NO, The Start Of An Arduous Journey.

     So the people of Greece have said NO to the truncheon of the financial Mafia, they have suffered enough as the banksters try to recoup their gambling loses. I have been a frequent visitor to Greece over the years and have seen it transformed from a pleasant place to live, among a friendly people, to a pit of deprivation, beggars have spread like a virus, social structures have collapsed, stress and trauma are everywhere. None of this was because of the actions of the ordinary people of Greece, it was all engineered by the financial Mafia in an attempt to shore up their crumbling financial house of cards. They will gladly sacrifice a whole land of people, sinking them into the mire of perpetual poverty, looking only at their balance sheets. We should all take a good look at this scenario, none of us are special to the financial Mafia, we can all be sacrificed at the altar of Mammon, if the banksters see that as a way of protecting their edifice of illusionary money.

      What does it feel like to live in Greece today, surrounded by a crumbling society, watching friends and family suffer for no reason of their own.

     This letter was sent to ft.com and gives some idea of what the people of Greece have been, and are going through. We owe them our support and solidarity in their fight to free themselves from this bludgeoning by the financial Mafia.

Sir, Memory. No memory of life before the financial crisis; politics has dominated it ever since. But now I can hardly remember life before Friday night. Fear. I am terrified of tomorrow, all I now see is black. Uncertainty, leading us through our days, every remainder of hope for a brighter future being destroyed by the minute. I look at my three-year-old niece, I envy her ignorance, I envy her age. I am 21 years old and the past few days I feel tired by life. A referendum that supposedly gives me the right to define my future, seems to have taken it away.

     There are hundreds of people queueing at the ATMs and petrol stations, there is silence in the streets, people’s faces are frozen. This is the reality since Friday night. There are, and have been for a long time, people literally starving. However, it seems that instead of their situation improving, the rest of us will have no different a fate.

       Families and friends divide in Yes and No camps. We are called to exercise our democratic right by voting on a referendum while having no tangible explanation of what will follow each decision. I see everyone I know ready to take this huge responsibility without even being prepared to do so. I notice us, arguing endlessly, everyone supporting their stance fervently, ego dominating minds and words, while having no clue as to what is really at stake.

      We all want the crisis to end, we all crave growth and happiness. I do not remember my parents being free of stress and anxiety in the past years. I do not remember not noticing shops closing every month, or the rapid increase of beggars in the streets. People that, before the financial crisis, never had to beg for anything. However, the past five days have been worse than all that has been so far. They say that all we hear is propaganda; but we have lost our trust in all sides, now everything seems to be lies.

       It feels like an end. The end of our lives as we knew them. Yes, the lives that, before Friday, we already thought could be better; now we realise they were better then. The only thing we truly wish for is that the worst is not yet to come.

Iliana Magra

Thessaloniki, Greece

       The people of Greece face an extremely hard time, NO may have been the right decision, but it is not an immediate panacea. You can rest assured the the financial Mafia will not back off easily, they will do their damnedest to crush the Greek resistance to their dictates. Their are extremely hard times ahead for the people of Greece, and their answer lies in their own hands, they have to break the shackles of the economic system that binds them to the banksters model of exploitation. There are groups in Greece that are pointing to the answer, people taking control of their own country free from the mantra of profit and illusionary growth.

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