http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/350-greek-tragedies-in-athens-in-june-alone.html
350 Greek Tragedies in Athens in June Alone
You know, we can write and read and research all we want, and till we're deep dark blue in the face, about Angela Merkel and Tim Geithner and Mario Draghi or Monti and Greek heroes Samaras and Venizelos, about what they say and do from day to day, driven by political pressure and mundane issues such as bond yields. And we will continue to write, read and research these things; that's not going to stop.
But as soon as any of us take a step back and try to see things from another perspective than that of the proverbial and iconic child with her nose pressed against the display window of the candy store, there's none of us with a grain of self-respect left who can maintain that what we see unfold is about Angela, Timothy and the Mario's. And that is what we will increasingly, and I mean all of us, need to add to our writing and reading: We will have failed miserably if we haven't paid attention to the people most affected by what rabbits the various leaderships decide to conjure up out of their high hats.
And not just because if misery in the streets reaches a critical mass, that will be where the direction of politics will be decided. It's not a macro picture. We ourselves are not a macro picture; we all of us live human micro lives. We therefore need to pay attention to the plight of the victims of the crisis, because they are people like us, because they can function as a mirror to who we are, and strive to be, and as a mirror for our futures. It is no use to be well-off yourself if you don't have a functioning society to be well-off in. And don't worry, I don't expect the majority of you to understand. I fully expect most people to hit the wall running.
Money has no value in and of itself; it derives that value from the world it rolls in. Take away that world, and you take away the value.
Yes, financial markets are doing relatively well, and if they don't, central banks will throw more of your cash at the banks. The problem is that they don't throw that cash at the people. Many of whom could really do with some. According to the present paradigm, banks are more important than people, and people, if I understand it well, can only be saved if banks are saved first (with the people's money). This paradigm is the sort of insanity only economists and bankers can come up with. The life of a person, whether rich or poor, is infinitely more important than the life of a bank. No contest. You would think.
What got me started on all of this is a great - great in its sadness - little tale from today's Spiegel, by Barbara Hardinghaus and Julia Amalia Heyer, on what happens with real people. Either we deal with issues such as this, or we don't. And if we don't, the issues will deal with us. Down the line, whatever happens to others happens to us too. We are after all social animals, that's not something we can alter at will. But we still try hard, don't we?
Greece has always had one of the lowest suicide rates in Europe, but its economic crisis has triggered a disturbing increase in the number of people killing themselves. Are the deaths the result of personal desperation or are people making a political statement with the only thing they have left to sacrifice?
On July 16, a businessman and father of three hanged himself in his shop on the island of Crete. A 49-year-old man from Patras was found by his son. He had also hanged himself. On July 25, a 79-year-old man on the southern Peloponnese peninsula hanged himself with a cable tied to an olive tree. On August 3, a 31-year-old man shot himself to death at his home near Olympia. On August 5, a 15-year-old boy hanged himself in Pieria. And, on August 6, a 60-year-old former footballer self-immolated in Chalcis.
These are also reports from Greece, reports that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with the economy. They come together to form a grim statistic, raising questions of what is triggering the suicides and whether the high incidence is merely a coincidence.
Or do people see suicide as a way out of the crisis that has taken hold of their country and their lives? Are they bowing out before things get even worse? Germany and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are opposed to a new bailout package for Athens. The country faces a shortfall of at least €40 billion ($49 billion). Greece could very well be officially bankrupt by the fall.
Greece, a country whose Orthodox Church does not condone suicide, has always had one of the lowest suicide rates in Europe. But now, there were 350 suicide attempts and 50 deaths in Athens in June alone. Most of the suicides were among members of the middle class and, in many cases, the act itself was carried out in public, almost as if it were a theatrical performance.
Desperate for Dignity
On April 4, shortly after 9 a.m., a 77-year-old pharmacist shot himself to death on Syntagma Square in downtown Athens. Dimitris Christoulas, a short man, stood against one of the large trees on the square, held a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.
"My father was a political person, a fighter," says his daughter, Emmy Christoulas. Weeks after her father's death, she is sitting in her living room in Chalandri, a northern suburb of Athens. She is a slim 42-year-old wearing oversized jeans, her short black hair streaked with gray.
Her father was politically active, a member of the "We Won't Pay" movement. He repeatedly called for an international review of Greece's national debt because he was convinced that it wasn't the fault of the people. He had come to beleaguered downtown Athens every day last summer to take part in rallies and to lend a hand, usually in the Red Cross tent.
When he went to Syntagma Square for the last time, on April 4, he sent his daughter a text message consisting of one short sentence: "This is the end." Then he switched off his cell phone. "It was at exactly 8:31 a.m.," says Emmy, pulling a cigarillo from a crumpled pack. When she was unable to reach her father by phone after receiving the text message, she and two friends drove to his apartment.
She heard a news report on the radio that someone had shot and killed himself under a tree on Syntagma Square. "First the text message, and then that report," she says. "I was sure it was him."
Since her father's death, Emmy Christoulas has taken the subway to the square, nine stops from her apartment, many times. She visits the memorial to her father two or three times a week, usually in the evening. When she does, she stands a short distance away from the tree.
It's become quiet in the square, where a band is playing and the sound of guitar music is wafting through the warm air. Christoulas crosses her arms over her chest and looks at the people who stop at the memorial. It consists of wreaths and a few stuffed animals leaning against the tree, as well as notes pinned to the trunk. "Don't walk like a robot! Open your spirit!" one note written in red letters on a piece of cardboard reads. The lines that Dimitris Christoulas wrote in a suicide note are engraved into a marble plaque.
The government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid into for 35 years with no help from the state. I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life so that I don't find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance.
The words "Dimitris' gesture cannot be repeated" are written on a piece of paper above the plaque. But his gesture is repeating itself on an almost daily basis. The newspaper Ta Nea describes the mood among Greeks as a "society on the verge of a nervous breakdown." [..]
On the morning of April 4, Dimitris Christoulas put on his light-colored trench coat, stuck his pistol in one pocket and the farewell letter in the other, and set out for the square, as he had done so many times before, and wrote the last text message to his daughter.
On the day after the memorial service for her father, Emmy Christoulas drove her father's body 13 hours to Bulgaria to have him cremated. The Greek Orthodox Church denies church burials to people who have committed suicide. Her father had left her the money for the trip. [..]
Nikiforos Angelopoulos, an Athens psychiatrist, has kept track of suicides and, with each new death, he has become more afraid. He tries to see each act as the failure of an individual, confused person. The 60-year-old did his doctoral dissertation on the subject of "hostility." Suicide is a disorder, he says, a form of hostility -- a person's hostility against him- or herself. [..]
The 90-year-old woman who fell to her death from a rooftop terrace on Vathi Square jumped together with her son. But the truth is that she didn't jump at all. Her son pushed her. Then he waited three minutes and followed his mother. It was a 15-meter (49-foot) drop to the pavement below. His name was Anthony Perris, a musician and writer, a quiet, 60-year-old man.
The spot where he hit the ground is three kilometers from Syntagma Square, next to the building where he lived with his mother. Perris had cared for his mother, who had Alzheimer's and cancer, for 20 years. He took her for a short walk in the small park outside every day. On the evening before the suicide, he closed the blinds in the apartment. The next morning, he took his mother into the elevator and up to the roof terrace above the sixth floor.
Perris also left a suicide note, placing it on the kitchen table. "My life has become a constant tragedy," he wrote. He tried to sell his house, but no one had the money to buy it. He owned a house, a boat and a moped.
"What's the use of owning things when you don't have any money to buy food?" Perris asked in his suicide note.
Everything that the papers are saying about the rash of suicides is "misleading and dangerous," says Angelopoulos, the psychiatrist. People who commit suicide, he notes, are not political fighters, even if the public turns them into heroes.
The pharmacist who shot himself to death on Syntagma Square was a desperate individual, just like all the others, says Angelopoulos, who sounds a little desperate himself. He is fighting a lonely battle. All the same, the Greek Ministry for Health set up a suicide hotline a few weeks ago. Despite all the budget cuts and austerity measures, it feels the expense is justified. [..]
On the morning after our visit with Christoulas, the Athens police received another emergency call. A 61-year-old man has hanged himself from a tree on a hill in Aghios Philippos Park, not far from his house. He was a sailor who had recently lost his job. He had a wife, a son, a daughter and a dog. His body was removed by the afternoon, a few hours after his death.
The red-and-white strip of crime scene tape is still hanging between two trees, fluttering in the wind above the big city.
and.....
http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/57659
| Press Watch, August 14 | |||||||||||||||||||
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As Greeks prepared to celebrate tomorrow’s feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary – one of the year’s biggest religious holidays – the Athens press offered a motley array of front page stories, which largely veered away from the depressing new measures that will further decimate the income of millions of Greeks (mainly the old and the poor, but also the entire middle class, as usual).
Former deputy premier Theodoros Pangalos’ new book on how political patronage squandered countless billions of taxpayers’ money garnered intense coverage, in both the print and electronic media. The e-book – which is a compilation of stories from people who wrote in and is entitled We all ate it up together -is sold online for 3.95 euros. Such an honest and conscientious citizen as Mr. Pangalos will undoubtedly offer the proceeds for the repayment of the national debt. Many wondered, however, why Pangalos had not undertaken such a worthy, whistleblowing campaign in the decades that he had served as minister, with a litany of financial perks. One must also wonder whether the book speaks of the longstanding charges that Greece’s big political parties routinely received generous contributions from the huge companies (Siemens executives alone admitted to dishing out about 100 million in kickbacks) that picked up the most lucrative state contracts. As many believe, such illegal kickbacks enabled parties like that of Pangalos to come to power and produce ministers that speak out against patronage only after they are out of office. Pangalos, who is one of the country’s most intelligent and educated politicians in recent decades, claims to have never done a political favour during his long career. That must make him either unique or forgetful.
“Recession continues at a rate of 6.2 percent” reported Kathimerini’s headline, referring to the first quarter. The report said that the economy is expected to shrink 7 percent this year. The paper quoted a Financial Times report that viewed the news as a “ray of light”, since it was a small improvement over the first quarter of 2011. “The rise in racist violence raises concerns” read another front page title. The report spoke of the recent murder of a 27-year-old-Iraqi migrant by five thugs on motorcycles and said that “the government, the authorities, political parties and society at large” are very troubled. Though many suspect a link between the far right Golden Dawn party and racist violence – there have been many charges by both migrants and Greeks - the “concerned” authorities have not managed to establish any link. However, it may be no coincidence that the huge sweeps rounding up immigrants came right after the brutal, near-death beating on the island of Paros of a 15-year-old Greek girl (who remains in a coma) by a 19-year-old Pakistani migrant. The police sweeps seemed timed to avert an avalanche of reprisals against innocent migrants by racist groups. However, the concerned authorities did not manage recently to stop dozens of Golden Dawn members from storming a ship transporting the culprit and smashing the front window of the police van transporting him to prison.
“New hiring package within August” declared Eleftheros Typos’ headline, referring to 6,000 mainly seasonal hirings at daycare centres, museums, municipalities, and citizens’ service centres, where copies of state documents are issued. The applicants will be chosen based on various criteria: how long they have been unemployed, the number of children they have, educational background, and work experience. “Samaras: united we can get the country out of the crisis”. The prime minister made his remarks, full of patriotic fervour, in his homeland of Messenia, where he officiated at the opening of a museum. Unfortunately, he could not make time to make the customary, annual speech on the state of the economy at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair on 7-8 September, nor will he be holding the customary news conference, where a full court press grills the PM for hours each year. Perhaps it would be difficult to explain the major wage and pension cuts that he will implement on orders from Greece’s creditors, cuts that violate (on the ground that staying in the eurozone is paramount) his basic campaign pledges and the programme of the three-party coalition. But many believe that full accountability to the public is crucial at this juncture, especially since public support (or at least acquiescence) is needed to successfully implement the reforms), let alone the fact that it is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of a modern republic.
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