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Words from Athens
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Pedro Olalla. Athens, October 5th 2011
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Greetings to all.
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I want to record a few words for all who hear me from Spain or from elsewhere,
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urgent words addressed to my friends from Athens, an Athens more and more wound.
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I want to inform you of a situation that concerns us all and, due to its severity,
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is achieving that lately any other issue that we deal with might almost seem frivolous.
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I also want to ask you for something, something important,
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but I'll leave that for the end, because I trust that you will not mind waiting five minutes.
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In recent times, the political and media discourse in Spain and other European countries
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has been to say, in a tone of relief, that "we are not Greece,"
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that our income statements are better, and that the Greeks actually deserve what is now happening to them,
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for being lazy and unruly and prone to strikes and demonstrations.
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Hopefully, now that the tide is coming to Spain and elsewhere,
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that there too salaries, pensions, rights and benefits are beginning to being cut,
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the Spanish and Europeans will weigh up their opinion on Greece better
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and become aware of the true nature of the situation that threatens us all and its true range.
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What is happening?
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In historical terms, what is happening is that those who control financial power in the world
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are taking possession of the political power through the creation and exploitation of the debt.
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And they are doing this with the connivance of our government and before the inability of an organized response of the citizens.
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So the problem of Greece is not a problem of local character, it is the visible face in Europe of a tragedy that affects us all:
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the progressive dismantling of the state and democracy by the agents of economic globalization.
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What is happening is very serious, because when the economic and financial forces have completely conquered the political power,
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politics as an exercise of sovereignty will disappear, democracy will only be a grotesque chimera,
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and independently of whoever might govern, we will all be slaves of a handful of magnates of money.
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To resist as citizens against this process is the deeper meaning of all the mobilizations which,
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the past one and a half year now, occupy most Greeks every single day.
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The people of Greece are willing to make sacrifices, and many,
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but they are slowly realizing that all the sacrifices that are demanded and imposed upon them
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are not intended to stop a perverse system, but to feed and perpetuate it.
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Why?
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Because the "rescue plan" organized by the hard core of the EU and the IMF imposed on us as the only and desperate solution to bankruptcy
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is a plan designed to safeguard the benefit of speculators, to minimize their risks and to open them the way to appropriate national wealth.
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It is not at all a plan to alleviate the situation of the country, or to generate development, or to redistribute wealth more fairly to all;
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quite the contrary, it is a plan to unfairly keep the wealth of all people increasingly flowing toward less hands.
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Let's be clear: what is presented as "crisis" is actually an organized economic attack,
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and what is presented as "debt" is a carefully designed product as a weapon of submission
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which gives continuity to colonialism and perpetuates the same violence.
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We owe one of every five dollars of world debt to the IMF and the World Bank.
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For those who have notions of contemporary history, the practices of these institutions are very well known in the countries where they have operated so far.
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If not, they should ask Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb countries in Southeast Asia
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or all of the so-called Third World, which, in the recent decades, live bleeding by a growing process of accumulation of debt,
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while paying back seven times what they receive in alleged development aid to the First World.
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These institutions act as financial intermediaries and, through their loans, offer greater payment guarantees to investors from the countries in which they invest.
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The purpose of the "investors", as it is known, is to encash money,
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but as private investors they have no guarantee that the countries which they invest in will produce the expected benefits and that the encashment will occur:
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they are subject to the risk of the bet, and their right to collect is limited to only a portion of the benefits, never a part of the heritage of the country in which they invest.
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So, in order to collect with guarantees, their goal is to bring a collection agent capable of transforming private speculation in government debt into the country.
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And that is what the International Monetary Fund has been doing since its creation.
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But in order to achieve this, one must get the connivance of certain politicians. And this is what they have achieved in Greece.
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Now, thanks to the IMF’s "converter effect" Greece no longer owes money to private speculators but to other states, making a non-payment more complicated.
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And now, one has to answer for this dubious debt with the taxpayers’ sweat and –what is even more attractive to investors-
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with national wealth which the government has seen to compromise as a guarantee beyond the inalienable bounds in the recently signed protocols’ text.
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Let's see: Is Greece the most indebted country in Europe or the world, like some try to make us believe for some time now?
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Of course not.
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In "External Debt in millions of dollars" it is ranked 18, in "Foreign Debt to GDP ratio" it is ranked 9
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and "Debt per capita" it is ranked 15, well behind France, Germany, England and Switzerland, even well distanced from Spain.
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Nor is Greece ranked first in terms of private debt and public spending or in terms of number of staff.
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But yes, it is the country with the highest rate of consumer prices in articles of basic necessity,
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and most of the Greeks have long been turning to family, moonlight jobs and precarious work to last through the month.
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What then is this debt?
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The debt, on behalf of which Greece is being forced to raise the highest loan in the history of mankind,
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consists in 90% of government bonds.
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And government bonds are not exactly "debt": they are "investment mechanisms",
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freely negotiable in market values, bets with money that can be won or lost.
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And this makes a big difference.
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Today, the capital which is moving in the loan market worldwide is 1,000 trillion (GB billion) dollars,
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while the worlds' annual production is only 57.
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The cause of the worlds "indebtedness" is rooted in this abysmal difference;
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it does not rely in the actual deficit, but in the "need" that just 1600 big investors have of "exploiting" this capital.
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In recent decades, economically speaking, we have constructed a world that is not only unjust but absurd.
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And yet, it seems we have to do everything possible to not let it break down!
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So, without going any further, just two years ago,
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Greece bailed out the banks with 70,000 million of taxpayer’s Euros, saying in order "to avoid major disasters".
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And now we have to rescue the financial sector, again with the taxpayer’s money.
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Meanwhile -attention- 50% of the money that moves in the world,
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does so through offshore companies set up in tax havens to avoid taxes and to maintain their owner’s total anonymity.
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Only in Greece more than 4,000 off-shores are operating,
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and in the last ten years more than a million of these companies invented by Anglo-Saxon speculators have been founded in the world.
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Nowadays coups are done by financiers.
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The Greek people –following the dictates of the European Commission, the Central Bank and the IMF–
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has to suffer tax raises, wage cuts, it is expelled from work, it is snatched health and social gains,
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it is imposed privatization of its state enterprises, it is forced to be put its country's national wealth in the hands of foreign investors,
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it is forced to buy weapons to its creditors and on top of that it is forced to pay "solidarity fees".
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Meanwhile, banks are subsidized and not even the imposition of a minimum rate of 0.1% on international financial transactions is considered,
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with which more than 600,000 million euros could be raised annually -more than the alleged Greek debt-
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without touching the taxpayers’ pockets or the hunger of the poor.
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But this is not done, it must be immoral..
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While the world works that way, neither politicians nor financiers have the moral authority to impose the sacrifices they want.
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And what could be done?, you will ask me.
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What is not done?
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First of all, what is now called the European citizenship (if it even exists), in Greece, Spain and all European countries,
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has to form a common front against the abuse,
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it has to demand from governments to stop the speculators or go home,
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obliging investors to take the "risk" of their rather devious operations instead of coming to their rescue with public money in order to make them always end up winning,
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they should, in short, rule for the people who entrusted them with the power and not for their own interests.
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In the case of Greece, European citizenship should support it to refuse the recognition of that "debt".
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Any plan for renegotiating the debt will be to end up in bankruptcy and subject to the conditions of the lenders.
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Everyone, not just Greece.
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The path of debt is a bottomless pit, as history has shown repeatedly.
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So, we must demand that the current political practice changes.
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We must immediately stop paying the "debt".
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We must clarify the origin and nature of this "debt",
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see if there are guilty of crime among those responsible for the borrowing
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and determine precisely how much of this hefty amount is but an "odious debt"
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-contracted against the interests of the population of a country with full knowledge of the creditor-
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according to the concept the U.S. coined in their own benefit, after the war with Spain for the independence of Cuba.
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And once all this is cleared up and the guilty are punished,
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decisions will be made with serenity and justice on which loans, which sales or what new measures will have to deal with the legitimate debt:
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the real deficit of the country in the last decade is only 4% of this supposed "debt".
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One such measure, for example, could be to claim decisively the war reparations that Germany was ordered to pay to Greece after the end of World War II,
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which, despite the military occupation, the massive deportations to the extermination camps and over a million of dead, have not been met.
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Other measures, cheaper and less "historic"
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would be to begin with to prohibit the operation of off-shore companies on Greek soil,
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blocking its assets and obligating its anonymous shareholders to identify themselves and pay taxes to unlock their property.
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It is likely that most of them would not even dare to come forward.
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Also one should demand the banks returned their rescues, impose taxes on international financial transactions,
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fair rates on the shameful deposits in Switzerland and other tax havens ...
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A series of tax measures to avoid the real fraud that is occurring across the banking, stock exchanges and the off-shores.
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And beside all this, one would have to rethink one's relationship with the European Union with one currency, the euro,
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designed with neoliberal criteria for the priority convenience of Germany and some other partners.
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If we do not acknowledge the debt, we will be kicked out of the markets for a while, boycotted as far as possible,
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but we will also save money from the speculation on bonds and save much of the national wealth which is going to large investor groups.
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Only the interests on the bonds for the current year are 16,000 million,
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the same amount which is dedicated to education and health in Greece!
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If we do not acknowledge the debt, instead of feeding the speculation, we can address the deficit,
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we will be able to support the country's real economy, relieve the pressure on citizens, revitalize trade and promote savings.
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And above all, our sacrifices -which itself will be many- will really serve to overthrow an unjust system and build a better one.
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And now, coming at the end of these words from Athens, is when I want to ask of you something important.
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Before the abuses of economic globalization, help to globalize the resistance.
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European society is fast asleep and accommodated in the political management of their poor democracies;
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and yet urgently it needs to be progressive in their beliefs and react decisively before the new coup.
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Effectively combat injustice and ignorance, rather than conceal or promote them according to dark interests.
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And this must be done for the good of all,
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because those who enjoy more than others freedom, welfare and culture, we have this moral debt to the rest of humanity.
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Yes, I acknowledge that I am "anti-system",
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because I do not understand how in a world where fifty companies accumulate more wealth than a hundred countries, someone who believes in solidarity can still be "pro-system".
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I think in the times we live in, our "system" needs dissidents more than ever.
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People willing to think high, to feel deeply and speak out.
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Best wishes from Greece!
Virtual fishes
