Profound Quotes

"Neither is it that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It's that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers - (let alone American soldiers - do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to." From 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower' by William Blum

From "9-11, Six Years Later": "If one looks at the credentials of skeptics compared to the credentials of defenders of the official line, it is impossible to dismiss skeptics as kooks. There are many people with strong imaginations on the Internet, but serious skeptics stick to known facts, known violations of standard procedures and the laws of physics. The vast majority of the people who call skeptics "kooks" are themselves ignorant of physics and have little comprehension of the improbability that such an attack could succeed without either the complicity or complete failure of government agencies. " Paul Craig Roberts

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular? But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.

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  OpEdNews - Article: Greece - The Eurozone’s first colony? Or Where War Begins? »

OpEdNews - Article: Shock Doctrine Uber Alles: Germany’s New Greek Colony

Chris Floyd

No Stukas, no stormtroopers, just a few strokes of the pen! Patrick Cockburn reports on the significance of Greece’s final surrender to the German-led blitzkrieg of bankers that has ravaged the cradle of democracy:

“Greeks [signed a deal] with the Eurozone leaders [on Tuesday] that will cede much of their country’s independence. Greece will become an economic — and to a large extent a political — colony of Germany and its allies. Berlin will have a say in everything from the choice of prime minister to the types of medicines dispensed by pharmacies.

“In return for $230bn, made up of $130bn in fresh loans and $100bn in write-downs on privately held Greek government bonds, Greece is relieved from its immediate debt burden. But the money does not go to the Greek government, still less to the Greek people. It simply leaves them to live off the money they earn.”

After noting the elements of Greek culpability in the making of this morass, Cockburn goes on (italics added):

“But there are clearly other motives behind the radical changes now being imposed on Greece. ‘It is like undiluted Thatcherism forced on the country in a few years,’ said one observer in Athens. For instance, the minimum wage is to be reduced by 22 percent to $522 a month as part of the latest austerity round. The Troika believes this will increase employment, but Greek economists disagree, saying that Chinese or Bulgarian workers will always be paid less. Greeks will not get jobs for the same reason that the Greek merchant navy employs Filipinos below the level of captain and chief engineer. Cutting the pay of poorly paid state employees will also do little for Greece except reduce consumption and increase misery.

“…on the back of the austerity program rides a neo-liberal vision of how the Greek economy and society should be run. It sounds and looks very much like what was applied in Russia under Boris Yeltsin after 1992. There will be widespread privatizations; cuts in social security, pensions and state health provision; and wholesale deregulation. Many on the right welcome these reforms. Vagelis Agapitos, a financial consultant in Athens, looks forward to the day when houses, hotels, wind farms and fish farms can be built without any troubling regulations or permits.

Archaeological surveys would be dropped.

Mistah Pericles — he dead.

**

UPDATE: Cockburn follows up with a report on one of the significant factors behind Greece’s huge national debt: the private profits of the masters of war. ….

OpEdNews - Article: Shock Doctrine Uber Alles: Germany’s New Greek Colony.

February 22nd, 2012 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment |

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