Tsipras has staged this summer in Itaka the end of the financial rescue to Athens via Libya. In the liturgy that was given on 21 August, he solemnly spoke of the end of the modern Odyssey.
Itaka is located on the west coast of the Greek continent, in the Ionian Sea. To the west, more than a thousand kilometres away, is the island of Kastellorizo, located under the peninsula of Anatolia. Although it is closer to Cyprus and Turkey, it belongs to the Greek State. At the Kastellorizon in April 2010, the then Socialist Prime Minister, Yorgos Papandreu, called for financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), opening his arms to the first rescue. After eight years of expertise, there is the head of the government who led the people to a referendum: he has faithfully followed the path of the rescues initiated by his predecessors, obeying the orders of the Troika and the capital. He has placed the end of the odyssey at the other end of the Mediterranean and the election as the setting for the Itaka de Homero has shown us that at a symbolic level it is also within the norm.
In the last decade, the Greek economy has suffered a sharp decline: Over EUR 200 billion in exchange for your commitment to implement the measures of the wildest neoliberalism. The social impact has been severe: the unemployment rate has risen by 16% in the last decade; the purchasing power of citizens has hit bottom: The European Union average has been reduced from 93% to 68%, with wages falling by 30%, doubling the share of Greek citizens in poverty. Austerity measures have mercilessly hit all age groups: While half a million young people have left the country since 2012, pensions have been reduced by twelve times.
In the last decade, the Greek economy has suffered a sharp decline: Over EUR 200 billion in exchange for your commitment to implement the measures of the wildest neoliberalism. The social impact has been brutal: the unemployment rate has risen by 16% in the last decade and the purchasing power of the people has hit the bottom. Falling from 93% to 68% of the EU average and salaries fall by 30%
Greece is the 13th country with a longer coastline, with more than 1,400 islands and with a strategic situation in the Mediterranean Sea. It is no coincidence that within the gigantic process of privatization initiated by the third rescue the sale of a dozen ports of the country s.Ya has been transferred to private hands two of the main ports: Piraeus of Athens and port of Thessaloniki. The first has been held by a Chinese public company (COSCO) and the second by the SEGT business group, in which German funds predominate. The sale of the port of Alexandroupolis will be closed next fall with the sale of: Very close to the border with Turkey, it also has a tempting position on the map of natural gas distribution.
The port of Piraeus is, along with the largest in Greece, one of the largest in the Mediterranean. More than 1,500 people work there. Since their salaries fell from EUR 1,500 to EUR 600, due to the crisis, no increase has been seen. Since the port is in the hands of the company COSCO, working and health conditions have become worse and worse. A complex system of subcontracting is being imposed: fewer and fewer workers are recruited throughout the day and more and more subcontracted to carry out work. Unskilled personnel are subcontracted but the company is not responsible for security risks. The workers know very well that what happens in the Piraeus is not a fool: “What is happening in Piraeus is nothing more than the principle of the precarious regime that will spread throughout Europe.”
Tsipras said in the show in Itaka that Greece has made itself with its destiny. After years of bleeding, what fate is left to the people? European technocrats have been greeted with applause and praise, but this hearing shows that Tsipras has been sold completely in recent days.
What do the sirens' songs mutter?