Friends,
Arianna’s mom reminds me of mine. Josephine Pinczewski Obuszewski, presente. Happy Mother’s Day to all here and now and to those come and gone, but not forgotten.
Kagiso,
Max
May 12, 2012
Greek Tragedy
By ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
When I was growing up, my family was a tiny microcosm of the current Greek economy. We were heavily in debt; my father’s repeated attempts to own a newspaper ended in failure and bankruptcy. Eventually, my mother took my sister and me and left him. We all lived in
Further austerity was coming, but my mother was clear about one thing: she would cut back on everything except our education and good, healthy food. She owned two dresses and never spent anything on herself. I remember her selling her last pair of little gold earrings. She borrowed from anyone she could, so that her two daughters could fulfill their dreams of a good education — me at
As I contemplate the statistics — especially the 54 percent unemployment rate among young Greeks — I think of all the stories behind this appalling data. All the dreams dashed. All the promise unfulfilled. And all the guilt, shame and fear that so often go hand in hand with intractable unemployment and little hope for a better future.
The punitive path of austerity and relentless economic contraction is, not surprisingly, likely to lead to further stagnation in 2013 and cannot be allowed to continue. And as last week’s election results show, the Greek people are not going to allow it to continue; they will instead demand change through either the ballot box or violence in the streets — or some combination of both.
The dangers of violent protest are obvious. But there are dangers in the ballot box, too: an extreme right-wing anti-immigration party received almost 7 percent of the vote, while Pasok, the establishment party of the left, lost 119 seats in Parliament in a humiliating third-place finish. If the European Central Bank does not abandon its destructive obsession with austerity, Greece will have few options but to leave the euro zone. This would be fraught with its own dangers, of course, but the European Union has left
Yes, the Greeks acted irresponsibly before the economic collapse — the same way my father had acted irresponsibly in his private and professional life. But that is not reason to punish the children, to destroy their future as part of a remedy for a past for which they bear no responsibility.
I spent many nights last summer in
Everywhere waiters, taxi drivers, salespeople, storekeepers, people at the table next to you at dinner, were talking about the same thing. They were — and still are — giving voice to a desire for more say in their own future, a future with more choices than those on offer from the European Central Bank.
When George Papandreou, who was prime minister at the time but resigned last November, visited The Huffington Post newsroom, he expressed the same feelings: “People think they’re being punished unjustly, because they feel they weren’t to blame for this crisis,” he said.
My favorite picture from the protests shows a young man pumping his fist at a line of riot police officers while his mother stands beside him, holding his jacket, to make sure he doesn’t catch a cold. If
And if having a future means leaving the euro, that’s most likely what the Greeks will choose. They invented democracy, and now it’s time to rekindle that Greek spirit of innovation and ingenuity — before economic trouble generates further despair and its dangerous progeny in the streets and in the ballot box.
President and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group and author, most recently, of “Third World
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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