Όποιος μεγάλωσε στα ξένα χέρια (Whoever grew up in foreign hands)

By Stratos Moraitis | November 6, 2011 at 5:10 pm | No comments | Featured, Greece, Opinion | Tags: crisis, European Union, Greece in crisis, Greece politics

Decades ago, Vassilis Tsitsanis wrote the following lyrics;

Όποιος μεγάλωσε στα ξένα χέρια 

κι ήπιε το δάκρυ της ορφάνιας το πικρό 

αυτός γνωρίζει τι θα πει 

να τρως με πόνο το ψωμί 

όταν βρεθείς χωρίς προστάτη στη ζωή 

Είναι πικρά είναι βαριά τα ξένα χέρια 

τα ξένα χέρια είναι μαχαίρια

Could be loosely translated as follows:

"Whoever grew up in foreign hands
  and drank the bitter tear of orphans
  he knows what it means
  to eat a loaf with pain
  when your life is without protection

It's sour, it is heavy, the foreign hands,
  the foreign hands, they are knives"

Powerful words to summarize the situation in Greece.

The outlook is grime. And I don’t mean the nation. I mean people. They have been given sticks covered with candy for twenty years. As they suck on the candy outing, people they trusted their future with, albeit local or foreign bought out their factories, corporations and even the houses they believed belonged to them.

Candy is gone and everyone is left with the stick in their hands. And the literary foreigners are scrambling around to find a way to prolong the hypnosis. But it’s very late. The people can surely read and it is obvious to everyone that the story of feeding the lies in the world of make-believe of wealth is over.

Because if you follow the behavior of the politicians, they are no different from headless chickens on a day of slaughter (pun intended). Their views turn 180 degrees every few hours and their aim is just to pass on the demands of EU and to preserve their future careers as politicians if possible.

That charade seems to be successful in silencing the people for a few days on the brink of a financial default, but it is inevitable that there are not many options at hand. One as mentioned above is the default and devaluation of all financial assets of Greece; the sudden death. Or Greece will stay in the Euro zone and follow the austerity guidelines as presented by Merkozy leadership; a prolonged period of soul-searching and radicalization. Since I cannot vote in the election system of Greece I abstain from making a selection between the two evils. But Greek electorate doesn’t seem to have a problem with that as shown by their voting tendencies of the last decades.