It's time for Greece to stand up for itself. No, not against the waves of traumatized refugees that are besieging its incredibly long and unfence-able coastline, but against a Germanic-led initiative to label the tortured country as a scapegoat in the Syrian crisis.
Imagine you live in an apartment building surrounded by a tent city. You can only afford a ground floor unit, which is vulnerable through a myriad of glass windows and doors. Your corrupt leaders left the building years ago, taking their ill-gotten gains with them to the Caymans or Switzerland, so you, who never saw or spent that money, can barely afford to eat, much less, pay for a guard or for bars for the doors and windows. The war of austerity has already depleted your savings, and is leading your own people to starvation, homelessness, and suicide.
Now, imagine the fat cats in the military-security-oil/gas-industrial complex on the other side of the 'river' fomenting chaos in the Middle East to feed their swollen coffers; actors who've made a devil's alliance with power-players seeking to expand their influence in the Anatolian war zones, such as Erdogan's Turkey, Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, and Netanyahu's Israel. Add in the crew that's currently living in the penthouse of your apartment building, Angela and her friends who are looking for a growing labor pool, tax base, foreign aid, and obeisance to the 'divide and conquer' strategy now being plotted to undermine Europe and the euro.
Finally, imagine thousands upon thousands of fat cat-created refugees are now descending on your apartment building, breaking into your home and taking the last breadcrumbs from your mouth.
Shouldn't Angela and the "landlords" mount a "federal" emergency intervention to come and help you address this human hurricane for which you are blameless? Shouldn't they help with resources, human and financial to help you both protect your home and offer humanitarian aid as the refugees are repatriated or relocated in the countries that are responsible the Syrian chaos? Why are you being made a scapegoat for the years of Angelic starvation that have made you so weak you can barely stand, much less carry out the solo security guard function that the penthouse is demanding?
The EU, which couldn't find resources to help a torched Greece regain its human dignity and European footing, gave 3 BILLION dollars to Erdogan's Turkey to stop the flow of refugees. And yet, Turkey, a major player in the Syrian battle, has continued to allow thousands of refugees to "escape" from its coastlines with nary a cork in the "leak". (I won't mention Turkey's history of land grabs and ethnic cleansing against Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds.) I'll just say that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others near and far have caused this mess--don't take the EU's money and dump the refugees onto Greece.
Meanwhile, the Greek people are being flooded with a human tragedy from the sea, and an inhuman tragedy from Brussels, which continues to impose pension and salary cuts on the poor and working class while sharing champagne with those who stole Greece's funds. And now, instead of coming down the stairs to Greece's rescue, the EU, and former SSRs that owe a debt to Greece, are locking their doors and blaming Greece for not falling on their swords for the corrupt EU.
No. No! It's time for Greece to stand up and shout that this must cease. The refugees are an EU problem, not a Greek one, and EVERYONE in the EU needs to contribute, humanly and financially to the solution. If fences are put up and borders are closed, the EU needs to "build" and enforce those borders in the waters between Greece and Turkey, not in the mountains between Greece and the former Yugoslavia. Funding to Turkey, a fascist proto-empire under Erdogan, must stop immediately, and those funds must be used to help Greece, Italy, and other countries affected by the crisis. Scapegoating Greece must end immediately--Greece's inclusion in the Schengen pact must be maintained, and this brutal and unjust criticism of an assaulted country must end. The 300 are bleeding and Thermopylae must not be an expectation in 2016.
And, finally, let's put the blame for this tragedy where it belongs. There are plenty of candidates, across rivers, seas, and ponds. One place where there should be no blame is a country that needs to reclaim its heroism, even if it means speaking truth to the powers that are.
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