From our roving correspondent, reporting from Athens, Greece

“…Greeks choose poverty, let them have their way,” said the Financial Times two days ago, with admirably Scrooge-like indifference to human suffering and a willingness to reverse truth in pursuit of propaganda that would have made Josef Goebbels proud. Maybe the author, Francesco Giavazzi should take a stroll around the streets of Athens…

While the population of the EU North and West is being coached by its mass media to adopt an even-greater insensitivity to the plight of the Greek electorate and its overseas, migrant guests, in Athens itself, the sight of refugees from the Middle East camping in the open in the city’s public squares has become a regular feature of the urban environment.

Last Sunday’s Flemish-language Standard assured its readers in Belgium that, with Tsipras’ announcement on Friday that Greece was seriously considering the possibility of joining the BRICS — a move which should surely be within its right as a sovereign nation and fully compatible with its member-standing in the EU — Greece “has lost its last friends in Europe.”

For those closer to the ground than the writers and editors of the Belgian Standard, however, Europe’s de facto abandonment of Greece has been obvious for years now.

We’re talking about the years in the second decade of the 21st century during which it became possible to see a 17-year-old Greek boy die of malnutrition, collapsing in the middle of Athens as happened in November 2013, or witness an impoverished Greek pensioner, a man in his mid-to-late 70s, reduced this June to selling his last prize possession — a violin, offered for a mere 80 euros out on the street — to buy the groceries for this week, and maybe the next.

Given such realities, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Greece has not had any real friends in the EU for quite some time now.

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