Massive unemployment, enforced austerity, pittances eroded to nothing, poverty growing deeper.
Meanwhile, the G20, self-proclaimed leaders of the global economy, live it up in the Riviera.
This is gall unmitigated, for the politicians, property of the corporate titans, to be in Cannes, concocting plans to force the swarthier of the Europeans, and for that matter, commoners everywhere, to do their bidding. A global elite of technocrats (fronting for the parasitic plutocrats) teaming up to tell the workers what sacrifices they need to make, foisting on local leaders a set of monitoring regimes and conversions of state resources into private property. "Give up your drachma and democracy," say the 20, "and we'll give you Euros and austerity." And should the Greeks or anyone else have the gall to insist on a voice, a vote, they'll be punished with a coordinated financial assault, after which the buzzards will swoop down to pick the bones clean and sell off the skeletons.
Sadly, I can believe it. Morosely, I see the alleged champion of change and freedom that I helped elect, smiling broadly, happy to be part of the pack of wolves devouring the rest of us before we get too skinny to be any good.
Or no, that metaphor is wrong. The literal truth is more disgusting, and less insulting to wolves. The G20 dine on fine French food and wine (as the rest of us subsist on beans and rice), then retire to the veranda to take in the balmy Mediterranean air, or to the smoking room to hatch further plans for transforming government pensions and social safety nets into guarantees that the world will be safe for oligarchs to invest profitably.
If for no other reason, the leaders who engage in this sort of behavior should be punished for being so severely irony impaired. If they keep up this blind ambition, they will awake to the surprising reality that they are far outnumbered, that they are Mubarak and Marie Antoinette. And the poor will drink their champagne for a while, then get back to work.
Meanwhile, the G20, self-proclaimed leaders of the global economy, live it up in the Riviera.
This is gall unmitigated, for the politicians, property of the corporate titans, to be in Cannes, concocting plans to force the swarthier of the Europeans, and for that matter, commoners everywhere, to do their bidding. A global elite of technocrats (fronting for the parasitic plutocrats) teaming up to tell the workers what sacrifices they need to make, foisting on local leaders a set of monitoring regimes and conversions of state resources into private property. "Give up your drachma and democracy," say the 20, "and we'll give you Euros and austerity." And should the Greeks or anyone else have the gall to insist on a voice, a vote, they'll be punished with a coordinated financial assault, after which the buzzards will swoop down to pick the bones clean and sell off the skeletons.
Sadly, I can believe it. Morosely, I see the alleged champion of change and freedom that I helped elect, smiling broadly, happy to be part of the pack of wolves devouring the rest of us before we get too skinny to be any good.
Or no, that metaphor is wrong. The literal truth is more disgusting, and less insulting to wolves. The G20 dine on fine French food and wine (as the rest of us subsist on beans and rice), then retire to the veranda to take in the balmy Mediterranean air, or to the smoking room to hatch further plans for transforming government pensions and social safety nets into guarantees that the world will be safe for oligarchs to invest profitably.
If for no other reason, the leaders who engage in this sort of behavior should be punished for being so severely irony impaired. If they keep up this blind ambition, they will awake to the surprising reality that they are far outnumbered, that they are Mubarak and Marie Antoinette. And the poor will drink their champagne for a while, then get back to work.
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