I am Greek.
To be Greek it is not an ethnicity, it is not a nationality and it is not even a profession.
To be Greek is a state of mind and it is a full-time job. However, what exactly means to be a Greek, I cannot tell you because I do not know. “Know thyself,” I was taught in school but I never succeeded.
Despite the election of January 25, 2015 (a day after this article went to print), there is a stern realization that nothing will change in the decades to come. Regardless of who the winners and the losers are, I will give dear friends, three perennial examples for the readers to get an idea what kind of people you hope to get your European money back from.
Recalling from history, not to speak of mythology, the guiding science of today’s media, our origins go back some three millennia. In these three millennia, nothing has changed in our attitude and behavior towards the Polis and the others. Nothing!
The first ever, and greatest world war, that doubles as the biggest civil war in history was the Peloponnesian War.
The democratic Athens with its Athenian Empire went to war against the ‘communist’ Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Just for the record, the Spartans won that war and their victory was signaled by their demolishing of the walls of Athens, accompanied by the sound of music. The walls of Athens symbolized the might of the Athenian Democracy.
The Peloponnesian war lasted 27 years, from 431 to 404 BC and transcended three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) engaging the greatest part of the then known world. The particularity of the Peloponnesian war was that all combating adversaries spoke one language: Greek.
Greeks fought against Greeks for 27 years on three continents. That is why the Peloponnesian war is considered the first and biggest ever, civil war in history.
The Parthenon of the Acropolis of Athens is beyond a doubt the greatest monument of human civilization. The Parthenon was built in 447-438 BC by the Polis of Athens, in celebration of the victory of Democracy of Pericles over the Dictatorship of Pisistratus.
There are some details, worth reminding, which may give you an idea of the perennial character of the Greeks. The Parthenon was an idea of Pericles but the Athenian Parliament, the so-called “Ecclesia of Demos,” was reluctant to allocate the necessary funds. The project was huge and as for political reasons was to be built by “free labor” (that is by labor of ordinary Athenian citizens who were paid, and not by labor of slaves).
In presenting the Parthenon project to the Parliament, Pericles, a very wealthy Athenian but also a well known …tight with money, cheated the Parliament stating that he would have paid for building Parthenon. As he would have paid for the project, the monument would be named after himself. The Parliament, which was fed up with the arrogance of Pericles, refused the proposal for private financing of the temple and allocated the funds.
The Parthenon was the temple built to celebrate Democracy. Before the Parthenon, in the mid of the rock of the Acropolis of Athens there was another temple built by dictator Pisistratus. The Athenians suggested celebrating the victory of Democracy over Dictatorship by demolishing the temple of Pisistratus and building Parthenon in its place. Pericles refused and ordered to erect a wall on the side and to build the Parthenon on top of that space, in order for the future generations to be able to compare what democracies can achieve in contrast to dictatorships. Indeed, today, two and a half millennia after, the temple of Pisistratus vanished as it was corroded by time, while the Parthenon, still stands.
Yet the most interesting tangent of this story is what happened to the protagonists of the Parthenon project. Kallikratis was the contractor, Iktinos was the architect and Feidias was the sculptor.
When the project was finished they were accused by the auditors of the Parliament for corruption. The three were convicted by the Court to life in exile in Katakolo (east Peloponnese). There, they convinced the Polis of Olympia to build a similar temple in the area. They build the temple of Epikourios Appolon in the mountain of Olympia, a temple even more harmonic and better looking than the Parthenon. As can perhaps be expected, the auditors of Olympia found “irregularities” suggesting corruption but the investigation didn’t lead to any more penalties, as by this time the trio had aged significantly.
Now days if you look at the PATHE road, the notorious trans-European E65 auto-route connecting Patrai to Thessaloniki via Athens, history repeats itself. In the last 30 years, the project has been fully co-financed by the EU’s Cohesion Fund at least five times but the road in its greatest part is still under construction.
Let us take a third journey now, to the case of Socrates: the greatest philosopher of humanity. Socrates was Greek and was executed by the Athenian Democracy for his ideas. He was the one and only person ever sentenced to death for his ideas by the Democracy of Athens. Shortly before his execution, Socrates was visited by Kriton who had bribed the guards and had arranged to take Socrates and flee to Thessaly. Socrates refused. Indeed, as he explained to Kriton, he did not want to break the Law of his City, even if the Law was unjust to him.
Now, dear friends, dear Jean Claude, dear Angela and dear Mario, you have some clues to understand the Greeks and realize that you should not be expecting too much from the new Greek government of whatever color and composition it will be.
Why? Because there is no money available, and because to the conscience of the average Greek, you are not morally legitimized to get any.
Indeed, no matter what the politicians you are speaking with are telling you, the Greeks are well aware that part of these big debts of Greece that partially are responsible for the economic crisis in Greece, were generated and subsequently returned to companies of your countries, legally and in some cases some claim under the table, as the cut of the loot of the co-financed Community programs.
The cases we (and probably you) are aware, are many. To make myself clear I will mention details of one, which is typical. Total cost of the project according to the European Commission (implemented a decade ago) € 2,35 BILLION. Real cost of the project (maximum maximorum) € 300 MILLION. Contractor was a huge northern European company and subcontractors a few Greeks contractors, minute in comparison. In this project, € 250 million was contributed by the European Commission while € 2,15 BILLION was paid by the Greeks in the form of Greek government contributions (taxes of the Greeks) and foreign loans to Greece, which you now are trying to get back.
Realistically speaking, the new Greek government will give you nothing except empty promises because it has nothing to give you and does not feel legitimized to squeeze the Greeks any more to give you something.
Therefore, dear friends, you have to look for another solution keeping in mind that the Greek crisis, economic, political and social, is the most serious political problem of Europe and not of Greece. It is that serious that if not handled properly, realistically and primarily politically, it may well prove the “strange attractor” to trigger the “big bang” in the chaotic system that future generations will know as European Union.
P.S. If you need to know more of the situation and outlook of Greece under the blessings of its European partners, please read my article, “Greece: no plan, no future”http://www.neurope.eu/article/greece-no-plan-no-futureof November 15, 2014.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/dna-voting-greeks-parable