Articles by César Chelala

Source: Common Dreams

To understand Greece’s recent travails and how the country got there it is useful to quote what Mikis Theodorakis, the famous Greek songwriter and composer wrote about it. Recently, on his home page, Theodorakis said:

“Until 2009, there was no serious economic problem. The major wounds of our economy were the enormous expenses related to the purchase of war material and the corruption of a part of the political and economic-journalistic sector. For both of these wounds, foreigners are jointly responsible. Germans, for instance, as well as French, English and Americans, earned billions of Euros from annual sales of war material, to the detriment of our national wealth. That continuous hemorrhage brought us to our knees and did not permit us to move forward, while at the same time it made foreign nations prosperous. The same was true of the problem of corruption. The German company Siemens, for instance, maintained a special department for buying off Greek stakeholders in order to place its products in the Greek market. Hence, the Greek people have been victims of that predatory duo of Greeks and Germans, growing richer at their expense.” read more