~ Gesticht àls Gesticht ter Voorkoming v/d Maatschappelijke Randdebiliteit ~
~ HÉT "progressief" Orgaan Der "Hangmatsocialisten" ~ Gesticht àls Gesticht ter Voorkoming v/d Maatschappelijke & Politieke Randdebiliteit
30-09-2011
Freya is de slimste!
Ons hartje sprong op van vreugde deze morgen! Is er eindelijk een regering? Is B-H-V helemaal gesplitst? Zijn we uit de crisis? Is Dexia gered? Neen....maar Freya, die lieve mooie Freya wil ook niet meer weten van de volledige uitrol van de slimme elektriciteitsmeters... Staat In De Morgen, moet maar kopen pagina 2....we gaan geen copy-paste toepassen deze keer. In feite zouden er reuzeaffiches moeten aangeplakt worden met dit heugelijke nieuws. Wij zijn bereid om bij een volgend huwelijk van Freya in één of ander tropisch oerwoud, haar daar persoonlijk een mandje witloof aan te bieden. Zo graag zien we onze Vlaamse minister van Energie. Leve Freya! Ze is slimmer dan 100.000 meters!
Waarover zullen het vandaag NIET hebben? De steriele discussie of Vlaanderen nu al dan niet verarmt bij de nieuwe akkoorden? niemand heeft een akkoord op papier gezien en de NVA roept al dat we zullen verarmen....kan zijn maar kan ook niet zijn...als we dat Vlaams-Nationaal jarenlang gejammer echt geloven dan zouden er in Vlaanderen Zimbabwaanse toestanden moeten heersen en zou Wallonië een soort emiraat aan de Maas moeten zijn waar iedere Waal gratis benzine krijgt en een gegarandeerd inkomen zonder werken...Dat lijkt ons dus niet de realiteit die wij kennen evenmin dat we een verschrikkelijk onderdrukte en geterroriseerde Vlaamse minderheid in Brussel kunnen localiseren. Dus over onbestaande problemen zullen we geen tijd verspillen. We hebben het vandaag nog eens over het mooie Griekenland dat steeds als baken heeft gediend voor vele zaken. Vandaag dient het dus als baken voor al wat kan mislopen in een slecht bestuurd land...Graag een artikel dat we zouden aanraden aan elke lezer zodat hij duidelijk een onderscheid kan maken tussen echte problemen en opgeklopte zever...hier hebben we het over echte verarming en de mensen die een land echt kunnen veranderen zowel in de goeie als in de slechte richting...
Small business owners in Greece have long been the backbone of the economy and reliable taxpayers in a country where tax evasion is rampant. That, though, is now changing. Self-employed workers like Angelos Belitsakos have had enough of rising taxes and have begun to revolt.
The people who could ultimately give Greece the coup de grace are not the kind to throw stones or Molotov cocktails, and they have yet to torch any cars. Instead, they are people like 60-year-old beverage distributor Angelos Belitsakos, people who might soon turn into a real problem for the economically unstable country. Feeling cornered, he and other private business owners want to go on the offensive. But instead fighting with weapons, they are using something much more dangerous. They are fighting with money.
Belitsakos is a short, slim and alert man who lives in the middle-class Athenian suburb of Holargos. He is also the physical and spiritual leader of a movement of businesspeople in Greece that is recruiting new members with growing speed. While Greece's government is desperately trying to combat its ballooning budget deficit by raising taxes and imposing new fees, people like Belitsakos are putting their faith in passive resistance.
The group's slogan is as simple as it is stoic: "We Won't Pay."
Working 12-Hour Days, Seven Days a Week
This business owners' absolute refusal to pay any taxes resembles an uprising of the ownership class, rather than the working class, a rebellion of the self-employed business owners who have long been the backbone of Greek society. These are not the people who weaseled their way into Greece's oversized civil service; these are people who put their money in the private sector, working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Or so Belitsakos says.
Standing in his small store, Belitsakos makes a sweeping gesture and says that the people in his movement no longer have a choice. "The state will kill us," he says. "We're acting in self-defense." Then he starts to do the math. Over the last two years, his sales have massively shrunk as 60 of the tavernas and restaurants he used to make deliveries to have terminated their contracts with him. At the same time, the government has raised the value-added tax (VAT) twice while imposing a never-ending series of new fees. He mentions the 300 ($406) one-time fee for the self-employed, a two-percentage-point boost in the VAT, a 180 solidarity levy for the unemployed and a property tax that is "easily a few hundred euros every year."
The taxes are part of Athens' last ditch effort to avoid drifting into insolvency and to live up to the promises of austerity it delivered to the European Union. The country's vast debt means it is already reliant on the steady drip of aid it receives from a 110 billion rescue package passed last year, with a second such package likely to be passed this fall. But each payment from the fund is dependent on progress being made on the effort to clean up the country's finances.
That progress has been halting at best. In an effort to move the process forward, the government of Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou has recently announced it intends to cut thousands of more civil servant jobs. And it introduced a controversial one-off property tax which has angered many. Several other taxes and fees have also been introduced.
Belitsakos calls them "charatzi," a word from Ottoman times that can perhaps best be translated as "loot" or "compulsory levy." The term is meant to indicate taxes levied arbitrarily and without justification, such as the tithe once paid to feudal lords. "But I can't and won't pony up. It's wrong," Belitsakos says. "Don't you understand?"
A Common Type of Revolt
The situation finally drove Belitsakos to write a letter to the head of the local tax authority in the name of his group. "We see ourselves facing a whole series of new taxes," he wrote. "We are protesting and enraged." He went on to charge that the only purpose behind the new fees was the "dispossession and impoverishment" of the Greeks and that he was now forced to resist. Briefly put, he wrote: "We won't pay."
Belitsakos says the tax official he handed the letter to was understanding and friendly. The fact that the civil servant put on a brave face might have something to do with all the TV cameras that were present. But, in a place like Greece, it is also entirely possible that the official was simply not all that surprised that someone would announce they were evading their taxes.
As well-known analyst Babis Papadimitriou puts it, the average Greek may well love his country, but he views the state apparatus as a power that one can and should plunder. Papadimitriou says that while the European average for VAT taxes that are evaded is 10 percent, the rate in Greece is roughly 30 percent. About a third of the entire economy happens off tax-authority radars.
You Can't Lose If You Don't Play
These days, even communists, unionists and leftists are raising a public outcry against the new taxes. This week, Aleka Papariga, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, said that the only way to stop the complete bankrupting of the people was for them to not pay the "charatzi." In fact, financial resistance had now become the supreme civic duty, she said.
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Greek Economy Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said: "The question is how we can create a feeling of solidarity. One for all and all for one, that's what it's about now." Still, Chrysochoidis would not answer his own question. For the moment, he said, it doesn't look like the government can count on many of their fellow Greeks being willing to sacrifice themselves for the interest of the state. In fact, people are abandoning the government in droves.
Belitsakos, the beverage distributor, can't and won't play a role in rescuing his country no matter what. The reason has nothing to do with patriotism. Instead, it has to do with his mistrust of the government in Athens and "international financial capitalism" and the fact that, despite having once studied mathematics, he still can't fathom the amount of money at stake here.
Belitsakos stresses that his plan is to refuse to pay any and all taxes and fees. If he has to, he says he will either go broke, to jail or both. He is convinced that there are thousands upon thousands who think just like he does and that, in the end, the Greeks will win this battle that they never chose.
The only question is what they really have to win.
Griekenland en de vrije pers een voorbode voor Europa
Hier zijn we weer, beste lezertjes. Ons hoofd suist nog van de vele akkoorden die onze federale politici plots kunnen afsluite. Akkoorden waarbij dan de enen beweren dat we als Vlamingen natuurlijk voor de zoveelste maal worden gerold en bedrogen terwijl een ander gedeelte binnen de zelfde Vlaamse meerderheid in de gewestregering( hallo ollanderkes, volgen jullie nog?) spreekt van historische akkoorden en copernicaanse revoluties volledig in overeenstemming met het Vlaamse regeerakkoord. De modale Vlaming lijkt in elk geval niet van plan zijn kiesintenties aan te passen en zou, volgens peilingen, nog steeds stemmen voor Bart Frit en zijn leuke bende. Maar daarover zullen we het dus NIET hebben vandaag.
Vandaag maken we een uitstapje naar Griekenland. Het is daar niet meteen leuk Griek te zijn. Voorlopig is het veel interessanter om er enkel als toerist naar toe te trekken. We vermoeden zelfs dat je best als argeloze en vooral onopvallende dus zeer duidelijk herkenbare toerist naar ginder afzakt. Wat wil zeggen bermuda en strandslippers in combinatie met shirts die een bierbuik tonen wat betreft het mannelijk gedeelte en de madammen in topjes en shorts. Al zal het soms wat lastig ademen zijn in de Atheense binnenstad, niet alleen omwille van de traditionele smog maar vooral omwille van het vele traangas dat de laatste maanden wordt afgeschoten op allerlei betogingen. Griekenland is er erg aan toe. Dat weet intussen zelfs een elke goudvis met zicht op een televisietoestel. De bevolking levert zwaar in en dus zijn er nogal wat sociale spanningen. De geloofwaardigheid van de traditionele partijen is bijna tot het absolute nulpunt gezakt. Je zou al voor minder nadat zowel conservatieve als socialistische partijen enkel en alleen belijken te bestaan uit sjoemelaars en bedriegers. Zo onstaat een spiraal van opgekropte razernij en uitzichtloosheid bij grote groepen van de bevolking en de aantrekkingskracht van de extremisten groeit als rattenvangers van dienst. Eén van de grote slachtoffers zijn de journalisten en de vrije nieuwsgaring. Reporters zonder grenzen heeft hierover een interessant document gepubliceerd dat we jullie niet willen onthouden:
Reporters Without Borders visited Athens from 27 July to 3 August to investigate in a report the recent decline in media freedom in Greece, a country that continues to worry its European partners. Greece has fallen three years in a row in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, from 31st in 2008 to 70th in 2010, level with its neighbour Bulgaria. The fall has been due to practices that are both surprising and unacceptable in a European Union member.
The economic and financial crisis has contributed to this decline and has above all highlighted the weaknesses of Greeces media and its almost mafia-like practices. Owned by a few big businessmen and shipping-line owners, most of the media companies are nowadays threatened with collapse, which would set of a wave of dismissals in a profession already suffering from poor pay and conditions.
The blogosphere offers a freer space for expression and a temporary antidote to the self-censorship that is becoming more and more widespread in the traditional media. But the Internet does not offer an economically viable alternative that could help reverse the disastrous practices that have taken hold in the past two decades. Against the backdrop of street violence, a very deep crisis of confidence has developed between the media and public. Seen either as louts or well-off brats, journalists are often identified with the now despised political class. Many now fear physical violence and some use protection.
The targets of smear campaigns that mix sarcastic slogans with death threats, journalists now think twice about going out on to the streets to report. Stelios Kouloglou, long the symbol of investigative journalism, is now the victim of a defamatory poster campaign. His crime? Laying off staff at his Web TV station because it ran into financial problems.
Although less exposed than their Greek colleagues, foreign reporters based in Greece recognize that they face problems that are unusual in a European Union member. But they prefer to be discreet on the subject because, like their Greek colleagues, they fear the possibility of reprisals or violence.
The impact of the crisis has radicalized a sector of the population, which expresses its anger and frustration in increasingly violent demonstrations. Photographers and cameramen are more and more at risk as they encounter situations akin to civil war in the course of trying to cover the activities of these grass-roots movements. Caught between the violence of the extremist movements and the violence of anti-riot police who show little respect for their professional status, photographers are paying a high price for the coverage they give us.
No journalists were upbeat about the consequences of the austerity plans and cuts, but Reporters Without Borders found that most of the ones it interviewed regarded the economic crisis as a chance for the media to break with the patronage system that has prevailed since the 1980s. Could the crisis help advance the cause of media freedom in Greece?
