Letter to a German friend

Athens, 12.2.2012

Dear Hans,

I feel an enormous gratitude, as a citizen of Greece, of Europe and of the world, for the speech Helmut Schmitt made recently at the SPD Congress. I strongly believe, and this is why I wrote it, in an article published in the Greek magazine Epikaira (8.12.2011), under the title “Helmut Schmitt, the conscience of Europe”, that “Chancellor Helmut Schmitt saved (with his speech) the honor of Europe, of European social-democracy and of his own country”. As I put it in this article, “a big surplus of conscience and consciousness, the one that is, tragically, lacking from all of us, was needed in order to mobilise this man and to enable him… to defend the European idea, but also Greece, in a way that no one of the political leaders, elected and paid by the Greek people, has ever done”.

Needless to say, the Chancellor’s speech was a big encouragement for the few and unfortunately disparate people from different backgrounds, who still try to save, in a rational way, what can be saved in our country, and to continue defending the thesis that there is still a way, to save Greece and Europe in the same time.

Modern science teaches us of the enormous consequences small variations in initial conditions may have in determining the final outcome of dynamic processes affecting very big systems. Greece is now the important detail in the whole European configuration, the small variable which, depending on what will happen the coming days and weeks, can put the whole European structure at very different trajectories. I really wish I had the talent of a Hemingway, to be able to write a modern version of “For Whom Rings the Bell”, or of Daniel Guerin, in his classical chronic of the final year of Weimar Republic.

Now, in Greece, we are crossing, these days, the final phase of our drama, which is merely the introduction to the real tragedy, for Greece and then for Europe. We are exactly at the point when non reversible events will begin to unfold in Greece, Europe and probably elsewhere (Middle East and the new, beginning cold war with Russia).

Greece as a state and as a society is “shutting down” now, at rhythms so rapid they defy our intellectual and emotional capacity to realize their significance, to grasp fully the extent of the decomposition taking place. To give you one example, the industrial production fall was 11,3% in December, the fiscal incomes of the state -18% on January. One third of the active population is currently out of work, including two thirds of young people. The country is artificially not bankrupt, but, in order to remain such, it is collapsing in all possible senses of the word. The productive nucleus of its economy is destroyed by one of the deepest and longer recessions in world economic history, the same goes with its welfare state and with the state and the political system as such.

Until yesterday successful people are added every day to the growing population of people living in the streets and having to be fed by Church. But I doubt that next year, by this time, there will remain many people or institutions able to exercise this sort of philanthropy. Greece will collapse completely in the short term most probably. The European Union will, most probably follow. It will be very difficult, rather impossible for Europe to absorb the political-financial-communication-strategic fall out from the destruction of one of its oldest members. Destruction due to its problems, but also to the cure applied to them and of course to the deliberate attack of the most radical nucleus of financial capital. Papandreou and Papadimos, Merkel and Sarkozy, Stauss-Kahn and Lagarde, Trichet and Draghi, they have already reserved a place in European history not better than the one of the leaders that pushed us to the First and Second World Wars. Europe will not survive the destruction of one of its members, as a result of its policies.

Nobody can predict what will happen afterwards in Eastern Mediterranean, as parts of Greek political elite, in search of political legitimization they may turn to external adventures. Netanyahu has already proposed them this idea, according to Greek press articles never denied. The same is true of Turkish Kemalists, wishing, in tandem with Israel, to topple Erdogan. We are witnessing a number of obvious provocations in the sphere of Greek-Turkish relations, which prepare the scene for what may unfold, including the sudden and very strange declaration of Mesut Yilmaz that Turkish secret services were burning greek forests in the ‘90s. Mr. Yilmaz cannot but know that such declarations are the best way to infuriate Greeks.

Greece now is in worse shape than Weimar at its time, which is reflected both in economic and in electoral statistics. PASOK, a historic party which won the elections with more than 40% in 2009, is credited now with 5% of the vote intentions. This is a signal for what may follow sooner or later with all known political institutions in Europe. A situation like this can lead Greece to a kind of civil war, of external war or of authoritarianism.

Greece is destroyed as a result of European and German policy. I m’ sorry to say that, but Greek people will never forget Germany for the second destruction of their country in one century.

The essence of the PSI, Loan Agreement and new agreement with troika is to secure what banks ask from Greece from the prospect of a serious restructuring, by changing the legal status of the debt into English from Greek, as it is now, and from debt to private holders into debt to states. In the same time, an unprecedented, in the history of colonialism, mechanism is established for the quasi automatic transfer of Greek property into property of lenders. Greece remains formally an independent and sovereign state, but without any means to exercise independence and sovereignty, thus transforming itself into a “colony of globalisation”.

Probably, German and European leaders believe that by pushing violently Greece to the economic and social levels of Bulgaria, they will solve the problem of European competitiveness. If this is true, then why we don’t turn all Europe into Bangladesh? But in fact this project will not succeed. Long before Greece approaches the Bulgarian and Romanian level, it will explode. Even if it goes there, it will be a Bulgaria with an enormous debt!

Behind this stupid project, one can find the real hidden, in my opinion, project, that is the radical overhaul of the European system by the most radical faction of the Empire of Finance, represented by Goldman, omnipresent in all European and US financial and political centres of power, that is the destruction of EU by exploiting all its contradictions.

If my prediction is true, and unfortunately everything I predicted in my published articles has come true up to now, these forces need a very big, even humanitarian catastrophe in Greece in the coming weeks or months. They will use it to terrorize all European nations, to experiment with new forms of authoritarian governance and they will use Greece in order to blow up the whole European edifice. Greece will not ne able to abide by the texts Papadimos is forced to sign now, it will have to deny its signature. But EU is a complicate legal structure. It will not be able to handle the political and legal crisis that will be produced.

I fully understand that what I write seems quite crazy to be believed. I ‘m at your disposal to provide with ample evidence, especially about the forces and persons behind the two Greek political parties which have orchestrated this course of Greece into the abyss.

Best Greetings

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos