Ακολουθούν επιλεκτικά αποσπάσματα από άρθρο που δημοσιεύτηκε στην βρετανική http://www.independent.co.uk . ΤΟ κείμενο έχει συνταχτεί από τον Daniel Howden οποίος καταφέρνει να κατανοήσει όσα πολλοί έλληνες αδυνατούν ή αρνούνται να κατανοήσουν.
Το κείμενο παρέμεινε στα αγγλικά για την άρτια απόδοση των φράσεων.
It was June of 2004 and the Greek football team had just won the European Championship in one of the unlikeliest sporting triumphs anyone could remember. The celebrations had been euphoric, almost visceral – a national convulsion. The Olympics were coming home the next month and Greece was on a high.
Seven years on and I am back in the same square with many of the same people it seems. The flags are there and to a non-Greek speaker the chants sound the same. But the mood is rancorous. I cannot escape the feeling that I am looking at a beloved country through a glass, darkly.
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Over the next four years, Greece's national debt is projected to rise to 200 per cent of GDP; the primary deficit – how much more the country spends than it earns before interest on its debt – is still climbing despite a year of deep cuts; unemployment is headed towards 20 per cent and the economy is still shrinking. The word that you hear most often in conversation in Athens is "adeiexodo" or "dead-end".
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This year, the games in Athens revolve around blame: private-sector employees blame public-sector bloat; civil servants blame tax-dodging professionals; the unions blame banks, oligarchs and neo-liberals at the IMF; almost everyone blames the government, which, in turn, blames the international media, financial markets and the opposition. Almost no one blames themselves.
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The "new Greek" could read Status magazine, have a €7.50 iced coffee and drink until dawn in places with names like Envy and Privilege.
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He also points out that Greece's economy is primarily based on small businesses, many of which are family run, and property ownership is unusually widely dispersed. In other words, corruption in Greece is democratic – or as one unemployed mathematician told me in Syntagma, "we are all small-time crooks".
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Kapplani describes them as "orphans" and says the primary emotion he senses, aside from anger, is an "overwhelming nostalgia for a time that has just past" and will not be returning. "Everyone is shouting for change but in essence no one wants anything to change."
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Crisis, which is a Greek word, has two meanings – the one that we are used to in English, but it can also be used to express a judgment.
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With panels composed of internationally feted venture capitalists, academics, writers and a young start-up executive it is a welcome reminder that despite the gloom there is an argument to be made for recovery
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- Ολόκληρο το κείμενο εδώ.
- Οι φωτογραφίες από το http://totallycoolpix.com/
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