Riot in Greece
"We want our candy! The Jews stole our candy!"
Hat tip to Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism
Below is an interesting article on how some Greek priest is blaming the Jews for Greece's current financial crisis.
http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/hi-level-greek-priest-goes-on-anti-semitic-tirade/
The Metropolite answered, “Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire.”
Great. Just what we need. Allow me to clear this matter up for the priest's edification. Greece's problem is merely the first and worst example of what plagues western Europe; non-stop spending on social welfare that the nation can't afford. According to one of my colleagues, who is married to a Greek, speaks Greek, and has lived in Greece (before they fled), about 35% of the work force is either working for the government or retired-a sure recipe for disaster. Now that the money has run out, Greece walks around hat in hand asking its European neighbors for hand outs. Then when any talk is heard about spending cuts, the Greek people run amok in the streets.
But it's all the Jews' fault.
Wrong. It is all the Greeks' fault. Maybe it's time for the lazy Greeks to get up off their asses and realize that life is not about the government of Mamby Pamby Land taking care of all your needs. (Maybe we Americans could learn that too.) The party is over in Europe. The money has run out. Now it is for the whole European Union to realize that they cannot save each country, one by one with bailouts.
Now comes this idiot priest blaming the Jews and Rothchild for all Greece's ills. Another black eye for Christianity, if you ask me.
Like the drill sergeant said,
"The Greeks are a bunch of jackwagens."
Talk about a has-been country!
For a current of thought which has consistently blamed Jews for both capitalism and communism, blaming the Jews for Hitler is a manageable bit of intellectual callisthenics.
ReplyDeleteWhat Gary neglects to mention is that it was a conservative party, with rhetoric not much different from Gary's own, that got Greece into this mess, while it is the Panhellenic Socialist Party that has the unenviable task of cleaning it up.
It is quite arguable that the problem with Greece is not the size of the social welfare budget, but the rampant failure of the government to collect taxes from the wealthier classes, who are used to utter impunity.
This is not unlike our clueless Republicans acting as if "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," cutting taxes while taking on two wars, giving a budget surplus "back to the people" when the country was $5 trillion in debt, promising querelous voters "We can do all this without cutting programs," then asking President Obama why the national debt is so high.
I suspect that this bishop is a tool of the Greek upper classes, seeking to deflect the mass of the population from asking such inconvenient questions, and distracting from any attempt by the current government to explain all this coherently.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteSo Greece's problem is that it didn't collect enough taxes from those evil rich people, eh? You know, if we in America confiscated all the wealth of every millionaire we couldn't pay for Obama's wild programs. I suspect the same is true in Greece.
Your talk about "Obama's wild programs" is a red herring Gary.
ReplyDeleteBEFORE the "Bush tax cuts," the United States budget was running a surplus, and we were beginning to pay down our national debt, for the first time in my lifetime, possibly in my parents' lifetime as well.
By the time GWB left office, the national debt had double from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, most of that in prosperous times. On Obama's watch, during an economic downturn that required some deficit spending, the debt has gone up an additional $3 trillion.
If Bush had simply kept the debt stable, without paying it down, our total debt today would be $8 trillion instead of $13 trillion. If he had kept the Clinton program of paying down the debt, we would be in an even better position to take on a little deficit spending when the economy needed it.
Taxing all the wealth of all the wealthy might not pay off the national debt in one year, but over ten years it would leave us in a very healthy position.
You should do a little reading on Greece. Everyone of almost every political perspective agrees that Greece does a lousy job of collecting taxes owed. It is one point that German critics have made over and over.
This is one time when you simply deny facts that are inconvenient to your ideology Gary. If we are going to pay down our debt, it will take tax revenues to do that. Money doesn't grow on trees. And I have to teach that to a self-proclaimed "conservative"???