Our dessert was irresistible, combination of ice cream and fruit - and when you combine that with a perfect view on Aegean sea, life cannot be better.
We started chatting with our waiter. He was in his early thirties, very professional and polite. We asked him how safe was in Athens, especially now, when government protests were happening on a daily basis. It was safe, but everyone should listen his/her common sense, not to go to hot areas, and those ones were on Syntagma square and around the parliament building. We thought that we have to go there anyway, as our hotel was a block from Syntagma square.
Our new friend became more passionate, and we had quite a conversation. Good thing was that there were no many customers, so he was able to talk to us. He was mad because of everything that was happening in Greece. I asked many questions as I wanted to know more, what Greek people were feeling and thinking about austerity measures applied and forced by the government and European Union.
"Whose fault was all of this?", I asked, and my new friend said: "Rich bastards. They did all of this. See that beach down there?", he pointed to beautiful Apolonies Aktes beach just below the restaurant, "People of Athens have to pay 10 euros to get there, to touch the sea....."
"And now, the government wants to sell our islands to rich bastards, and that means that we'll lose Greece. We won't be local anymore, in our own country. They'll take everything".
He was talking, giving me more examples, and I was listening. I was thinking as well. Similar pattern was applied in Croatia, where people were becoming foreigners in their own country. "Rich bastards" came and bought everything that had some value. They'll get it much easier once Croatia is granted membership in EU.
I was thinking how economic hit-men assassinated governments and spread new colonialism and corporatism to the world.
Greece was a good target, and I actually admired hit-mens work, as they hit 'prosperous' western country - appetite of their employers has grown, so they were not anymore satisfied with some "rogue" south american "regimes". It was time now to enslave even well off countries. To steal their resources.
They need them in order to feed their ponzi scheme.
Of course, Greeks were stereotyped as lazy, as inefficient, and it was concluded that social policies applied through many years drained government pockets. Everything that had to do with word 'social' was the real cause of Greece's demise.
If there is a crisis, everyone should get a life boat or no one should. It was unfair for the ship Titanic to only have enough life boats for the rich, it is no less unfair to save the rich from the austerity measures imposed on the middle class and poor.
Banks, investors, and others of the rich connected to Greece's debt problems, who have benefited from Greece's past borrowing, are not even to be subject to the taxes to be used to pay off that debt. Are the workers in Greece wrong to protest the fact that
they are being forced to pay for the present and future profits of these powerful interests?
During a crisis like WWII, when everyone was considered to share in on the danger, the rich paid 90% taxes, and really did not enjoy nearly so much luxury as they did before the war, until the crisis had passed.
There is a crisis in Greece: While the homes of the middle class and poor burn, the rich, especially banks, should not sit idle and play their fiddles.
Frankly, the entire Western World should reconsider ignoring the permanent crisis created by one sided trade policies that guarantee the permanent poverty of the third world. Why stop with just helping Greece?
Western media keeps referring to events taking place in Greece as the "death throes of socialism". I appreciate the need of apologists for capitalism to misrepresent the facts concerning the economic collapse in Greece. However, the events unfolding in Greece are not the results of socialism but the results of a capitalist system that is not based on free market principles. Instead its a system where oligarchic and monopolistic interests have been allowed to exploit Greece for their own ends without regard for the consequences. It is as Mussolini said: " a better name for Fascism would be Corporatism". That is what has destroyed Greece. Corporatism in its most rapacious form.
I told my friend the following:
"25% of Greeks now live below the poverty line due to previous measures taken to pay of the banking cartel. Follow the examples of Iceland and Argentina and tell the bankers to pound sand. Capitalist vultures are waiting to buy up your country at close-out prices, in cahoots with your politicians and rich elite. Who refuse to pay taxes as the middle class do. Your corrupt companies, allied with foreign banks, have brought you to this. The billions spent on the owelympics franchise was the straw that broke your back. Odious debt incurred by the corrupt does not need to be repaid by the citizens. Default, Greece, and help bring down the corporate gangsters that are the root of this. And then reform your government and your business and tax laws".
