The Greek Mouse That Roared "OXI". What is the lesson?
Politics / Social Issues Jul 06, 2015 - 12:51 PM GMTIt is the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 that came to mind when I watched the results of the Greece referendum July 5. I vividly recalled the so-called pro-democracy movement in Cairo to oust corrupt dictator President Hosni Mubarak; the steaming multitude huddled in Tahrir Square stoically waiting for his resignation; the subtle reminder to Mubarak by President Obama "to leave". The "Arab Spring" was hailed by all Western media at the time, and that alone was reason to question it.
Alas, Egypt turned back to the devil in short order as many, including this writer, predicted. The present military dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi who overthrew democratically elected Mohamed Morsi (scheduled for execution) and who is supported by American taxes isn't probed or criticized by Western reporters because, no doubt, doing so would jeopardize careers. Nor is it discussed how American occupations and endless wars in the Middle East have fostered the Islamic State. Nor are Israeli actions against Palestinians ever characterized as other than "defensive". Nor is the role of Saudi Arabia in financing al-Qaeda revealed or the House of Saud's connection to 9/11. Forbidden it is to condemn its present genocide against the poorest nation in the Moslem world, Yemen, where 80% are left to starve or die from American supplied firepower. Samantha Power won't categorize this as a "human rights abuse issue" needing "humanitarian intervention" by Western neo-colonialists. No. Those labels - particular favorites of Democrats - are reserved for China whose real crime against Empire is success and solvency. Nor are the ongoing threats of coups and assassination attempts now sweeping across South American countries reported because, no doubt, they are engineered by masterminds of Empire in the hallowed boardrooms and war rooms of Wall Street, the Pentagon and Langley. For an American in America to openly question the endless lies told to everyone about Russian aggression is to invite censure, if not banishment. Nor will it be reported (except by me) a picture I just evinced in my crystal ball: a military junta and civil war is possibly ahead for Greece.
A reader of financial news and markets might suspect that dictatorship of finance capital respects no vote, no political leader and no sovereign nation. Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who described the actions of Athens’ creditors as “terrorism”, and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras can't be careful enough. May they not become martyrs. If Chancellor Angela Merkel can tolerate fascists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine overthrowing democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych, she can tolerate it elsewhere on behalf of banks, particularly Deutsche Bank. In Greece, wake Golden Dawn from its sleeper cells and with an all-too-readied police and military apparatus whose loyalties mostly aligned with them revive the gory days of the "Regime of the Colonels". The Greek media will justify it and the rest of Western media will spin it as it did with Ukraine, casting blame on leftists or anarchists setting fires and throwing cocktails. By the time you read this, however, events should have overtaken all expectations, but the game in play is one that will amplify into a future no one can predict. This is good. Why is this good? It is good because the Old World Order must retire for the new to emerge - and the new is not one crafted and defined by the old. It is unpredictable; unpredictability is terrorizing. The "terrorism" Yanis Varoufakis described coming from Athens (i.e., Brussels, Berliin, Paris) has been returned to them.
Democracy was born in Greece and democracy might die there today or tomorrow, but death will be illusory. The Mouse refuses to die.
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In America, as the world undergoes financial trauma, its media is focused on GOP candidates competing with Donald Trump in the "battle of the egos" for the starring role in playing loud, crass and venal Sarah Palin. The Democratic counter-offers are uber hawk Hillary offering to "finish the job" of world domination, and Bernie Sanders who Democrats must stand-down lest his moniker ("socialist") becomes attached to them. Goodness knows if Bernie were really that he'd call for the nationalization of all banks and industries placing them under control of the workers. But in the Rush Limbaugh-Fox News dictionary of economics, anybody who shares his lunch with a homeless man or challenges the status quo (and it is big money, big corporations, big banks, big media, big wealth and oligarchy) is....well, a socialist.
If Bernie is a socialist, what was Lenin?
Filling the newswires seventeen months ahead of Election Day with streaming pontifications by presidential candidates is a very effective ruse for alienating the electorate further from engaging in democracy while concealing the country's role and activities in the rest of the world, as well the results of that role. The "rest of world", however, is more "awake" than it has ever been; hasn't "dumbed down" but "smartened up"; and it consequently will influence outcomes for America that the American people aren't prepared to understand or meet fairly and rationally when they arrive. If the world is "out there somewhere" to most Americans, at home they now are facing internal dynamics that flow out of unresolved conflicts from the past, such as racism, religious bigotry, discrimination against and persecution of minorities, suppression of dissent, police brutality, hegemonic narcissistic ambition and an almost messianic belief in their chosen destiny. In another sense, and because focus is on internal conflicts, an "isolationist" mentality regarding the world-at-large has already taken hold in the mass mind. Thusly, with the internal self of America withdrawn into domestic problems, her external self - expressed through financial and military power - no longer connects to or rests upon its people, but upon its elites, military, corporations and financial institutions that are free from public and democratic accountability. A government serving those interests foremost also acts outside the rule of the electorate. If America is described as "divided", this internal-external division is core. The America I describe and live within is actually "two Americas" functioning independent of the other and often oblivious of each other. In short, Americans have little or no control over their government, institutions and policy makers. At the same time, they are held fully accountable and responsible for actions they cannot control.
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Epilogue (Greece):
If Syriza leading the Mouse That Roared "OXI" can shake the earth for however short or long, for whatever the cost to the world's richest and Greek's poorest, it is proof that a small mouse, beaten and crushed, demonized and exploited by the most powerful can and did undermine the will of the forceful boot.
If the smallest can defeat the largest, the poorest defeat the wealthiest, then a small number of people together can change the world!
This is the lesson of "OXI" and this is the hope...
while we remain three minutes to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock.
By Michael T Bucci
Contact: mbucci@michaelbucci.com
(c) 2015 Michael T Bucci. All Rights reserved.
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Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey presently residing in New England. His essays have appeared at The Market Oracle (UK). He is the author of nine books on practical spirituality including White Book: Cerithous.
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