Alexandros Alexandropoulos - Aristotle vs. the Troika

How Greek austerity and multinational mining companies have ravaged Aristotle's birthplace.

Kevin, KV

Micheal Hudson says how all the debt gets compounded and to pay it back the world gets stripped of its natural resources on an ever increasing scale. But what do the bankers do with all their money, why, reinvest it of course? But then their wealth gets compounded too and that also gets reinvested, but surely there will come a time when they run out of things to invest their  in money in, and them inflation eats their wealth away? According to Micheal Hudson the intense competition in capitalism means profits get very low, so the wealthy invested in real estate and the flipping of companies instead, pushing their prices up. 

Now with all the speculation that is done, and with the massive amounts of money made, where does all that profit come from? Economists say that the speculators are just making money of each other and it doesn't involve the real economy. Hmm, does that mean that lots of speculators are going bust while others win, I don't think so. I haven't had time to work it out yet, but I think all the speculation is really just draining money off the real economy, that is, the rest of us.

Now I have read some of Micheal Hudson's books and he says that the banking is parasitic, and that when companies are flipped and asset stripped to make huge profits prices go up and so the public is paying more for everything. People just see it as capitalism and markets at work ,which they see as a natural phenomenon, like earthquakes, but are the One Percent manipulating everything?  Micheal Hudson says how the bankers knew what they were doing in the build up to the 2008 would bring on a crash, but they also knew the government would bail them out. It's just business to them. KV

Alexandros Alexandropoulos

One would think that the place where Aristotle was born would be a hotspot of international tourism, kept open and accessible by the Greek government. But these days, an aura of secrecy and security envelops the great philosopher’s village and the Skouries Forest around it.

The reason is a controversial mining project in the area, operated by the Canadian company Eldorado Gold. Approaching the site is dangerous business: successive Greek governments have deployed a sizeable force of riot police and machine-gun wielding, mask-wearing elite police special forces to the forest. Barbed wire fences wind through the trees. One of Greece’s national newspapers reports that the private security company Blackwater — infamous for its role in the Iraq War — has undertaken to protect the project against incensed locals. Residents that oppose the project have seen their houses set on fire and stores trashed.

In 2013, riot police surrounding the mine beat an elderly local dissident known as Theodoros Karavasilikos. They claimed that the disabled “uncle Theodoros” ran to escape arrest and that he hit them with “his hands and legs.” This May, a Greek court convicted him to an one-year prison sentence for “disrupting traffic,” “disrupting public peace,” and resisting authorities. “I don’t believe you,” said the judge who convicted the old man, despite a medical report showing that Theodoros had sustained a concussion and eye damage during the attack, among other severe injuries.

The little information we do have is thanks to local people like Uncle Theodoros, as well as satellite images showing extensive environmental destruction, including a gaping crater at the heart of the forest.

The project’s continuation over the objections of locals epitomizes the defeat of the Syriza government at the hands of international finance. When Syriza entered government in 2015, the party represented a bold challenge to the debt bondage and austerity imposed by the troika. It even promised to stop the extractive pillage in the Skouries Forest. Now, it has been reduced to administering that same austerity, standing aside as multinationals exploit the Greek people and environment alike.

Alexandros Alexandropoulos - Aristotle vs. the Troika