Bleeding Edge

Greece Today is made up of Dead and Dying people.

Dead of Spirit and Bereft of Hope…

Because what else can you call the Hopeless, the Hungry, and the Loveless — than Dead?

Dead by Suicide or Dead by assassination — matters very little to Greece now.

The German Occupation Reichsmark today called the “EURO” is the point of this whole exercise in killing a whole country and it’s people slowly but surely. The Euro has made all Hope and Food unaffordable luxuries for Greece and for all the countries of Project  Europe today — much like the Occupation ReichsMark did in the 1940s for the occupied Europe under the Nazi flag back in the 1940s.

The reason why Greece has turned into the worst case of all of the Project Europe suicides — is that of the five countries that were looking over the economic cliff a few years ago — Greece was the one country in the most dire economic shape, and the one that was forced to burn down most of it’s economy in the altar of the false idols of EUROPEAN POLITICAL INTEGRATION AND OF THE FORCED ECONOMIC AUSTERITY POLICIES, foisted upon it by a vehement Germany.

Unfortunately, Greece has not resisted the Austerity programs strongly — instead choosing to play Germany’s game and thus it has subsequently flat-lined and gone for dead. Successive Greek governments have been “owned” by the German Banks and Big Companies via corruption and serious under the table cash contributions for their political campaigns and for their own deep pockets. They are the collaborateurs that Greece first and foremost must fight to win. The enemy within is far greater than the one outside the gates. The Rot has set in deep in the wood of the ship of state and the Greek boat has floundered.

Thus the country is already a Colonial outpost of Germany and has been placed under a serious austerity measure in order to reduce any chance of Resistance. When You control the Food Supply — you control both the country and the people in it. Thus under German Guidance the Greek Economy has never recovered, nor it is likely to recover under the Austerity mechanisms any time soon. That is, until the Greeks understand the real meaning of OXI [=NO] and declare their Liberty by choosing to have their own coin and their own Monetary Policy.

Because it is my learned opinion and History will bear me out on this: For any Nation having it’s own Monetary Policy is a “Birthright.” I believe that it is a vital “Birthright” that when abolished — the formerly Sovereign Nation becomes a contract Slave, to whomever they have abrogated that “Birthright” who now sets their Monetary Policy, and regulates the Coin of the Realm.

And that in a nutshell is the Essence of the European Crisis right here.

First and foremost Greece should not be in the EuroZone — in the first place, because the Euro is the coin of the German European Project, and not of anyone else.

Second because it is fully contrary to the Greek Democracy and the Independence Spirit that the country’s Modern Revolutionary Founders envisaged back in 1821 upon the Liberation of the country from the Ottoman yoke, and as it was modeled after the Innovative Greek Democracy of Two and a half Millennia earlier, during the Golden Age of Greece and Athens under Pericles and Isocrates at around 2,500 BC. The golden age of Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles (495-429 B.C.), who was a fierce Democrat and a brilliant general, orator, patron of the arts, and politician — ”the first citizen” of democratic Athens, according to the historian Thucydides.

And third because Structural and purely Economic Reasons make Greece’s position within the EuroZone untenable, because the Euro is far too expensive a coin to have today for a poor and emerging economy like Greece’s and as the modern day Reichsmark it only serves Germany’s hegemony interests throughout Europe.

Naturally today’s savvy Leadership reader of the BEB blog, fully understands and embraces the first two reasons, but the third might need some further erudition, and therefore an explanation is provided herewith:

The Structural reason that Greece does not belong in the Euro is simply because Greece’s budget deficit going into the crisis far exceeded that of any other European country. This speaks to that fact. Of course it didn’t help that it was Greece that had to endure much more enforced Austerity since then — far more than any other European country ever had — and that has shed more than a third of it’s economic output. So it’s not surprising that the country that’s cut the most out of it’s Life Force, – the economy, and lost the most of it’s Power, has also done the worst by any Measure…  And what is the utterly expensive EURO going to offer to impoverished Greece whose exports are further dwarfed by the Rich German People’s Reichsmark that allows them to holiday and Lord it over Greece for very little cost. It is a tool for the Germans to vacation and live like Kings and Princes in Greece, at the same time that the Greeks themselves are eating the majority of their meals from the garbage cans outside of the Big Tourist Hotels and Great Restaurants that serve the wealthy tourists? How can a country that today runs more Soup Kitchens and provides for more Soup Lines than any other country, afford to have a currency designed and managed by Berlin?

And yet that is what is going on.

That’s Austerity for You…

Here are some photos of the soup lines that have sprung up everywhere in Greece and one photo of the men responsible for this sad development, as an intended consequence of Austerity Economics applied against a single country of the European Project.

Greece since 2009… to today has produced not much else besides more and more than soup and Soup lines, and we are all occupied with semantic accounting instead of the pure accounting of the Human Toll.

Where is the Leadership in this?

There are soup lines everywhere in Greece and still the people go hungry to sleep every night and the children wake up to go to school without food… People are malnourished and dying everywhere throughout Greece from lack of food, lack of medicine and from all related extreme poverty and famine related causes.

Suicides have mounted to unreasonable heights. Elderly people without Medical Care die un-helped. Even those who are well off receive far less Medical attention that anyone needs to survive. There are no Medicines on the pharmacies and no help i the hospitals. The country is coming to an End…

And now another Round of Austerity Medicine will be applied to Greece and it’s once proud People — and to the rest of the European Periphery by extension of measures…

Surely, the coming months and the coming years, will be trying for Europe’s struggling economies of the periphery but especially for Project Europe as a whole, and for Greece in particular.

THe Project of European Integration is not going to survive this anymore than the German occupation of 1941-1944 during the height of the Second World War

Greece, in rather extraordinary fashion, agreed to meet a long list of highly punitive reforms after a standoff of more than a week that had forced its banks to close and its economy to shut down. The deal was struck in exchange for a bailout package, which could approach $100 billion, and an extended stay as a member of the euro zone.

The reforms and their impact, won’t be pretty. Greece has already endured far more austerity than any other flailing European economy, swinging from an 18-percent deficit to a 2-percent surplus, more than double what any other country has done. And now it will have to put up with more, but it’s not clear whether any of these efforts will ease skepticism about whether the whole affair has done irreparable damage to the euro project. So far, the euro, in its 15th year, has been a symbolic boon to Europe, but it has also seen more than a handful of countries suffer significant economic setbacks with Greece and the periphery becoming RoadKill in the process of EURO integration.

Indeed, it’s worth remembering that there are a number of crisis countries that are in pretty bad shape — but none worse than Greece, for a specific reason: Corruption in the European Union both in Berlin and In Brussels. And a systemic weakness in Athens through it’s own corrupt mentality of the current and past Leaders…

During the beginnings of the European financial crisis, which exploded in 2009 and 2010, there was particular concern about five countries — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain — which were, perhaps, best known in the form of the acronym PIIGS. All of them had accrued massive debts — some of them public, some of them private — that led their economies to sharply contract when the global financial system froze up after the 2008 crisis that started in the United States. And while growth bounced back in the U.S., these countries had bigger “structural” problems — ingrained in their laws — that hurt growth.

The tipping point, though, came in 2010, when markets realized how much these governments now needed to borrow to make up for their bad economies. Greece was on the extreme end of that spectrum, but even countries that had kept their fiscal houses in order, such as Spain and Ireland, found themselves unable to borrow on anything but the most punitive terms.

To restore market confidence and get help from Europe and the European Central Bank, the countries had little choice but to administer strict austerity measures in the form of budget cuts and tax hikes. Greece, which in 2009 had a budget deficit that was equal to nearly 14 percent of its economy (the largest of the five), has undergone the most. But the others have suffered through significant pullbacks, too.

This fiscal tightening has worked to the extent that it’s closed the countries’ deficits, but it hasn’t in light of the fact that it’s also made the countries’ debt burdens worse.

The only place where this has come close to working is in Ireland, where spending cuts and an export boom — partly boosted by the the falling euro, which has made Irish goods cheaper abroad — have helped turn the country’s fate around in the past 18 months. It’s enough that Ireland is actually Europe’s fastest-growing economy now, though it still has 9.7% unemployment.

But in most cases, austerity has often hurt the economy so much that even though countries owe less, they’re less able to pay what they do owe because their economies are smaller, and that means they collect less tax revenue.

Italy is perhaps the most glaring example of this. The past five years have been nothing short of a disaster for the country, whose economy is still almost 10 percent smaller than it was in 2008. And in fact, the damage Italy has endured over the past half-decade has wiped out virtually any progress made the previous one. Italy’s economy is the exact same size that it was in 2000.

It goes without saying that a decade and a half without any growth is not a very good thing. And it may not be a coincidence that this stagnation started when the euro was introduced in 1999. After all, Italy has had structural challenges, such as making it difficult to fire workers or bust up monopolies, for a long time. It’s not like those can explain why Italy can’t grow now when it could before.

The reality is that the euro has prevented Italy from covering up its structural problems like it used to be able to when it could at least devalue its way to competitiveness. In other words, the Italian lira could fall in value when it wasn’t so hot, making Italian exports cheaper and offering a boost to growth. It doesn’t have the luxury of a cheaper lira now, though, so it’s been stuck in a no-growth trap that has no sign of turning around soon.

But Spain hasn’t been much better. Now, it’s true that its economy has looked much better over the past 18 months, but top-level growth hasn’t trickled down as much as Spaniards might have hoped. Salaries in Spain remain low, and unemployment remains high — around 24 percent. It is the only country whose labor force woes look anything similar to Greece’s (and, for a time, were even worse).

Portugal, meanwhile, is an economic whodunit without an obvious culprit. There wasn’t a bubble like there was in Greece or Spain — not in housing or in government spending — but Portugal just kind of fell behind. There was no bust, in other words, because there was no boom. From 2002 onward, the country’s economic output per capita, which shows how rich its people are, has essentially been flat.

Things are better now, but not much. Portugal is growing, yes, but still very slowly. That last time it posted real growth of more than 3 percent was 15 years ago — in 2000.

As for Greece — forget it. That Economy has already tanked. Greece’s Economy is dead — not on Life support either.

Now you need a powered by the mains, defibrillator to even attempt to resuscitate the dreams and hopes of the Greek people — forget the Economy.

Austerity for Greece is a bitter pill administered by the Germans that carry a grudge going back to the Second World War when Greece burned them badly by fighting and winning against their Axis ally Italy, and that made Hitler come to Mussolini’s rescue against Greece –therefore delaying his campaign against the Soviet Union by a crucial six months.

That time set him up to start the fight with the Soviets on early Summer and threw him at the mercy of the Russian Winter before he could conquer the Capital and the big industrial centres. Once the General Winter along with General Molotov set in — Hitler was finished in the Russian steppes and the Top Brass of Germany blamed the Greeks for delaying their Blitzkrieg towards Moscow.

Strange how History works…

The Germans back then in 1941, the Occupation German Army enforced a punitive austerity in occupied Greece by stealing all of the staple foods production of the country, and taking all of the Emergency Foodstuffs of Greece and thus intentionally throwing the country in a protracted famine, that saw fully 15% of it’s population die of starvation and privations in the pivotal harsh winter of 1941-1942 resulting in the greatest loss of lives as a percentage of the population by any country of the world during the wrath of the Second World War, including the tremendous and horrible loss of Life of then homeless nation of the Jewish People’s Diaspora, who perished in the German Concentration Camps, and that of the Gypsy tribes of Europe and all other stateless Peoples…

A heavy price to pay indeed for any country fighting for it’s independence against foreign aggressors.

But that was the German plan for collective punishment of the Greek Population because they wanted to show other nations that Resistance to the Nazi Reich armies will bring down the wrath of the Huns and exterminate their people.

Here is how Wikipedia describes the Greek Famine:

Great Famine of Greece
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Great Famine
“Μεγάλος Λιμός”
Athens winter 1941-1944

Collecting the dead from the streets of Athens, winter 1941–1942
Country Greece
Location: Most of Greece (urban, rural areas, islands)
Period 1941–1944
Total deaths: Est. 1,300,000 (The Famine mortality rate reached a peak in the winter of 1941–1942)
Consequences: Destruction of the infrastructure and economy of Greece.
The Great Famine (Greek: Μεγάλος Λιμός) was a period of mass starvation during the Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II (1941–1944). The local population suffered greatly during this period, while the Axis Powers initiated a policy of large scale plunder. Moreover, requisitions together with the Allied blockade of Greece, the ruined state of the country’s infrastructure and the emergence of a powerful and well-connected black market, resulted in the Great Famine, with the mortality rate reaching a peak during the winter of 1941–1942.
The great suffering and the pressure of the Greek Diaspora eventually forced the Germans to lift the blockade partially, and from the summer of 1942, the International Red Cross was able to distribute supplies in sufficient quantities; however, the situation remained grim until the end of the occupation.

Fascist Italy invaded Greece from Albania on 28 October 1940. However, the invasion was quickly turned into a humiliating defeat for the Italians and the Greek forces managed to penetrate deep into Albanian territory. On 6 April 1941, Germany attacked Greece and the Greek forces fell back quickly under the astonishing firepower of the Blitzkrieg. Immediately following their victory, the occupation powers divided the country into 3 zones between which any movement of goods and people was strictly prohibited. The Germans occupied parts of Athens, the region around Thessaloniki, a few strategic outposts in the Aegean and the island of Crete, the Bulgarians held the northern regions of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, while the Italians controlled most of the mainland and the Ionian Islands.

In general, the Axis powers viewed conquered nations as sources of raw materials, food and labor. As a matter of policy, subjugated nations were to provide material support to Germany and Italy. According to this principle, already from the outset of the occupation, German and Italian troops initiated a policy of wide-scale plunder of everything of value. Moreover, pillage, torture, executions, and civilian massacres throughout Greece were also part of the Axis agenda during the years of occupation.

The German attitude toward occupied Peoples was expressed succinctly in the words of Hermann Göring in a letter to the Reich commissioners and military commanders of the occupied territories on 6 August 1942:

Hermann Göring wrote then these words: “”…This continual concern for the aliens [Greeks] must come to an end once and for all … I could not care less when you say that people under your administration are dying of hunger. Let them starve and perish so long as no German person goes hungry.””

Naturally, THE GREAT GREEK FAMINE ensued … that along with German bullets, and privations levied against the Greek patriots, in total killed efficiently more than a Million and a Half people, out of a population of Nine Million Greek Souls.

That was the “friendly” German Occupation of 1941-44 and it is replayed now seventy five years later through the Forced Austerity in 2015 in Greece — that unfortunately is part of the European project under the Fourth Reich of Germany all over again…

Wolfgang Schäuble is today’s Hermann Göring, and he manages propaganda just like his predecessor. Wolfgang Schäuble being the Austerity Ayatolah of the European Project is the powerful Finance Minister of Germany. And he is truly, the Father of Austerity in Europe — even though he is a simple accountant with a penchant for Propaganda and for Lording it over Europe — much like his idol Hermann Göring. In October 2013, Wolfgang Schäuble was accused by the Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, for regularly placing news in the media against Portugal during the eurozone crisis prior to the Portuguese bailout; Sócrates called him a “Sly Minister of Finance”.

Wolfgang Schäuble is a leading advocate of austerity during the eurozone crisis — Schäuble has been described variously as the “personification of fiscal discipline” and as “Europe’s foremost ayatollah of austerity”

Hermann Göring back in 1941, offered the same enforced Austerity to Greece and Europe back during the Second World War occupation of Europe, and we saw how it killed fifty Million people of Europe. That’s how the European Peoples enjoyed the fruits of the German Austerity then, and today we are trying the same enforcement of Austerity towards Greece and the rest of Europe — with predictably the same results.

Austerity didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.

Austerity never worked.

And it doesn’t work today to set a country towards Growth and economic prosperity.

We don’t need Keynes of Adam Smith to come out of their grave to tell us so…

Austerity kills people and economies alike.

The Euro has made Hope and Food unaffordable luxuries for Greece and Project  Europe today, because the Euro is very much like the German Occupation Mark of the 1940s and it only serves one purpose: The Subjugation of Europe. Nothing else…

And if you want to see the effects of it — let’s revisit the 1941 occupation of Greece by the Germans according to Wikipedia:

Within the occupation zones, the confiscation of fuel and all means of transportation, including fishing boats and pack animals, prevented any transfer of food and other supplies and reduced mobility to a minimum. The occupiers seized strategic industries and appropriated or bought them at low prices, paying with occupation marks they circulated all stocks of commodities like tobacco, olive oil, cotton, and leather and transferred them to their home countries.

Laid Archer, who worked for an American aid agency and was in Athens when the Germans entered the city on 27 April 1941, noted in his Journal:

‘April 28 …The wholesale looting of Athens has begun.

‘Remaining food and fuel reserves have been taken first. … [A staff member] found the entire market sealed under the swastika. The Germans have emptied all public [fuel] tanks].… A Marathon farmer, who made his way in today to report that our nurses were safe in the hills, said that his flocks of poultry, even the pigeons, had been machine-gunned and the swastika planted at the four corners of the field. He had been warned to take nothing from the fields on pain of death.

‘The invaders have been taking meat, cattle and sheep north of the city for some days and now have reserved the dairy herds in the environs of Athens for their own use. … My friends in the Ministry of Agriculture estimate that the 200,000-ton domestic supply may be cut to a third by the slaughtering.

‘Modern transport has been seized simultaneously with food supplies. Syntagma square is already filled with seized cars. … Buses likewise are being taken. And especially trucks …. Orders posted and radioed require all bicycles to be delivered to a given location, More than five thousand have been taken.

‘Wholesale and retail shops are being systematically cleared out. This is done by the polite method of “purchase” with freshly printed Occupation Marks, of no value outside of Greece. Early this morning, all troops in Athens not on detail were issued with 100 of such marks each. … They were sent into the shops to buy anything from women’s stockings to electrical equipment. They took their “purchases” to the parcel post office or to the railway express and promptly shipped them home to the Reich … .I saw a squad of soldiers, who had cleaned out a small leather goods shop, carry their new suitcases to a clothing store to be filled. The Eastman Kodak store has been emptied of cameras. … Principal Greek industries are being taken over. This is done by the same polite system of “purchasing” 60 percent of the issued stock and installing a German director.

‘Raw materials, metal, leather and so on are being confiscated. Scores of little factories, turned back to their owners by the sneering Germans as not of any importance, are without materials for processing. … Carpenters can’t get nails with which to get on with the few construction jobs that are still in progress. Even cement … can no longer be had.

‘Finally, hospital and drugstore supplies are being taken by the Germans… …

‘The incredible speed and efficiency of this leaves us dazed, not knowing where to turn for the most ordinary supplies.’

Unemployment rose to extreme levels, while extraordinary levies were extorted from the Greek collaborationist government to sustain the occupying forces. Occupied Greece was not only burdened with the occupation costs of the German and Italian armies but also with the expenses of Axis military projects in the Eastern Mediterranean. Unlike the rest of the occupied countries, whose costs were limited to their actual defense appropriations prior to the Axis invasion, the size of Greece’s levy in 1941-1942 reached 113.7% of the local national income.

{By the Way — These numbers of Debt are very similar to what is demanded of Greece today under the current round of Enforced Austerity Economics…}

On the other hand, the Allied forces responded with a full naval blockade in order to weaken the Axis in its military efforts. This cut off all imports to Greece, including foods.

{By the way this is also today’s stance in starving Greece economically through the Forced Austerity programs as performed by the long term Allies of Greece in the US led International Monetary Fund, and of the Wall Street and of the City in the UK…}

Farmers in Greece had to pay a 10% in kind tax on their produce and to sell to the collaborationist government at fixed prices all production above the subsistence level. The food price controls and rationing that had been in place before the Greek defeat were now tightened. With the low government prices and newly imposed taxes, farmers went to great lengths to hide their produce from the officials and traders pulled their merchandise from the shelves, a factor that added to the severing of the foreign trade routes on which Greece traditionally depended for food imports.[4] Thus, the scarcity of food supplies resulted in the increase of their prices, while the circulation of the German Occupation Reichsmark and the Italian Casa Mediterranea Drachma led soon to inflation. Under these circumstances, black market and rationing became the only means of food supply in the urban areas of Greece.[9] Fishing was also prohibited, at least during the early period of occupation.[10] Moreover, the Bulgarians forbade any transportation of grain from their zone, where 30% of the Greek pre-war production took place, to the rest of the country.

In mid-September 1941, when the famine was imminent, Hitler and the German High Command of Berlin, responded to enquiries of German officials about the famine and the dire straits the population is suffering through in Greece: “Supplying Belgium, and probably Holland, and Norway, as well, will be more urgent from the standpoint of military economy than supplying Greece.”

Period.

Yours,
Dr Kroko

PS:

As economists points out, there is a tangible difference between Greece and Portugal, where GDP per capita is roughly the same, but was arrived at differently. Portugal makes about as much money as it did in 2000, and only marginally less than it did just before the recession. Greece’s economy, meanwhile, grew rapidly and then evaporated by almost a quarter between 2009 and 2013, and by an additional 15% between the second bailout and today. That downward adjustment of the economy for a total of 35% till today and further declining, is indeed very-very difficult for people to understand, let alone live through it.

And it’s not going to be over anytime soon. Greece has just signed up to do more and more austerity for the next three years, its economy has fallen into even more of a hole now that its banks have closed, and it’s stuck with a currency that’s too expensive for it.

Europe now has offered Greece a new $96 billion bailout after its government agreed to enact deep economic reforms under close supervision by its creditors. The so called “rescue” — Greece’s third effort since 2010 — should secure its place in the euro, for now. The country’s potential exit from the currency union would have shaken Europe to its core and it seems to have been averted only to be loaded on to the Greek people’s broken backs once again.

This time Greece agreed to significant economic reforms: Pension cuts and higher taxes, as well as the sale of many key government assets, and all of the public properties. Further they agreed to foreign supervision, because the key to the deal is Proof that Greece will follow through with the programs established by the Creditor nations. “Eurozone leaders have agreed in principle that they are ready to start negotiations on a [new bailout],” said Donald Tusk, who chaired an emergency summit of all 19 nations that use the EURO.
Greece’s Parliament must approve these measures by Wednesday. In addition, Europe will assign monitors to ensure that Greece will also have to give up control of the proceeds from government sales, with the bulk being earmarked for debt payments.

Sounds like Gunboat Diplomacy to me….

What Do You Think?

Regardless… the Old People used to say:

“Woe to the ones who fail to learn from History because they are bound to repeat it”

So…

Had I been asked five years ago how I would vote in the referendum on whether or not the UK should stay in the European Union, my answer would have been unequivocal Yes.

Had I been asked if Greece should stay in the EuroZone back then — similarly my answer would have been Yes.

Had I been asked if the European Project is a Good Idea — I would have been favourable to it as well.

I would have been amenable to the Project Europe and the EuroZone, because they all seemed to me to be a civilising force, restraining the cruel and destructive tendencies of certain member governments, setting standards that prevented them from destroying whole Peoples livelihoods, trashing workers rights, and blocking the Corporate & Banking groups from controlling the bureaucratic and Monetary processes that always present an urgent threat to democracy…

Now I’m not so sure.

Am not at all certain about Project Europe even though I am the Founder of the European Democratic party. I am totally disgusted by the way the European Project has been usurped and turned into the German European Project and all that it entails.

Am not at all in favour of Europe right now because everything good about the European Union is in retreat, and everything bad is on the rampage.

I accept the principle of sharing sovereignty over issues of common concern, but I do not accept the idea of the rich nations under Germany, combining to crush the democratic will of the poorer nations, as they are seeking to do to Greece today…