Parliament, MPs, the President of Greece: The Trinity of Shame Foreign Headlines Exalt

(William Hogarth’s The Orgy)

Members of Parliament in Greece are continuing the farce they call austerity measures, aka cutbacks. At a time when Greeks are called upon to pay property tax for the third time (they already pay two on a bi-monthly basis) with a further three announced this year, when civil servant income has been lowered (often rightly so in some cases) and pensioners who receive €550 a month are subjected to a further decrease in a pension that will not enable them to pay rent, medication or fuel for central heating this winter, MPs seem to live in a world of their own.

Backed by fervent support from the media nationally and internationally which has given rise to the image of the Greek who refuses to fess up to tax evasion all these years and pay the price, Parliament has passed the new budget for 2012 which hardly touches MPs’ salaries. Although slight pay cuts – which were proportionately insignificant in relation to the cuts average citizens suffered – were effected in 2011, that is where things stayed for 2012. In fact, the precise state of affairs is shocking. While the world lauds the government for its efforts to restitute Greece’s image by cutting salaries, wages, pensions, subsidies and perks in a country that never had a welfare system that worked, Greeks are protesting because they know better.

Last year’s MP expense budget covered:

a) compensation: Yes, compensation as they call it, because what they are doing is a favor to all  Greeks, that is why they need to be compensated rather than receive a salary like those lucky enough to hold

Pawnbrokers Prosper as Greece Struggles With Hard Times

Comment by MySatelite:

This article, which as Greek citizens we can acknowledge as true, is an answer to all those who a) say ALL Greeks deserve to pay as they have been thriving off black money for years (so how come they’re selling their jewelry instead of tapping into their fat bank accounts?) and b) believe Papandreou’s policies and now Papademos’s (the governor of Greece’s central bank who was involved in cooking figures to put Greece in the Euro over a decade ago) are geared towards saving the nation.

As for the illicit gold trade the article mentions, it pales in comparison to what Greek politicians have stolen from the Greek people. No Greek will ever feel inclined to walk down the path of justice as long as justice is never served in a prejudicial system that pretends to look after the welfare of the country but does so only in name.

In Greece’s Sour Economy, Some Shops Are Thriving

ATHENS — With all the contraction in the Greek economy, with employees laid off en masse and one in four small businesses forced to close, it might seem odd that new shops are springing up like mushrooms in Athens and other cities.

Why isn’t Anyone Talking about the Demonstrations Tomorrow in Thessaloniki?

How convenient don’t you think, my dears? Tomorrow the International Fair , the city’s most important annual event, kicks off in Thessaloniki and no one has spent a single paragraph to tell the world what is about to take place.

No, the foreign press has decided to snub the whole affair, because to them, the Greeks are just lazy, complaining spoilt brats who have no idea what’s going on in their lives. Well, let me tell you

Prelude to the selling out of the Greek people

Published 06/02/2011

We had promised that we would reveal how Greece ended up being sold for a pittance to the International Monetary Fund. And we have already said that the information is already publicly available. What we do here is freshen up the memory of the Greek citizens and, through our translation project, provide this information to everyone else outside Greece as well. You see, the Greek people were systematically slandered by the media – the Greeks were described as lazy, good-for-nothing bums, parasites, living at the expense of the other peoples of the European Union. The German media (mainly the highly influential right-wing rags Bild and Focus) dubbed Greeks -collectively- thieves and spewed endless hatred towards Greeks in the German society; hate that was almost equal to the anti-Semitic rage of the NSDAP.

PM opts for reshuffle, vote of confidence

COMMENT BY FENRIR:

The majority in Greece demand all 300 Members of Parliament to give back what they’ve stolen and then resign, and as you can see, politicians just care about keeping their seat in Parliament and receiving that fat pay check at the end of the month.

And since the first bailout didn’t work, why is the IMF promising a second one? What collateral will they get in return? What is really behind all this bankruptcy sham and who is really going to benefit from it?

The reason Greeks are out in the streets is because they’ve put the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s obnoxious to say Greece is in trouble when so many other countries owe ten times more.  Is it coincidence that so many flocked to help Greece when precious minerals inland and oil was discovered off its shores?

 

PM opts for reshuffle, vote of confidence

Papandreou withdraws offer to step down as part of bid to form coalition government with ND

Greece says debt negotiations concluded positively

A near month-long inspection of Greek finances by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund concluded «positively» on Friday, the country’s finance ministry said. 

 

The inspection is crucial to whether Greece will receive the next batch of loans from a €110 billion bailout fund from the EU and IMF agreed last year and could well inform discussions over an extension to the current financial rescue package. 

 

The Iagos in Parliament … by The Reaper

Has it been that long since I last made my presence felt here? I’ve been busy, as you all well know, what with the uprisings in the Middle East and the purportedly humanitarian bombings – an oxymoron in itself – by the libertarianist coalition of the New World Order. So many lives to take. So many tears to thrive on. Well, that has quite kept me on my skeletal little toes for the past several months and I’ve left my quaint story involving this tiny hole of a country in the Mediterranean at a very crucial point.

As I was saying, apart from all the corruption, bribery, tax evasion (which as I mentioned is nothing in proportion to the money transfers by government officials effected to Swiss banks and other offshore accounts, or London real estate for that matter), there was the affair of a certain presidential candidate who decided to say there’s money in the country’s coffers when in fact he knew all too well there wasn’t.