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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges: We Are All Greeks Now
from truthdig:
by Chris Hedges
The poor and the working class in the United States know what it is to be Greek. They know underemployment and unemployment. They know life without a pension. They know existence on a few dollars a day. They know gas and electricity being turned off because of unpaid bills. They know the crippling weight of debt. They know being sick and unable to afford medical care. They know the state seizing their meager assets, a process known in the United States as civil asset forfeiture, which has permitted American police agencies to confiscate more than $3 billion in cash and property. They know the profound despair and abandonment that come when schools, libraries, neighborhood health clinics, day care services, roads, bridges, public buildings and assistance programs are neglected or closed. They know the financial elites hijacking of democratic institutions to impose widespread misery in the name of austerity. They, like the Greeks, know what it is to be abandoned.
The Greeks and the U.S. working poor endure the same deprivations because they are being assaulted by the same systemcorporate capitalism. There are no internal constraints on corporate capitalism. And the few external constraints that existed have been removed. Corporate capitalism, manipulating the worlds most powerful financial institutions, including the Eurogroup, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve, does what it is designed to do: It turns everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to be exploited until exhaustion or collapse. In the extraction process, labor unions are broken, regulatory agencies are gutted, laws are written by corporate lobbyists to legalize fraud and empower global monopolies, and public utilities are privatized. Secret trade agreementswhich even elected officials who view the documents are not allowed to speak aboutempower corporate oligarchs to amass even greater power and accrue even greater profits at the expense of workers. To swell its profits, corporate capitalism plunders, represses and drives into bankruptcy individuals, cities, states and governments. It ultimately demolishes the structures and markets that make capitalism possible. But this is of little consolation for those who endure its evil. By the time it slays itself it will have left untold human misery in its wake.
The Greek government kneels before the bankers of Europe begging for mercy because it knows that if it leaves the eurozone, the international banking system will do to Greece what it did to the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973 in Chile; it will, as Richard Nixon promised to do in Chile, make the economy scream. The bankers will destroy Greece. If this means the Greeks can no longer get medicineGreece owes European drug makers 1 billion eurosso be it. If this means food shortagesGreece imports thousands of tons of food from Europe a yearso be it. If this means oil and gas shortagesGreece imports 99 percent of its oil and gasso be it. The bankers will carry out economic warfare until the current Greek government is ousted and corporate political puppets are back in control.
Human life is of no concern to corporate capitalists. The suffering of the Greeks, like the suffering of ordinary Americans, is very good for the profit margins of financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs. It was, after all, Goldman Sachswhich shoved subprime mortgages down the throats of families it knew could never pay the loans back, sold the subprime mortgages as investments to pension funds and then bet against themthat orchestrated complex financial agreements with Greece, many of them secret. These agreements doubled the debt Greece owes under derivative deals and allowed the old Greek government to mask its real debt to keep borrowing. And when Greece imploded, Goldman Sachs headed out the door with suitcases full of cash. .................(more)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_all_greeks_now_20150712
Octafish
(55,745 posts)That used to be called fascism before the Powell Manifesto.
Nitram
(22,663 posts)Unions and FDR turned the tables for a while.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Besides, in a "free market" there are no exemptions to "rules" and regulations and no subsidies.... especially if you are making a profit.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)which is an offshoot of corporate capitalism, present the world with a stark choice. The survival of corporate capitalism or the survival of the human species.
Those who benefit from the status quo will never, ever give an inch. The denouement is is probably going to be very messy and bloody when it finally comes, as it eventually must.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Do we eliminate industrialism? If so, how?
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)and Naomi Klein's "This Changes Eveything" for a summar of what is readily possible if predatory corporatism is taken down.
I see no reason why many things cannot be done on a smaller and more local scale. There is no sane reason for the biggest banks to be as big as they are, there is no reason farmers cannot use non-GMO seeds, there is no reason people cannot implement workplace democracy instead of the fascistic command-and-control model. There is no sane reason for the US to try and rule the world with its absurdly wasteful and bloated military, which serves only to protect corporate interests, not the landmass of the US.
There is no reason why employees should not be represented on corporate boards and be shareholders in businesses.
But there IS a reason none of these things will ever happen - the tenth-percenters are utterly content with the status quo and its rapidly unmasking fascistic nature. Many of them are sociopaths who actively feed on and revel in human misery and inflicting suffering on the powerless, which is pretty much everyone else.
The scale of things is the big problem. Companies have been allowed to become so large, rich and powerful tat they are like a black hole, sucking in everything, in addition to becoming so wealthy that they can literally buy the governemt of the entire country. There should be a limit on how large any corporate enterprise can become. Furthermore, there should be a death penalty for bad corporate actors, in particular repeat offenders, and a requirement that any business acting in the corporate form be required to behave in a manner that serves the public good, not merely the interests of the shareholders, who have no loyalty to anything save money. Corporate charters, especially those of large enterprises, should be subject to a searching public review every 5-10 years. No more corporate personhood or immortality. And large corporations should be watched with hawk-like scrutiny.
As for the future, the transition away from fossil fuels provides the most relevant example. What do you think could be done if the government invested 10% of the 15 trillion the banksters were given in alternative energy development grants to small businesses and inventors? Shit, what could be done with just the money that the oil companies extract from the government each year if used for renewables.
These are just a few of the things Greider and Klein discuss.
If we continue to go down the same path, the ending of predatory capitalism is going to be extremely bloody and ugly. People can be pushed so far and no farther, and no tyranny has lasted forever.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)I appreciate the earnest reply!
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)marmar
(76,976 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)"It's not that the wealthy wish us to die, they just don't care if we do."
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)an administration which is enriching the bank$ter/donors on the back of the workers that voted for it. Ask the kids who weren't on food stamps just 6 years ago.
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)A port. Looking to privatize part of their infrastructure to help their struggling economy. I didn't hear any compromise of partnership or minority ownership stake, just sale.
On edit: the "corpses" won't be happy until the whole world is a subsidiary.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)The tenth-percenters are probably working on the plans to turn entire countries into forced labor camps..It is the logical next step.
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)Rest of the crew, negotiating for "shares" from The Company to live on. James Cameron anticipated corporatocracy 30 years ago.
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)About 3% negative growth and a worse recession than before, according to BBC interviews.
marmar
(76,976 posts)Adrahil
(13,340 posts)A Grexit would probanly result in more a 10% contraction at this point.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)And that happened because Greece ran out of money.
It's important to be clear about events. Without the money and assistance in the deal, the economy would probably collapse over 8%.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)exists for a reason. Those that argue "debt doesn't matter" are right until is does - and
at that point it is often too late for a good outcome.
jalan48
(13,797 posts)So much for trickle-down economics.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Which leaves all the real estate undamaged and provides a nice big slave labor force.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)Give that man a cigar, we have a winner.
It won't end pretty.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)I feel terribly about what's happening in Greece, but no one goes to another country and asks for war to be declared, nor does war consist of bombing your country with tens of billions of dollars in aid.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Overseas
(12,121 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)An outstanding article.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Just a reminder: Tomorrow is Bastille Day.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)ancianita
(35,812 posts)He wants workers to join internationally to divide and conquer leaderships of governments and corporations. It's an old I.W.W. way of proclaiming the 99%'s interests, and I hope it works.
I hope the rest of us will add this to our outlook on national and international politics.
erronis
(14,941 posts)ancianita
(35,812 posts)niyad
(112,424 posts)mother earth
(6,002 posts)are guilty of willful ignorance. I've seen people here declare Greece to be at fault, which is an easy out for corporatist politics, aiding and abetting the continued practice of global austerity which seeks only to debt enslave people from all nations. As a democrat, this is all very clear, anyone who declares it as a good thing, is no democrat, they are DINO, and yes we have DINOs here, or perhaps they are paid to spew their nonsense.
The trend to privatize everything for profit and sell off just about everything in this process, is a global poison, it is predatory in nature & it is class warfare. Anyone here who can defend this is a fool, there is reason for the corruption of politics, and it all goes back to class warfare...be clear who you seek to empower, and know we will see you for what you are.
K & R, marmar & Chris Hedges!
fasttense
(17,301 posts)"We will not return to a rational economy or restore democracy until these global speculators are stripped of power. This will happen only if the streets of major cities in Europe and the United States are convulsed with mass protests. The tyranny of these financial elites knows no limits. They will impose ever greater suffering and repression until we submit or revolt. I prefer the latter. But we dont have much time."
ancianita
(35,812 posts)town" is a harm toward us all. We're going to have to work on the logistics of internationally mobilizing.
It's hard to muster courage and will when one feels so alienated and weary in one's own country. But I myself have sent lots of good cheer and reassurances that most of us here are on the side of Greece's 99%.
historylovr
(1,557 posts)CrispyQ
(36,221 posts)Every word is spot on. Wish I could rec multiple times.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... or collect their taxes appropriately, and therefore put them into bigger debt and corresponding financial problems to start with that let Wall Street financiers come in and take advantage of them later, and subsequently the EU coming to "enforce austerity" on the WRONG people there who have been suffering for so long already from unequal taxation there. It is good that the Greeks finally have a government elected that will hopefully keep those local tax problems from happening again, but they need to find some way of fending off the EU and recovering from the earlier damage that the oligarchs have pushed on to them.
With the way corporate America has scammed the taxation system and let others shelter their income overseas, and lowered the taxes for the wealthy while raising it on others through things like capital gains taxation shifting, taking away things like income averaging and deducting interest like we used to have, etc. we've been hit by the same redistribution of the debt to the government and to us that has affected Greece. Yep, we have a lot of the same problems. Time we got a NEW populist government like they do to start fixing these problems.
randome
(34,845 posts)Greece was just saved from a horrible collapse by making a horrible deal. It shouldn't require much in the way of 'analysis' to see that this outcome was just one of many, ALL of which were horrible.
Yet instead of acknowledging the complexity of the matter, Hedges has to be depressed because that's what he does best.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Creating is hard work. All it took was a couple generations of spoiled brats who felt they deserved the world because they were daddies precious. Buy em an MBA from a good school, get em a job on Wall St and watch em go. They cannot create, they lack the skills, but they can destroy and suck out the insides of everything they touch.
Like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, they vomited all over established small businesses, factories and hospitals people left as legacies, that people labored a lifetime to create, to turn them into a sweet money paste they could absorb through a jutting proboscis and return to the screaming and hungry shareholders back in the nest.
They are drinking all of our milkshakes, forever.
And far from stopping them, far too many are more than happy to lend a dollar, or a hand, or a life or an entire race.
Danascot
(4,662 posts)but it's just fine for the Greeks and the rest of us to be sacrificed on the altar of capitalism.