Posts Tagged ‘Greece’
Refugees Losing their minds in Idomeni, Greece
Idomeni, Greece, April 18, 2016 — The striking thing about these refugees, the ones stuck for months on the Greece-Macedonia border, is that you can actually feel them slowly losing their minds. (Being so close to the doors of Europe and denied to cross a stupid fence)
I’ve covered this refugee crisis for years and in all sorts of places — the refugees fleeing the war inside Syria, getting out of the war zone through barbed wire at the Turkish border, reaching European shores after dangerous journeys at sea on the Greek island of Lesbos.
And now here in the Greek village of Indomeni, near the border with Macedonia.
Andrew Bossone shared a link.
There are around 11,000 people stuck here.
This is the bottleneck that’s developed after a bunch of countries closed their borders in an effort to shut down the Balkan migrant route, through which thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have reached European countries over the past year or so
Every place where I’ve covered the refugee crisis is different.
What you have to understand about this place is the utter despair. These people have left war-torn countries, made dangerous journeys with their children in tow.
And now they find themselves in the middle of Europe, living in conditions similar to what they left behind, with the gate to Europe shut and no idea of what will happen to them next.
Some of them have been here for two, three months. Just waiting. And not knowing what will happen next.
Will they be able to get into Europe, like the thousands before them? Are they going to be sent back to Turkey? Are they going to have to go back to their countries?
So they’re losing their minds. What do you expect? You’d do the same in their situation.
Day by day their behavior changes. Even me. I’m just doing my job, I’m used to these situations, having covered so many of them.
During the two weeks I was there, I knew I was only going to be there temporarily, and then I would return to my home and family. And even me, day by day I became more depressed, more aggressive.
The atmosphere of the camp, it doesn’t just hang over you, it weighs you down. It’s heavy.
And then there are the conditions. God, the conditions these people live in, I don’t even know what words to use to describe them.
They’re the same conditions that you had in camps in Syria. And Syria has been in the middle of a war for the past five years.
The first thing that strikes you is the smell. A mixture of toilets and body odor.
People are living, sleeping and eating near the toilets. (Even animals don’t sleep or eat where they shit)
You could say they’re living, sleeping and eating in the middle of toilets. What else can I say? That should tell you everything.
There aren’t enough showers, there aren’t enough places to wash your hands. There isn’t enough water, period
The smell — no, the stench — is heavy and it’s everywhere. Children get sick.
I have seen such conditions in war zones. And now I was seeing such conditions in the middle of Europe.
This is the shame of Europe. These people are living like livestock — and I don’t say that with any disrespect to them — they’re living like they’re still inside Syria and they’re in the middle of Europe.
And then there is their daily life. If you could call it that.
They go from food line to food line, eating food given to them by NGOs.
There is nothing to do but to take care of their basic needs. And wait. Can you imagine? Having literally nothing to do all day, except to watch your dreams and hopes slowly die, despite all the sacrifices you made to get to this point. And just not knowing what will happen next.
These people, they have spent lots of money and time, they took lots of risks to get here, they have spent their life savings. They don’t want to go back.
First off, there is nothing to go back to and secondly, then what was it all for?
As a journalist, it’s also difficult because people look at you as some kind of savior. Every day people ask me, “When are they going to open the gate?”
“What will happen to us?” I have no idea what to tell them. I just don’t know.
You want to know what life is like inside? I have a friend, a Kurdish woman from Syria whose husband went to Europe six months ago. He’s in Germany now and he has sent for her and their two children. She travelled through Syria and she has been at the border for two months, waiting to go to Germany and join her husband.
She goes to the food lines and people there, they start hitting each other and pushing each other to get the food.
She tells me ‘I have never hit anyone in my life to get food, I just can’t do it. Even here, I just can’t do it. How can I push another person to get food?” So there have been days when she just couldn’t get any food. This is how people live in the camps
And then there are the children.
The children are what gets to you the most in this story. They’re the ones that stay in your mind once you go home. Especially if you have kids of your own.
The children, they’re just going crazy in these camps. They don’t go to school. Do you know what happens to children if they don’t go to school?
The way they act changes. You can actually feel their brains changing.
They play in the middle of the train tracks, in mud. They have nothing to do. They come and touch you, they push you, they shout at you. What do you expect?
My friend, she has an 8-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. Because of the war, they haven’t been to school in two or three years. She is really worried about them. They don’t learn anything, she says, what’s going to become of them?
And to top it all off, you had the tear gas incident of a week ago.
You had a bunch of people trying to force their way through the closed border into Macedonia, and the soldiers threw tear gas canisters and fired rubber bullets, injuring several dozen people who were then treated by NGOs.
Can you imagine? You’ve been through hell, you’re living in hellish conditions, you have no idea of what’s going to happen to you and then you have soldiers throwing tear gas at you.
It’s just crazy. Who wouldn’t lose their mind?
This blog was written with Yana Dlugy in Paris.
Humans of New York: This long deadly journey by sea. Fleeing from Hell
“My husband and I sold everything we had to afford the journey.
We worked 15 hours a day in Turkey until we had enough money to leave.
The smuggler put 152 of us on a boat. Once we saw the boat, many of us wanted to go back, but he told us that anyone who turned back would not get a refund. We had no choice.
Both the lower compartment and the deck were filled with people. Waves began to come into the boat so the captain told everyone to throw their baggage into the sea.
In the ocean we hit a rock, but the captain told us not to worry. Water began to come into the boat, but again he told us not to worry.
We were in the lower compartment and it began to fill with water. It was too tight to move. Everyone began to scream.
We were the last ones to get out alive. My husband pulled me out of the window.
In the ocean, he took off his life jacket and gave it to a woman. We swam for as long as possible.
After several hours he told me he that he was too tired to swim and that he was going to float on his back and rest. It was so dark we could not see. The waves were high.
I could hear him calling me but he got further and further away. Eventually a boat found me. They never found my husband.” (Kos island, Greece)
Dismantled and fed to profit-hungry corporations? Case of Greece
Greece is heading towards its third “bailout” (Fourth bailout after parliament voted for it).
This third bailout of €86 billion is on the table, which will be packaged up by international lenders with a bundle of austerity and sent off to Greece, only to return to those same lenders in the very near future.
“selling off profitable or potentially profitable assets leaves a country less able to repay its debts.”
Post-war Germany recovery? Any roles to Greece, Spain, and Turkey…?
Sixty years ago today, an agreement was reached in London to cancel half of postwar Germany’s debt.
That cancellation, and the way it was done, was vital to the reconstruction of Europe from war.
It stands in marked contrast to the suffering being inflicted on European people today in the name of debt.
Germany emerged from the WWII still owing debt that originated with the first world war: the reparations imposed on the country following the Versailles peace conference in 1919.
Many, including John Maynard Keynes, argued that these unpayable debts and the economic policies they entailed led to the rise of the Nazis and the second world war.
By 1953, Germany also had debts based on reconstruction loans made immediately after the end of the second world war. Germany’s creditors included Greece and Spain, Pakistan and Egypt, as well as the US, UK and France.
German debts were well below the levels seen in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain today, making up around a quarter of national income.
But even at this level, there was serious concern that debt payments would use up precious foreign currency earnings and endanger reconstruction.
Needing a strong West Germany as a bulwark against communism, the country’s creditors came together in London and showed that they understood how you help a country that you want to recover from devastation.
It showed they also understood that debt can never be seen as the responsibility of the debtor alone. Countries such as Greece willingly took part in a deal to help create a stable and prosperous western Europe, despite the war crimes that German occupiers had inflicted just a few years before.
The debt cancellation for Germany was swift, taking place in advance of an actual crisis.
Germany was given large cancellation of 50% of its debt. The deal covered all debts, including those owed by the private sector and even individuals. It also covered all creditors.
No one was allowed to “hold out” and extract greater profits than anyone else. Any problems would be dealt with by negotiations between equals rather than through sanctions or the imposition of undemocratic policies.
Perhaps the most innovative feature of the London agreement was a clause that said West Germany should only pay for debts out of its trade surplus, and any repayments were limited to 3% of exports earnings every year.
This meant those countries that were owed debt had to buy West German exports in order to be paid.
It meant West Germany would only pay from genuine earnings, without recourse to new loans.
And it meant Germany’s creditors had an interest in the country growing and its economy thriving.
Following the London deal, West Germany experienced an “economic miracle”, with the debt problem resolved and years of economic growth.
The medicine doled out to heavily indebted countries over the last 30 years could not be more different.
Instead, the practice since the early 1980s has been to bail out reckless lenders through giving new loans, while forcing governments to implement austerity and free-market liberalisation to become “more competitive”.
As a result of this, from Latin America and Africa in the 80s and 90s to Greece, Ireland and Spain today, poverty has increased and inequality soared.
In Africa in the 80s and 90s, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by 125 million, while economies shrank.
In Greece today, the economy has shrunk by more than 20%, while one in two young people are unemployed. In both cases, debt ballooned.
The priority of an indebted government today is to repay its debts, whatever the amount of the budget these repayments consume.
In contrast to the 3% limit on German debt payments, today the IMF and World Bank regard debt payments of up to 15-25% of export revenues as being “sustainable” for impoverished countries. The Greek government’s foreign debt payments are around 30% of exports.
When debts have been “restructured”, they are only a portion of the total debts owed, with only willing creditors participating.
In 2012, only Greece’s private creditors had debt reduced. Creditors that held British or Swiss law debt were also able to “hold out” against the restructuring, and will doubtless pursue Greece for many years to come.
The “strategy” in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain today is to put the burden of adjustment solely on the debtor country to make its economy more competitive through mass unemployment and wage cuts.
But without creditors like Germany willing to buy more of their exports, this will not happen, bringing pain without end.
The German debt deal was a key element of recovering from the devastation of the second world war. In Europe today, debt is tearing up the social fabric.
Outside Europe, heavily indebted countries are still treated to a package of austerity and “restructuring” measures.
Pakistan, the Philippines, El Salvador and Jamaica are all spending between 10 and 20% of export revenues on government foreign debt payments, and this doesn’t include debt payments by the private sector.
If we had no evidence of how to solve a debt crisis equitably, we could perhaps regard the policies of Europe’s leaders as misguided.
But we have the positive example of Germany 60 years ago, and the devastating example of the Latin American debt crisis 30 years ago. The actions of Europe’s leaders are nothing short of criminal.
Note 1: While Greece, Spain and Turkey were bailing out Germany, their citizens were flocking to Germany to work under the recovery program.
Note 2: I guess the creditors were convinced that the hard working and law abiding Germans, under institutions still functioning, and an industrial know how… will generate the necessary profit to pay back the loans. I guess France and Germany do not believe that the other EU States, crumbling under their debts, are good enough people with sane institutions to generate any profit.
Liquidity is meant for the Internal market. Competitiveness is for External market?
Posted on: April 16, 2014
Liquidity is meant for the Internal market. Competitiveness is for External market?
Should the level of “Life-Style” be the same among the competitive and the challenged productive states within a Union?
This is not a fair condition to impose on States that managed to sacrifice and work hard for better life conditions.
States in financial crisis must have ready lists of 4 categories of enterprises:
1. The public institutions that are critical in the smooth transmission of liquidity to the various economic sectors
2. The mixed State/Private entities that have locations in many regions of the State and employ many citizens
3. The nationwide private companies
4. The medium and small productive companies that serve their local provinces
It is well know that medium and small productive companies constitute 70% of State production that cater for the internal market needs.
Any shortage in liquidity in these small private companies and employment hit the roof and the citizens experience shortages in most commodities.
Giving priority to the local economies in the distribution (infusion) of liquidity is the first step in preventing mass unemployment.
There are public economic sectors that cater to the general public needs, such as energy, water and transportation… and the stabilization of these functional sectors in matter of maintenance is another urgent priority.
Before the internal market is reinvigorated and underway, it is of no use planning for the export sections to external markets in order to get the influx of “hard currencies”
Stability and security are the basis for a shift toward State development.
Having the autonomy to print money in period of liquidity shortage is the key for stabilizing the internal market.
The disadvantage resides in the society structure that favor the oligarchy and wealth disparity that eliminate the benefit of printing more money.
The crisis in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy have demonstrated that it is a priority that a State has to reform its public service institutions to discard redundant and politically influenced service appointments.
Without a drastic realization that the political structure should be reformed, and for actually feel the pain associated with uneven equal rights to jobs and opportunities in the institutions, all the remaining reforms will be within the “patching” process.
The crisis in Greece was deep rooted because it lacked the two preconditions: Lousy political structure and not having the right to print money.
Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy had political structures that could remedy to the “unfairly” political conditions and to reform the system within the single Euro currency.
The EU has learned the lesson:
1. First, the State that asks to join the union zone must demonstrate that it is serious to undertake political reforms and the structure be designed to react in timely manners to situations of political reforms.
Many States have been included based on historical and ideological “myths” that didn’t match their current unstable realities.
The EU dominant responsibility is to gradually transform the States who applied to join the union into politically viable structure.
The States in waiting must acknowledge that it takes time to achieve stable and valid political structure.
How a poor and unstable State can become competitive in the external market? This is an impossible condition to withhold liquidity infusion that is meant to support local companies.
The “productively challenged States” in the Euro zone should not expect the same level of life-style as the most competitive among them.
And equal rights in life-style is not an equitable and sustainable demand on State basis.
China displacing Europe in Greece
Posted on: October 4, 2010
China has officially visited Greece last week and signed 11 economic agreements. China has secured the management of the main Greek port of Piraeus for 35 years in return of investing $700 million for building a new extension and modernizing the port. The Greek vice premier declared: “China invests in real money and is not like Wall Street using faked paper money. China invests in palpable business matters and do commerce in real objects and trading goods. China will aid Greece in a tangible economic development of its infrastructure.”
Chinese tourists are already invading the Greek islands.
The executive manager of the Chinese giant maritime company Cusco declared: “We have built the nest so that the eagle investors in China will find a place to come to. This is how we contribute to the interest of both countries.”
Jealous Japan decided to increase its investment in Greece with $34 billion in order to compete with the Yellow Dragon. Europe is understandably very worried. Jonathan Wood said in London: “Europe is apprehensive of trade imbalance with China. Europe might be in the same position as the US in trade imbalance with China.”
China has already taken over Sudan investing in oil, gas, agricultural lands, forest, water, and mineral resources while the US was busy playing war games in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US had 50 years to befriend Sudan but considered this outstretched super-undeveloped country as a reserve land to fall back to when needed. The US may try to resume destabilizing Sudan in the short-term, but the game is over: The US can benefit to negotiate with China to becoming a major subsidiary in Sudan’s wealth.
The central bank of China is siting on a monstrous pile of liquid money and has to turn it over quickly: “The price is not a problem” with this much devalued Yuan.
