War Without Bombs

There’s not much point in beating around the bush: it’s a shit state of affairs in Greece right now. The poor are stuffing pittances into mattresses while the rich are funneling vast sums out in to tax havens abroad. Two years of mercilessly enforced austerity have left people rummaging through rubbish bins for a meal, young people chasing after concepts like livelihood and prospects as they evaporate out of the country, and older Greeks emasculated to the point where shooting yourself in Syntagma Square becomes the last stand of the dignified. 

Greece is hemorrhaging money, blood and youth. The people are drowning under a pile of unrelenting shit, pouring down on them from great rusted shovels wielded by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank –the Troika. In Greece, the profits have been privatized, loaded into private jets and flown out of a country desperately in need of funds. The losses have been socialized and strapped onto the backs of the masses. Ordinary, working Greeks have been told, in no uncertain terms, that the mess left behind by bankers at home and abroad and a corrupt political leadership within parliament is theirs to clean up.

Austerity hasn’t brought salvation to Greece, it’s brought humiliation and death.

Sold as essential to stopping up the leaking Greek ship and returning it to stability, the conditions behind the funding from the Troika have plunged the country into a debt it cannot repay if it isn’t willing to sacrifice a generation – possibly more than one – to the market god. And Greece is not alone. Across the west pillars of the financial world, and the Punch and Judy dolls they manipulate in office, built a great house of cards, climbing each level as they finished it, collecting bloated bonuses for doing little more than gambling. The house only needed to hold until they reached the top with their dosh in hand; from there, it was left to topple, leaving the rest of us crushed under the ruins. But rather than pull ourselves from the wreckage, it is expected that we suffer the costs of their rampant destruction. If we don’t, how will they possibly manage to repeat the process in the future?

The sorry thing is they have every right to expect that. We’ve given them little reason to think they won't get away with it.

When American mega banks set off the financial land mines they'd been planting for decades in 2007, they demanded to be saved by the people, and the people gave in. When the contagion sailed across the Atlantic to Europe, the people gave in again – more bailouts, no accountability, and the acceptance that we the people must face hardship and piercing loss if what remained of the house of cards was to be reconstructed. It was up to us to save the economic system. No one responsible would face the justice system, or spend time in prison for the elaborate fraud they perpetrated. 

No one responsible would suffer at all, as it turns out. Suffering is the unique arena of the poor. 

But Greece isn’t being saved, it’s being destroyed. Third world financial trade off tactics, the monetary weapons of the IMF and the World Bank, are being applied for the first time in a fully developed nation. These organizations that so spectacularly and completely pillaged the impoverished in Africa and the South Pacific, needed to find new avenues for their prof model. Countries in the developing world such as Argentina, and the emerging powerhouses of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) had worked out the sinister side of the IMF gambit, and had rightly told them to fuck off some time back. Enter the European sovereign debt crisis. In the newly traumatized developed nations on Europe’s periphery, global money lenders saw their chance to utilize financial weapons that had worked so well for them in transferring the wealth of the world’s poorest nations into the hands of the wealthiest.

In short order, loans with bad conditions were agreed upon. The Troika made the offer, the Greek politicians agreed. The Greek people, and their feelings on being sold into debt slavery, were never asked what they wanted. When they tried to fight back against the odious nature of the deals by demanding a referendum, their President was forced from power, and a technocrat was installed to ensure no such referendum would take place. This was no time for government to consult the will of the people. This was no time for democracy.

The Greeks finally got an opportunity to voice their desperation over what austerity is doing to them on 6^th May, 2012. The elections saw a radical shift in the makeup of the Greek Parliament. While the pro austerity New Democracy party received the largest percentage of the vote at 18.85%, it was the radical left SYRIZA coalition that made the greatest gains, coming second in the vote with 16.78% riding on a platform of anti austerity. All told, no one party was strong enough to form a government, and several attempts to create a working coalition failed. The Greek people will go to the polls again on 17^th June. For a while it looked certain that SYRIZA and its young leader, Alexis Tsipras, would come out the clear winner, as Greek voters rallied around the party most willing to fight for a reworking of the austerity deal that mires the country in misery.

But then the fight back came, bearing its fangs and spitting toxic bile. 

Since the announcement of the next election in June, political leaders and financial luminaries across Europe have done their best to put the fear of God into the Greek electorate. British PM David Cameron announced to the press that the June election in Greece was a clear choice between staying in the Euro currency and leaving outright. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble plays the simultaneous role of good and bad cop, telling the world that a Greek exit from the Euro is avoidable, while telling the Greek people that, without question, they must accept every condition imposed upon them if Greece is to remain in the Euro. 

But no voice can top that of International Monetary Fund chief Christine La Garde for blunt audacity. 

In an interview with The Guardian on 25^th May 2012, La Garde stated that she had little sympathy for Greek parents who cannot afford to care for their children. She was quoted saying  “All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”

Ironically, as boss of the IMF La Garde pays no income tax on her salary. This is one of the perks that comes with being employed by an international organisation. If only Greek parents unable to feed their children could be so lucky.

The doom speak seems to be having the desired effect of grinding down Greek resolve. A recent series of polls indicate support for the SYRIZA coalition is eroding, and moving back to the pro austerity parties, New Democracy and PASOK. If the polls are to be believed, these orchestrated fear campaigns may succeed in keeping the Greek people in line, and giving their consent to financial servitude.

What lies ahead is a test, and the Greeks will face it first. Their choices are grim in either respect. Stay in the Euro and accept impossible debt repayment plans that will leave them impoverished and see their social frameworks destroyed, or vote against these measures, call the bluff of the powerful, and risk being left alone to pick themselves back up. Each option promises hardship and struggle, but only one allows citizens to take control of their situation, and forge a way out on their own terms. Plainly speaking, the powerful want to see if they can overrule democracy in Greece because if they can, the rest of Europe will follow. They are looking to see just how firmly under foot the people are. If they succeed, we will have taught them that, without question, dire rhetoric can terrify the rank and file into submission.

The constant accusation those with power and vast stores of wealth love to foist upon the malcontents beneath them is that they itch for class war. In reality, that war started decades ago, but it wasn’t the poor and the downtrodden that fired the first shot. This is a war without bombs, and what frightens the aggressors is that the other side might finally be opening their eyes to the full scale of the assault they are under.