2015-08-01

It's not all Greek to me

Most folks have not taken the time to read the tons of documentation that has been produced in regard to the Greek crisis. Tsipras is trying to buy some time to get through the next phase of the storm, but has anyone seriously asked themselves what he's doing and why? I don't know. I really don't know, but what I do know is that we're being fed an official line of distraction and confusion, and they're using every trick in the book to see that it stays that way.

The Greeks have been forced to put up all their public assets for sale. Just over a week ago, Warren Buffet took advantage of the sale and bought himself an island for a mere €15m. Not unsurprisingly, just this past week, it was -- quietly, subtly, almost unreportedly -- that the Americans are going to be given access to Greece's (not insubstantial) gas and oil reserves (just like they silently and forcibly moved in and took over the Ukraine's). In the meantime, just like in the USA where Social Security and Medicare are on the block for the upcoming elections, top priority was given to privatizing and gutting the pension system and the Value-Added-Tax, the most regressive of all taxes, was almost doubled.

The official line is that these "reforms" are necessary to get Greece back on its feet. When you call a program whose sole results is the destruction of what was there before a "reform", you have to be pretty damn cynical at heart. In the five years of the crisis, and here, in the last round, where it was do-or-die, the creditors (as if they should be given credit for something) demanded these changes, but not once in all that time have they demanded that a tax on the rich or super-rich be instituted, not once have they demanded that the government immediately clamp down on tax-evasion. Instead, the Greeks have been encouraged to "modernize" their administration (for example, by issuing very limited, but very lucrative IT-infrastructure tenders to be implemented whenever) and over all this time, the Greeks had submitted to continuous reviews, all of which were approved by those very parties who decided it was time for the Greeks to turn over their democratic sovereignty to extra-democratic institutions.

In light of the documentation, and in light of the actions of the Greek government in the last couple of weeks, I'd say they know what's what. At the very slightest indication of non-cooperation, I would be willing to bet that what has so-far been accomplished below the radar will simply burst to the surface. There will be a radical, perhaps even violent, change of government right here on the edge of Europe. Greece is being made an example of, but there is growing distrust of the current powers-that-be, not only in Greece, but elsewhere, and it is very likely that Greece will begin living its myths and become Pandora's Box.

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