To be honest, at this point in time, and with the chorus of colonial-style browbeating from the North rising to a new crescendo, few Greeks really give one red penny about “Europe-wide stability,” the “integrity of the common currency,” and “further European integration.”
With the exception of a rapidly shrinking club of euro masochists, which includes the few remaining big business and a thin minority of self-aggrandizing “cosmopolitan elites” attached to the dream of an ethereal “European community,” the mood prevailing among the Greek masses now sinking into poverty and a starkly uncertain future is one of bitter rejection of our “saviors” and slowly, but surely, billowing rage against both the latter and the Papandreou regime.
Foreign correspondents resident in Athens often exclaim at the remarkable patience of the average Greek in the face of the most pitiless, brutal, and thoroughly illegal invasion of his country by foreign middle-level “technocrats” -- who exercise plenipotentiary authority on behalf of “central powers” who miss no opportunity to remind us all that Greece must shed a “significant part of her national sovereignty” in order to be “saved.”
This patience though has limits like all phenomena of Nature.
These limits are now being broken every day by the Papandreou regime, which has been catapulted into the polling abyss long ago, with its inner advisers aware of non-published survey data showing the total collapse of the ruling “socialists,” who are presently recognized as the most naked predatory neo-liberals ever to tread on Greek soil in addition to being willing collaborators of foreign overlords promoting the dismantling of Greece as we know it via fire sale.
It would be a strategic mistake on the part of those in the North, who are wielding the rhino whip over the hapless, submissive Papandreou, to underestimate the powder keg potential in this far corner of the European “union.”
We are of course aware that few among our northern “partners” really care about whether Greece sinks into violent civil disorder and eventual insurrection.
However, they should also be aware that the European “union,” already confused and disoriented, isn’t exactly a model of social cohesion and harmonious, stable everyday living, especially in view of the onslaught of the austerity monster and the neo-Calvinist demands of a small group of “inner sanctum” potentates in the spirit of the recent rant by Herr Schauble.
[The spontaneous explosion in English streets only weeks ago, which nearly overwhelmed a poorly prepared government, should serve as a timely reminder of the murderous pitfalls inherent in taking the knife to the bone of societies in accordance to edicts from the “markets” and “international rating agencies.” And Greece is so far gone down the pike that any explosion of social desperation will make what happened in London and other English cities look like school rowdiness during the spring break excursion (with a chain reaction effect always part of the package).]
The Greek sovereign debt crisis, and Greek “modernization, have transcended the technicalities of “credit events” and “orderly” vs. “disorderly” bankruptcy, not to mention the strict schoolmaster criteria of the European “inner sanctum” potentates, and have come to lie at the root of a political crisis with serious potentialities of widespread violence triggered by outside invasion, not with tanks but with laptops.
As these lines are drawn, Papandreou travels to the northern city of Thessaloniki to speak at the opening of the city’s annual trade fair surrounded by an unprecedented legion of police raised by transporting thousands of officers from other parts of the country (that will be left without law enforcement protection for days in order to surround Papandreou with police shields).
Calls from protest organizers are being broadcast all over the country in an effort to mobilize as many demonstrators as possible to travel to Thessaloniki and unite against the leader of the most bitterly dismissed, if not hated, government in post-war Greek history. The aim is to deny him access to the speaking venue and generally frustrate his unwanted presence in Greece’s second largest city.
In this noxious, morose atmosphere, Greek democracy, or what’s left of it, is being tested beyond its manufacturers’ fatigue and endurance limits.
The core question for Greece has thus moved away from what the Troika wants or does not want, or what Herr Schauble believes the rest of the world must perform in order to satisfy German diligent pupil criteria.
It is now a question of national survival similar to that which arose in April 1941, when the country was overwhelmed by the Axis occupation.
Unless the Greek people realize where we stand today and begin to join the Resistance en masse, the catastrophe will be complete.
Unless we mobilize now to break the shackles of the Troika and declare the Greek sovereign debt null and void in its entirety, we shall never see the light of day again thanks to all the “saving” now under way.
The price of resistance will be extremely high, but certainly not higher than that of permanent debt bondage in the hands of “saviors” accustomed to experimenting on live subjects to satisfy “investors.”
It’s that simple -- and that blood curdling.
Postscript One: A word to those who will rush to declare the above proof of opposition to “progress,” “reform,” and “necessary change.” We firmly believe that all three conditions are inextricably tied to serving the common good of the great majority of the people. The current plight of Greece, under the Troika, points to the exactly opposite direction: what has transpired so far has damaged severely and irretrievably the overwhelming majority of Greeks, not to mention the bedrock of the economy. Nothing that Europe and the creditors demand is centered on the welfare of the Greek people as it must. In addition, the haste involved -- unprecedented in the annals of “rescues” -- guarantees an apocalypse, especially when one realizes the true state of Greek public administration and government services. In short, what Europe and the creditors are doing is IMF-taught vivisection upon a country that can barely stand on her own two feet. Hence, we are at war for survival -- and the “saviors” are the masqueraded opponent, not to say enemy. As unpalatable, ungrateful and offending this might sound to EU propagandists, not to mention Herr Schauble, M. Trichet, and the “philhellene” M. Junker, it is the hard truth “on the ground.”
Postscript Two: Remember September 1939.