[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

[Ryan Lanham]

Hi Michel:

Here is a profound statistic I read this weekend: 50% of French nationals
over 50 do not work for a living and are on some form of pension--usually
from the government.  In an age where people live to be 80 regularly, how
can such a system work?

Ryan



On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
> via
> http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/05/greece-pilger-britain-imf
>
>
>
> The crisis that has led to Greece's "rescue" by European banks and the
> International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system
> that itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely
> reported as such, but waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial
> rich.
>
> What makes Greece different is that it has experienced, within living
> memory, invasion, foreign occupation, military dictatorship and popular
> resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that
> dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis
> that preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou was
> described by the sociologist Jean Ziegler as "a machine for systematically
> pillaging the country's resources".
> Epic theft
>
> The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal Reserve board is
> investigating the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of
> Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited
> €360bn in Swiss banks. This haemorrhaging of capital continues with the
> approval of Europe's central banks and governments.
>
> At 11 per cent, Greece's budget deficit is no higher than America's.
> However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international
> capital market, it was effectively blocked by the US corporate ratings
> agencies, which "downgraded" Greek debt to "junk". These same agencies gave
> triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage
> securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.
>
> What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar,
> scale. In Britain, the "rescue" of banks such as Northern Rock and the Royal
> Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his
> passion for the avaricious instincts of the City, these gifts of public
> money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other
> the booty they call bonuses and to spirit it away to tax havens. Under
> Britain's political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the US, the
> situation is even more remarkable. As the investigative journalist David
> DeGraw has reported, the principal Wall Street banks that "destroyed the
> economy pay zero in taxes and get $33bn in refunds".
>
> In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told
> they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs,
> pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers
> put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunity presents to "change
> the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF
> and the World Bank have "structurally adjusted" (impoverished and
> controlled) countries across the developing world.
>
> Greece is hated for the same reason Yugo­slavia had to be destroyed
> physically behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks
> are employed by the state, and the young and the trade unions comprise a
> popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels' tanks on the
> campus of Athens University in 1967 remain a political spectre. Such
> resistance is anathema to Europe's central bankers and regarded as an
> obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets in the aftermath of
> Germany's troubled reunification.
>
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-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
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