Greece: Burning Banks

Here a wee vid showing “The worst riot damage in years has struck Greek cities as MPs pass harsh new austerity measures. Amateur video shows violent protests in central Volos, where a branch of one of Greece’s largest banks – Eurobank – was torched.”. (2012-05-13)

I was particularly impressed with some of the comments:

• “one day all the banks all over the world will be on fire :)”
• “Let the temples of the money-changers burn! Let the cradle of democracry become the grave of usury.”
• “MESSAGE TO THE 99%. Let the globalisation of bank-burning commence!! They want a new world order, let’s fucking give them 1!!!!!”
• “They got the money out first right?”

Video from: http://youtu.be/oIVdnKc1BDI

 

Greece’s new cashless currency

A bit of good news.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/16/greece-on-breadline-cashless-currency?INTCMP=SRCH

Via: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/16/greece-develops-euro-free-currency-in-tight-economy/

Via: http://usuryfree.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/greece-develops-cashless-euro-free.html

Greece develops cashless, Euro-free currency in tight economy

A determination to ‘move beyond anger to creativity’ is driving a strong barter economy in some places

In recent weeks, Theodoros Mavridis has bought fresh eggs, tsipourou (the local brandy: beware), fruit, olives, olive oil, jam, and soap. He has also had some legal advice, and enjoyed the services of an accountant to help fill in his tax return.

None of it has cost him a euro, because he had previously done a spot of electrical work – repairing a TV, sorting out a dodgy light – for some of the 800-odd members of a fast-growing exchange network in the port town of Volos, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki.

In return for his expert labour, Mavridis received a number of Local Alternative Units (known as tems in Greek) in his online network account. In return for the eggs, olive oil, tax advice and the rest, he transferred tems into other people’s accounts.

“It’s an easier, more direct way of exchanging goods and services,” said Bernhardt Koppold, a German-born homeopathist and acupuncturist in Volos who is an active member of the network. “It’s also a way of showing practical solidarity – of building relationships.” …

Tems has been up and running for barely 18 months, said Maria Choupis, one of its founder members. Prompted by ever more swingeing salary cuts and tax increases, she reckons there are now around 15 such networks active around Greece, and more planned. “They are as much social structures as economic ones,” she said. “They foster intimacy and mutual support.” …

The Greek parliament recently passed a law encouraging “alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development”, including exchange networks such as Volos’s, giving them official non-profit status for tax purposes.

Choupis said there was a new mood abroad in Greece, a determination to “move beyond anger to creativity”.

“You are not poor when you have no money,” she said, “you are poor when you have nothing to offer – except for the elderly and the sick, to whom we should all be offering.”

by Jon Henley in Volos, guardian.co.uk

See also: “Modern Greeks Return To Ancient System Of Barter” https://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142908549/modern-greeks-return-to-ancient-system-of-barter

 

Greek debtmocracy

Greece has been deliberately bankrupted and is now the poor man of Europe – an warning to the other countries and an excuse for greater integration.

From: http://youtu.be/v1g-rr_dFq4

My notes:

1. Banks pay for election candidates to get elected.
2. One of them gets elected. The prime minister (president, premier, etc.) is now in temporary control of their country.
3. Bank blackmails and/or threatens and/or bribes the prime minister (president, premier, etc.) to take out on loans (= principal + interest) using his/her county’s assets as collateral. The people are happy – there’s jobs, infrastructure, £s in your pocket to buy shiny things.
4. These loans have (or not) to be paid back by the populace, not the prime minister.
5. Later, another election.
6. Go back to beginning.
7. Eventually the country can’t even afford the interest payment on these debts.
8. Time to call in the bailiffs.
9. Country’s assets are stripped.
10. Live miserably ever after.

 

Movement “I Don’t Pay”

From: http://youtu.be/eUFBcczPeRo

Leftists shine when it comes to direct action. And that’s what they are doing in Greece and elsewhere in Europe in response to bankster imposed austerity measures — direct action at the point of highway robbery.

In the video, we see students and unemployed workers shutting down public transportation toll collection. It’s called the “I Won’t Pay” movement. It began last year in Greece and has spread to other locales on the continent, including Spain and Sweden.

Thousands of Greeks are now refusing to validate their public transit tickets following well-publicized protests by leftists and communists in response to ticket price hikes by the government.

Some believe this sort of civil disobedience is ineffective and merely theatrical, but it is a good way for people to make a point — they are opposed to the state acting as an enforcer for the IMF, the World Bank and the international bankers.

COURAGE BREAKS OUT IN GREECE, SPAIN & SWEDEN

The article and video shows masses of citizens in Greece, Spain and Sweden, refusing to pay the increased tolls and transportation fares imposed on them through the austerity from the globalist bankers.

Increased taxes, reduced wages and benefits and higher indirect taxes through those tolls and fees, have brought millions to their knees. All this to pay a very few international bankers interest on money they create “in their basement”. Many of us have been suggesting civil disobedience against our government masters. The refusal of paying tolls is a great start.

Back in the 1950′s the greater Chicago area began constructing toll ways in order to relieve congestion. Those government masters promised to remove the tolls once the roads were paid for. Of course they lied. 60 years later the tolls not only still exist, but a few years ago, they were doubled. On top of that some of the toll roads were sold to foreign interests for a fraction of their value. I had suggested back then, don’t pay them. With 6 million commuters using the Chicago toll roads every day, civil disobedience on the part of even 100,000 daily would bring the system down and return control to the people.

It always comes back to the same thing – courage. I didn’t say not to be afraid. Courage exists in the face of fear. Unfortunately, we have to look at Europe for those examples. Even so, their disobedience could put them in jeopardy, but they have no choice. We must remember government power comes from money and police. Hopefully our police and military will soon figure this out and return to defending the Constitution. If they don’t, they will soon see they also are disposable.

Maybe Texans outraged by the Trans Texas Corridor and proposed toll roads should think about following the lead of Greek leftists.

TTC : Not for me!!!!!

http://www.oxidiodia.gr
http://www.kinimadenplirono.gr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuETrd030F8&feature=player_embedded

 

See also: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41723432/ns/business-world_business/t/i-wont-pay-movement-spreads-across-greece/#.T0pZvPXDLEl

 

Queen Victoria would feel at home in our times

I suppose the Bankers will ticking off another box as ‘completed’ on their list of achievements.

Is this the 21 century?
Is this the ‘western world?
Is this a ‘white’ country?
Is this the Europe our ancestors died for?
Is this the EU our ‘leaders’ wants us to have?

Probably wont be long before workhouses are built (with tax money)?

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085163/Children-dumped-streets-Greek-parents-afford-them.html

Via: http://www.ukcolumn.org/blogs/children-dumped-streets-greek-parents-who-cant-afford-look-after-them-any-more

Children ‘dumped in streets by Greek parents who can’t afford to look after them any more’

• Youngsters abandoned as parents struggle
• 4-year-old found clutching note: ‘I can’t afford her’
• Country also running out of medicine
• Aspirin stocks low as austerity measures bite

By Lee Moran, Last updated at 7:05 PM on 11th January 2012

Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

Athens’ Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months.

One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha.

Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note that read: ‘I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry.’

And another desperate mother, Maria, was forced to give up her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia after losing her job.

She looked for work for more than a  year, having to leave her child at home for hours at a time, and lived off food handouts from the local church.

She said: ‘Every night I cry alone at home, but what can I do? It hurt my heart, but I didn’t have a choice.’ She now works in a cafe but only make £16 per day and so cannot afford to take her daughter back.

Centre founder Fr Antonios Papanikolaou told the Mirror: ‘Over the last year we’ve had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.

‘They say they do not have any money or shelter or food for their kids, so they hope we might be able to provide them with what they need.’

Further evidence of Greeks feeling the pinch of austerity measures is the lack of aspirin and other medicines now available in the country.

Pharmacists are struggling to stock their shelves as the Greek government, which sets the prices for drugs, keeps them artificially low.

This means that firms are turning to sell the drugs outside of the country for a higher price – leading to stock depletion for Greeks.

Mina Mavrou, who runs one of the country’s 12,000 pharmacies, said she spent hours each day pleading with drug makers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients.

And she said that even when drugs were available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Meanwhile, talks about private sector creditors paying for part of a second Greek bailout are going badly, senior European bankers said tonight.

That raises the prospect that euro zone governments will have to increase their contribution to the aid package.

‘Governments are mulling an increase of their share of the burden,’ said one banker, while another said ‘Nothing is decided yet, but the bigger the imposed haircut the less appetite there is for voluntary conversion.’   

A third senior banker told Associated Press: ‘Private sector involvement is going badly.’   

There are suggestions in euro zone government circles that ministers are coming to the realisation they may need to bolster Greece’s planned second bailout worth 130 billion euros if the voluntary bond swap scheme, which is a key part of the overall package, falls short of expectations.

Stumping up yet more money would be politically difficult in Germany and other countries in the northern part of the currency bloc.

 

Old Holborn: Government Bonds and the EU

Am I getting older and more right-wing? Or am I becoming more knowledgeable and appropriately piss-off?

From (with thanks): http://www.blottr.com/columnist/old-holborn/squeezing-lemons

Emphasis in red are mine.

Squeezing the Lemons

This week saw the European Central Bank suddenly “create” half a trillion Euros in order to lend to cash strapped banks, so that they could, in turn, lend money to us and businesses. It hasn’t solved anything because the European Central Bank will be lucky to get it back and the market knows this, but also, the Politicians are demanding that the banks now buy Government bonds with the money they have just been lent. Lets break that down again so you can see how the scam actually works.

A Government bond is what a State issues when it can’t fleece it’s citizens with enough taxes to cover the bills. It’s a promise to pay back based on future tax revenues, a huge IOU placed upon the citizens of the country that hopefully, they will work hard enough for the State to be able to borrow in their name, based upon their future labour. So the ECB created from nothing, a large pile of money that doesn’t exist and has lent this imaginary money to the banks to lend to you at a profit, whilst it is backed by the future labour of your children. When this money hits your account, it is very real but you are the only one who is going to be paying interest on it. The banks will get rich, the European Central Bank will earn a tidy sum, and one day, your kids will have to work to pay it back as well. Got that? Excellent, now we’re getting somewhere.

Greece has decided, in order to cover the debts of the bonds it has issued and cannot repay, that a special property tax of up to €20 per square metre will now be imposed on the citizens. If you own a house that uses electricity, a little extra will be tagged on to your leccy bill, to be handed straight to the bankers. And here’s the catch; don’t pay and the state owned electricity company will come round and disconnect your power. Ironically, the very same State that owes the electricity company around £140M in unpaid electricity bills. Very possibly the finest argument for the privatisation of utilities you will find anywhere. When the state can extort funds at this level, no one is safe. It can raid your wage packet, slap 20% on everything you buy in the shops and now cut off your electric if you don’t hand over that little bit more, Luigi. Or you sleep with da fishes, eh?

Naturally, the Greeks are not taking to this mafia enterprise lightly. Already on their knees, groups of electricians are vowing to boycott disconnections or simply reconnect those who refuse to pay and rumours of a new water tax are rife. In effect, the Government of Greece has sold and squandered the future labour of its citizens and is now systematically extracting what little wealth the private citizen has left – the very roof over their heads. Interesting times indeed.

Meanwhile, in the background, the EU prints off more money to lend to people who cannot afford it and can never repay it, in order to keep the wheels of the State turning, regardless of the consequences to the hard pressed citizen. 2012 may yet turn out to be the straw that breaks the camels back when the EU finally runs of out of imaginary money to lend to banks too big to fail. When that happens, the house of cards, built by decades of Politicians promises on sand, will collapse very quickly indeed, along with the massive centralised States it has created. At the height of the Great Depression in the ’30’s, the US had unemployment of 25% and Spain is already at 20% with a default in 2012 likely.

If I were you, dear reader, I would start slowly thinking about your own, personal plan B, just as the Greek citizens are. Plan for the worst, hope for the best and keep crossing your fingers that no one ever picks up the can that is continuously kicked down the road by our Politicians, because when they do, you will see things with your own eyes that our Grandchildren will be taught about in history books.

On that happy note, enjoy your Christmas and try to stay off the stuffing. I fear there’ll be more than enough of that to go around in 2012.

 

Greek referendum on bailout

Sounds like the Greek Prime minister, Papandreou is looking for an easy way to walk away from this fiasco.

If the Greek people vote in favour, he will be hero. If they vote against, he will resign, save his skin and pass the buck.

He really can’t lose!

 

Foreign riot police may now be operating in Greece

Coming to the UK very soon …

From: http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/10/foreign-riot-police-now-operating-in-greece/

” Did you know that the EU has its own riot police that can operate in any European country but is answerable directly to none of them?  No I didn’t either.

They are called the European Gendarmerie Force (Eurogendfor) . They are based in Italy but funded and staffed by six signatory nations who are France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Romania.  However, according to the Treaty which established Eurogendfor they can operate in any EU country and are available to others who invite them to do so. The country which invites them in is refered to as the ‘Host’.

The Gendarmerie are specifically set up to deal with riots and civil unrest and as the treaty spells out they are to be “exclusively comprising elements of police forces with military status“.  “

 

Vultures and prey: 4 p.i.g.s and a square

From: http://youtu.be/_6NhzVf0mIM

 

Euro dream fanaticism to end in disaster

“The EU’s leadership remains unphased by the festering debt crisis in Greece, maintaining Athens should not, cannot, and will not default. Their message, however, is falling on increasingly deaf ears as leading economists, investors and academics say it’s inevitable. Greeks, meanwhile, are mobilizing for new mass rallies as government imposed austerity begins to break the back of the country’s economy. Salaries, pensions and jobs are free-falling, while taxes and cuts soar – all in an effort to satisfy EU demands in return for yet more debt – in the form of bailouts. And, according to William Dartmouth, an MEP for the UK Independence Party, the EU’s obsession with the Euro can only end in disaster.”

From RussiaToday: http://youtu.be/gtIcOGYWYxw