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Life in a Modern-day Debt Colony: The Truth about Greece

by Michael Nevradakis, via 99GetSmart

In May, likely for the first time in the post-war history of the Western world, a national parliament willingly ceded what remained of its country’s sovereignty, essentially voting itself obsolete.  This development, however, did not make headlines in the global news cycle and was also ignored by most of the purportedly “leftist” media.
The country in question is Greece, where a 7,500-page omnibus bill was just passed, without any parliamentary debate, transferring control over all of the country’s public assets to a fund controlled by the European Stability Mechanism, for the next 99 years.  This includes all public infrastructure, harbors, airports, public beaches, and natural resources, all passed to the control of the ESM, a non-democratic, supranational body which answers to no parliamentary or elected body.  Within this same bill, the “Greek” parliament also rendered itself voteless: the legislation annuls the role of the parliament to create a national budget or to pass tax legislation.  These decisions will now be made automatically, at the behest of the European Union: if fiscal targets set by the EU, the IMF, and the ESM are not met, automatic “cuts” will be activated, without any parliamentary debate, which could slash anything from social spending, to salaries and pensions.  In earlier legislation, the Greek parliament agreed to submit all pending bills to the “troika” for approval.  For historical precedent, one needs to look no further than the “Enabling Act” passed by the Reichstag in 1933, where the German parliament voted away its right to exercise legislative power, transferring absolute power to govern and to pass laws, including unconstitutional laws, to Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
The Greek omnibus bill was preceded by another piece of legislation, “reforming” Greece’s pension system through the enactment of further cuts to pensions, while increasing taxes almost entirely across the board.  Despite government lies to the contrary, these cuts are regressive and will disproportionately impact the poorer strata of society: the basic pension has been cut to 345 euro per month, supplementary pensions to poor individuals have been eliminated, the value-added tax on many basic goods has been raised to 24%, the number of households which qualify for heating oil subsidies has been slashed in half while taxes on oil and fuel have again been increased, co-pays on prescription drugs covered by public health insurance have been hiked by 25%, employees’ contributions to the social security fund have been raised (effectively lowering salaries), special taxes have been introduced on coffee and alcoholic beverages, while Greece’s suffering small businesses have been saddled with an increase in their tax rate from 26% to 29%.
In addition to the aforementioned pieces of legislation, the Greek government, in effect, ceded its national sovereignty earlier in the year when, as part of the EU-Turkey deal on the refugee and migrant crisis, Greece unconditionally accepted the presence of NATO warships and Turkish military and police personnel in the Aegean region, while the “patriotic” defense minister of Greece, Panos Kammenos, has publicly proposed the construction of a new NATO base on the island of Karpathos.
While Greece has made global headlines in recent years, the media have remained silent on this latest neoliberal attack on the country’s economy and on Greece’s already suffering businesses and households.  But it has not just been the mainstream media which has been quiet.  Supposedly “leftist” media outlets such as Democracy Now! have “forgotten” about Greece ever since SYRIZA’s betrayal of the July 5th, 2015 referendum result, where an overwhelming majority (62%) of voters rejected further austerity.  “Leftist” intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein have also remained silent.  These “left-wing” outlets and intellectuals had all, at one time, openly supported SYRIZA—even while the signs were there that SYRIZA was not what it claimed to be.   Today, these outlets and these intellectual figures refuse to admit that they were wrong or to openly denounce SYRIZA’s betrayal, while also not providing any support to other, true anti-austerity movements in Greece.
Of course, even when Greece was in the news, the truth regarding what was really happening in the country was obscured behind the international media’s overwhelming pro-EU, pro-austerity bias, which masqueraded as “objective” reporting. This is equally true of Greece’s oligarch-controlled media outlets. Let’s examine what they have been hiding.
The economic crisis in Greece has typically been blamed on “lazy” and “unproductive” Greeks who supposedly refused to work, even at their cushy government jobs, retired at age 30, and who lived beyond their means, vacationing in the Greek isles and spending the money of hard-working Europeans to live the high life.  “Reality” television programs such as “Go Greek for a Week,” broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4, perpetuated this blatant stereotyping, as did the Greek media back at home.  Even the supposedly brilliant anti-austerity “crusader” Yanis Varoufakis repeated the mythology that “hard-working” Germans and other Europeans are now paying to support Greece.  The reality, however, is harshly different.  Greece is not receiving “free money” from Europe or the troika.  It is receiving loans—to repay previous debt—loans which are accompanied by high interest rates and onerous strings attached, such as the aforementioned measures recently passed by the Greek parliament.  Greece’s debt as a percentage of GDP was 124% prior to receiving its first “bailout” in 2010. Six years later and after repeatedly being “saved,” this figure is approaching 200%.
What has gone unsaid by both the Greek and international media are the true origins and contributors to the Greek crisis. These factors include the manipulation, by Goldman Sachs, of Greece’s debt and deficit figures through a series of swaps and derivatives, hiding the true figures in circumvention of EU Maastricht criteria for admission into the Eurozone, for a tidy profit.  Indeed, a piece of often-repeated mythology was that Greece was the only country which misbehaved by “lying” to enter the Eurozone.  In fact, Goldman Sachs as well as J.P. Morgan and other major banks, helped Italy and other countries “lie” as well, while the role of swaps and derivatives in bringing about the global financial meltdown of 2007-2008 is well known.
Manipulation took place in Greece too, at the behest of international lenders.  Greece’s statistical authority, ELSTAT, led by former IMF official Andreas Georgiou, is said to have manipulated Greek deficit figures in 2009 to seem worse than they were in reality, with the goal of providing the political impetus necessary to bring in the IMF and other “saviors” to “bail out” Greece.  These allegations were so serious, and so effectively substantiated by ELSTAT whistleblowers such as Zoe Georganta, that criminal charges were filed against Georgiou—charges which were quietly dropped by the “leftist” SYRIZA government in 2015.  The ELSTAT scandal has barely been reported upon outside of Greece, if at all, while in Greece today it has essentially been “forgotten.”
Another cause of the crisis is the euro itself.  The euro is a debt instrument, produced by a private bank (the European Central Bank) accountable to no government, and lent to member-states such as Greece. The concept of the European common currency was first proposed by economist Robert Mundell, who is also known as the father of “supply-side” economics, and who, in an interview with Greg Palast, had the following to say about the true objectives of the euro: “It puts monetary policy out of the reach of politicians, and without fiscal policy, the only way nations can compete is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.”  The euro was created to strip fiscal and monetary policy-making ability from national governments, leaving them without the ability to increase stimulus spending or devalue their national currency to regain competitiveness. The only option left is austerity and deregulation.
What has happened in Greece, therefore, is not an accident or a “failure” of the euro.  It was the goal.
Following five years of crisis, SYRIZA was touted, in Greece and abroad, as the “savior.” Sold by the media as a “radical leftist” and “anti-austerity” party, SYRIZA’s pre-election promises included “tearing up” the memorandum agreements and rescinding all of the austerity legislation with “one law and one article.”  Millions in Greece and globally were duped—yet, the signs were there: SYRIZA was built upon the ashes of the corrupt PASOK dynasty in Greece, with a dozen of SYRIZA’s initial government ministers (including Yanis Varoufakis) being former PASOK personnel.  Similarly, SYRIZA’s coalition partner-to-be, the “anti-austerity” Independent Greeks, stemmed from the corrupt right-wing New Democracy party.  SYRIZA continuously waffled on taking a firm position regarding remaining in the EU and Eurozone or departing.  And as the January 2015 elections inched closer, SYRIZA continuously diluted its rhetoric.
For those who kept their eyes open, the impending sellout was predictable.  It didn’t take long for the naysayers to be proven correct.  SYRIZA’s first months in office were marked by agreeing to extend the previous austerity measures; nominating and electing a corrupt pro-austerity conservative, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, as president of the Hellenic Republic; seizing the public sector’s cash reserves to repay further installments of debt to the IMF—even though the legality of said debt was supposedly being audited—while Varoufakis and other government ministers repeatedly stated the government’s intentions to fully repay the Greek debt.  Leading up to the referendum of July 5 and the betrayal and third memorandum agreement which followed, SYRIZA itself proposed a 47-page set of harsh austerity measures, cuts, and privatizations, to Greece’s lenders totaling over 8 billion euros.
A dirty secret of Greek electoral politics is that the party which finishes first in the national elections automatically earns a 50-seat parliamentary “bonus.”  This bonus was enough to allow SYRIZA to form a majority coalition government with the Independent Greeks in January 2015—and again in the snap elections in September.  SYRIZA, however, did not have a mandate in either electoral contest, earning 35-36% of the vote in races with record-low turnout.  Essentially, approximately one in five Greeks voted for SYRIZA, hardly a “mandate.”  SYRIZA, as New Democracy and PASOK in recent elections, was helped along by the formation of pro-establishment flank parties, such as “To Potami,” the “Democratic Left,” and the “Centrists’ Union,” parties which absorbed a significant subsection of voters supposedly seeking an alternative to the status quo but which, in reality, were equally pro-austerity, pro-EU, and pro-euro.  Such parties have been created prior to each parliamentary election in recent election, for precisely this reason.
Of course, the Greek and international media will have you believe that Greeks are overwhelmingly pro-euro, gleefully reporting the supposed results of public opinion polls which have claimed that 70-80% of Greeks wish to remain in the euro at all costs. Herein lies another dirty little secret of Greek politics: there are no independent polling firms. Instead, these firms all receive government funding, and all public opinion polls are conducted on behalf of major media outlets, all of which are politically aligned and most of which are oligarch-owned. Results are, predictably, tailored to the desires of these outlets and their owners—but are unquestioningly repeated by the international media and their Greece-based correspondents.  What haven’t they reported?  The results of the annual Gallup International poll, for instance, conducted in several European countries including Greece, which found majorities in Greece in favor of departing the Eurozone in both 2014 and 2015.  This poll, conducted across Europe and by a non-Greek firm, is far less likely to be politically tainted.
It is nevertheless true, of course, that there is a strong pro-European sentiment in Greece.  This mentality is deeply rooted in the country’s modern history.  Following independence, the “great powers” promptly installed foreign monarchs at Greece’s helm. For most of the 19th and early 20th century Greece was a Bavarian and British protectorate.  Following the Greek Civil War, itself prodded by the British, Greece became an American protectorate, capped off by the U.S.-supported military junta of 1967-1974.  Following the fall of the junta, a conservative government laid the groundwork for Greece to cede its sovereignty, as the country joined the EU in 1981 and the Eurozone in 2002.  Greece has never been an independent, fully sovereign state, and this reality has created a colonial mindset and fierce divisiveness in the Greek psyche: a division between those who were “leftist” versus those who were “fascist,” and a division between those who believe Greece should be aligned with the West, and those who wish to align with Russia. Those in favor of true independence and non-alignment are few and far between, while the crisis has brought back to the fore the old societal divisions.
European Union membership has often been credited with Greece’s economic growth in the period between 1981-2009.  What is less often said is that this period coincided with a tremendous growth in unemployment in Greece, a wholesale attack on Greece’s industrial base as Greek industries were shuttered or swallowed up by multinationals, while Greek agriculture was decimated by the EU’s “Common Agricultural Policy,” which dictated to farmers what to grow, what not to grow, and what Greece could or could not export.  Greece’s self-sustainability in many sectors of food production was decimated, leading to an increasing reliance on imports (helped along by strong marketing of the “European way of life” and desire for “foreign” products).  EU funds for major public works projects usually made their way back to European banks and firms such as Siemens, which landed the major contracts to construct these projects, while Greek taxpayers were saddled with the bill.
Nevertheless, the Greek people voted overwhelmingly to reject the austerity proposals in last July’s referendum.  But what exactly was the referendum asking?  The question on the ballot was purposely convoluted, while the SYRIZA-led government did not present its planned course of action if the “no” vote prevailed.  This should have been a warning.  Tsipras, as well as Varoufakis, could barely conceal their disappointment that “no” prevailed—and so overwhelmingly—and neither could the media and the polling firms, which predicted that “no” and “yes” were running neck-and-neck, just as their electoral exit polls dating back to 2010, have been woefully inaccurate and always in a pro-austerity direction.  The lead-up to the referendum also saw a tremendous wave of “solidarity” throughout Europe and the West—with activists purportedly supporting the Greek people and, somehow, supplied with SYRIZA flags, which I am sure one can’t just easily purchase in a shop in London or New York City.  Oddly enough, following the betrayal, this “solidarity” movement dissipated.
The “protest” movement in Greece is not much better.  While a general perception exists across the world that Greeks have not been afraid to “riot” and to strike for their rights, the reality is far more mundane, unfortunately.  Complacency, apathy, and resignation are the name of the game in Greece.  Every so often when a protest is organized, the same old stale, ineffective recipes are followed: gather in Syntagma Square, stand around in front of Parliament with the same old banners, wait for the “rioters” to appear and the tear gas to start flying, and then retreat.  And just who are these “rioters”?  The media calls them anarchists—but a plethora of documentary evidence suggests that these are provocateurs, who are working in cahoots with the police and are sent in to orchestrate trouble in otherwise peaceful gatherings, providing the impetus for police to fire tear gas—not at the hoodlums, but at the crowd that had gathered peacefully, thereby breaking up the protest.  Numerous videos and photos have shown these provocateurs mingling with police officers, or smashing shop windows in front of police, unobstructed.  I’ve seen this with my own eyes: hooded men in civilian clothing mingling with police behind the U.S. Embassy in Athens during a protest in 2012.
In the rare event that a demonstration gathers large crowds, as was the case during the protests of the “indignants” in 2011 or the rallies in favor of “no” prior to last July’s referendum, this is invariably because partisan armies have been mobilized to show up en masse.  A dirty secret of the large-scale 2011 protests is that they may well have been staged to serve as a release valve for an increasingly disenchanted populace.  An official now with the Independent Greeks party (which had not yet formed in 2011) claimed in an interview I conducted for my academic research in 2012 that he was behind the original Facebook invitation which led to the beginning of the “indignants” movement in Greece. When asked why the Facebook page was later taken down, his reply was that “it no longer served a purpose.”  Similarly, while large crowds (and celebrity musicians) were mobilized in the days leading up to last year’s referendum, following the referendum and betrayal, the number of protesters in Syntagma Square did not surpass a few hundred.  The partisan armies stayed home.  Similarly, the mobilization of Greek farmers recently was halted once party-affiliated union bosses got involved, sending the farmers back home.
There is also a global perception that Greece is often crippled by strikes and that Greek workers are not afraid to fight for their rights.  Wrong again.  One sees more strike activity in France and even in supposedly “disciplined” Germany—where Lufthansa personnel regularly walk out of their jobs—while in Greece, “general strikes” are in name only.  Most workers don’t participate, and many that do are under the impression that they are “sending a message” by calling for a three or four hour “work stoppage.”  In 2011, in the midst of the indignants’ movement, workers at the Public Power Corporation scheduled “rolling blackouts” to prevent the proposed privatization of the company.  Coincidentally, these blackouts were only implemented in the poor and working-class districts, while the lights stayed on in parliament, central Athens, and the wealthier suburbs.  The same counterproductive, failed strategies are implemented again and again without change—and quite likely on purpose.  In the meantime, SYRIZA not only has not fulfilled its promise to dissolve the violent, out-of-control riot police units, but has instead used them to again attack protesters with tear gas.
Complacency and the lack of critical thought are indeed well-cultivated in Greece.  The education system, which also happens to be highly politicized, strongly favors rote learning.  Schoolteachers routinely underteach pupils in the classroom, obliging parents to pay small fortunes to send their children to after-school “prep centers,” where they end up learning what they were supposed to learn in school.  Having to endure back-to-back schooldays on the same day plus homework for both school and their prep courses, children—particularly those in high school—spend their prime years on top of textbooks without break.  Students are required to choose a course of study at age 14, in preparation for all-or-nothing “national exams” which determine university admission.  The endless hours of schoolwork foster rote memorization and discourage any critical skills or “outside the box” thinking.  Once in university, students are almost obliged to join one of the political blocs which dominate the campuses and which make arrangements for everything from study guides to weekend getaways.  These blocs are all aligned with the major political parties—so that young adults begin a lifetime of partisan dependency.  University faculty, star-struck by EU funds and grants, are almost invariably pro-EU and pro-euro, stifling any healthy political debate on campus.
The education system is not the only societal sector that has been purposely compromised. In Greece’s (in)justice system, even the simplest of legal cases can take a decade or more to resolve—with various shenanigans invariably occurring along the way.  This suits the powers that be quite well.  The endless legal process prices out those who are not wealthy and can’t continuously pay attorneys’ fees.  There is also no constitutional court in Greece, while Greece’s highest court, the Council of State, is infamously deferential to the government—which appoints its members. Indeed, the entire state apparatus, from mandatory military conscription for men with essentially no option for alternative civil service, the patronage system, and the notoriously inefficient bureaucracy—seem to exist less due to some inherent societal flaw, and more by design, as this apparatus suits the interests of the political class and the powerful, discourages critical thought, activism, or the development of a true civil society; and helps encourage the “brain drain”—which is not a product of the crisis but a long-standing phenomenon—therefore opening the way for the well-connected to attain key positions in both the public and private sectors.
Notably though, the aforementioned “brain drain” is a part of the mentality of complacency prevalent in Greece.  With the help of the education system, which for the past three decades has severely diluted the teaching of the Greek language and Greek history while teaching students that they are “European first,” one sees in Greece today an utter lack of respect for the country or for the Greek language.  Everyday parlance is dominated by slang and imported vocabulary, primarily English-language words, a cycle perpetuated and furthered by the media.  Young people, for years now, have been raised essentially with the goal of graduating and obtaining a “good” career abroad.  Continuing family-run businesses or working in agriculture or even shipping, are options that are perpetually snubbed.  There is not even the slightest desire to fight for a better future at  home.
Indeed, this phenomenon extends to all sectors of society. Defeatism and self-loathing abound.  A long-standing mentality in Greece is that the country is the worst in everything, that phenomena ranging from violence at sporting events to political corruption to ordinary cases of official incompetence, are exclusively Greek.  Greeks will readily get into arguments with anyone who says otherwise—passionately arguing against their own country and people even when evidence and lived experiences exist to the contrary.  The aforementioned inferiority complex towards the “civilized” West (as it is often described) further perpetuates this mentality, which essentially becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and which itself contributes to the paralysis, apathy, and sclerosis of Greek society.  No notable civil society exists outside of the political sphere or, more recently, the equally suspect sphere of mostly foreign NGOs which have inundated Greece.  The aforementioned education and legal system, bureaucracy and corruption, are treated as “facts of life” in Greece, with no organized pressures for change.
A major culprit for all of these realities is Greece’s media.  The major newspapers and broadcasters are, without exception, owned by oligarchs and the politically connected. There is almost no independent media in Greece, except for largely invisible websites and blogs.  There is no real public debate to speak of: the entirely of Greece’s media landscape is pro-austerity, pro-EU, pro-euro, and heavily politically aligned, including party-owned broadcast stations and newspapers.  Radio and television stations operate without licenses but within a legal framework that is nevertheless so convoluted and tailored to major interests that no outside players or independent voices can enter the marketplace.  By way of example, radio and television stations that had not initially classified their programming as “news” programming, are prohibited by law from switching classifications and providing news.  This has created a closed broadcast market for news—with all news stations owned by entrenched interests.  There is no provision, in practice, for non-commercial broadcasters.  Existing major media outlets are not profitable, but “earn their keep” by promoting the political and business interests of their owners and by influencing public opinion.
The SYRIZA government, whose pre-election promises included “cleaning up the airwaves” and attacking the oligarchs, has now launched a bid for nationwide television licenses, a bid based on technical lies regarding the number of stations that can broadcast, and a process in which these few licenses will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Not surprisingly, the only candidates for these licenses are the same stations owned by the same oligarchs.  SYRIZA’s own radio station began operations completely illegally, while the then-PASOK government sent riot police to shut down 66 radio stations in Athens in one night, with the excuse that they were causing “interference” but with the true objective of turning over the entire radio landscape to the oligarchs and their friends.  State broadcaster ERT, reopened by SYRIZA last year, has forgotten the activist reporting which it provided following its shutdown by the conservative government in 2013, and now acts as a neutered pro-government, pro-EU mouthpiece, closed off to alternative voices.
It should be mentioned here though that foreign media have not been any more reputable or responsible in their reporting on Greece.  Most English-language news websites from Greece are biased, with the same pro-EU and pro-austerity or globalist/internationalist outlook as the major media. Foreign correspondents operating from Greece are even more passionately pro-EU, pro-euro, and pro-austerity: one such correspondent proudly tweeted his “yes” ballot from last July’s referendum.  Their reporting, while cloaked in supposedly “objective” language, is heavily biased, with references towards “bailouts” and “necessary reforms” creating specific perceptions in readers’ and viewers’ minds, while one newly-launched and supposedly independent English-language news outlet kicked off its operations with a deferential and star-struck interview with celebrity economist and financial fraudster Yanis Varoufakis.  The reporting of these outlets also contains generous helpings of “crisis pornography”—reports which purportedly show the dire impacts of austerity but which instead misreport, misinform, and create the image of a country in such dire circumstances that no one in their right mind would even want to visit, and lest we forget, tourism is one of Greece’s major industries.  Reports on mothers abandoning newborn children or giving birth in the middle of the streets, claims that one million people migrated out of Greece in a single year, and claims that spendthrift Greeks have the highest percentage of Porsche Cayenne ownership in the wrong are all blatant lies, but these lies poison public opinion both in Greece and abroad, and fan the flames of sensationalism.
This sensationalism has, for instance, created the impression that ouzo-swilling Greeks were, for decades, retiring during early adulthood and living beyond their means at the expense of hard-working Europeans.  What is never reported is that Greece has essentially been a debt colony from the early days of its establishment as a modern nation-state.  Debts from the Ottoman Empire continued to be repaid until 1965.  For decades upon decades, Greece was obliged to turn over its tax receipts from goods ranging from salt to tobacco products to matches, to a consortium of “great powers” (Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria, and Russia) to repay debts dating back to the 19th century. Indeed, these same “great powers,” beginning in 1898, established a permanent presence in Athens, overseeing the repayment of the debt, including war reparations to the Ottoman Empire.  In other words, over a century before the Greek “debt crisis” and the arrival of the “troika,” Greece was forced to submit to international economic oversight, with the “great powers” maintaining their physical presence in Greece until 1978, a total of 80 years—for those who believe that Greece ceding control of its public assets for 99 years sounds far-fetched.
Indeed, the relinquishment of public ownership of Greece’s valuable utilities, resources, and assets began long before the current crisis.  Soon after the end of World War II, German firms, through well-connected Greek middlemen, sidestepped sanctions against Germany and obtained control over valuable mining resources in Greece.  In the 1990s, privatizations began in earnest, including the selling of Greece’s national telecommunication provider, OTE, to Deutsche Telecom.  These privatizations, as should be clear by now, did nothing to prevent Greece’s economic crisis and likely contributed to it.  More recently, the SYRIZA government, which prior to its election promised to put an end to privatizations, sold majority stakes in Greece’s largest port, the port of Piraeus, and 14 profitable regional airports, to Chinese-owned Cosco and German-owned Fraport, respectively.  The port of Piraeus was sold for a mere 365 million euros—which amounts to 15 days’ worth of Greek debt repayments—even though its facilities alone are valued at over 5 billion euros, while the agreement with Fraport states that the Greek state is still responsible for paying for all technical upgrades at the 14 airports that were privatized, for the next 40 years.  In the meantime, Chinese-owned Cosco, which had already purchased the Piraeus container port in a previous privatization, has imported Chinese-style working conditions to Greece, as workers are not even permitted bathroom breaks while on the job.
Of course, we are supposed to believe that the Greek people had it coming, because they were living beyond their means.  Greece’s very high rate of home ownership has often been cited as an example of this.  The reality, though, is that traditionally, land ownership has been highly valued in Greece, with homes and property passed from generation to generation.  Until recently, with the introduction of the euro, Greeks did not believe in loans or credit.  Even today, in the midst of the crisis, per capita private debt in Greece is among the lowest in Europe.  This is the opposite of “living beyond one’s means.”  And now, the Greek people are being punished for being prudent with their finances.
We are also told that Greeks didn’t pay taxes, ignoring the fact that just as in other countries, salaried workers in Greece are taxed at the source, while an absurdly high value-added tax, which is now as high on 24% even on basic goods such as orange juice, is included in the retail purchase price.  Those who evaded taxes in Greece are the same as those who typically evade taxes elsewhere: the rich and the well-connected, those with the means to operate offshore shell corporations in tax havens or to maintain Swiss bank accounts. Many of these individuals were named in the so-called “Lagarde List” of tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts, but the SYRIZA government has not prosecuted any of the individuals on the list.
But Greeks retired at age 30 and sat around in cafes and at the beach all day, right?  Wrong.  Public employees, particularly those on older contracts, were able to retire after 25 or 30 years of employment—similarly to other countries.  With many of these employees having entered the workforce after high school, it makes sense that there would be retirees in their 50s, just as police officers, union employees and other public servants in countries like the United States were also, for a long time, able to retire after 25 or 30 years of service.  Are Americans lazy too?  How about the Germans or the British or the Swedes, whose social welfare policies have always been far more generous than those of Greece?
In the meantime, the Greek people are saddled with further insane tax increases, including a hike in the unified property tax (ENFIA), which was initially sold as a “temporary” tax and which SYRIZA promised to abolish. Instead of abolishing it, SYRIZA has made this tax permanent—and increased it.  Beginning June 1, banks will be allowed to seize foreclosed homes and properties electronically, without a physical court hearing, essentially putting an end to a very effective grassroots campaign at courthouses across Greece to block these foreclosures.  In the wintertime, Athens are other cities are blanketed by a noxious, unhealthy smog resulting from makeshift fireplaces lit by households unable to afford the absurdly high taxes on heating oil.  Schoolchildren are suffering from malnutrition in record numbers.  University restrooms lack even toilet paper.  And in return, the Greek people are constantly told by the government, by all of the main opposition parties, by the media, and by Greece’s so-called European partners, that “growth” and “development” are coming.
The Greek people have also been told that they are racist and xenophobic due to their handling of the refugee and migrant crisis.  However, it is these claims which are racist—and not the majority of the Greek people.  The “concerned” global media typically fail to report the tremendous amount of care and hospitality ordinary Greek citizens have shown towards the refugees and migrants. They also fail to report that this is not a new or recent phenomenon in Greece: refugees and migrants from war-torn areas in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa have been streaming into Greece for well over a decade, in hopes of reaching northern Europe.  Few media outlets have reported on the realities of the EU’s Dublin 2 Regulation, which has stranded these refugees and migrants in Greece, because the country of entry is the one legally responsible for processing their paperwork—a regulation which disproportionately impacts countries like Greece.  And all of this during a time of tremendous financial and societal strain.  While ordinary Greek people commiserate with the plight of the refugees and migrants, as Greece is a country that is no stranger to either, there are legitimate worries about Greece’s ability to absorb tens of thousands of refugees and migrants at a time of economic turmoil and high unemployment.  This is interpreted by the “concerned” global media as racism, as is the emergence of the far-right Golden Dawn party, whose electoral share, however, is far less than far-right and xenophobic parties in such “civilized” countries as Austria, France, Germany, and Denmark.
In the face of this reality, the global media and many in Greece continue to treat the “leftist” SYRIZA government as the savior, excusing way the new austerity agreements and the wholesale sell-off of the country as the cost of being “bailed out” and “remaining in Europe,” perpetuating the claim that Greece “has no other choice.”  SYRIZA is doing its part, doing anything it can to gain votes using the time-honored tradition of patronage: legalizing fraudulent degrees, legalizing participation in offshore corporations, and proceeding with patronage hires and outright nepotism at all levels of government and the public sector—including the hiring of dozens of relatives and spouses of government ministers.  As SYRIZA does this, it sticks its middle finger at the populace.  Constitutional scholar Giorgos Katrougalos, who once participated in the major protests in Syntagma Square but who now sends the riot police to tear gas protesters, cynically remarked in response to the new coffee tax that Greeks can go without coffee.  SYRIZA’s member of the European parliament Kostas Hrisogonos arrogantly stated that if authorities raided Greek households, they could find another 45-50 billion euros’ worth of undeclared income.  This rhetoric does not seem very “leftist.”
So who are the saviors then? Certainly not the Popular Unity party, consisting of former SYRIZA and PASOK retreads, such as the energy minister of the first SYRIZA government, Panagiotis Lafazanis, who failed to fulfill SYRIZA’s promise to put an end to the environmentally destructive mining activities in Skouries, in Northern Greece, during his tenure, and economist Costas Lapavitsas, who prior to his election as a SYRIZA MP touted his so-called “radical economic proposal” but who ended up defending SYRIZA’s economic policies as a form of “moderate Keynesianism.”  The Communist Party of Greece bashes imperialism, but in the same breath tells the Greek people that Greece is not ready to leave the Eurozone or EU at this time.  Celebrity economist Yanis Varoufakis, with his new pan-European movement supposedly in favor of restoring democracy, is another fraud.  His actions as Greece’s finance minister included the acceptance of all previous austerity agreements, a comprehensive proposal for more austerity, a refusal to even entertain the possibility of a Eurozone exit, the full repayment of Greece’s debt that was supposedly being audited, the imposition of capital controls which remain in place today, limiting withdrawals to 420 euros per week, and the confiscation of the Greek public sector’s cash reserves, in order to repay the IMF.  Those are not the actions of a supposedly Marxist anti-austerity renegade.  His partner in crime, former parliament speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, also voted in favor of all of the austerity measures SYRIZA passed in its first months in office, refused to shut down debate in parliament while these measures—including the betrayal of the July 5 referendum result—were being discussed, and who after the betrayal repeatedly stated her “support” of the SYRIZA government.  The reason Varoufakis and Konstantopoulou left SYRIZA has nothing to do with principle, and everything to do with political opportunism, and the fact that Alexis Tsipras stated his intention not to include them on the ballot for the September snap elections.  They are political opportunists and frauds of the highest order.
This is the truth about Greece. There is no European dream—but instead a European nightmare.  There is no recovery.  Greece is not an independent or sovereign country, but a debt colony of the West—a reality which much of the third world is already quite familiar with, and which is very much in the process of being imported to the “first world” as well.


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Klaus Kastner (@kleingut)
Klaus Kastner (@kleingut)
Sep 21, 2016 10:29 AM

There are interesting examples of surprising self-diagnosis in the article. Perhaps they have something to do with the current state of affairs in Greece.
„Complacency, apathy, and resignation are the name of the game in Greece.“
„Complacency and the lack of critical thought are indeed well-cultivated in Greece.“
„Schoolteachers routinely underteach pupils in the classroom.“
„The endless hours of schoolwork foster rote memorization and discourage any critical skills or “outside the box” thinking.“
„Once in university, students are almost obliged to join one of the political blocs which dominate the campuses and which make arrangements for everything from study guides to weekend getaways. These blocs are all aligned with the major political parties—so that young adults begin a lifetime of partisan dependency.“
„In Greece’s (in)justice system, even the simplest of legal cases can take a decade or more to resolve—with various shenanigans invariably occurring along the way.“
„There is also no constitutional court in Greece, while Greece’s highest court, the Council of State, is infamously deferential to the government—which appoints its members.“
„Indeed, the entire state apparatus, from mandatory military conscription for men with essentially no option for alternative civil service, the patronage system, and the notoriously inefficient bureaucracy—seem to exist less due to some inherent societal flaw, and more by design, as this apparatus suits the interests of the political class and the powerful, discourages critical thought, activism, or the development of a true civil society; and helps encourage the “brain drain”—which is not a product of the crisis but a long-standing phenomenon—therefore opening the way for the well-connected to attain key positions in both the public and private sectors.“
„Notably though, the aforementioned “brain drain” is a part of the mentality of complacency prevalent in Greece.“
„There is not even the slightest desire to fight for a better future at home.“
„A long-standing mentality in Greece is that the country is the worst in everything, that phenomena ranging from violence at sporting events to political corruption to ordinary cases of official incompetence, are exclusively Greek.“
„There is almost no independent media in Greece, except for largely invisible websites and blogs.“

Cat OSullivan
Cat OSullivan
Jul 1, 2016 8:25 AM

Well researched. An inside look into the plethora of ways a country’s sovereignty is swiped. But for 99 yrs??? The opium wars or I should say the opium that was thrown at the Chinese in Hong Kong 110 yrs ago forced the same 99 yr lease. One can see just for spit the hand over ceremony will be stripped bear with no infrastructure handed back. But this has to be contested in a staged kind of way : any Greek court will do. Would it not be a thrill if enough civilians started to insist on pressing this unlawful taking of assets by the fraudulently valued Greek books through a court process: it would at least cause a stir.
The farce of a monetary system controlled and operated outside any countries jurisdiction for state and federal supply is bad enough but to be privately owned….This is the elephant in the room. Nothing is untainted by this: right down to our personal relationships with each other.

Jen
Jen
Jun 29, 2016 1:16 AM

“… Following independence, the “great powers” promptly installed foreign monarchs at Greece’s helm. For most of the 19th and early 20th century Greece was a Bavarian and British protectorate. Following the Greek Civil War, itself prodded by the British, Greece became an American protectorate, capped off by the U.S.-supported military junta of 1967-1974 …”
I’d just like to mention that sometime in the early 20th century, Italy under Benito Mussolini invaded Greece in 1940 to turn it into a colony. The Greeks fought the Italians and threw them out, at which point Nazi Germany and its allies (Italy, Bulgaria) intervened in 1941, defeated the Greeks and occupied the country until 1944. During the brutal and violent occupation the Germans basically looted Greece and starved its population. Thousands died and the estimate is that 13% of Greece’s population was lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/24456-the-math-of-mass-starvation-and-murder-germany-in-greece-during-world-war-ii
The Greek Civil War that followed liberation was no less brutal in its duration and consequences. Thousands of Greeks who fought for a republican government were forced to flee overseas. This not only created the present-day global Greek diaspora but also encouraged to a strong fascist strain in Greek politics that has probably helped mould the society into what it is today and which Nevradakis decries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

stuartbramhall
stuartbramhall
Jun 28, 2016 10:18 PM

This is why the EU needs to be dismantled. Full stop.

binra
binra
Jun 28, 2016 11:30 PM
Reply to  stuartbramhall

As it is relieved of its disguise will it not lose allegiance and disintegrate of itself?
Of course there are many who WANT the mask of unity and conferring of rights to be true – and see any voice against it as dissonant and ‘anti’ – but if the wolf in sheep’s clothing is indeed a wolf – there is only the question of when the error is recognized – and then of living from integrity despite intent to subvert, undermine or deny communication that restores perspective and indeed sanity.
On that basis I suggest that dis-integrity invites or secretly supports the deceits to thrive at the expense of the whole – for the whole of you is not where hate agenda finds soil in which to hide itself. (Not singling you out personally here!).

Empire Of Stupid
Empire Of Stupid
Jun 28, 2016 6:21 PM

Excellent article and discussion between the author and elenits. Hope they can get together and make something happen.
Greece may not be the most beautiful country in the world, but it’s the most beautiful I’ve ever visited. Wonderful people too, I met hundreds when they were students in the UK during the long night of the Colonels.

bill
bill
Jun 28, 2016 12:02 PM

devastating informative article well worth reading –

headrush69
headrush69
Jun 28, 2016 10:40 AM

Wow!
Will the elitist guardian readers acknowledge this report I wonder? Will they even get to read it?
This is what awaits all the peoples of the EU, maybe not tomorrow but definitely during the first half of this century.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 28, 2016 1:36 PM
Reply to  headrush69

By 2050 the ecological collapse, caused by the same Rightwing psychopaths as are inflicting neo-feudalism on humanity, will have ended all human misery-for good.

binra
binra
Jun 28, 2016 11:48 PM

Curiously this reads as a death wish – which is just another version of psycho-pathy – is it not?
So many humans have been induced to a hatred of humanity instead of addressing the currency of human thinking – much of which is hateful – though framed or presented so as to seem ‘correct’ right or kind and helpful.
Our forebears had a term ‘deceiver’ for thinking that operated an anti-life – but the deceiver shuffles everything around when you are not paying attention and so can pass of its thinking as if it were your own.
I don’t think ‘left or right’ has any relevance to psychopathy. A masked hate that believes its ‘self’ is justified in adopting opportune guises to get what it wants regardless of cost to ‘objects of discardability’ in callous indifference to their pain.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 30, 2016 5:49 AM
Reply to  binra

What I stated is a bitter TRUTH, one that I abhor. And to read it as ‘a wish’, is simply incorrect, and possibly just pathopsychological projection. But then again, now you could say that of this comment.

binra
binra
Jun 30, 2016 9:14 AM

I was not intending blame – but reflection.
The sweet truth is that ideas do not have to be accepted that are not true – even if the mind demands and insists ITS judgement is FINAL!
Heartbreaking experience can set the mind in cynical bitterness – or it can break the grip of mind that was substituting for true feeling while denying conscious access to it. This ‘mind’ acts as a distortion filter – interpreting exclusively in support of a splitting off or capacity to NOT know what thus becomes rejected or denied and unrecognized self. One might say our world experience is cast in and reflecting such unrecognized denials whilst a surface identity engages in power struggle. beneath the displacement attempt is an inner struggle.
I have a real sense of what life can be – and is being – as and when allowed to flower – and I also have a sense of the patterns of conflict that subvert, suppress and deny and honesty of being. Initially I experience these in terms of guilt or blame and of course fear and anger – but if I let my experience stop there – the blame only reinforces the patterns without revealing them as choices in which I participate – and therefore can change for different choices – embodying a current sense of life in me than the inherited conditioning – that may not serve me now so much as keep me in a re-enactment of a past made in anger.
Within the framework of the human conditioning – I see no real Life being lived and shared and only a struggle that uses up and lays waste – and this is easy to see. The ing on the end of condition is critical to my point – for the conditioned live their trained association-response as if it is their hard wired reality and cannot think or imagine beyond it. But we can pause from reactive blame and ‘righteous’ hate long enough to allow a greater perspective to rise of itself BECAUSE we are not setting up an exclusion zone by focusing only in a fixed and exclusive sense of self.
Recognizing the prison is part of accepting freedom – so as I say it – we have to be willing to go INTO the territory of self that we spent our life evading as our prime directive – but within a different context than the thinking and purpose of evasion – which of course feels like survival (and prevailing) of a segregative part of ourself over and against a fear of loss of self.
This pattern plays out in Large and we all carry it. If what I say has true resonance and relevance to opening a fresh perspective on a very old and deeply imprinted conditioning, then the Final Judgement of who and what we in fact are – must wait on a more intimate illumination.

HERSTEL DE REPUBLIEK
HERSTEL DE REPUBLIEK
Jun 28, 2016 7:13 AM

Reblogged this on THE DUTCH RESET and commented:
There is no recovery. Greece is not an independent or sovereign country, but a debt colony of the West—a reality which much of the third world is already quite familiar with….
Tsipras is a traitor and part of the elite, no doubt:
http://www.grreporter.info/en/tsipras_stays_villa_owned_businessman_lagarde_list/13279
Syriza is a Soros vihicle:
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.nl/2015/03/busted-secret-meetings-between-syriza.html
Oxi means YES! We have learned that lesson.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 28, 2016 1:37 PM

Tsipras has also drawn Greece much closer to Israel.

binra
binra
Jun 29, 2016 1:20 PM

The tail that wags the dog?

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 6:14 AM

Devastating and 90% true.
However, there are far more anti-euro, anti-EU and pro-Grexit voters than Nevradakis is aware of. At least 62% as of last summer’s referendum 🙂 And these voters come from across the entire political spectrum, and from all economic sectors.
The one poll question that has never been asked, and assiduously avoided, is how many people are pro-euro and pro-EU.
The problem today is lack of political representation since ALL parliamentary parties are pro-EU, pro-Austerity, pro-euro – except, supposedly, Golden Dawn and KKE [communists] and even their anti-EU stances are shaky, suspect. Talk is not action.
At the same time parliament is now a Punch & Judy show (Karagiozi in Greek), kept in place to maintain a veneer of democracy – remember: the West stands for “Democracy” – but 100% run by Troika: the only legislation that can pass is that dictated by or approved by Troika. Thus MPs are simply well paid Troika collaborators, and getting into parliament one of the very few cushy and well paid jobs in the country.
Furthermore, not mentioned by Mr. Nevradakis, the US has its European navy command base [nuclear] at Souda Bay, Crete. And thanks to SYRIZA’s allowing the US to force a SOFA agreement with Israel on Greece (we are the only 2 countries in the world with a SOFA agreement) the Israelis have constructed an air force base at Kastelli, Crete, with no doubt more to come. This combined Hegemon will not “agree” to Greece’s independence in any way, shape or form. As was proved in the so called civil war, the junta, and since 2008.
The question is: what now? What does the ordinary “anti” Greek do now? I and millions of other Greeks have lived this question since last July 15 when Tsipras & co. betrayed the country. We need a lot more than descriptions of what exists. We have proved we are not afraid to organise ourselves politically, the question is how. Now.
The problem Greece faces, all of EU faces: the EU is a protectorate of the US, a giant version of Puerto Rico. The EU is also militarily occupied not only by US (and now Israeli) bases, but also NATO bases.
Please, let’s discuss the reality.

Michael
Michael
Jun 28, 2016 10:55 AM
Reply to  elenits

Dear Elenitis, I’m the writer of the article. I respectfully disagree with your assertion that “at least 62%” are anti-euro, anti-EU and pro-Grexit, at least as of July 5 of last year, even if I would like very much for that to be true. Reality, however, has demonstrated something completely different. First of all, the referendum question was muddled and unclear, and it was not asking about a Eurozone or EU exit.
At best, it was asking voters to accept or reject an austerity proposal. Combined with a lot of other factors from that time period, it was pretty clear that 1) many who voted “no” were from the partisan armies of SYRIZA and AN.EL., who were at their peak of popularity at that time and who followed what they thought their parties were representing, 2) many voted no to that particular austerity package but wanted “a better deal within Europe”, 3) others voted “no” to any austerity but still voted yes to remaining in the EU or Eurozone or both.
How do we know this? We know this based on the complete and utter lack of reaction that followed the betrayal of the referendum result and the signing of the third memorandum, we know this from the September election (with a very similar participation and abstention rate to the July referendum), and we know this from the inaction and apathy which has followed up until the present day. I’ve heard a number of excuses, that Greeks are “overwhelmed,” “in shock,” “depressed,” “disillusioned” etc., but for me, those are not valid excuses. When you’ve been betrayed, you fight back, especially after so many years of the same. And if not immediately, certainly within the next 12 months you can get yourselves together!
But as I wrote in this piece, there’s no real protest in Greece, certainly very few effective protest strategies (the movement to stop the home foreclosures is a notable exception, which is now being “nipped in the bud”), and I will disagree with you here…I do not see a lot of effective political organizing. Instead, I see “anti-austerity” voters split into different fragments, with some of those fragments following frauds like Varoufakis, Lafazakis, and Konstantopoulou. It should be pretty clear that they are frauds too, their actions when in power speak for themselves–assuming one was paying attention. In my everyday interactions in Greece, believe me, there is still A LOT of pro-EU sentiment and A LOT of fear.
But if people can’t take the time to do their own research and reflection and to look beyond what Skai and Mega and ANT1 and ERT and Real FM tell them, honestly, that’s really their fault. It’s been seven years now, not seven days. I’m sorry to be so dour and negative but I think we have to face reality if we want any hope of changing things, instead of deluding ourselves into thinking that there’s this big silent majority in Greece that, for some odd reason, has chosen to remain silent for so long and which is invisible on the streets and at the ballot box.
(edited to break up text into paragraphs for clarity – ed)

Michael
Michael
Jun 28, 2016 1:41 PM
Reply to  Michael

By the way, if anyone has any doubts as to the pro-EU intention of many “oxi” voters in last year’s referendum in Greece, one needs to look no further than the #ChangeEurope hashtag on Greece. There were many who voted “no to austerity” (or no, in order to get a “better deal”) and “yes to Europe.” https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChangeEurope?src=hash

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 1:44 PM
Reply to  Michael

Michael I appreciate your answer and I disagree. I follow your work and admire it but I disagree in this instance. The country went into shock last July and stayed in shock for at least 8 months. You have to understand: in that one moment we realized that there was no political process anymore that wasn’t cooked, i.e. no democracy; that we were disenfranchised; we had also taken the hard lessons of 7 years of demonstrations peaceful and violent – that they are all infiltrated and controlled. We realized we had become a protectorate and that our democratic hands were cut off at every pass. Even if you voted, what were you voting FOR? Puppet parliamentarians, a parliamentary simulacrum, and collaborationist, bought-and-paid-for “politicians”. Remember the low poll numbers in September? 35% of the country voted – what kind of GREEK election is that?!
I was in Syntagma the night of Tsipras’ surrender. ANTARSYA was there and a few others standing listlessly. The mood was terrible. I knew no one would come: I live nearby and was feeding dogs. I went and spoke with them and went home. Meanwhile 4 blocks away the US embassy staged fake rioting with “mad Greeks” burning cars in Plaka – they turned out to be Bulgarian and German mercenaries bussed in from Kosovo’s Camp Bondsteel. The same with the fake “rage” fires that burned on Immittos (where I helped evacuate 150+ dogs from a Filozoiki with the flames 10 m away) that turned out to be set by….2 Germans. Everyone knew those fires were “BS”, even Kammenos who said as such – because believe me, that was not only NOT the mood of the country but we all know what fires are set for: certainly never, ever as an expression of political rage, we LOVE our country and our nature. But foreigners don’t understand these ‘nuances’, they just go by cliches.
Now our armed forces are stood down too.
One small thing that HAS changed is the police’s relationship to the people – the enmity has gone, they are not raising a finger. And why. Because we agree.
For myself, active politically, an active person, for the people around me we live in a type of suspended animation in a context that still looks the same but is totally different, hollowed out. The break will come, whatever this shall be. At this moment with an undeclared-by-NATO nuclear armada massed in Greek waters and the east Mediterranean, and Nuland directed events in FYROM and Albania it looks like the reason will be war.

Michael
Michael
Jun 28, 2016 1:53 PM
Reply to  elenits

1) The turnout was low but not 3-5%. It was in the low 60% range, similar to the referendum and the January 2015 election.
2) It’s not just due to “shock” (which is inexcusable, no matter what anyone tries to tell me). As I posted above, go check out the #ChangeEurope hashtag on Twitter to see how the “OXI” vote was often accompanied by hopes for a “better Europe” (in the EU and Eurozone), not a Grexit.
3) The first months of the SYRIZA government should already have been enough for the people of Greece, with betrayal after betrayal, from electing Pavlopoulos to extending 100% of the previous austerity agreements to the nomination of Panaritis to the Greek IMF post to the confiscation of public sector cash reserves to pay off the IMF to the 47 page austerity proposal put forth by SYRIZA. Were the Greek people in shock then too? There always seems to be an excuse. And if Greeks finally realized in July that they had been voting for frauds all this time, why did a similar electoral turnout deliver similar results in September?
4) If I go by the riot police at least (since they are usually the ones that have done the “dirty business” for the government in power), nothing’s changed. They were tear gassing the protesters against the new pensions bill in May as per usual. The regular police force, in the fortunately few interactions I’ve had with them, ranges from incompetent to menacing. I’ve never felt they were on the side of the citizen.

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 2:04 PM
Reply to  Michael

Michael if you live here we should meet for coffee – believe me, I’m on your side, brother. And I like your energy. I suspect we also live in different parts of Athens – this makes a difference – and I am reflecting my central Athens Plaka-Pangrati-Kaisarianni-Ilissia ethos. I am ready to roll up my sleeves and I know too many like me.

Jane
Jane
Jun 29, 2016 1:44 PM
Reply to  Michael

Same here in America. There is no real protest of anything. No cohesive voice, just buckshot.
And we can’t say the warnings were not there. Here is an article written almost a decade ago (preTPP and TIPP) but where are the ears to hear and the eyes to see what is happening? http://www.commondreams.org/views/2007/05/25/globalization-and-democracy-some-basics
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” – PLATO

binra
binra
Jul 3, 2016 2:00 PM
Reply to  Jane

I write into what I see as the operating identity here in my own way. Identifying in fear, hatred and denial of – is being negatively identified. Our denied ‘unconscious’ and ‘subconscious’ is active as a kind of fear and rage based shadow power while a surface mentality believes it is – or seeks to be – in ‘control’ and obliged to maintain order against all kinds of violations and encroachments upon its sense of self and world – without any recognition of its own participation in its own experience.
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/06/30/psychologists-explain-people-refuse-question-the-official-version-911/
The above offers a similar view but written in perhaps more accessible terms to analysis – although feeding into the idea of evil others and the seed of self-righteous blindness – which is the way the hate propagates itself.
A surface identity or persona is already grown as a strategy of survival amidst overwhelming pain or conflicted experience. It divides off from what it hates or fears and seeks a sense of control and order amidst a sense of threat that must be mitigated, allayed by ‘psychological defences’. Within the ‘matrix’ of such artificial redefining and filtering of our focus within self-limitation, is an ‘externalized’ world of displacement that seems to put the cause of pained conflict outside to ‘save’ a fragment or partial consciousness within the persistence of the idea of denying and evading – or overcoming and eradicating a core trauma that is so upstream to all else we think or experience that it seems the god or the self or the reality to which we align with or manipulate so as to survive in terms of pervasive threat or indeed terror. And we all have different exposure to this and generally escape it by the fastest possible route because it feels unbearable or opens the unthinkable. One way of ‘escape’ is to hate anything that is associated with bringing on such a sense of violation – and direct the energy of such fear and hate as an armoured weapon against the scapegoat – so as to allow no other communication or perspective to weaken one’s power or defence against the ‘hateful’. Such hate driven identity may be called psychopathic – but it may also be temporarily active within many of us by specific conditions that trigger such denied conditioning to move without inhibition as rage driven violence.
The breaking of the matrix-reality by its exposure is no less an identity crisis or rather the exposure of the device by which self-illusion is invested with belief as exclusively true. No one still identifying in self-illusion willingly opens to their underlying patterns of denial but life experience reflects opportunity for such insight over and over because the reintegrative movement of being operates automatically to restore balance within wholeness subject to willingness to recognize and align.
Denial operated in its time as a way to hold a focus within conflicted self-experience so as to survive within the framework of such experience. But it also operates a fear-fulfilling prophecy where all that is denied ‘comes home to roost’ – because we don’t actually get rid of sin or dissonance by hating and killing the ‘Other’. It is a magic or illusion-belief that defines self against and therefore separate from the ‘Other’. The fact is that hatred is not truly escaped for it now operates outside – as if trying to get in and from beneath – attempting to come up.
The mind (as we generally concieve it) is unable to operate the ‘control’ or discernment of true from false and this recognition allows the pause of the mind in willingness of the heart. Not the broken heart of a secret or fragmented sense of self. A quality of being that recognizes itself where all the thinking had attempted to manufacture itself.
Opening a felt relationship with denied or feared and hated ‘self’ (rather than being defined against it) is the awakening and growing of compassion. Opening to an ‘Encompassing Perspective’ that supports or guides a balance point within awareness whereby a quality of true relationship is operating within the unfolding moment as the right relational focus and appreciation to that unique event – rather than subconscious routines of a conditioned programming that once served a need but no longer represents the true of who you are feeling, knowing or simply preferring yourself to be.
What belongs to us can only come home – but what has no belonging in us can fall off unused. The old identification operates a reversal. The shift of perception and perspective that inner willingness and honesty opens is very quickly ‘lost’ or covered by the resumption of the old habit. But the sense of true worth and joy in being that even a glimpse affords, is a basis on which to reset purpose and direction anew – and anew – no matter what the form of the loss of focus – so as to grow a new habit of consciousness that lives a sense of connectedness within rather than as evasion of conflict in mutual reinforcements of diversion and distraction.
Few want truth of being – although the desire may be latent within them. Many want protection from their fears and power to make such symptoms go away. It is no accident that we co-create society as we have – but it has largely been blind outcomes of ancient conditionings – operating in our Name.
Power operating within the world addresses symptoms – often to multiply them in more subtle disguise – and rarely looks for cause – because honesty reveals a natural and necessary transformation that seems loss of power and loss of self. But if you feel into this paragraph it may dawn on you that what we accept as power, costs us true power and locks us in a static concept of self that cannot flow with or evolve through its own experience. In modern terms; an evolutionary dead end. Perhaps disguising its utter defeat in pyrrhic victory.
Our existence can be felt hateful, meaningless, worthless and endurable only within secret dreams of vengeance, power and self specialness. I sense that our collective dreaming powers the things we say we hate and want to change for a better world. But I don’t say that to a propensity to pile on more blame – but to a willingness of self-responsibility.
I cannot live anyone else’s life – being already full-on as my own. But what I meet has resonance within me and this I accept as my own ‘garden’ to tend. meanwhile I confess my actual garden runs rather wild because writing in willingness for a greater perspective out from which to make more conscious choices is where I meet ‘the world’ in a sense of shared worth.
Do even the blindly hateful among us serve a role in a greater awakening than our current thinking can imagine? I believe so – and yet I appreciate that feelings have to find ways of evolving that do not simply propagate hate in ‘socially acceptable forms’ to thus feed and seed a blind arrogance in self-righteous compulsion.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 28, 2016 1:39 PM
Reply to  elenits

Tsipras makes Yeltsin look like a patriot.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Jun 28, 2016 5:31 AM

A long read but well worth the time. By breaking the reality down in this fashion, with just the right mix of detail and generalization, and by tirelessly repeating the exercise, Greece being only yet another example of the more or less standard pillaging and brainwashing operation, more and more people will “get it,” until one day enough people will grasp the pattern, and in their numbers a necessary and sufficient critical mass will be reached, and the fight will be on in earnest. But for the work of people like Michael Nevradakis, there would be absolutely no hope. But as it is, Michael(s) at long last seem to be multiplying like mushrooms in autumn. To me, it feels like something in our mental environment is beginning to shift. Kudos to Michael and many thanks to Off-guardian, eh.

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 7:15 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

I take your point NP: Hats off to Nevredakis and may there be more like him. All we have left it seems is Growing Awareness. But we have to extend the parameters of this awareness and re-visit the orthodoxies of our PR-ed histories. We need to talk about the Great Powers again and Hegemony and HOW our delusions and entrapments have been put in place, and what these are: what is real, what is nonsense.
We Greeks since last July have lived the reality of Entrapment. We are cornered rats. If readers disagree, please provide us with your solutions – they will be welcome. We in Europe (Greeks are simply ahead of the curve) live in a strange reality, I would say ‘fake’ but that is insufficient, in which every population is shot through with undeclared, paid federalists in place since even before the war. Every profession, every union…quite apart from the politicians. Our “news” MSM is of course just PR, the profession of propaganda.
Who to trust???
A situation not unlike the Stasi grip on East Germany…
At this point not only the corrupt feeding trough of the EU and its pipeline to the pols and federalists needs to be exposed in endless detail but more important the development, management and Implementation of the EU Project from Washington: the why and the how. Not least the Washington-paid and placed midget politicians running Europe now, the creation and elevation of these politicians from outside (Tony Blair, for example, who came from literally nowhere hailed as a saviour on no evidence of competence, ditto Cameron, who was a harder product to sell: Mr. Green Windmills & Bicycles, remember?), the sudden disappearance of inconvenient politicians like Margaret Thatcher, John Smith, Robin Cook…to use only English examples. Yes: Margaret Thatcher WAS deposed on the evening of her “No! No! No!” speech in a putsch organized out of Brussels by the federalists in her cabinet. Love her or hate her, that was a hegemonic putsch.
One thing to expose (and keep in mind) is that every person who works for the EU signs a contract to never speak badly of the EU: punishment is loss of job and pension. Vilification too. As an EU politician Margaret thatcher’s EU pension was cut…
I have not even touched on 70 years of Gladio operations….political assignations…military occupation…because in truth the EU is the civilian arm of NATO.
We must dare to finally speak the UnSpeakable and do this loudly and backed up by research. At least our fellow Europeans, the majority not in the feeding trough, deserve clear and true information. Believe me, the result of this information is disgust. Shock and disgust – and anger.

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 7:19 AM
Reply to  elenits

…that was supposed to be ‘political assassinations’….

binra
binra
Jun 28, 2016 1:08 PM
Reply to  elenits

“Shock and disgust – and anger”.
These feelings are unlidded (within us) by events. All of us carry the lid of social civility that generates a mask of personae under which is the attempt to coerce outcomes in alignment with (at least temporarily) escaping or delaying the shock of a broken identity in self and world; the disgust of (and at) the hatred that is thus exposed in the raw, and the survival sense that denies and projects hatred to instead focus almost exclusively in a relative self-righteous justifiction – in which hate of OTHER is seen as absolutely justified and therefore replaces the love that is denied within the hurtred of hate and rage. And so we ‘love’ to hate and hate to love – for hate has made of love a victim – an invalidity – an un-reality.
I have attempted to sketch something of the imprinting of the human conditioning that ‘sets’ the human condition unless we feel through it to an expanded acceptance of embrace and perspective.
The hate that embodies an anti-Life globalism, hates the Life that – in its experience – failed it. There are different facets of separation trauma – but we all share in and embody such archetypes that are locked in polarized conflict of ‘divide to rule’ or indeed to rule out what we cannot bear or tolerate.
There can be no relationship or communication to a mind exclusively identified in vengeance or in terror. But only what is believed to be necessary and justified deceit and coercion – in the framing of the goal of power from which all else derives whatever use or meaning it is allowed to have. Power operates a false sense of protection – or rather a protection of an incomplete sense of self falsely asserted as an exclusive and authoritative power over its own experience.
And so terrorism – whether masked or in the raw, operates the act of the hate upon its own – as a coercive conformity to asserted and imposed ‘idea’ under which, the living will – the freedom to feel and move as one’s being – is sacrificed and denied. The illusion of power ‘paints itself into a corner’ as checkmate! But the board is a two dimensional representation of a polarized oppositional identity.
If the illusion of power is unsurprisingly self-defeating – does it not invoke curiosity as to the true nature of power – or perhaps there is no term for it in a world so long entrained and enchained to darkness in which NOT being hit can seem like love.
When our hated, feared or denied feeling finds acceptance in the movement of its being – without being given reactive access to trigger harm to self and others, then a fresh take can replace a mis-take and a quality of compassion within ourselves can automatically and naturally recognize opportunities and willingness for communication and relationship hitherto unseen or discarded – in which the power of true presence is extended and honoured in place of a ‘relational usury’ that seeks to ‘get validation from others’ by offering a false presentation as substitute for the power it believes lost – and so does not rest in and share.
The inner recognition is not a strategy or replacement for integrity in relationship – but a questioning and opening of foundations so as to truly know and align in purpose – rather than be-guiled within evasions that feel justifiably compelling and necessary.
Is not tragi-comedy a gift of cultural inheritance from early Greek culture? Using the reflection to uncover recognition in which what seemed exclusive polarities are both owned – and instead of an overwhelm, we open the freedom to focus differently – to accept a different choice than a split compulsion.
How anything ‘works out’ is beyond me – excepting that what I write here has relevance to living a good step – from which a fresh perspective opens its own good or recognized guidance. This is so ‘different’ as to seem too difficult or indeed daft. But questioning our foundations in desire for true being is not in order to get a better handle on power and protection in the frame of the ‘world’ – but to receive and thus bring forth a ‘different’ world from what separation trauma painted and defended as our life.
Illuminating the ‘checkmate’ of a ‘victory’ by which life is made hollow and meaningless is part of growing willingness and desire for Life and for truth that is truly receptive and not pre-loaded with demands and conditions.
Our original nature can be covered over and denied – yet must first BE that denial can seem to operate a replacement. Denial is a part of focusing – but we do not have to hate or demonize the choice that does not resonate with who we truly feel and know or even prefer ourself to be – in order to live that freedom and learn of it freely. A coerced or conformed choice is no freedom to feel and learn and grow. The old world order replicates itself over and again as the dictate of a seeming ‘separate’ mentality – presented as if normal and self-evident – yet predicated on hate and fear and locked in by guilt.
I have only the English translation of the adaptation of Arnisi – used by Theodorakis in Sto Periagiali – I sign off with it in solidarity with and gratitude for an awakening Humanity.
Sto Periagli (Mikis Theodorakis) Based on (Arnisi) DENIAL by Giorgos Seferis
On the secret seashore, white like a pigeon (dove?),
we thirsted at noon, but the water was brackish.
On the golden sand, we wrote her name, but the sea-breeze blew and the writing vanished.
With what spirit, what heart, what desire and passion we lived our life:
a mistake! So we changed our life
[English trans : Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard]

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 28, 2016 1:41 PM
Reply to  elenits

I’m sorry, but the Stasi were there to protect East Germans from the horrors inflicted on Greece.

elenits
elenits
Jun 28, 2016 1:55 PM

I hope that’s true. I can believe it. But naturally we in the Western bloc heard differently

binra
binra
Jun 29, 2016 1:47 PM

I feel you are mistaken. The apparatus of Soviet state control – extending to making everyone a spy on everyone else – may have been initially ‘justified’ in terms of protecting against foreign terror threat – but operated to consolidate a power elite who masked in a ‘collectivist’ appeal at expense of the quality of Life shared – excepting of course, within the conformity of the official dictate.
The identifiction of ‘sides’ is unaware that deceit works both or all sides of opportune or manufactured conflict to influence outcomes in its favour, without seeming to play much part – except perhaps as saviour.
I am not suggesting that protection is not required against deceits that carry heavy consequence – but that the very quick minded position themselves ‘upstream’ of events so as to operate ‘insider’ leverage by which they become defacto ‘elites’ making the decisions that frame ‘the lives of others’ who have little or no awareness of what is in fact going on beneath appearances – excepting they feel denied of their core humanity by a tyrannous dictate – but induced to blame and inflame their own divisions.
Likewise western ‘intelligence’ gathering is used for corporate/political advantage in globalist power struggle even though it was ostensibly to protect against the ‘bad guys’. Corporate or mercantile power tends to be one foot (or many) in front of the attempt to check and balance it – but it is the consolidation of power that operates – for when transnational corporations have served their nation-destroying role, they too will be relived of any temptation towards undue influence or threat to the power dictate.
However, without the belief in the evil enemy – such society cannot remain ordered – for the inner conflicted purposes that are ‘unified and displaced’ by the dictate of centralised power rise up as a creative chaos through which a different way of living starts to come into focus than coercion and deceit.
However, I note that the terror that external power was supposed to hide or protect us from is leaking out everywhere now – so a ‘creative chaos’ might be the only option left. The creative is of course what we bring as presence to that which we find disturbing or unsettling. If we only fixate in anti-evil identities we let ourselves be defined over and against the thing we hate. Defined by hate is not creative freedom – even if ingeniously marketed and spun to a fear of change.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jun 30, 2016 6:00 AM
Reply to  binra

The reports of Stasi ubiquity are just black propaganda, and, as the Snowden and other revelations show, the situation is the same in the West. Indeed in the USA the more radical opposition to elite rule, like the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Weathermen, etc were destroyed by programs like COINTELPRO, with some bloodshed, show trials and the like.
William Blum has written of US sabotage efforts in the DDR, even including poisoning dairy cattle, reminiscent of the hundreds of terror attacks launched against Cuba. For years people crossed the border from east to west, but then the brain drain from East to the heavily subsidized West became too much, so up the Wall went. And when it came down the society of ‘sharp elbows’ returned, as did greedy absentee land-lords and the like, and the usual litany of social ills from the Free World. So much so that even today the ‘inexplicable’ Ostalgie for the lost past of a society not founded on greedy individualism and ruthless competition still exists.

binra
binra
Jun 30, 2016 3:53 PM

I am aware of what you write about, but do you paint the Soviet system with a true brush? Is greedy individualism not associated with party privilege and was not ‘divide and rule’ no less applied by the Soviet system than the Western model – but with a different ‘front end’?
Is conformity of thought to a dictate of ‘correctness’ the flowering of Humanity?
Thoughts on individuality:
A false and corrupted idea of the individual became the basis for a false reactive version of the collective. If we realized that the accepted currency of idea is the definitional template by which we interpret, perceive and respond to everything, we would also see how powerfully this generates our sense of identity and associated protection, and be vigilant against false currency. Divide and rule is a middleman who seeks to interject between so as to own or control the flow of information, energy, or sustenance. Driving the moneylenders out of the Temple was not inciting rebellion – so much as awakening inner responsibility. People didn’t get it then or now – because thought is working from a divided individuality (oxymoron) seeking validation and protection for identity defined over and against others.
Those working the scam are aware of what they are doing, but those below are generally aligned with a righteous sense of fighting evil. As long as such division is invested in for pumping up our identity, the scam remains hidden and active upon our lives. Giving true witness is communicating as an extension of worth rather than as a coercive trick to claim ascendancy in ‘truth’ or win a conflict of wills so as to ‘validate’ oneself over another.
Confusion of personality with individuality short-circuits true communication – for a persona is a mask over an inherently conflicted or defended and hidden sense of self and is not and can not be equal to the function of our individuality. This sense of powerlessness in struggle characterizes a breakdown of communication assigned to the symptoms without awareness of or possibility of addressing the cause.

Vaska
Vaska
Jun 30, 2016 6:22 PM
Reply to  binra

As horrific as the Stalinist era was for tens of millions of people, and notwithstanding the economic and social privileges which accrued to Communist Party members and especially the top echelon, the nomenklatura, the fact remains that for the last 30 years of its existence the Soviet system did deliver something far, far better than the untrammelled wild-west-capitalism of the 1990s did — hence the continuing preference of the majority of Russians for some form of socialism. Nor is it hard to understand how the social ownership and management of key industries and public services itself fosters an attitude that counters the psychology (the greed and the alienation) of capitalist individualism.

binra
binra
Jun 30, 2016 10:53 PM
Reply to  Vaska

Is state ownership, social ownership? Does a state ‘religion’ or monopoly counter the hate and fear of rogue individualism that I actually see as power cartels that own and control the collective through corporate influence that effectively is the power behind any and every ‘state’ regardless whether they pretend to ‘free market capitalism’ or technocratic top-down collectivism.
Alienation begins with becoming a stranger to ourself. I see greed as a symptom of insecurity in fear of loss that is not native to a clearly felt sense of self expression and acceptance. Ideology nurtures and feeds upon such insecurity to create systems of sacrifice to a promise of protection from such ills and power to create a new world order.
I see the western notion of individualism to be as corrupt as the Soviet or EU collectivism – for the corporately owned global infrastructure – including central banking – is framing and unfolding the social, political, medical, scientific, technological and educational agenda. The idea of consent and willingness is just something to be engineered or disregarded by any top down power structure.
This applies also within our individual consciousness and I believe our world reflects the governance within – which is no less veiled and protected by propaganda than any impositional government.
I don’t attack the mind – I watch and embrace as an expanded perspective. But an unwatched mind can and does believe its own spin – and become divided or split from its true feeling and function within the whole.
Perhaps awakening and accepting individual responsibility is nothing to do with callous or hateful exploitative power ‘relationships’ for those focusing exclusively in the world – but I see the ideas we operate from as the most powerful choice we make – and remake every moment. Ideology seeks to define and control or engineer identity and society. But I question the urge to impose power over our consciousness, other or our world, as a true protection or power – for it results in a fear of loss, and an alienation from our self and true nature in the seeking of power, validity and fulfilment in the manipulation of life rather than the living and sharing of life.
Because of the worship in conceptual control, if something cannot be fitted into the framework of manipulation it is regarded as powerless, irrelevant or heretical deceit.
Of course in any system, many people have lived their lives who haven’t suffered its overt evils directly. I am not seeking to use any system to justify or negate any other. Any system is only as good as the willingness of the people to embrace and use it. If the law serves the whole – it finds a place in our heart, but if it serves the few against the many or even the many against the wholeness of all – it must use coercion and deceit to seem to pass off as law.
Human beings are generally afraid of change and will vote for the devil they know unless this is become too hateful to tolerate and then they release investment in the old and embrace the new. But this is also where opportunists subvert a desire for change with false promise. No one else can live our life for us and we cannot trust another if we have not learned to trust ourselves. Those who are honest in their inner life do not need coercion and deceit to extend and share communication in willingness of relationship. But those with a heavy investment in the mask have an entirely different perception – unless of course they change their minds.

binra
binra
Sep 21, 2016 2:45 PM
Reply to  Vaska

I don’t dispute that one form of control can be worse than another or that dreams can turn to nightmares – or nightmares can subside to a kind of frozen order in which the worst symptoms are suppressed. Good cop bad cop polarities operate to make seem good. On some level this operates on the ‘world stage’ – whether by manipulative design, innate psychological patterning or of course both and within contexts that are unavailable within this frame of thinking.
If the nature of human being is simply a problem of management to be solved – then the problem is already set by managerial thinking and the forms that are filtered to such thinking are the various ideas being ‘explored’ or tried out on Earth.
I see systems of government that effectively farm or predate upon the governed as parasitic or usurping of the true function of governance – to a static and defended idea of control. Likewise systems of thinking usurp our true function of balanced integrity of communication within relationship.
All systems have some merit within certain limited parameters – for clever thinking takes a part of something true and presents it as the truth, just as a partiality can assert itself as the official narrative – denying or suppressing any other voice.
But the usurping of the domain of true by any part becomes a violence upon the whole. Truth is fruited from a true relationship – and true symptoms of a false or manipulative relationship are a breakdown of communication – regardless the systems or contracts that are then brought in to limit the loss or protect investments and supports.
How do we govern our own life? Are we driven primarily by negative outcomes that we are founded on evading, overcoming or fixing – that is – are we driven by conditioning from which human being was denied and human doing was demanded or required in its place – by the carrot and stick of granted conditional and temporary freedoms or privilege by which to lessen or ‘outsource’ pain – so as to come to ‘love’ our captors and support their agenda?
It is said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but I feel true knowing is denied by scarcity by which the very few hold the leverage as the ‘gatekeeper power’ over Life.
This patterning within our thought system – OWNS our thought system – and farms us at a much deeper level than thinking can discover – because the fruits of the false foundation operate a self-replicating negative loop that justifies and ‘proves’ its foundation as experience.
The seeming freedoms of certain political ideologies appeal to different aspects of our being and polarize division so as to maintain a breakdown of communication via defended identities – that use ‘truth’ as the justification for their persistence in their attempt to validate that identity because they felt or saw something true that was being attacked, threatened, denied or corrupted – and identify AGAINST the evil.
We have innumerable diseases now in which the body literally attacks itself to dysfunction, pain of loss, and death. We have ‘health management’ and ‘food processing’ – amongst other factors – that propagate and pharm and protect the sickness from the cause – by assigning false or partial causes and focusing exclusively in them.
The evil will – however it is personified – is operating through our survival instinct – but divorced in significant ways from introspection, revision, or indeed anything that would change its mind in terms of holding against what it sees in that moment to be MORE fearful or indeed hateful to itself or overwhelming of its sense of power to exist in any way it can imagine tolerating or in fact imagine at all.
The collective result of individuals operating terror avoidance – or a secret war on terror that operates evasion, denial and deceit – are personal, cultural and societal personifications of denials that themselves are denied.
We all have a range and variety of separation scripts that interlock and interact consciously and as under-current realities or communications. Becoming aware of the ‘template level’ of definitions and beliefs that effectively set the parameters of response for thought behaviour meets the defensive aspects of the ‘survival script’. If these are recognized and integrated so as to embrace them within a larger perspective – then there is a greater freedom of participation in awareness of being which I could call a restored Intimacy of being – but if the motivation is not for healing but for power – then one is indeed led into temptation to see the template as a means of leverage and power over others and use the feeling of true that is in the sense of creative freedom uncovered – as a slave to a sense of personal validation and power that must validate itself through assertion of power over – and in the demonstration of powerlessness or invalidity in others. However benign it may start off – hate and rage are the feelings around loss of power – and power addiction never actually arrives – any more than any other addiction.
The ‘moneylender in the Temple’ is a false devotion to both controlling life and others for self-aggrandisement – and inherently and actively denying Life its true nature – in your own mind and the minds of others who join in hate with you. This does not belong in our heart. It may tell you the heart is just a pump if of course it is in your heart to listen there.
But back to your larger view of political and social landscape – whatever ideas, events and structuring occurred operates the matrix through which individuals, relationships and communities of endeavour lived, experienced and were transformed by such experience, including the joy and pain of such existence – which cannot be portrayed by a broad brush overview of generalisation.
Whether we consciously notice or not – we are all in the gestalt of having opened that experience and thus are not in that milieu – but facing the challenge and opportunity of our own – in which symptoms can be used for war or as a call for healing – allowing that if we knew what healing was we would no longer be defined by symptoms so much as recognizing our participation in what we are using them for – or what are we getting out of it on some level ?- and growing willingness for honesty of being amidst the recognition of what is ours and what is not.
The separated or alienated sense of self – in its usurping of function from a relational wholeness – takes on responsibilities or functions it cannot meet, neglecting those that it cannot really escape.
Words have been used to deceive – like fig leaves over a sense of exposed invalidity or inadequacy – for so long that anything and everything can mean… almost anything and everything – in a progression of the idea of the Tower of Babel – as a sowing of confusion by which common cause turns to bedlam and mayhem.
I feel this is because the foundations are conflicted – but in any new relationship of hopeful endeavour – conflicts are denied, filtered out, walled and defended against in the attempt to become powerful in manifest act and fruit of action. But all that is denied is never really out of the action – but operates out of mind. The split mind that wars to become The official narrative can never find true validation because truth is the first ‘casualty’ of a decision to split off from and overcome or undermine and capture or conform.
Education is properly the guiding and supporting in the bringing forth of the one who is being embraced and supported in finding and becoming themselves in their world. The usurping of education as a means of denial and control by those entrusted with sharing on and supporting others whose needs are therefore not seen or met, teaches a world of denial and control to which those ones then have to find their way to adapt to or survive in or perhaps become aware of in some way that seeds a different perspective and pathway within what is still life – however insanely it is being lived.
The attempt to fuse mutually polarized facets of being toward restoring an integrity that includes and transcends both is perhaps indicated in the point, counterpoint and synthesis – which can be observed in life – but is not the same as usurping and mimicking life as if to ‘engineer’ heaven or even a fairer or better world.
Education or facilitation of social and political needs has to be a relationship of growing communication and trust – which is not just verbal-mental intellectual controls of an elite – nor the working of subconscious manipulations through symbol, image and implanted association.
I feel that when ‘what do we do’ is given priority over ‘what is the truth here’ – and being open to receive it – then the driven and compulsive reaction to be some other moment than where our life is being persists through the generations, at ever greater burden of denial, fragmentation and the need for control. This posits a mutation to something that has effectively denied its own creative – for what we give power to by denial – denies us until truly owned and accepted.
The personae level is the surface appearance and the undercurrent can be defined in terms of protecting that surface appearance from intrusion, violation or loss of status AS reality. But such definitions can be challenged and should be challenged when there is a willingness to grow beyond the confines of a nursery. And we need to honour the spirit in which a growing responsibility seeks to explore and experience its passions, interests, and talents – even if they are not our choices. Those who deny and neglect their own life seek to make one out of feeding off or denying the right of others. If there is truth in that – it is for a change of heart and mind – not to pile on blame.
I do not see the guide in Life as destructive – but Translative. The idea of destruction as the means to create is disembodied idea. A cold and heartless indifference to life in form by a presumption to lord over it. Our experience of change when clinging to the form may be of destruction but as I am pointing out – our experience is a composite construct of self-definition, feeling, sensation, thought, perception, response, and behaviour. All of which operate to validate, reinforce and protect the self-definition – until of course a shift of perspective enables a different choice to operate in place of what is now seen not to serve the accepted purpose one now feels and aligns in being.
Without the creative – where is perspective? Programming is not a living perspective – though of course habits can be useful when serving a conscious will. But a conscious will is a relational communication and not a slave unit to mould to another’s will. Usurping the creative assigns insight to the ego – and yet the forms of insights serve a false light taken out of context. Are we being framed? and farmed? If so – this is the recognition of the need to shine light upon the framing and grow only what moves truly. Or accept a managed existence and deny the life that moves you for a ‘notional security’ against something ‘even worse’.
Is there a way to translate my predicament to terms in which I can truly and freely accept? Yes but not within the terms the current predicament is defined and given meaning by. Lets look at these demands and see if they can be met in other ways…or if you do in fact need what you thought to need, now.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Jun 28, 2016 5:05 AM

Reblogged this on Taking Sides.