join the European Union. It was just five years after the collapse of the fascist military junta which was openly supported by the U$A government, so the majority was more in favor of sovereignty rather than being dictated by another power center. Neither the new government consulted anyone to resort to the International Monetary Fund and of course the plan to decrease all the wages by 20% and together cut off all the salary benefits and bonuses for which the Greek people fought enough hard the past decades to assert has outraged the vast majority of the population.
It is true that we the ordinary Greek people do not want to pay for the crisis caused by an oligarchy, neither we want another country to pay for us, as we know that this might be an attempt of political manipulation and of course it can damage our foreign relationships. The number of people who are loosing confidence of Euro is growing rapidly day by day and I am sure when the new austerity plan will take place most of them will demand immediate withdraw from the Eurozone. The oligarchy of bankers and the rich taxpayers are responsible for the downturn, therefore they should pay.
Since when refusing to work for 400 euro per month under medieval working situations is injustice and laziness? Why it is bad trying to defend your rights? Why should we all, the Greek people, obey all the rules of the global ruling class? Why should we sacrifice our dignity and progressiveness for the sake of the global market who want us an easy controlled consuming mass obsessed by law and security? Why should we obey all the rules that have been forced upon us? Why we should stop promoting solidarity and freedom and sacrifice our hospitality to the regulations of the United States of Europe?
I am one of those who don’t consider the right to work as a human right. It is an obsession that a lot of people think the more they work the more useful they are. Most of us are forced to do jobs we don’t like in order to secure a salary that will allow us to have the necessary to survive. A deeper research of the political power-structures and the social life of many Western countries will be enough to convince us how anti-social and counter-productive the attitude of “work as more as you can” is. People have forgotten that life is more than to blindly obey the rules and “working as hard as possible” in order to buy an expensive car or afford a mortgage to buy a house, while children learn how to accept like passive spectators this meaningless lifestyle of “work, buy, consume, die”, this plastic materialistic civilization of false hopes and visions. This is a form of modern slavery that helps the rich to become more powerful as we all offer our services to them. Why for example working in a mint under the minimum wage, digging in the ground and breathing toxic carcinogenic gases is a good thing? Aren’t there machines to do that job? We have the sources and the potential to eliminate harmful and unnecessary jobs, would the world be a better place if we were able to use technology and together invest in education and human progress?
Back to Greece again, “Marxistiki Foni” (article “The myth of the “lazy Greek workers””) claims that Greek workers are one of the most underpaid in Europe based on Eurostat sources while they “work on average longer hours than the rest of Europeans. They work a 42-hour week, while the average working week in the 27 member states of the EU is 40.3 hours and within in the “Eurozone” it is 40 hours.” At the same time “The average age of retirement in Greece is 61.4 years, a little higher than the European average of 61.1 years” while at the same time Greeks have one of the lowest pensions of EU (around 350 euro per month). Unemployed people can not easily obtain unemployment benefits if they have not worked primarily and the duration of the providing benefit may not exceed one year. “On top of all this, in Greece there is also the phenomenon of around 300,000 “false self-employed workers”. These are workers who have in reality been forced to set themselves up as self-employed. In reality they work for a boss who can freely assign the manner, the time, the place of work, and the working conditions and thus this form of working is essentially employment by a boss, but with the added advantage that he can sack them whenever he wants, as formally he is the workers’ “client”. Bosses prefer this method of employment because these workers are not treated legally as employees; they don’t have the same legal rights as the rest of the working class, such as monthly salaries, paid holidays, etc. Employers can fire them freely, even without any compensation. We must also add to the list the 200,000 “part-time” employees, most of whom work full-time but are being paid half-time.”
“Working people in Greece are showing the way forward to people here and across Europe. Another system is possible. International capital has targeted Greece as its next victim. Hedge funds have pushed the interest on Greek government bonds to close to 14 per cent. Just as bankers Goldman Sachs made billions betting on a default in the sub-prime housing market in the U$A so now these same predators circle Greece expecting to make similar obscene sums off the backs of the people of that country. Since the beginning of the international economic crisis the very rich have manoevered to make themselves even more wealthy. However the people of Greece have decided to fight these cuts. Fresh strikes and demonstrations started on Monday with a 24-hour walk-out by Greece?s federation of shipping unions (PNO) that disrupted ferry services to more than 50 Aegean islands. Public transport in Athens will shut down for six hours on Tuesday when workers stage a protest against pay cuts. The Greek working class is showing us the way forward. Send support to the Greek workers fighting IMF cuts”
International capital has targeted Greece as its next victim. Hedge funds have pushed the interest on Greek government bonds to close to 14 per cent. Just as bankers Goldman Sachs made billions betting on a default in the sub-prime housing market in the U$A so now these same predators circle Greece expecting to make similar obscene sums off the backs of the people of that country. Since the beginning of the international economic crisis the very rich have manoevered to make themselves even more wealthy”. (Solidarity page)
Let’s face the reality, the people in Greece have started to realize what’s going on, who is hiding behind these years of underdevelopment and backwardness, so I guess Spain will be the next country and hopefully more and more people across the world will rise up. If some people think that “violence is not a solution”, then we would be more than happy discussing new opinions and ideas. Apart from that, a social struggle (protest, demos etc) does not indicate always violence. However, those who judge without knowing even the basic history of the country and want us to become a “big brother” police state should not be welcome. I would be the first to discourage them even visiting the country. If they still thing “we are lazy”, then we are fine with this… but we simply don’t care, neither need their opinion.
8 Comments
Be informed about new articles…
Loading ...
16/07/2010 @ 19:51
Ηey carl, you are an american and you are talking about brain wash in greece? Αt least,greeks may have elected idiot politicians for years, but they would never elect G.Bush twice!
09/06/2010 @ 16:36
Dear Carl,
I’m sorry for you, for you were raised in a country that one of its greatest things is brain wash. I can’t really say anything more, because I trully believe it’s a waste of time. And stop eating at McDonald’s because it’s bad for your health.
Molly.
03/06/2010 @ 15:37
Well said Jim, I completely agree with you, we are totally ripped off by a bunch of wankers-politicians. However the problem is that these poor fellows in the other side of the planet who spend their whole time watching TV cannot really understand what is going on in Greece. I seriously doubt if they can even locate Greece in the map. But I don’t blame them. It’s the journalists and the media, the ruffians of the world, who portray Greece abroad as something evil obscuring the truth knowingly in order to maintain the people’s stupification and ruling class’s interests safe.
03/06/2010 @ 14:11
The crisis is noone’s fault, except from the capitalists. They have been abusing the working class and the world and accumulating their wealth on the struggles of simple people that have been trying to live by with the small salary that they earn. The only ones to blame are the corrupt politicians that gave hope when there wasn’t any… The situation should have been explained to the Greek people about 20 years ago when the “gap” first appeared, but no… The politicians thought that “since they are living well and there’s no sign of an upcoming crisis we might as well steal some more“. And now, they have been trying to seal the case by letting crooks like Christoforakos and Tsoykatos not pay for anything, the millions in debts that certain companies owed the government be deleted, and they have been trying to shut the protesters up by sending them to jail, to show that everything is under control. But, unfortunately for them, the times of 1936 in Spain where the only thing you would see in Barcelona was building under the occupation of CNT are not away! All we ask for is the certain people who are responsible for this “crisis” to pay! Theres nothing ignorant about that!
03/06/2010 @ 10:13
@Carl
This is the dampest comment I’ve ever seen. I really wonder are you a special case or just a troll who has nothing better to do than keep on repeating the same cheap conservative propaganda in every threat.
And who the hell are you to tell us that we should learn “how the world works”! It is you that have to learn that! Look at this “It would be immoral to force anyone else to pay for the Greek peoples immorality“…did you smoke again Carl?
And what about the millions of innocent people who are forced to pay the price for your war crimes in Middle East, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Gaza, Rwanda, in Chile, in Ecuador… have you really seen the irony of your statement? Me thinks, you should learn how the world works and show some respect to other cultures and countries. Ever heard about the word GENOCIDE? Learn also that the more than 200.000 people who marched on the streets of the major Greek city do not want any other country to pay for us but those who have caused the crisis (a few rich taxpayers, no more than a handful) and immediate withdraw from EU as the article says. I bet you did not spend a second of your life reading the lines above, did you?. We don’t need anyone to show us and tell us how to behave and what to do. So please, do us a favor. When it comes to politics, keep your hands to yourself.
And something more:
“Once they came for the Iraqis but I didn’t do anything cause I am not from Iraq, then they came for the Chileans but I wasn’t one of them, then they came for the Palestinians but am not either a Palestinian, and finally… they came for Americans but there was no one around to support and help me” (Bertolt Breht)
P.S
You also need to get back to school. You grammar and syntax is horrible!
03/06/2010 @ 04:06
The voters of Greece have brains. They can and should understand what makes the world work. But they’ve been lazy. They’ve not studied and searched for the truth of what makes the world work. They have believed lies of politicians and then elected them. The Greek people are more to blame than anyone. They have been told and have believed they can have something for nothing. Ignorance is no excuse. The truth is nothing is free and everything must be paid for. Now its time to pay. It would be immoral to force anyone else to pay for the Greek peoples immorality.
24/05/2010 @ 16:40
@Jacques Martin
I absolutely agree with what you say. We must be united now and smash the media propaganda which wants us a consuming mass slaves of a capitalist oligarchy. I am also getting sick of all these leaders telling us what to do, what to say, what to wear.
21/05/2010 @ 23:20
As said in your whole info blog, which new face is great, Greece is not isolated case of social injustice and human fall. We are all concerned, northern as southern, eastern as western. It’s a global disease of humanity that’s driving us to disaster. No country will be excepted. No people. Just a class will not pay for her own fault. THE CAPITALIST… as far as money’ll go on ruling our life we’ll be the slaves majority of a rich minority, just coz we play their games,the capitalistic wheel of fortune…
We people of underclasses have to unite worldwide and stop together this golden comedia of our own shit life and inhuman death. WE RE ALL GREEKS!
World belongs to humans and animals ,trough nature, not to money and machines,trough torture!