LETTER FROM ATHENS

Athens, 17 July 2013

Dear All,

This letter was initially intended to be addressed to Wolfgang Schäuble – who has the nerve and the stubbornness to visit my country tomorrow – as well as to members of the Greek and the European Parliaments. However, what is happening to Greece, concerns all the inhabitants of this planet, as much as what is happening to Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, France, Turkey, Egypt, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, the Balkans, Vietnam, directly involves us all.

Wolfgang Schäuble is a comfortable personification of the surrealistically legalized immorality and the greedy insanity of Globalization. We, rather they, are expecting him to pay us a visit and test the obedience of his governmental subjects. Herr Schäuble pays visits, while he and the German Government emphatically refuse to pay back to Greece the billions due to my country against the WWII German damages, as well as against the obligatory loan that the German occupators grabbed from our Treasury. Actually, the total amount of real money that Germany owes to Greece exceeds the total amount of the weird and questionable, to say the least, “Greek loan”.

Dear All, Greece, Hellas, is the Mother of Science, Art, Culture. Hellas is the Source of the Light of Civilization, while our language is the perfect expression of Humanity. I do not intend to dwell on the ancient glory. What matters to all of us is the present. Misguided by our mass enthusiasm for kicking out the military junta in 1974, we allowed untrustworthy and incapable people to govern our country, repeatedly voting for them and their family members. We allowed, by our democratic approval, greedy and superficial people to lead our country to a moral, social and financial catastrophe. It is our political fault. However, it would be unfair to exterminate a Nation because it has corrupted and short-sighted politicians. Mistakes are corrected. Mistakes are lessons. For some reason, unknown to us now, Greece is a protagonist in Global Politics, being a negative example.

Econometrics and Statistics can be very dangerous to the stability of the Human Society’s network, when taken for granted.

Since 2010, when the Greek Prime Minister and his team made the deal with the international bankers and other power groups, the majority of the Greek population has been suffering a galloping impovertization that is miserably drying us of our beautiful qualities, dragging our blood, both metaphorically and physically.

One employee is being fired every 18 minutes. The approximately 2.000.000 of jobless citizens, in a population of 10.500.000 and a work force of 7.500.000 approximately, are increased by one new unemployed citizen every eighteen minutes! These figures are the important ones! These figures kill our co-citizens. These figures are murder to our society, our dignity, our everyday life, our future, our children!

There is so much talk in the national and international Media about the installments that Greece will or will not receive from the international Shylocks, to whom Greece has or does not have the financial resources to pay back, regardless of the fact that all this money is a virtual reality that has nothing to do with old fashioned cash. The Greek tragedy annoyingly resembles the court scene in The Merchant of Venice. I do hope that a Shakespearian solution will close the curtain.

There was – and still is to some extend – so much talk about the lazy, sunbathing, worthless Greeks that owe billions of Euros to the innocent European tax payer! I, personally, as well as the majority of my co-patriots, do not owe a penny to anyone! As a matter of fact, I personally, my ancestors and my family, my friends, as well as the majority of my co-citizens, are heavily taxed and punctual tax-payers. During the last couple of years, the heavy taxation that was imposed on honest people has dramatically increased, exceeding, frequently doubling, our total annual income. The taxation, since the financial “aid” that our Governments have been receiving from their “partners,” has turned to shameless, cruel, violent robbery. The victims of the statal tax-robbery are the innocent Greek tax payers. However, the Media never interviewed, never even mentioned, the violence that we are experiencing through the nightmare of losing our real estate (our cash has evaporated to the bankers and the international lenders, a long time ago), or going to prison for depts we do not owe anyone, or both.

The Media emphasize on the damage caused to the local Market and to the image of our country by the demonstrations and the civilian protests. The local Market is a stinking corpse, exposed in the outdoors – food for the jackals, the vultures, the crows, and the worms – that cannot afford its own decent funeral. As for the image of our country, nothing can harm it more than the deeds of those that govern it. The black screens of E.R.T.’s governmental cancellation give an unspeakable of image. The police’s brutality against peaceful protestors, harm the country’s image irreparably.  The pretentious inability of every Government of this country to catch the non-tax payers, is harmful enough for our country’s image. A very small number of Greek eponymous citizens cumulatively owe the State an amount close to, if not higher than, our so-called national debt. The Government, every Government, shamelessly refuses to demand and receive taxes from them. No Medium, national or international, dares to bring this up. They choose to emphasize on the doctor or the plummer, or the hairdresser who neglects, or avoids to issue receipts for their services.

The Media repeatedly show disgraceful scenes of citizens searching for food in garbage bins, or begging for a few kilos of free potatoes offered by agricultural producers. The Media show close-ups of children that faint at school because they didn’t have breakfast, nor dinner and, out of family dignity, they do not speak about it to the teacher or to their classmates. However, the Media keep a guilty silence about the thousands of suicides. People jump from balconies, hang themselves, poison themselves, unable to cope with their virtual or real debts, unable to feed and home their families. No Media has ever spoken about the fact that in Greece we did not have homeless people before the imported crisis. There were poor people in my country, but they used to live in their poor houses and they had a limited quantity of food to eat. During the days of the troikan war, we all have become poor or, the luckiest among us, just poorer.

We do not easily unify to fight for a cause. Maybe the city-state is well imprinted on our DNA. We are revolutionary, but we do not have the talent for effective revolutions. However, our Hellenic qualities are awakened when our survival is threatened. The most recent historical example is WWII. We owe it to our children, as much as to our parents, to remember that we are Hellenes. Now, that the survival of the Human Society, as we know it, is being threatened, we have no alternative but to become all Hellenes!

Being a Hellene is a title of honour, without geographic or racial boundaries. It is up to us to become and declare that We Are All Hellenes!

Peggy Vavali

P.S. Xenius Zeus is very upset by the uninvited visitors to the city named after and in honour of his wise daughter. Athena is even more upset, as these supposed visiting friends frightfully resemble Ithaca’s suitors. Athena’s favorite Trojan hero was her protégé Odysseus, who pretended to be “Nobody” in front of the huge, half-blind Cyclops.

 ©Peggy Vavali_17-07-2013