The Periphery As Testing Ground for Social Destruction September 25, 2013

The “Untouchables”, the internal Greek police investigating the Greek police have raided 3 police stations in Athens, and further raids are planned in other cities. High ranking police officers have resigned, others are suspended and many are “under investigation”. Investigations resulting from analysis of the mobile phone records of Giorgos Poupakias have exposed a strict chain of command within Golden Dawn, involving MPs. These investigations confirm allegations made previously, but left unproven after police inaction.

On the face of it, it would seem that they are getting tough on Golden Dawn, after the killing of Pavlos Fyssas. Don’t be fooled.  The murder of Pavlos was engineered, to create the “right” conditions for a government -lead coup  A contradiction in kind, but then, it is Greece. The main purpose of all this is not to curb Golden Dawn, the main purpose is to firmly establish the corrupt international political and financial elite as the “saviours” of not just a country, but a world in free-fall (Created by those same “saviours”).

At the behest of their powerful international puppet-masters, the corrupt corporate and political elite of the place I call home have once again managed to create violent chaos, with the inherent promise of the “responsible centre”(PASOK and ND) being the only possible answer to the problem and the only ones that can provide the solution. The solution is being put forward as the only way to prevent the complete polarization of the people of Greece between far left and far right. The bad boys are ΣΥΡΙΖΑ and Golden Dawn.

ΣΥΡΙΖΑ is the natural opposite of capitalist policies. Golden Dawn is the result of capitalist policies. The capitalist policies are the root of this deliberate polarization.  The very “raison d’etre” for Golden Dawn was created by 30 years of PASOK and ND mismanagement, nothing else. They served their purpose well, and have now become surplus to requirements. In military jargon, the government “actions” resulting in the loss of Golden Dawn is nothing short of Golden Dawn’s death from “friendly fire”.

The bottom line is, we all better vote correct next time around, or else…

The vote will be soon. Samaras will try and prevent it from happening before January, because that is when he takes over the EU Presidency, in Europe. And Samaras wants that on his CV. He has worked hard and manipulated a lot to get this far, he’s not going to let that slip if he can help it. And Europe won’t let him.

Next time around, it is almost certainly going to be PM Tsipras in Greece. Can you imagine the bad Alex calling the shots in Europe? Merkel & Friends would be beside themselves, not to mention their puppet masters. All those years of false promises, careful manipulation, corruption, bribery (sorry lobbying) etc., and then to end up with somebody like Tsipras at the helm? Unthinkable!

The fascism Greece, and Europe, should be afraid of, really afraid of, is not the fascism of Golden Dawn, BNP, Front National, etc. The real danger comes from Government Fascism throughout Europe, in the shape of the hijacked EU. The real danger is the fascism of International Finance. Greek government has quietly used Golden Dawn to deflect public attention from the real issues by focussing the attention of the public on false issues like “the immigrants” and forcing the attention of ΣΥΡΙΖΑ away from government onto the threat of rising fascism. By doing so, they created the time and leeway they needed to put the EU dictated fascist policies in place, under the watchful eye of the EU bullyboys and enforcers known as the Troika. Golden Dawn has now served its purpose. When they were busy killing and maiming immigrants, neither Greek nor EU government cared.

After all, government was instrumental in spreading the myth that the immigrant was solely to blame for the problems of the Greek people, and the people of Europe in general. The odd dead immigrant here and there was acceptable because it was simply a natural consequence of being the scape goat. No better way to stop this out of control insanity called Golden Dawn than by blaming them for the murder of a Greek. A left-wing Greek at that, it just helps to deflect the left wing attention away from capitalism, which is the real fascism at work. The PASOK-ND machine has fine-tuned Sinclair’s statement that Fascism equals Capitalism + Murder. The revised version of the axiom now reads Capitalism = Fascism +  The  Politically Correct Murder.

The murder of Pavlos, rightfully or wrongfully blamed on Golden Dawn, was the wrong murder, and has reduced the Golden Dawn vote down to half, virtually over-night.  Keeping the pressure up, with high profile acts like raids on police stations (Which will establish the links, whether they actually exist or not) or the sacking of dispensable high ranking officers will reduce that vote further, and come next election they will most likely not have enough votes to enter parliament. There will almost certainly be laws in place to prevent Golden Dawn from re-entering the parliament, just to make sure. This can be done because Golden Dawn is a government engineered entity.  Their compatriots in nationalistic idiocy, Independent Greeks, are at this stage a non-entity. So is DIMAR. KKE is holding its own at 5 % or so, which makes for democracy demanded, but largely anecdotal opposition. This leaves ΣΥΡΙΖΑ to deal with.

Banning ΣΥΡΙΖΑ by law would be counter-productive because it is a naturally existing opposite. Attempting such a ban would also give the game away. Here, different measures are needed. When the time is right, the “hoodies” and “anarchists” will appear on the streets of Athens again, maybe burn down a bankrupt bank or two and kill some employees for good effect. This strategy of tension has been well rehearsed and fine-tuned.

Over the last 30 years, the PASOK-ND machine has mastered the politics oftension down to its smallest detail. They have learned to apply J.P Faye’s “Horseshoe Theory” and are doing so with great effect, masking the violent nature of the ultimate fascist policies they are enforcing on behalf of the real masters, International Finance. The whole operation is being directed by the Troika, who are once again visiting Greece to “evaluate” the progress of “The Program”.

A similar, although less violent (so far) tactic is being followed in France with the targeting of Marine LePen by the forces of “Law and Order”. Yes, she should indeed be targeted, as should all the other forms Fascism. Fascism is nothing short of the modern day version of the Greek myth of the Lernaean Hydra.  Golden Dawn, Front National, BNP, but also the notoriously fascist DIAS (motorized police in Greece), the organized football hooligan gangs in the UK,  are just some of the many heads of the Hydra.

Simply chopping off those heads only ensures two more grow back, as the myth tells us. In order to permanently stop this monster from rising up out of its hell-hole nest and growing more heads, the nest must be destroyed and the hole must be plugged. This is done through education and investment in people rather than investment in profit, for the sole purpose of more profit. Until that becomes government and EU policy, nothing will change and things will get worse, far worse. Altering the way in which one manipulates a situation does not remove the manipulation. It simply adjusts its effectiveness and in itself serves as a very effective way of masking the true reasons for the manipulation itself.

The stick behind the door, or the elephant in the room if you like, is the military. The Greek military have made it perfectly clear that they will not tolerate “political interference”, like what is happening with the police force right now. IOW, as long as the elite stays loyal to the army, the elite will be left play government, line their pockets, fleece the people, and remain their corrupt selves. Should things get that bad that the elite turn on the army, or lose the next elections, a military “intervention”, Egypt style, is not unthinkable.  A little known, or little published, fact is that NATO have quietly been closing all their bases in the Mediterranean, and are moving them all to Greece. On Crete alone this has increased US military personnel with a good few highly trained “units”.

While the people on the island struggle to heat their homes, schools and offices, the military build a stock pile of millions of gallons of fuel for “emergency purposes”. All this has a lot more to do with Greece than it has to do with Syria, Egypt, Iran,Israel and all the other reasons quoted. Greece is not just a testing ground for the less palatable neo-liberal tactics, it is a vital component in the “Endlösung”, the creation of the economic wasteland necessary to protect the neo-liberal heartland of the experiment called EU, and to provide the source of cheap labour that will allow this experiment to compete with existing cheap labour markets like
China and India. For that is the ultimate intention.

The EU’s industrial superiority has been severely eroded by the cheap labour economies of China and India. Economies that, by the way, have been seriously criticised by the EU for using the very low-wage, purely profit driven policies the EU itself is now enforcing on the periphery of Europe. If Europe wants to hang on to its industrial base and stop China and India from taking over, it needs to compete on their terms, with cheap energy and cheap labour. Greece will supply both, willingly or otherwise…

The EU periphery is the test lab for the powers who have hijacked the EU and are turning it into a vehicle of neo-liberal economics and consequent social destruction. Each country in that periphery is a test tube in which a different experiment is conducted. Greece test reactions to high levelsof unemployment and loss of national identity, Ireland hands over energy resources to Shell and test reactions to loss of energy authonomy, etc. Each country has its own “speciality”, all have different levels of poverty inflicted on them and the reactions are being studied. The EU even publishes the statistics of these studies in the form of unemployment figures, poverty levels, housing details, etc.

The people of the peripheral countries are the guinea pigs for different policy scenarios.  Tsipras has stated as much in Greece, but also on his visits to Spain, France, Germany, etc.    He has very recently warned the German workers that they too are very much in danger of being sacrificed to please the God of Profit.   That is why he is the “most dangerous politician” and will be stopped, at any cost. The current happenings in Greece are part of that cost…

Ephilant   25.9.2013

Blasphemy Laws, Institutions and Faith – the Fascist Assault on “Corpus Christi” November 2, 2012

Photo by Christos K, CC license

Religious groups and neo-nazis protested against gay-themed play Corpus Christi in Athens on 11 October, 2012. Deeming it blasphemous, they assaulted a theater critic and forced the cancellation of the performance.  Police watched and refused to intervene when a Golden Dawn MP assaulted a critic.  Orthdox Christian religious groups had previously attempted in vain to get the play banned in court

http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/58657

OOOO

Why is it that people, at the mention of blasphemy, almost immediately descend into an orgy of finger-pointing, extreme verbal abuse and the use of selective, often wrong, historic events, to prove their point by shout louder than anybody else, but never quite touch on the real problem?

Recent events have brought the debate on “Blasphemy” to the foreground with forceful incidents.  Lives have been lost and millions worth of damage have been caused because of the insult of “Blasphemy”, as is claimed by the rioters and their leaders.

None of the people involved in these knee jerk reactions have ever produced a logical, coherent definition of “Blasphemy”, leave alone a logical, coherent reason why they are so offended by this undefined concept.   Nevertheless, the emotive power unleashed by “blasphemy” is there for all to see.  So let’s define Blasphemy, and see if the recent events of violence and destruction are indeed caused by blasphemy, as is alleged.   There are not to many definitions of blasphemy.  Those that do exist seem to agree on the following:

Blasphemy, by reason of the significance of the words with which it is expressed, may be of three kinds.
It is heretical when the insult to the Divine involves a declaration that is against Faith,
It is imprecatory when it would cry a malediction upon the Supreme Being
It is simply contumacious when it is wholly made up of contempt of, or indignation towards, the Divine.

Now lets look at what has been happening lately, as recently as a few days ago in Athens, and it becomes very clear that people everywhere make two very fundamental mistakes.   First, they equate religion with faith, and secondly, based on the first fundamental mistake some people then go on and use the deliberate wrong interpretation of the very emotionally charged concept of blasphemy as a means to promote their specific worldly ideas and policies, all of which are designed to maintain and strengthen their power rather than respect the Divine.

One of the worlds greatest thinkers, Voltaire, defines Faith as follows:

“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.   It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.”

Faith cannot be reasoned in or out of existence, it is beyond the power of reason. It is a universal phenomenon of belief, or Faith, in the Divine. Some people will call the Divine God, other will say Allah, others again will speak of Jehovah, or Shiva, or… the name given to the Divine is immaterial, what is important is the universal nature of Faith. No person or group has exclusivity on Faith.

Again, Blasphemy is “the insult to the Divine involving a declaration that is against Faith”.   This is where the first fundamental mistake happens.   Faith gets equated with religion.

Religion is the attempt by the secular power to hijack the Divine itself as well as Faith in the Divine, and use both as a tool to advance the secular agenda. Religion attempts to replace Faith and harness the power of Faith for its own purposes.   Religion grows apart from Faith because religion allows its leaders to see themselves as figures of authority [example: the “infallible” Pope] rather than just faithful believers. Religion does not nourish genuine Faith, instead it demands blind credulity to a set of man-made rules and regulations, devised by those claiming to speak on behalf of the Divine.   Religion is nothing short of spiritual corruption.   Faith promotes freedom of belief, religion crushes that freedom.

Having reduced blasphemy to a weapon for defending religious power rather than Faith, the second fundamental mistake becomes evident.

Secular blasphemy laws, which are needed to convict people of the crime of blasphemy, are the result of the unholy alliance between secular and religious “authority” to enforce the restrictive power of that religious authority in those areas of human existence where the secular cannot impose its own restrictions.   However, this religious authority is only an authority with the blessing of the secular authority. If a religion is not accepted by the secular, it has no protection from the secular, it actually does not exist.
Blasphemy has not only lost its meaning, it has been reduced to a means for the secular of controlling Faith through religion.   It is the passport handed out by the secular to the religious “authority” to justify its existence by declaring denial of power of religion as illegal.   The Divine has simply been written out of the concept of blasphemy and the “laws” regulation it.   One of the clearest indications of the above can be found in the Greek blasphemy laws which clearly state that blasphemy is committed by

One who publicly and maliciously and by any means blasphemes the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ or any other religion tolerated in Greece …” The law protects the institution instead of the Divine.

This twisted way of looking at blasphemy is now being used to jail bloggers who insult religion, but do not necessarily issue a “declaration against Faith”, or cartoonists who insult a religious figure head, but not necessarily Faith, etc.   A few days ago people shouted “blasphemy” when the play “Corpus Christi” was put up in Athens, but the very same people who shouted “blasphemy” that evening do not, despite the very specific Greek law, see their burning down of a makeshift mosque in Athens as blasphemy.   In fact, they are correct.   Their act of arson was a despicable, cowardly act of thuggery based on homophobia, but not an insult to the Divine involving a declaration against Faith.   These actions also highlight another, often overlooked, aspect of Religion.

It can be seen that throughout history Religion and Fascism invariably gravitate towards one another.    Not necessarily at the level of “the footsoldier”, but most definitely at leadership level. Nevertheless, in Greece, every Chrysi Avgi member will openly and defiantly declare his/her membership of the Orthodox Church of Greece as an important, integral part of, and reason for his/her Chrysi Avgi membership and support.

Why is this? For one reason, and one reason only.  Religion is Fascism on a different, more subtle level.   The raw, physical violence of the secular Fascist is not always echoed in the violence exerted on society by the Religious authority.   Religious violence is much more refined, but as devastating. Witness to this the years of silence imposed on victims of clerical sexual abuse by the Church. Witness to this the recent labelling of homosexuals as “diseased” by the Greek Orthodox Church.   Witness to this the labelling of the single, pregnant woman as “unworthy of motherhood”, etc.

Blasphemy has become a means of justifying the waving of religious symbols and protecting religious authority which invariably insist that everybody else is wrong. Blasphemy should be a means of guaranteeing respect for the universal Divine, by everyone. Like Faith, nobody has exclusivity on blasphemy. And nobody should be allowed to claim it.

Correcting this warped interpretation of blasphemy would go a long way in stopping the repetition of the recent violence, as it removes the perceived insult. It would also remove a very powerful control system used by authority against anybody who dares think different…

Ephilant   2 November 2012

Europe on Austerity’s Knife-Edge – How Long is this Going On For ? Forever ? October 17, 2012

As of 15/10/2012 we see yet another few days of unfinished business, in the ongoing “Troika vs. Greece” sparring match. Greek political “leaders” are walking a very fine line. On the one hand the politicians need to be seen to please the Troika, on the other hand, they can’t afford to alienate themselves any further from the Greek people. Greece’s political leaders tell us that if they can’t get agreement with and from the Troika, Greece will not get the next 30 billion tranche of the bailout, and the country will be bankrupt. We’ve heard that three times so far, and each time, without any apparent agreement with the Troika, money has magically appeared from somewhere, and things stumble along again for a few months. Then we are told we will bankrupt again, and magically, money appears….

Conflicting pressures on politicians, to say the least.   The latest opinion poll will no doubt have frightened both Greek politicians and their European handlers like never before. It indicates a serious political polarization in Greece; with a 48% majority intending to vote SYRIZA should an election be held tomorrow, while the far right Chrysi Avgi holds its ground.   Evangelos Venizelos, leader of Pasok, has special reason to worry. Despite his defiant rhetoric, the party is on the slippery slope and is polling less than 10%. This downward trend is now pointing to the serious possibility of the once mighty Pasok polling around 5% or less, with a very real danger of the party not even reaching the required 3% of the vote to claim representation in the parliament.

Under this pressure, popular stances need to be taken, and both Venizelos and Kouvelis have started opposing various Troika demands, resulting in the announcement on 15/10/2012 by the Greek Finance minister Yiannis Stournaras that talks with the Troika will continue after the EU Summit.   At the same time, some 20 Greek government MPs have made it clear that they will not support the measures demanded by the Troika in terms of 15,000 immediate redundancies in the civil service and complete abandoning of all the provisions currently enshrined in the various labour laws to protect the basic rights of the Greek workers. More and more international voices are echoing the idea that Greece will indeed need not only more time, but also more money. And the question is being asked in Greece and across the EU

“How long is this going to go on? Forever?”

In order to answer that question one has to understand what is really going on in Europe. Let’s make one thing very clear from the outset. Despite all the talk of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and others being “bailed-out”, nothing could be further from the truth. Neither Greece, nor Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia or any of the current or future “bailout programs” are intended or designed to bail out the respective countries to which they are allocated.   In simple terms, the so called bailout allocated to these countries is in reality the amount of internationally held bank debt these countries have been “volunteered” to clear. This can be understood by looking back at the financial developments of the last 15 years or so.  Around 1995, the “Home owners’ market” came into the sights of financial houses. Home owners in general have no other corporate exposure, and their only means of investing and “creating wealth” is by investing in their houses. It was therefor in the interest of the financial institutions to have as many home owners as possible. Millions of people did however not fit the traditional “safe borrower” profile, and needed to be brought into the “home owners’ market” some other way. Subprime lending, a system of high risk, high interest lending, often more correctly referred to as predatory lending, was born.

And then something strange happened. In an effort to reduce the high risk element of this kind of reckless lending, while keeping the high interest component, financial houses started repackaging loans, and selling packaged debt to each other. This was a completely new, and as we now know, very dangerous development. Rather than debt backed up with bricks and mortar, or government guarantees, or something with value at least, we now had people investing in debt backed up by debt, backed up by debt, backed up … The perceived value of this debt was seen as wealth “locked in” to the debt, which would be released upon settlement of the debt.

The financial world embarked on an insane orgy of buying and selling debt, the amounts involved became ever larger, fooling themselves and everybody else into thinking that they were “creating wealth”. In reality, all they were doing was creating a phenomenal amount of unsecured, and unsecurable debt. In order to maintain the momentum, and create more POTENTIAL wealth, enormous amounts of cheap money were released in to fragile economic systems like the whole Southern periphery of Europe, officially enabling those economies to import product from the export oriented Northern European economies. In reality, all the banks were doing was increasing the amount of debt they owned, and still believing that the wealth locked into that debt would at some stage make it all worth the risk. Believing their own hype, the financial madmen of the day started investing heavily in the very Ponzi scheme they devised, buying the debt they created, creating more debt, and the vicious circle became an ever faster turning merry-go-round of buying and selling debt. Essentially, it was always the same debt, simple repackaged and re-priced, and made more expensive. In other words, more debt created from existing debt. And it was only a matter of time before the whole thing would come to a crashing halt.

The collapse of Lehman bank was the trigger for the financial master minds of the world to try and safeguard their insane investments. The banking crisis hit, and with it the most fragile economies went into a downward spiral. Of course, local corruption and manipulation by “interested parties” only helped to make a bad situation worse. Debt could not be paid, wealth locked into that debt could not be realized, and the very rich were not happy in seeing a possibility of not getting what they think is their God given right to get, yet more money. Lehman bank had shown them just how much they stood to lose, and they were not going to let this happen on a world wide scale. Banks holding debt, or in their sick minds “Potential Wealth” could not be left go ever again, no matter what the cost.

The fact that they brought this upon themselves is an inconvenient little side note. There is of course also the very real consequence to the larger economies in Europe, who were only too happy to supply cheap money to fuel their own export-based economy, would end up holding the debt they created. So a firewall needed to be erected that would prevent “contagion”. And somebody had to pay for this. To use the words of the late Brian Lenihan “We were bounced into a program”.

But this was not just in Ireland. The same treatment was dished out to Portugal and Greece. The method used to stop “contagion” is the bailout mechanism. Every cent of bailout money “given” to the various countries goes straight back to the so called lenders, with a handsome 7% interest in this case Greece, for the privilege of having their respective countries used in what is nothing short of a gigantic money laundering operation. The system was invented by the so called lenders, and is operated by the EU through the ECB, EMS, etc. According to those in charge of the plan, the firewall guarding against contagion is now in place. But more money is needed. A second firewall must be erected. This firewall is to guard against bank insolvency. Joe Soap must cough up even more money to fund this, so Spain and soon enough Italy will get “bounced into a program” to provide the extra cash. Meaning, Joe Soap in the various countries has everything, including his very livelihood stolen of him through “austerity” in order to safeguard the solvency of the banks, and thus realize the wealth locked into the debt created by those very same banks.

When Poul Thomsen, the IMF representative assigned to the “Greek case”, admits that the IMF got it wrong, he does not mean they got it wrong in the sense that they are sorry for leaning too hard on Greek Joe Soap and pushing him into levels of poverty not even experienced during the Nazi occupation of the country. What he does mean is that they are sorry for leaning on Greek Joe Soap so heavily that they endangered the possibility of recovering the wealth locked into Greece’s allocated slice of international bank debt. There is,no apology to Greek, Irish or whatever Joe Soap. In fact, they couldn’t care less about Joe Soap.

The problem the financial gangsters are facing is that, until this second firewall is in place, not only does the situation get worse by the day, the merry-go-round, of which the likes of Greece, Ireland, Portugal are fixed components, must be kept turning, and the debt contained in this merry-go-round must keep going round. Buying bonds, selling sovereign paper, propping up banks, whatever, it must be kept moving between ALL the components making up the merry-go-round. The money stolen out of pockets of Europe’s Joe Soap ensures this, while it reduces the bank debt slowly, or looking at it another way increases the bank’s wealth.

If one element is allowed to drop out, through sovereign bankruptcy, or Euro-exit, the merry-go-round suddenly becomes a deadly game of musical chairs, and the last one standing picks up an enormous bill. By the nature of things, that last one will be the stronger components in the merry-go-round. And instead of realizing the potential wealth held in all this debt, they will be left holding the debt. That is the real reason behind the bailout/austerity scam. Joe Soap is being made pay for the debt mountain created by the corrupt and often criminal bankers, on behalf of the richest 5% of the world population. Once this scam is seen to be working, they will want yet more again, this time encouraged by the knowledge that Joe Soap will pay, willingly or otherwise.

How long will this go on for? The answer is very simple, until Joe Soap says, and means, enough. No sooner. Joe Soap would be a wise man to say enough now. If he waits till the second firewall is ready, the whole Southern Periphery and Ireland will be dropped like a hot potato, and Joe Soap will be left wondering what happened, and how long it is going to go on for…

Ephilant  16 October 2012   Greece

Greek students protest against the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU