The Peloponnese in Greece, is probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. Breathtaking views, glorious weather, and steeped in Greek history and mythology. While the rest of Greece mires in "austerity", unemployment, poverty and deprivation, nestling in the beautiful Peloponnese is the small town of Nea Manolada. Former “Socialist” Prime Minister George Papandreou, praised the area as an "economic miracle". This little town has a turnover of more than €90 million, all from that lovely fruit, strawberries, acre upon acre of strawberries.
While the Greek state, under its program called, Xenios Zeus, after the ancient Greek God of hospitality, carries out mass sweeps of immigrants, rounding them up and placing them in over crowded and inhumane concentration camps, it gives the area of Nea Manolada a miss. This might seem odd as the town has a population of approximately 2,000, but a migrant population of approximately 4,000. Among and around the lush strawberries are migrant workers living under the glaring Greek sun in makeshift plastic tents, where hygiene is poor or none existent.
This is the small town in which an employer and a some of his foremen, blasted some migrant workers with shotgun pellets, for having the audacity to ask for their six previous months wages. Their case came to court recently and the result proves that the Greek judicial system is as corrupt and fascist as the Greek state. The employer was acquitted, while the two shooters were given 14 years and 8 years, but were released on appeal and ordered to pay a €5 a day fine instead.
The Nea Manolada "economic miracle" is built on extremely low, or non-existent wages, and dreadful conditions. Greece is in the European Union, and this part of Greece is where brutal exploitative capitalism morphs into brutal capitalist slavery. The latter being the ideal conditions for maximum profit, the capitalists dream.
These conditions, and worse, are repeated all over the world, all in the name of profit for the few, that is the system we tolerate, why?
