The Greek people are being savagely assaulted. The foreign
financiers and their political stooges who now rule Greece are demanding the
Greek political hacks rubberstamp the latest “austerity” plan- the fifth
round of vicious economic warfare attacks on the Greek people in just two years
(a rarely mentioned fact in U.$. media “coverage” of Greece, whose main obsession
is to make the Greeks pay off bondholders and stay trapped in the euro).
Hundreds of millions of euros MORE are to be cut from
pensions. ANOTHER 150,000 public sector jobs will be eliminated in the next
four years. No explanation how these workers will support themselves. Private
sector workers are getting another 20% pay cut. Private business has
collapsed. With no money to spend, people do not produce enough demand to keep
businesses afloat, much less allow those businesses to hire the unemployed. The
public health care system no longer can care for many of the sick.
In other words, the economy has been forced into a death
spiral. More layoffs, more cuts in people's income, means less demand, less
economic activity, leading to business failures and more unemployment. And
international finance capital has imposed all this without even needing a
military coup!
Here’s a telling incident that provides a revealing glimpse
into the stone-hearted ruthlessness of the political enforcers of the finance
capitalist social order that imposes misery on millions:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared at a student forum
in Berlin February 7th. A young Greek woman studying at University
there addressed Her Eminence in a voice quavering with emotion:
“I am here as a representative of a generation, my generation
in Greece, which at the moment is really in despair.”
Merkel’s response to this plaintive cry? That she is aware that Greece is “in a very
complicated situation at the moment.” (A nice and vague dodge hinting of
“technocratic” complexities beyond the ken of mere peons whose rations are
being cut to the bone, for the best of reasons, of couse!) However, what is most important, Merkel instructed, is
that what is euphemized as “the difficult choices” (code for savage attacks on
the standard of living of the masses, the same code used in the U.S. by those
propagandists and ideologues of plutocracy who urge the politicians to slash
Social Security, Medicare, and all other social spending in the name of avoiding
alleged fiscal Armageddon) “would not be perceived as something imposed from
the outside.” I.e. the main thing is to obfuscate what’s being done to Greece
from the Greek people, so they’ll blame themselves, and/or their own
politicians, or even adopt the illusion that they themselves are voluntarily choosing to “sacrifice” to pay off the
foreign bondholders. Merkel went on to rue the fact that this level of
mystification had not yet been achieved: “I do not believe that has been a
success yet.” Notice the yet.
Apparently they aren’t through trying to brainwash the Greeks yet.
But give Merkel credit for not feigning sympathy or, even
worse, compassion, like arch con man Bill Clinton might have done. No one in
Europe has any excuse for not understanding what’s going on.
The U.$. media of course agrees with Merkel about what’s most
important. The New York Times, for
example, headlines its front page story February 10th as “GRECE
SIGNS OFF ON SWEEPING CUTS TO CALM LENDERS.” Calming “lenders” is Job One.
Subhead: “A BID TO AVOID DEFAULT.”
But, according to the second subhead: “European Officials
Want More, but Deal Is Expected to Pass.”
Maybe they won’t relent until Greeks are literally starving
to death from lack of food? Because right now a huge number of Greeks can no
longer make their shelter payments. Unemployment is at 21%, at least.
The article begins: “Global financial markets received a
reprieve on Thursday after Greek political leaders agreed to sweeping new
austerity measures that should unlock the financing Greece needs to avert a
potentially damaging default in March.” That’s the first paragraph in its
entirety.
So “financial markets”- i.e. financiers and speculators- are
the ones in peril who need a reprieve, not the Greek people, who are being brutally
punished, with no options except to die, it would seem. And just what or who
would be “damaged” by default? “Financial markets,” apparently.
Oh, and the latest assault on the Greek people includes a
huge gouge in the minimum wage, to make sure multimillionaire financiers get
their dough.
If you’re a businessman, you’ll be treated to a blunter
headline on the first page of the NY
Times Business Day section: “Banks Come First in a Greek Rescue Plan.” (By
the way the Times frequently hides
stuff they don’t want their general readership to see in the Business Section.
Corporate crime news, dangerous pharmaceutical news, environmemtal pollution
news, the banks’ criminality in filing bogus legal papers in thousands of
foreclosure cases, these are some examples of news they’ve hidden there.)
Aljazeera's latest report on the reality in Greece, the
reality the U.$. media mostly hides, gives examples like that of a military
pensioner having his pension cut in half, while at the same time being forced
to support his adult sons and daughter in law, two of whom have lost their jobs
and have no other source of income, one of whom had his pay cut in half, to
$1,000 a month.
Of course, virtually the entire American public is cut off
from Aljazeera on TV, since the media masters have decided it is inappropriate
fare. Cable companies provide hundreds of channels per customer, many of them
empty, the vast majority filled with crap and incredible trivia, but “no room”
for Aljazeera, they claim. This is what they cynically call, in best Orwellian
fashion, “the free press.”
Yes, you can seek Aljazeera out yourself on the internet, and
get some of its content there. But only a minority of people use the internet
for news, and especially older people use it very little or not at all.
The U.S. hasn't yet gone the China route and blocked internet
access to Aljazeera. But just wait, the U.S. has been getting more and more
repressive ever since the ferment of the 1960s and early 1970s.
They just officially passed a law giving them the “right” to
imprison dissidents in their military gulag indefinitely, without charges,
trial, lawyers, or legal recourse, simply by slapping the label “terrorist” on
them, a label routinely applied to progressive protesters, environmental activists,
and peace activists, by the FBI and state and local police. And the government
already can, and has, seized websites it deems to infringe some big
corporation's copyrights. Would blocking Aljazeera be such a big deal for them?
Some civil libertarians and media critics will carp, and get very little
coverage for doing so, but other than that, and maybe a lawsuit dragged
interminably through the bourgeois courts, nothing will happen. So why not?
Don’t be surprised if it happens.
Jasonzenith.blogspot.com
Taboo-truths.blogspot.com
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