it's always May

(Young protesters changing the name of the City Hall Square into 15th May Square in Valencia. Photo by: jacobictus)

It's only been three days since I was contemplating on the need to act, indignant for my passive reaction to what is happening in Greece, discouraged by the way the state has decided to use the police against protesters and disgusted with the way the mainstream media seem to back them up. Thanks to the same media, who have the suspicious tendency to discover a new "terrorist" every time our government is about to announce another set of austerity measures, I -and the majority of Greeks- was still ignorant of the massive protests all over Spain until a few days ago. It looked as if the sensitive journalists of the establishment have failed to realize what was, what IS happening in Spain, where people, young people still maintain the courage to take to the streets, march, shout, even camp in Puerta del Sol, Plaza Catalunya and elsewhere without having to face tear-gas cannisters and globs.

Even more, it looks as if in Spain, the media still see the people -especially the young- for what they really are. Unemployed, in search for a low salary and an even lower rent, disappointed with how their education has turned them into by-products of a system of labour that cares more about interest rates than people and infuriated with their leaders that are too stubborn to realize what is obvious to almost everybody except perhaps to some short-sighted bureaucrats in Brussels. That things, as they are, are simply not working.

The movement of May 15th, is a movement of the young, which sparked of in May, in a European capital. The similarities to that other May, the Parisian one of 1968 end here. The French of the 60s were suffocating in a world of post-war prosperity. They were asking for "imagination to assume power", they were clashing against the police and went back to school once their revolution was smashed. The Spaniards (and the Greeks, the Irish, the Portuguese, tomorrow even the French and Italians) of the 2010s are the casualties of economic warfare. They demand a decent job with a decent pay, a decent place to live. They are pacific and non-violent (for now) but once, when, if their revolution is crashed they will have no other place to go than the exact same streets they now occupy.

Just think about that.

the crisis and why one should care

It's as simple as that. The more you care about the current economical crisis, the more you get entangled in something that is beyond the grasp of the great majority of the people, even well educated ones. Over the last year, I have been trying to understand the basics of the global financial system through reading of newspapers, analyses, economists' blogs, by watching (good and bad) documentaries and talks on TV. But there was just too many SWAPs, too many derivatives and too many interests (literally speaking) for a poor bioinformatician to handle. I ended up wasting a great amount of my time without really getting a more elaborate idea than the one I had in the beginning: "There is something systematically wrong in this system".

I soon reached the conclusion that one should not really care about it. Let's face it. Life is short and one cannot expect but to pursue only a small part of his dreams over its course, the amount of which will be greatly reduced if he were to spend his time trying to understand how others pursue their own. My dreams have to do with understanding the way nature works, the particularities of the human soul expressed through literature and music, the extent of human ingenuity through football tactics. Other people's dreams have to do with how to become rich at the expense of others. It is a minor dream chosen by petty people. I said, let them have it their way.

The problem is that THEY are not letting me have it MY way.
Over the last week, these petty people, the little men (and women) in Brussels, Strasbourg and whichever place it is that their insignificances choose to hold their meetings, have been trying to "convince" the greek political parties (and hence the Greek citizens) to reach a consensus otherwise they will not carry on with the financial "aid" towards our country. The consensus here being simply the opinion the two greatest parties have on the memorandum that the greek government has signed with the IMF/EU/ECB "troika". It is, in fact, a common extortion of the worst kind. They are not urging the political forces of the country to reach an agreement. They simply demand that they all accept the -already signed- terms of the treaty as being the only way to go. Yes, we are back at the times of "total solutions". "Arbeit machts frei" is soon to follow.

Under these circumstances, carrying on with one's own business simply is not an option anymore. Even if for the majority this looks like no great a change, we are facing a challenge on which we cannot turn our backs. Democracy is at stake, the whole tradition of the Enlightenment, on which our culture has based its foundations is in danger. Lending money in a way that would have made Shylock blush is one thing. Making sure that a pay back will be done in a way that would ask for ever greater loans, thus holding a whole generation as financial hostages is another thing. But to demand that everybody says "Yes, we love the way you are screwing us up" is a whole different one.

Going beyond just the end of democracy, it is the end of reason.

the man who ran a lot

When I was a little boy, two things were very common on Saturday nights. One, my parents, still quite young and too tired of staying in the whole week, wanted to go out. Two, the Greek TV, still in its innocent youth was overwhelmed with old Greek comedy films, most of them shot during the 50s and 60s. The two combined meant that I had to spent a great number of my childhood's Saturday evenings watching Greek comedies at my grandparents place in the -then- quiet and picturesque neighborhood of Gazi.

There was one more thing. Back then, I could not stand Greek films. Oddly enough for a child at my age (these evenings were more frequent at the age of 5 to 10), I had the greatest distaste for these naive -I then thought- productions that could simply not compare to the historical Hollywood feature films like "Spartacus" or "Lawrence of Arabia" that were my father's favourites. Even more strangely, I could not stand colour. I vividly remember having a strong preference for black and white films, which to my eyes appeared more original, as I found it hard to accept that technicolored, cinecitta-like, musical extravaganzas had anything to do with Greece in the 60s. To my childish eyes -and as it now seems to the eyes of most people-, Greece in the 50s and the 60s was a black and white place, poor but romantic, grey and nostalgic.

Among those black and white films, there was only one kind I really LIKED to watch (to the relief of my grandparents). Those starring Thanassis Veggos. Aka our "good man". Aka "the man who used to run a lot". Truly the most talented Greek comedian of all time, undoubtedly the most innovative, simply the most beloved actor in the (short and moderate) history of Greek cinema. There was that time, I still remember, when Veggos was on, that everything stopped. At the age of 7, I could not get all his lines and I was puzzled by some of his references to anti-military themes, but there was something in this man's voice, his constant running up and down, his overall struggling that to me was -subconsciously- identified with the Greek soul.

To my childish eyes, THAT was Greece in the 60s. A guy in black and white, always in a working-class neighborhood, obviously uneducated but curiously wise, working three or four jobs to get by. A guy who never gets rich, never gets the pretty girl, never gets to be famous. Yet a guy with a smile that cannot be beaten, a laugh that cannot be silenced, a face impossible to be forgotten.

The "man who ran a lot" reached the finish line last Tuesday. Given that our Greece today is starting to resemble that black and white country his films took place in, there is a growing demand that we live up to his effort.
After all, life is a relay race.

becoming Bin Ladin

Bin Ladin's henchmen and followers have repeatedly kidnapped, killed, decapitated westerners, often innocent reporters, whose bodies were never recovered. Through the eyes of fellow westerners, those have been considered, barbaric, intolerable acts of cruelty not abiding by the moral standards of our advanced societies.

After the killing of Usāmah bin Lādin, alongside three other men and a woman, the same westerners were pleased to announce that justice has been done. Unfortunately, this was justice the Bin Ladin-way. Breaking and entering, shooting indiscriminately -as none of the 25 extremely capable U.S. Navy Seals were harmed during the shooting-, kidnapping the body and bearing it in the sea as "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult."

Now that ʾUsāmah bin Lādin "sleeps with the fishes", there is perhaps a timely question to answer. Is this the kind of example we "westerners" will pass on to "those rogue, backward muslims"? What has become of the western democracies in times when even a not-so-common terrorist suffers the exact same end would advocate for his victims? President Obama who thought that "yes we could", Frau Merkel who found Ladin being dead (correction: killed) to be good news and President Sarkozy who greated a preposterous act of violence as "a major event in the fight against terrorism", should think again.

Perhaps, they are becoming just like Bin Ladin