(an old jetty at Perama)
I am proud of most of the Greeks.
Proud, because they are the first Europeans who have chosen change: they voted
for Alexis Tsipras, who tries as long as he can not to
bend his head to the European dictatorship and to the banks. He also dared to
install a flamboyant minister of Economic Affairs: Yanis Varoufakis, who made a show, not only with his unorthodox style of clothing and
behaviour, but also with his ideas about economics.
I am not a journalist, nor a
scientist, a politician and not at all an economist. Nowadays when reading
about banking business you need to have some knowledge of all those complicated
processes, otherwise you cannot understand it. It is no wonder that most of the
people have no idea how we landed in a crisis and for that reason believe
without questioning everybody who seems to know, like the media.
According to Yanis Varoufakis (not
only a minister but also a professor in economics) economy is no exact science
but a philosophy. He explains that in a little book addressed to his daughter
and for nitwits like me: Μιλώντας στην κόρη μου για την οικονομία (The book was recently published in Dutch: De economie zoals uitgelegd aan zijn dochter). After reading it, my thoughts were
confirmed: the banks are the biggest criminals of our time and politicians have
forgotten that one of the roles of a government is to protect the money of the
people.
The text is clear and describes how
we ended up in today's predatory economy, where banks and big industrials make
bigger and bigger profits at the expenses of the people who become more and
more poor. Varoufakis explains the complicated matters with examples from the
history of England, like the introduction of sheep rearing which made the
farmworkers lose their jobs and thus caused the first huge changes, and later
on the industrial revolution. He even speaks about movies like The Matrix, Blade Runner and Star Trek, to make everything more explicit.
The beautiful novel Harvest from the English writer Jim Crace just received
the prestigious prize of IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award. It tells about the extinction of a village of farmworkers, because
wool will bring more money.
I am not sure if here on Lesvos many
farmworkers lost their jobs when sheep were on the rise in the Lesvorian
landscape. It is a fact that the island used to produce far more agrarian
products like tobacco, cotton, pulses, wheat and grapes (Lesvos once was famous
for its wines). Sheep and goats still dominate the meadows and mountain slopes,
but are no longer kept for their wool (that is now disposed of in deserted
places), but rather their milk is used to make cheese.
The industrial revolution on Lesvos
was marked by the introduction of steam presses that streamlined the production
of olive oil and by steamships that speeded and cheapened transportation. And
so around 1900 Lesvos was a pretty prosperous island, also having at the Gulf
of Yera the biggest tanneries of the region. The now dilapidated buildings (eg.
in Perama) still are an impressive sight.
After centuries of Ottoman rule in
1922 Lesvos returned to being Greek, but that destroyed the industry. This had
nothing to do with economics, but with politics. Some agrarian activity like
tobacco and resin remained, but olive oil and cheese became then
the main export products, with ouzo in third place as an export
After the Second World War the
western countries of Europe developed quickly. Not Greece however. This country
first had to face a civil war and later the colonels took power. Not really a
climate for investment. The colonels lost power in 1974 and left Greece as an
impoverished country.
For Greece joining Europe meant
hope, and when they did, Europe offered so many cheap loans, that for a moment
the Greeks felt like living in paradise. We now know what an enormous price the
country now has to pay for it, because even not half a century after the Greeks
finally gained their freedom, the country again is on the brink of a steep
abyss.
And maybe this is also true for the
whole of Europe, which now shows more and more signs of failure: daily it becomes
more clear that politicians act according to what the big industrials and banks
want. For instance permission has just been given to the big dangerous wolf Monsanto to operate in Europe. This industrial giant,
famous for its chemical pesticides and Agent Orange, buys patents of vegetables (and tries to take over the wine industry
in France).
After Monsanto gets what it wants,
in a few years you can forget about your choriatiki (Greek salad) because you will only
get Monsato salads. They will have patented all the tomatoes and paprika. On
Lesvos most people have a little vegetable garden where they grow their own
food and in many restaurants you also get those homegrown vegetables. Most of
the tourists love Greek tomatoes, because in the summer months they get so much
sunlight. But if Monsanto will rule the markets, we will be left with only
manipulated tomatoes who will taste the same in the whole of Europe and who
knows, it might even become forbidden to grow other vegetables and even eat
other than those of Monsanto.
When you see how Europe holds a
knife to the throat of one of his members, how it tries to discharge the
problem of refugees to three of its members and do nothing to reform the
banking system, it is clear: Europe has failed. No politician ever learned a
lesson from how Iceland dealed with its bankruptcy, no leader of government seems to
think that refugees also may contribute to a solution of the European crisis and nobody
dares to stop the money makers. In my eyes west-Europeans look more and more
like the machines in The Matrix, like Varoufakis mentioned in his book: they
obediently agree with all new laws, just squirm a bit, but nobody dares to take
action.
That is why it is good that -
whatever happens next - Greece opposed Europe and its money wolfs. The New
Europe - just like democracy - will be born in Greece. And when you want to
learn more about our turbulent world, Yanis Varoufakis’ ideas are a real must for a first
economy lesson.
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
© Smitaki 2015
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