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For us Greeks, it not a secret. The 1947-1949 Greek Civil war that created a bloodshed between the Greeks who fought the Germans, was all a British creation, ju

For us Greeks, it not a secret. The 1947-1949 Greek Civil war that created a bloodshed between the Greeks who fought the Germans, was all a British creation, just like it has ever been throughout the years in most countries (just read history to see that the British Empire did in Middle East and Far East) Then the Americans came, who saved us from the "communists" and who openly supported dictactorships; dictaroships that challenged the basic human principles such as freedom of speech. Unfortunately, Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British and American interfering in our political life down to very basic levels. Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. You need not go to far. Substitute the British actions of 1946 in Greece with the American actions in Ukraine supporting the puppet nazi government over there or supporting the so called "freedom fighters" of Jihad in Syria who have murdered thousands of innocent civilians. The world would be a better place if England and US had kept to themselves and never interfered in other countries. But that would be asking a wolf to not kill a sheep if the wolf finds one. What is worse, though, is that the British/American public support the governments, thus making them complicit in their crimes against humanity, which in essense, is quite tragic.

olavk 11y ago
The EU is "Nazi like"? I think you will have to provide some justification for this claim.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  I think he doesn't have to do that. It's not a comparison he needs to prove for me. Not that I agree, but it shows his feelings, and it probably shows the sentiment of many Greeks.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    Hacker News isn't generally the place for Reddit-style emotion baiting; the request for proof is another way of saying "don't just rant, help us be objective." An opinion isn't of much use if it's baseless and prejudiced. As it is, the comments about British and US interventions in Greece are illustrative of what I'm sure is a modern history of Greece less known internationally and are surely interesting.
- fooballs 11y ago
  The EU is certainly extremely undemocratic. We "elect" MEPs, who satisfy the illusion of democracy, but they can't actually do anything apart from rubber stamp the laws made by the unaccountable unelected dictators. And the aims are clear - to unite Europe into one undemocratic state and remove individual countries and cultures. And it appears to be completely controlled and driven by Germany.
  - olavk 11y ago
    What does this have to do with "Nazi-like"? Is "Nazi-like" just a shorthand for anything you disagree with? If by "unelected dictators" you are referring to the council, these are ministers appointed by the democratic governments in the individual member states.
    - orbifold 11y ago
      It is abundantly clear that the EU is a step backwards in terms of democratic accountability, by now there have been several laws passed in Germany for example that were based on EU decisions, which were later declared to be unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht.
      - realityking 11y ago
        The opposit of democratic is not "Nazi-like". That just wording that derails any sensible discussion.
  - gtf21 11y ago
    That's still not "Nazi-like". There are plenty of undemocratic systems that are not equivalent to the Nazi regime.
  - peterfirefly 11y ago
    The commission can be toppled by the parliament -- it has been a real parliament for quite some time. Not only that, the European Parliament de facto has the right to dismiss individual commissioners and each individual candidate commissioner has to be accepted by parliament before they can be appointed. (One entire commission was dismissed in 1999, a candidate was not accepted a few years back -- I think she was from Romania. Might have been Bulgaria, though.) I'd say that as quite good as democracy goes.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  With the speed the far right is gaining power - even if it is not - it will soon be.
liviu 11y ago
You are lucky that your country have not endured Soviet occupation like other states in Eastern Europe. Event today the economical and social signs are clearly visible on those states. This was magnitude worse that British/American influence.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  Well you could dispute that for young people living in Greece right now, without any future, with a huge debt that will last for generations. Former Eastern European states now part of the EU may have a future that is a lot brighter. Even if people there are poorer than the average Greek right now, they are on the rise, and the Greek are falling down. Given a basic level of wellfare, I know what I would prefer, knowing where you came from.
  - johnnyoughut 11y ago
    Who's fault is that debt in the first place?
  - gadders 11y ago
    That is self-inflicted.
    - peterfirefly 11y ago
      Or rather, inflicted by the older generation upon the younger.
- dmichulke 11y ago
  Well, these "lucky" Greeks you mention still had their share of dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2%80%9374 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E... In any case, justifying the application of violence with the possibility of preventing more violence some 20 years later is kind of outrageous.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  I disagree. There are examples and counterexamples on both sides. It's really hard to decide where the blame should go. I am from Czech Republic, a former communist country. And it was nowhere as bad as Chile or El Salvador. Or, if you want just to compare Russian atrocities, occupation in 1968 was nowhere as bad as mass rapes in Germany after the end of world war, or Ukrainian famine, or Stalin's purges. It's not just it's not black and white, it's not even one-dimensional. You can have regime without freedom of speech that puts couple tens people per year into jail (like Czech Republic in the 70s and 80s), or you can have a regime with freedom of speech that commits torture and war abroad, killing hundreds of people. To ask/answer which one is worse is meaningless. And to compare it from economic perspective is just outright disgusting. Even if killing some people would indeed cause higher economic growth, no human should agree to such a trade.
johnnyoughut 11y ago
If you wish the Americans and the IMF had kept out of Greece, then do you also wish that the IMF had not bailed Greece out and instead had let it collapse? You (Greece) borrowed money from us and promised to pay it back at a certain date. You are failing to do that, and you say that we're the bad guys? Pay your debts, assshole. Plus you CHOSE to join the EU, and the single currency. You chose to follow their rules. You can't complain now about that!
peterfirefly 11y ago
Maybe that civil war had a little bit to do with Tito and Yugoslavia as well? You are so lucky that Churchill got an agreement out of Stalin to keep Greece out of the Soviet sphere of influence.
mattlutze 11y ago
The EU is very vocally anti-totalitarian or racist, and Greece's people were betrayed by its own government when it colluded with accounting firms to ensure Greece's entry to the Euro. Which, then, because Greece wasn't economically strong enough to compete with the larger, less social-welfare-reliant Northern European countries, led to the need for massive financial intervention and the mess the Greek youth are now today left with. All for the egos of some politicians who wanted to feel important. The Pasoak leaders from the late 90's / early 00's should be ashamed of their short-sighted greed. It very well might be the best thing for the long-term wealth of the Greek economy for it to exit the Euro and reestablish the Drachma, to better facilitate trade/labor growth with what would initially be the much more expensive Euro group. Manufacturing, generally, moves to places where labor and total production cost is cheaper, increasing the economic productivity of the region it moves to... this could only be a good thing.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >The EU is very vocally anti-totalitarian They've reduced the status of the last three Greek governments to hollow bureaucratic institutions which rubber stamp Troika diktats. That is not anti-totalitarian.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The EU excels at criticising others when it comes to it's own they are just as 'racist' as everyone else case and point their latest dance with illegal immigration from N. Africa, and their intervention in Libya to preserve Italian and French energy interests. There aren't many countries in Europe that can support the lavish social programme of the EU, yes Greece lied but so did Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and many other countries. There is just as much blame to be placed on the big financial players as onto Greece at this point.
  - sergiosgc 11y ago
    > yes Greece lied but so did Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and many other countries. Absolutely false. There is no record of national account abnormalities on any country other than Greece.
teekert 11y ago
For those interested in more examples of US interference in other economies and the catastrophic effects it can have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...
- kamjam 11y ago
  The Four Forsemen documentary was also very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU
  - teekert 11y ago
    Yes, I just saw that one last week, very nice. John Perkins, writer of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, is a big part of that documentary.
blowski 11y ago
You had me until 'Nazi-like EU'. For all its faults, the EU is not a despotic regime killing millions of civilians just for being different. To compare one to the other is disingenuous.
peteretep 11y ago
> Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British > and American interfering in our political life down to > very basic levels "A long time" being 2,000 years, since ~ 146BC. Then the UK, France and Russia helped it become an independent country in 1830, an "interference" without which a Greek state may not have existed in 1947...
ptaipale 11y ago
> The world would be a better place if England and US had kept to themselves and never interfered in other countries. I strongly disagree with that. England and US not interfering in other countries would not have stopped other countries, most notably the USSR, in interfering with other countries. And the places where other countries, not England and US, had major influence, generally had much bigger problems with civil rights, freedom and material well-being. A significant indicator in this respect is the need to build walls to keep in the population in a country, because otherwise it would flee (and then call this "anti-Fascist protection wall"). Your hyperbole about "puppet Nazi government" in Ukraine pretty much proves the point: the Poroshenko government, elected with rather clear majority in what is a relatively free election, does have its problems in corruption and whatever, but not any worse than the previous one, which was an actual puppet of Putin. The EU has many problems, but being "Nazi like" is not really one of them.
- bad_user 11y ago
  The "Nazi" label has been used by the communists, being their common and invisible enemy, the modern equivalent being "terrorism". For example all political opposition that they arrested, executed or deported during communism were labeled with Nazi, or the local variant. Labeling Ukraine's government as being a "puppet Nazi government" shows a clear bias to Russia, as that's were this nonsense came from. I wonder why he hasn't mentioned the struggle of the people against the imperialist bourgeoisie.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    However, I see a change here happening over the past two decades: before, the opposition painted by Soviets and puppets was usually "fascism". Now it is "nazism" I believe this was simply because nazi is "national-socialist", which inconveniently rhymes with "international-socialist", which was the officially perfect doctrine of the Eastern Block. Therefore, "fascist" was the preferable enemy, even if it was the name of the lesser, Italian variant which was not quite as nasty and murderous. You can see this in all sorts of memorials in Russia, as well as textbooks. Nowadays there is less talk of international socialist, so Nazis have become a better term - perhaps because it is more useful in propaganda work in the West.
adaml_623 11y ago
> What is worse, though, is that the British/American public support the governments, thus making them complicit in their crimes against humanity, which in essense, is quite tragic. What a silly sentence to finish with. Does the Greek public support the government? Can you give me an example of what 'not supporting' would look like? Why are you combining millions of people in a sweeping generalisation? This whole democracy thing (which I'm quite sure you know about) is a ugly blunt tool that allows the general public some vague influence on what their nation does. But most of these things happen due to self perpetuating systems that have been there for generations and which are invisible to the public.
NicoJuicy 11y ago
The greeks are miserable because none of your politicians thought they ever had to pay their debt. Your debt ( Greeces) is like 177 times your GDP... And the politicans of the EU made the mistake of accepting greece in the European Union, because they all lied about there economic numbers. Now you are dependant on the EU, yes, but you still have a lot of financial help. If you would have fallen without the EU ( sooner or later), there wouldn't be anyone to pay debts for you and forgive them ( partially). I'm a Belgian and even every Belgian pays 1000€ for Greek financial support... And there are many other countries. Every European citizen is paying for the Greek mistakes. But i don't mind. You still have to do a lot of yourselve, but it isn't our entire fault. Stop blaming this on other things/people/instituations, it isn't a "one side has right" situation..
- leereeves 11y ago
  > Your debt ( Greeces) is like 177 times your GDP. 177% of GDP, which is 1.77 times. For comparison, Belgium is at about 100% of GDP. > I'm a Belgian and even every Belgian pays 1000€ for Greek financial support That money doesn't go to the Greek people. It's used to preserve the international banking system.
  - claudius 11y ago
    > That money doesn't go to the Greek people. It's used to preserve the international banking system. Stop lying. That money went to the Greek people. If the Greek people had not squandered their income for years on ridiculous levels of social spending and had maybe considered collecting taxes, they would now not need additional loans to “preserve” their local banking system.
    - leereeves 11y ago
      Yes, bad loans were made in the past. Financial support "to Greece" now goes to the holders of those bad debts: mostly governments, the IMF, and the ECB.
      - 11y ago
antientropic 11y ago
If Greeks really believe that the EU is "Nazi-like", then why don't you just secede? Article 50 of the EU treaty allows you to do that, you know. Not really a freedom that the Nazis granted to the nations they conquered...
bad_user 11y ago
> Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. Right, that's what you say after voting in power an incompetent socialist government which only prolonged the continued borrowing of funds to pay for your socially assisted and your corrupt and inefficient public institutions, funds that are fueled by all EU taxpayers, including countries that have much lower average salaries than yours, that did implement austerity measures and that now have to support your bill. This after you lied about your budget deficit for years, even before your admission into the Eurozone. Speaking of which, your government didn't even had the balls to take responsibility for their own actions, imposing that referendum on financial matters on citizens that don't have the competence to vote on such issues, being the textbook example of the tyranny of the majority effect. But yeah, blame the americans and the masons and the german banks. It's never you, it's always some invisible and powerful puppeteers governing your life, right? I personally blame the lizard people.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  I meant to upvote this, but fat-fingered it into a downvote. Sorry!
- dang 11y ago
  This comment is well outside the boundaries of civility. Please don't post inflammatory attacks to Hacker News, regardless of how wrong you think someone or some country is.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    You are right, I apologize for it.
agumonkey 11y ago
Interventionism seems everywhere... wasn't there a time in history where countries would be a lot less contrasted (It seems the 'rich' countries are tempted and invited to put their hands and resources into less wealthy ones... creating problems on the long run) and thus more stable ?
oblio 11y ago
> Unfortunately, Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British and American interfering in our political life down to very basic levels. Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. South Korea is another US "vassal state". So is Taiwan. So were Japan and Germany after WW2. I'd say that the Greek problems have other sources. As a Romanian I wish they traded Greece for Romania in 1944. So that you'd learn a painful lesson.

olavk 11y ago

The EU is "Nazi like"? I think you will have to provide some justification for this claim.

rogeryu 11y ago
I think he doesn't have to do that. It's not a comparison he needs to prove for me. Not that I agree, but it shows his feelings, and it probably shows the sentiment of many Greeks.
- mattlutze 11y ago
  Hacker News isn't generally the place for Reddit-style emotion baiting; the request for proof is another way of saying "don't just rant, help us be objective." An opinion isn't of much use if it's baseless and prejudiced. As it is, the comments about British and US interventions in Greece are illustrative of what I'm sure is a modern history of Greece less known internationally and are surely interesting.
fooballs 11y ago
The EU is certainly extremely undemocratic. We "elect" MEPs, who satisfy the illusion of democracy, but they can't actually do anything apart from rubber stamp the laws made by the unaccountable unelected dictators. And the aims are clear - to unite Europe into one undemocratic state and remove individual countries and cultures. And it appears to be completely controlled and driven by Germany.
- olavk 11y ago
  What does this have to do with "Nazi-like"? Is "Nazi-like" just a shorthand for anything you disagree with? If by "unelected dictators" you are referring to the council, these are ministers appointed by the democratic governments in the individual member states.
  - orbifold 11y ago
    It is abundantly clear that the EU is a step backwards in terms of democratic accountability, by now there have been several laws passed in Germany for example that were based on EU decisions, which were later declared to be unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht.
    - realityking 11y ago
      The opposit of democratic is not "Nazi-like". That just wording that derails any sensible discussion.
- gtf21 11y ago
  That's still not "Nazi-like". There are plenty of undemocratic systems that are not equivalent to the Nazi regime.
- peterfirefly 11y ago
  The commission can be toppled by the parliament -- it has been a real parliament for quite some time. Not only that, the European Parliament de facto has the right to dismiss individual commissioners and each individual candidate commissioner has to be accepted by parliament before they can be appointed. (One entire commission was dismissed in 1999, a candidate was not accepted a few years back -- I think she was from Romania. Might have been Bulgaria, though.) I'd say that as quite good as democracy goes.
venomsnake 11y ago
With the speed the far right is gaining power - even if it is not - it will soon be.

liviu 11y ago

You are lucky that your country have not endured Soviet occupation like other states in Eastern Europe. Event today the economical and social signs are clearly visible on those states. This was magnitude worse that British/American influence.

rogeryu 11y ago
Well you could dispute that for young people living in Greece right now, without any future, with a huge debt that will last for generations. Former Eastern European states now part of the EU may have a future that is a lot brighter. Even if people there are poorer than the average Greek right now, they are on the rise, and the Greek are falling down. Given a basic level of wellfare, I know what I would prefer, knowing where you came from.
- johnnyoughut 11y ago
  Who's fault is that debt in the first place?
- gadders 11y ago
  That is self-inflicted.
  - peterfirefly 11y ago
    Or rather, inflicted by the older generation upon the younger.
dmichulke 11y ago
Well, these "lucky" Greeks you mention still had their share of dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2%80%9374 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E... In any case, justifying the application of violence with the possibility of preventing more violence some 20 years later is kind of outrageous.
asgard1024 11y ago
I disagree. There are examples and counterexamples on both sides. It's really hard to decide where the blame should go. I am from Czech Republic, a former communist country. And it was nowhere as bad as Chile or El Salvador. Or, if you want just to compare Russian atrocities, occupation in 1968 was nowhere as bad as mass rapes in Germany after the end of world war, or Ukrainian famine, or Stalin's purges. It's not just it's not black and white, it's not even one-dimensional. You can have regime without freedom of speech that puts couple tens people per year into jail (like Czech Republic in the 70s and 80s), or you can have a regime with freedom of speech that commits torture and war abroad, killing hundreds of people. To ask/answer which one is worse is meaningless. And to compare it from economic perspective is just outright disgusting. Even if killing some people would indeed cause higher economic growth, no human should agree to such a trade.

johnnyoughut 11y ago

If you wish the Americans and the IMF had kept out of Greece, then do you also wish that the IMF had not bailed Greece out and instead had let it collapse? You (Greece) borrowed money from us and promised to pay it back at a certain date. You are failing to do that, and you say that we're the bad guys? Pay your debts, assshole. Plus you CHOSE to join the EU, and the single currency. You chose to follow their rules. You can't complain now about that!

peterfirefly 11y ago

Maybe that civil war had a little bit to do with Tito and Yugoslavia as well? You are so lucky that Churchill got an agreement out of Stalin to keep Greece out of the Soviet sphere of influence.

mattlutze 11y ago

The EU is very vocally anti-totalitarian or racist, and Greece's people were betrayed by its own government when it colluded with accounting firms to ensure Greece's entry to the Euro. Which, then, because Greece wasn't economically strong enough to compete with the larger, less social-welfare-reliant Northern European countries, led to the need for massive financial intervention and the mess the Greek youth are now today left with. All for the egos of some politicians who wanted to feel important. The Pasoak leaders from the late 90's / early 00's should be ashamed of their short-sighted greed. It very well might be the best thing for the long-term wealth of the Greek economy for it to exit the Euro and reestablish the Drachma, to better facilitate trade/labor growth with what would initially be the much more expensive Euro group. Manufacturing, generally, moves to places where labor and total production cost is cheaper, increasing the economic productivity of the region it moves to... this could only be a good thing.

crdoconnor 11y ago
>The EU is very vocally anti-totalitarian They've reduced the status of the last three Greek governments to hollow bureaucratic institutions which rubber stamp Troika diktats. That is not anti-totalitarian.
dogma1138 11y ago
The EU excels at criticising others when it comes to it's own they are just as 'racist' as everyone else case and point their latest dance with illegal immigration from N. Africa, and their intervention in Libya to preserve Italian and French energy interests. There aren't many countries in Europe that can support the lavish social programme of the EU, yes Greece lied but so did Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and many other countries. There is just as much blame to be placed on the big financial players as onto Greece at this point.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  > yes Greece lied but so did Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and many other countries. Absolutely false. There is no record of national account abnormalities on any country other than Greece.

teekert 11y ago

For those interested in more examples of US interference in other economies and the catastrophic effects it can have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...

kamjam 11y ago
The Four Forsemen documentary was also very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU
- teekert 11y ago
  Yes, I just saw that one last week, very nice. John Perkins, writer of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, is a big part of that documentary.

blowski 11y ago

You had me until 'Nazi-like EU'. For all its faults, the EU is not a despotic regime killing millions of civilians just for being different. To compare one to the other is disingenuous.

peteretep 11y ago

> Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British > and American interfering in our political life down to > very basic levels "A long time" being 2,000 years, since ~ 146BC. Then the UK, France and Russia helped it become an independent country in 1830, an "interference" without which a Greek state may not have existed in 1947...

ptaipale 11y ago

> The world would be a better place if England and US had kept to themselves and never interfered in other countries. I strongly disagree with that. England and US not interfering in other countries would not have stopped other countries, most notably the USSR, in interfering with other countries. And the places where other countries, not England and US, had major influence, generally had much bigger problems with civil rights, freedom and material well-being. A significant indicator in this respect is the need to build walls to keep in the population in a country, because otherwise it would flee (and then call this "anti-Fascist protection wall"). Your hyperbole about "puppet Nazi government" in Ukraine pretty much proves the point: the Poroshenko government, elected with rather clear majority in what is a relatively free election, does have its problems in corruption and whatever, but not any worse than the previous one, which was an actual puppet of Putin. The EU has many problems, but being "Nazi like" is not really one of them.

bad_user 11y ago
The "Nazi" label has been used by the communists, being their common and invisible enemy, the modern equivalent being "terrorism". For example all political opposition that they arrested, executed or deported during communism were labeled with Nazi, or the local variant. Labeling Ukraine's government as being a "puppet Nazi government" shows a clear bias to Russia, as that's were this nonsense came from. I wonder why he hasn't mentioned the struggle of the people against the imperialist bourgeoisie.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  However, I see a change here happening over the past two decades: before, the opposition painted by Soviets and puppets was usually "fascism". Now it is "nazism" I believe this was simply because nazi is "national-socialist", which inconveniently rhymes with "international-socialist", which was the officially perfect doctrine of the Eastern Block. Therefore, "fascist" was the preferable enemy, even if it was the name of the lesser, Italian variant which was not quite as nasty and murderous. You can see this in all sorts of memorials in Russia, as well as textbooks. Nowadays there is less talk of international socialist, so Nazis have become a better term - perhaps because it is more useful in propaganda work in the West.

adaml_623 11y ago

> What is worse, though, is that the British/American public support the governments, thus making them complicit in their crimes against humanity, which in essense, is quite tragic. What a silly sentence to finish with. Does the Greek public support the government? Can you give me an example of what 'not supporting' would look like? Why are you combining millions of people in a sweeping generalisation? This whole democracy thing (which I'm quite sure you know about) is a ugly blunt tool that allows the general public some vague influence on what their nation does. But most of these things happen due to self perpetuating systems that have been there for generations and which are invisible to the public.

NicoJuicy 11y ago

The greeks are miserable because none of your politicians thought they ever had to pay their debt. Your debt ( Greeces) is like 177 times your GDP... And the politicans of the EU made the mistake of accepting greece in the European Union, because they all lied about there economic numbers. Now you are dependant on the EU, yes, but you still have a lot of financial help. If you would have fallen without the EU ( sooner or later), there wouldn't be anyone to pay debts for you and forgive them ( partially). I'm a Belgian and even every Belgian pays 1000€ for Greek financial support... And there are many other countries. Every European citizen is paying for the Greek mistakes. But i don't mind. You still have to do a lot of yourselve, but it isn't our entire fault. Stop blaming this on other things/people/instituations, it isn't a "one side has right" situation..

leereeves 11y ago
> Your debt ( Greeces) is like 177 times your GDP. 177% of GDP, which is 1.77 times. For comparison, Belgium is at about 100% of GDP. > I'm a Belgian and even every Belgian pays 1000€ for Greek financial support That money doesn't go to the Greek people. It's used to preserve the international banking system.
- claudius 11y ago
  > That money doesn't go to the Greek people. It's used to preserve the international banking system. Stop lying. That money went to the Greek people. If the Greek people had not squandered their income for years on ridiculous levels of social spending and had maybe considered collecting taxes, they would now not need additional loans to “preserve” their local banking system.
  - leereeves 11y ago
    Yes, bad loans were made in the past. Financial support "to Greece" now goes to the holders of those bad debts: mostly governments, the IMF, and the ECB.
    - 11y ago

antientropic 11y ago

If Greeks really believe that the EU is "Nazi-like", then why don't you just secede? Article 50 of the EU treaty allows you to do that, you know. Not really a freedom that the Nazis granted to the nations they conquered...

bad_user 11y ago

> Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. Right, that's what you say after voting in power an incompetent socialist government which only prolonged the continued borrowing of funds to pay for your socially assisted and your corrupt and inefficient public institutions, funds that are fueled by all EU taxpayers, including countries that have much lower average salaries than yours, that did implement austerity measures and that now have to support your bill. This after you lied about your budget deficit for years, even before your admission into the Eurozone. Speaking of which, your government didn't even had the balls to take responsibility for their own actions, imposing that referendum on financial matters on citizens that don't have the competence to vote on such issues, being the textbook example of the tyranny of the majority effect. But yeah, blame the americans and the masons and the german banks. It's never you, it's always some invisible and powerful puppeteers governing your life, right? I personally blame the lizard people.

fapjacks 11y ago
I meant to upvote this, but fat-fingered it into a downvote. Sorry!
dang 11y ago
This comment is well outside the boundaries of civility. Please don't post inflammatory attacks to Hacker News, regardless of how wrong you think someone or some country is.
- bad_user 11y ago
  You are right, I apologize for it.

agumonkey 11y ago

Interventionism seems everywhere... wasn't there a time in history where countries would be a lot less contrasted (It seems the 'rich' countries are tempted and invited to put their hands and resources into less wealthy ones... creating problems on the long run) and thus more stable ?

oblio 11y ago

> Unfortunately, Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British and American interfering in our political life down to very basic levels. Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. South Korea is another US "vassal state". So is Taiwan. So were Japan and Germany after WW2. I'd say that the Greek problems have other sources. As a Romanian I wish they traded Greece for Romania in 1944. So that you'd learn a painful lesson.