Cyprus: in the most convoluted of disputes, at least one thing is clear

Meletis Apostolides is going home.
Who is he, the non-Cypriots amongst you, will ask. That is immaterial, I will answer. He is one of thousands of Greek Cypriots who fled the North of the island after Turkish forces invaded in 1974. He is one of the thousands that have spent the last three and a half decades oscillating between hope and anger. And for most of that time, going back was not an option. But the world is changing.

After the 1974 invasion the island of Cyprus was partitioned.
Greek Cypriots from the North and Turkish Cypriots from the south became refuges in their own homeland. And although the situation seemed untenable, it held for a very long time. The island remained divided against all the rules of logic and international affairs.

The North declared itself an independent state that nobody other than Turkey recognised as legitimate. The world just ignored it. But it didn’t go away.

I grew up in Greece, where the North was always referred to as ‘Denktaş’ fake state’. And although Denktaş is no longer at the helm, the North remains a fake as far as the Greeks are concerned.
For the Turks, in Turkey or in North Cypris, that is – unsurprisingly – not the case. The North has a name and its name is KKTC (kakateje, amusingly) Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti ‘the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’.
What’s in a name? Claims to legitimacy and aspirations for recognition, that’s what’s in a name. A clear affiliation to the mother state (the Turkish Republic), a claim of ethnic ownership of the land occupied and an appeal to democratic legitimacy in the form of a Republic of their own. A name that claims ‘we are genuine even if the Greeks think we’re fake’.

But the name didn’t do the trick.
The rest of the world averted their eyes, discussed ‘the issue’ at UN summits and largely pretended the North did not exist.
Sure, Turkey got a slap on the wrist for invading but there was no long-term damage to relations with Europe. So, many thought being ignored wasn’t altogether bad news.
Only Turkey was not prepared for a long-term occupation. Nobody had the stomach for it. They had neither the means nor inclination to sustain a patch of earth ignored by the rest of the world. But sustain it they did.

From 1974 and until the opening of the borders to foreign commerce and tourism, Turkey provided all the food, water, electricity, blankets, medication, toys, boots and shovels Northern Cypriots needed. KKTC had no economy of its own, no industry and inadequate agriculture. Naturally there was no foreign investment – direct or indirect – and the North’s beautiful beaches were out of reach for foreign tourists.
Turkey had to foot all the bills and put a big bright smile on it all as the military had decreed KKTC a priority on all levels.

Meanwhile the North was repopulated with Turkish-speakers, the South picked up its pieces and people tried to rebuild their lives. Never ignoring the big green line dividing their island, never forgetting the pain of separation.

And both sides think they are right. And both sides have stories of pain and loss. And the story changes depending on when you start the telling and when you stop. On where you stand when you tell it and where you stand when you listen. One thing is certain in every version: it is a sad story with no winners.

And I cannot for a moment blame Mr Meletis Apostolides for wanting to go home. And I understand why he went to court in Cyprus demanding his right to get his land back, now the border is open and the EU is asking all Cypriots to play nice.
And the Cypriot court said Mr Apostolides can have his land back.

And here is where the problems begin.
The land is not empty.
A British couple – Linda and David Orams – bought the land off a Turkish Cypriot and built a villa on it and, as you can imagine, they are not too keen on the idea of Mr Apostolides coming back.
So he went to the European Court of Justice where the Cypriot court ruling was upheld: Mr Apostolides can go home.
Now this is all academic, of course, because Northern Cyprus is not part of the EU so ECJ rulings do not bind the KKTC. And I don’t see them rushing to uphold a Greek Cypriot court ruling either.
But Mr Apostolides can seek compensation in a UK court and I would be very surprised if he doesn’t.

But even if he pursues this no more, Mr Apostolides’ case has set a massively significant precedent that will send chills down many spines.

And I will not pretend to have the requisite knowledge to suggest an appropriate solution for repatriation after a 36 year gap. Families that have lived and died in a once-empty house feel this is as much their home as the person’s who left it 36 years ago while fleeing for their life. Maybe it is. When ownership becomes entangled with morality and history there is no straightforward answer.

For a foreign investor, however, things are simpler and they boil down to this: like your daddy used to say, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
When something looks like too much of a bargain, you should always wonder why that is.
A beach-front villa in Northern Cyprus is so much cheaper to come by than its counterpart in the Marbella. I wonder why?

For 36 years Europe has ignored Northern Cyprus. We pretended it was a black hole. No flights landed there, no commercial relations existed, no goods were imported directly.
But in the last few years things have relaxed. Tourists, merchants and speculators have all descended since movement in and out of Northern Cyprus became possible.
And nobody noticed that nothing had changed in the status of KKTC. Still nobody recognised it as anything but occupied territory. It still had no standing, no membership in international organisations, no part in treaties and alliances, no international presence whatsoever. As a state, it only exists at home.

But investors, sun-hungry Brits and various land developers did not want to get bogged down in the political detail. Such a shame that this beautiful place was closed off for so long, they thought, and aren’t I lucky to be getting in first?
With cheap land up for grabs, investors rushed to beat others to it without stopping to think about ownership or legal redress.
Otherwise known as ‘the catch’.
You are buying land in a country that does not exist as far as your own country of citizenship is concerned. What are you going to do in case of a dispute?
Believe in the power of the dollar, is the answer.
The borders have already been opened to trade. This means that methods must have been found to resolve resulting disputes, so we must be fine, let’s go invest in cheap land.

Yet there is no such thing as ‘empty land’. It’s been centuries since that was last true – and even then it was dubious. Land always belongs to someone. Who did yours belong to before it was sold to you? In most cases you don’t really care.
Unless you are buying in a former war zone.
Unless you are buying in an area famous only because of an invasion and corresponding population displacement that occurred in living memory.
All I’m saying is in Northern Cyprus, you should care, because these guys may want to come back.

With Cyprus ‘peace’ negotiations being on the news pretty much non-stop since 1974, people became jaded about the possibility of a real solution, but nobody forgot the war, the division, the refugees. Until the refugees' houses went up for sale when everything was forgotten in the face of a good bargain.

With population displacement things are difficult and I do not envy the task of the judge that should decide to evict families – some times, though not always, refugees themselves – because the original occupants – also refugees – want to come back. People pitting their pain against each other trying to figure out whose tragedy is worse, whose right strongest. People in each other’s home, not everyone wanting to return.
That is hard.

But with an investor who grabbed the bargain not stopping to think about the complications, not caring about the implications, not stopping to wonder about the ‘catch’, well in their case, they took a risk. They gambled on the politics remaining conveniently unresolved, they gambled on people not wanting to come back. They staked their money on a bad situation staying bad. And they lost. But at least they lost after taking a conscious risk. And if they didn’t pay attention to the small print, the risk factor, then they only have themselves to blame.
They should have paid more attention to their daddy when he told them that this is the problem with bargains, there is always a catch.

Remind me again – who did you say are the good guys?

Ah the Cold War. We knew who the villains were, we slept soundly in the knowledge we were with the good guys and James Bond movies had blissfully uncomplicated plotlines. Ok so that last bit hasn’t changed. But everything else has.

Now did I actually sleep soundly thanks to the Cold War?
No, not really.
I personally lived in constant fear of nuclear annihilation and could not possibly figure out why that terror of a man, Reagan, was supposed to be the good guy ahead of cuddly, smiley Gorbachev. But I was barely 10 when perestroika started so I am obviously nothing to go by here.

Still the fact remains: those who thought they knew where they stood with the cold war can say that no more. Sure, the Arabs are today’s bad guys. And they fit into the civilisational ‘us vs them’ battle over liberty and ‘our way of life’ (as well as banal questions of military supremacy and global power).
But not all Arabs are bad, now are they? Some are friends. But how do you tell them apart? And then, of course, those who are foe are not alone, are they? So many other bad guys to keep an eye on. Plus, this new generation of bad guy is very mobile. You don’t know where to point your missiles any more.
Add to that the fact that there are all sorts of allies we don’t really like all that much and you have a right headache in your struggle to safeguard freedom and the way of life we were talking about.

Take China for instance. Now that’s a good subject for someone interested in freedom, fairness, justice and democracy. A trading partner, of course. So we try not to bug them too much. Although, if truth be told, we are not too fond of them. Or their human rights record. Or their tendency to execute people en masse (and then sell their bodies to the West to be used in art exhibitions of dubious taste. Yes, yes it’s the Bodies exhibition I am talking about and, yes, I am squeamish). And now China has created an ever more degrading, even less controlled and monitored and even more outrageous way of killing off its own people: the mobile execution vehicle, the death-mobile, a van that can come to you and administer lethal injection in your own location. Trivialising life and death and laughing in the face of UN representatives speaking of China’s ‘improving human rights record’.

But stop press for a moment.
Have you thought that China’s record may well be improving, not out of any concerted effort to democratise, liberalise or play nice but simply because everybody else’s record is deteriorating at the speed of light?
I’m sure you all read the articles earlier this week – the CIA waterboarded two suspects 266 times during interrogations. Now 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and alleged terror commander Abu Zubaydah are bad guys. But that used to mean that they were prone to do things we wouldn’t do, us being the good guys. Thieves are bad because stealing is wrong, murderers are bad because life is sacred, rapists are evil because violation and violence is a sin, a crime and an abomination. So we are the good guys, not because we are victims of badness but because we wouldn’t do what bad guys do. Right?

Then explain torture to me, will you?
And before you tell me that Obama – blessed be his name – has banned waterboarding, let me tell you that it was happening till 2 months ago and, as Obama has not instructed a wide-spread inquest and purging of the CIA, waterboarding will stop but torture won’t.
Because 266 instances of waterboarding on 2 people says one thing and one thing alone: it happened a lot. And that, in turn, tells us an awful lot of things about how the CIA go about interrogating bad guys. And none of those things are good.

Now if you are of the ‘an eye for an eye’ school, you obviously disagree with me. Especially as we have now seen memos outlining how medical experts prevented waterboarding from causing severe mental or physical harm to the subject. So it’s not even an eye for an eye as we keep them alive.

Is that the measure of our humanity, then? Ensuring the pain doesn’t kill the suspect?
When did ‘who we are’ stop mattering?
Because who you are is measured half against what you do with you life and half against what you refuse to do. So, no, torture is not ok. Even if you have the worst of villains sitting across the interrogation table from you. And it’s not ok for three reasons:

1. What if you are wrong? What if hours, days, years from now you find that the guy who looked so evidently guilty on paper actually wasn’t? What if?

2. Revenge is not what our legal system is based on. Revenge is a bad motive and a bad reason for action. Revenge leads to the dark side.

3. If who you are entails a capacity and drive for violence, inflicting fear and pain on a defenceless – however horrible – human being, then you too my friend are one of the bad guys. Not as bad, perhaps, but bad all the same.

And making waterboarding illegal far from solves the problem
Because, don’t tell me that, when not using waterboarding, the CIA just had stern chats with their charges? And don’t tell me that, since Obama is not prosecuting any officials (not those who devised the policies, not those who carried out the interrogations, not those who failed to stop them) there will be a real change in how the supposed good guys interrogate the suspected bad guys?

And before you tell me that all’s fair in love and war, tell me how turning into what you are fighting against helps protect what you are fighting for?

Some fear that taking techniques off the table will make the enemies even more daring. More daring than what? What’s more daring than a suicide bomber?

And while experts debate whether torture ‘works’, whether accurate confessions are exacted through the medium of pain and the associated panic simulated drowning would cause, I maintain that this is not the point.
As a citizen, as a person, as an one-time ‘expert’ I refuse the ulta-right dismissal of the anti-torture argument as naïve and stand by my original proposition: humanity and morality cannot be fully separated. If you stand against the bad guys, don’t be a bad guy. If, in fighting a war, you compromise what you are striving to protect, you are your own worse enemy. And if you are fighting for freedom and democracy, well, then you can’t agree with Obama’s decision not to prosecute.

The point is that good is as good does. And no matter what desperate times call for, whatever popular wisdom absolutions you can think up, the fact remains: good guys should act like good guys, all the time, under any circumstances.
Even when doing so is difficult.
Particularly when doing so is difficult.

Why the folks running Greece cannot possibly be human

I have this theory.
That three things set humans apart from other animals: our ability for reflection, abstraction and compassion.

What do I mean?
I mean that unlike other animals, humans can deeply reflect on their behaviour, on life, on the universe. We have an ability and often a need to link the dots, poke in the shadows, truly seek to understand how things fit, why things are the way they are, why things feel the way they feel. Why did so-and-so do this? Why was I left feeling this way?
On top of that, we can do all this in the abstract. We can think about our own liberty and freedom writ large. We can think about rights, ethics, social reform. We can write poetry and debate religion. We can deal in things that cannot be touched or seen and yet we feel strongly about them.
And, most important of all in my mind, we are capable of compassion. Not just the fierce love of the lioness for her cubs. Not just the acute territorial protectionism of a wolf for his pack. Compassion. For complete strangers. On grounds of our shared humanity.

So, after thinking about it at length, I have concluded that, if my taxonomy is taken to its logical conclusion, we are left with only one option: the people running Greece are not human as they demonstrate no ability to reflect, no capacity for linking up the abstract with the concrete (the law they are passing with the problem they are trying to solve, say) and above all, no compassion whatsoever.

Let me demonstrate.
Mr Markogiannakis – successful lawyer, public prosecutor under the dictators and high and mighty within the current government. If he is not proof enough in his continued service that our leaders don’t reflect, let me give you more. He is one of the forces behind the stun guns our policemen carry – notorious for causing permanent health problems or even death – and is currently clamouring for the hire of ‘foreign’ policemen with the express job description of informing and keeping an eye on their compatriots, saving the day by arresting scores of illegal immigrants selling home-made CDs on street corners
Leaving aside his belief that illegal immigration is Greece’s most pressing problem at the moment (being stupid, sadly, fails to disqualify him as a human), his proposed solution fails to even for a moment consider what sort of society he would be building if the measure went through. No abstraction. He fails to consider how relations within the force and between the force and the community would fragment, sour and militarise. No reflection. And he fails to see – or fails to care – that this measure is preying on the poverty and despair of many an immigrant who would agree to anything that would feed their families in an honest, if not honourable way. So compassion is out the window too.

The really bad news, of course, is that Mr Markogiannakis is not alone.
Our glorious police force demonstrate a pitch-perfect ‘pack mentality’ looking after their own, covering up trespasses, crimes, violations of the law and police code of conduct. Evident is an inability to think in abstract terms of public service, order and an active contribution to democratic governance. Evident is their total lack of compassion for those they are meant to protect. Evident is also a total lack of willingness to reflect on their own conduct.
A recent study revealed that 4 or 5 policemen go down every year on charges of drug and people trafficking, blackmail, pimping and murder. That’s a tiny number in a corps that is notorious for its corruption. Yet even these few invariably come back into the force, having lost a few months’ earnings.
With more and more cases of evident police brutality being written up as people ‘beating themselves up’, tripping and, of course, suicide, ‘looking after one’s own’ is not just a figure of speech. The boys in blue don’t just keep an eye out for each other. They take out any eye that witnessed wrong-doing in a fierce protection of the pack.

Now ‘looking after your own’ is a natural instinct. Meerkats do it. Hyenas do it. Policemen do it. All humans do it, if we are honest. But they don’t do it to the complete detriment of everyone else. That’s the difference between hyenas and humans living in society. The latter know that survival does not need to be a zero sum game.

And while I’m at it – the priests? Not human either.
Sex scandals, appropriations scandals, land sale scandals and pure theft from charity coffers. Wanna talk compassion now? Wanna talk reflection? Why am I here, why am I wearing this funny black dress and what was it I set out to do?

Animals live meal to meal.
When humans have to live like that, we feel a crushing sadness as this life robs them of the basic tenets of their humanity – the ability to make complicated choices, the ability to live in the abstract, the luxury of showing compassion which you just don’t have when your own belly is empty.
But when you are fed, watered and sheltered from the elements, abstraction, reflection and compassion are possible. And essential.

Which brings me to the subject of our prime minister.
Well-fed, undoubtedly. Safe, warm – even though a trifle tired.
He is in a position to engage in reflection, abstraction and compassion. And yet he does not. He allows his government to pass laws that at best fail to address the problems he has to solve and at worse manipulate society closer and closer to a repressive regime.
There are three options here.
Option 1: his ability for reflection and abstraction is impaired because he’s dumb. That doesn’t make him any less human although it does throw his suitability for the post he is holding into sharp relief.
Option 2: the lack of reflection and compassion suggests he is not actually human. And that explains a lot.
Option 3: he is reflecting all right. And he has a perfect visualisation of where he is taking us, so his powers of abstraction are unimpaired. The slow but sure descent into a controlled state of fear and state repression is part of the plan and the prime minister and his cronies are simply members of that species that can think like a human but not feel like one. Abstraction? Reflection? Yeah, sure. Compassion? No, not today.

And here we are, trapped in a weird fairy tale, a work of science fiction, with a dark and sinister plot, unexpected twists, beasts, demons, battle scenes, plenty of villains – and no good guys.
But if this is a fairy tale, and having demonstrated that we are governed by wolves and ogres, are we not due a prince to slay them all roundabout now?

Witch-hunts for the digital era

One of my pet peeves, of which I have many, are people who use the terms ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ interchangeably.
Homosexuality ‘it’s not natural’ they say ‘it’s not normal’.
No sir.
It’s natural because it occurs in nature. But it is not normal as in, it is not of the norm – as in it is not the statistically prevalent, culturally prescribed, socially expected and publicly encouraged form of conduct.
So let’s get our terms straight here: ‘natural’ has everything to do with Mother Nature. ‘Normal’ has everything to do your own mother, her expectations and a whole number of social prescriptions on how ‘things should be’.

Now if you ask me, societies change, opinions evolve and what is considered normal is far from constant, varying from time to time, from place to place and from one person to the next. So although ‘natural’ is an altogether safer bet long term, ‘normal’ is what gets you invited to parties and leaves your aunties and nosy neighbours feeling safe and all warm inside. You don’t need me to tell you people generally prefer ‘normal’ to ‘natural’. Societies have historically victimised, marginalized, criminalized, ostracised and killed witches, prophets, adulterers, abortionists, unmarried lovers, homosexuals, members of different religions, parties, factions or football clubs.
You catch my drift.
‘Normal’ can be brutal and scary.

And here we are, in the year of our Lord 2009, in an era of openness, acceptance, moderation. In an era where your creed, colour, sexual preference or taste in neckties will not lead to a marginal life of victimisation and uncertainty. Or so they tell us.
Here we are thinking that, in our open-minded Western societies, ‘normal’ is a multi-hued, multi-faceted thing, as close to ‘natural’ as it has ever been in human history.

And here I am reading with incredulity that a number of psychiatrists and therapists are still offering their services to gay customers: 'helping them become heterosexual'.
To be honest, I first read the item a couple of weeks ago and dismissed it as an April fool’s day folly. A bad one but still a folly.
But no. It’s still on the wires. Evidently not a joke. Patently not funny.

Although such treatments are at best irrelevant and at worst harmful, apparently one in six of the mental health professionals surveyed in a recent poll in the UK said that they had ‘helped at least one patient curtail their gay, lesbian or bisexual feelings’ and one in 25 would try to ‘treat’ someone with homosexual ‘emotions’.
That’s a big percentage.
Maybe they are starting a trend. Maybe they will launch a pill.
I can see the adverts: ‘Tired of being different? Now you can fit it with the jocks, the cheerleaders and the conservative Christian right! Yes you can. You can try lobotomy or our new revolutionary Straight Pill – available at pharmacies near you’.

No, I don’t think this is funny either.
If licensed mental health professionals are trying to ‘cure’ sexual preference then it’s a matter of time before an angry mob bearing pitchforks comes to my door and drags me away to be burnt at the stake for witchcraft – what with my opinions and the people I hang out with.

Professor Michael King, from University College London, denounced any such attempts to cure homosexuality as scientifically unfounded and potentially harmful. His statement was countered by someone who refused to be named (the KKK also wore hoods to conceal their faces) who claimed that many a gay person is unhappy with their sexuality and ‘wish they were heterosexual’ and thus deserve help.
Professor King of course puts this proposition on its head, noting that many people face prejudice against their sexuality both from society and from within themselves – because you can’t shake your upbringing as easily as you’d like – and the mental health practitioner’s job is to help the individual deal with and overcome this prejudice, wherever it comes from.
As I was saying, when ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ collide the socially-fabricated and collectively-upheld normality wins over nature every bloody time.

And so ‘normality’ is shoved down our throats, with a lab-coat and stethoscope screaming from afar ‘when society and science converge, there is no use resisting’.
Now you may say, 1 in 25 practitioners being tempted to ‘cure’ homosexuality is not that bad, statistically speaking. But I really hope you won’t say that. Because one is one too many.
Besides, if a few sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy are believed to cure homosexuality, it is a matter of time before we hear of pills for atheism, syrups for liberalism and an enema to cure trade unionism.

This is not the first time doctors help us to be 'normal'.
This is not the first time scientists opt for upholding 'normality' and corresponding relations of power and control.
'Normal' has by definition strenght in numbers. 'Normal' lives, by definition, in the mainstream. What was once done in Churches is now done through chat shows, socio-babble jargon, websites. But a witch-hunt is a witch-hunt even with a .com at the end of it. And this wouldn’t be the first time the bad guys wore lab coats either.

And although the numbers are low (1 in 6 have done it, 1 in 25 would do it), the numbers are too high. And until the profession purges itself, there is a collective reponsibility no-one can deny. And until 'normal' aligns itself with 'natural', I will have cause to rant. This anger may be not be natural but, given the world I live in, let's face it: it's normal.

Economic crisis made in Greece.

If I hear one more Greek in Greece bemoan the credit crunch I may have to fly over to hit them on the head with something heavy. A volume of ‘Economics for Dummies’ may be a good idea.
Why the urge for violence? You ask.
Am I doubting Greece is facing an intense economic crisis? No. Of course I’m not. Greece is in the midst of an intense economic crisis with a financial and fiscal crisis to boot. By there is no credit crunch. Not yet and not for a good reason: Greece is not a global financial hub. The credit crunch has not affected Greece. Not yet, not as such. The Greek crisis is at the heart of government, in the local market and in every household.
Leave American bankers and British traders out of it, guys, this is one of ours.

Yes, there is less money sloshing about the Greek market and there is less money going into the state coffers in the form of taxation. But you can’t blame it on the credit crunch.
Of course the flow of international capital into Greece is affected by the global crisis. And the knock-on trade melt-down has affected us all – although the real effect has been on the shipping sector and not on agricultural producers. Besides, as the agricultural crisis can be blamed on government mismanagement of European directives; and as the shipping sector is tax-exempt, all this can’t be blamed for the crisis either.
Neither can we blame the December riots for the crisis. Undoubtedly businesses were lost or damaged but statistically the destruction was not widespread enough to create a financial downturn. And, no, the strikes can’t be blamed either. They don’t help output and they don’t help consumer confidence. But strikes are usually the results of a crisis, not its harbingers.

The global crisis started in the private sector, it started in the moneymaking backyards of big corporates. Not so in Greece.

The government are still trying to put a positive spin on things – despite the prime minister being so very tired, poor thing. They try to argue Greece is faring well, comparatively, but the fact is Greece is weathering a different storm to the rest of the world and the government, rather than being our valiant captains, are part of the problem.

Der Spiegel ran a most depressing article listing small and medium-sized Greek businesses that are packing up and closing down, not because of the credit crunch, not because of the global fiscal crisis, but because the government owes them too much money for them to stay afloat. Yes you read it right, unpaid bills in the millions of euros to suppliers of medical equipment – a total debt across the business of 800 million euros and bills remaining unpaid for over four years.
Businesses that should be recession-proof are closing down, courtesy of the government. Of course there are reasons for this delay in payments and these reasons are built into the system, but even with those taken into account, the delays suffered and amounts outstanding are outrageous even for Greece. Plus banks are not playing ball any more and the business that had traditionally financed the wait with loans can no longer do so.

Can’t the government help?
No.
As I said, they are part of the problem as the banks are not afraid the medical suppliers can’t pay up. They are afraid the government can’t pay the medical suppliers.

So the government is taxing like mad and not paying up.
In many ways, what’s new?
Well, the extent of the badness is new. The numbers are new. Even higher unemployment. Even higher costs of living. Even higher taxes.
And in the midst of it all government secretary general of information Panos Livadas announces Greece’s triumph where the global economies have failed, describing the Greek economy as ‘indestructible’ on the strength of the fact that the cafés are full of customers.
Because sales figures for espresso are how you assess the robustness of an economy.

Meanwhile people are sinking into debt; qualified and unqualified, skilled and unskilled workers alike fail to find work, spending savings, cutting spending, living in poverty. But Mr Livadas is right. This is not the credit crunch. This is a crisis of biblical proportions made in Greece.

Now Mr Livadas keeps quoting growth figures. While people can’t make ends meet.
The banking sector is sound, he says.
So what? No credit crunch does not mean no crisis and what good is escaping the global tidal wave if everyone is being crunched regardless, courtesy of home-grown deficits and deficiencies?

Greece’s national deficit has exceeded the euro zone limit of 3% three years in a row and counting. Meanwhile, and for comedy’s sake, the government is steeped in financial scandals of all hues and varieties including, my favourites, the ones including the Lords’ Lambs, the Orthodox Church – from the Vatopedi land sales to the bishops of Thermopylae and Velestino’s appropriation of 13 million Euros worth of charity money. And the state’s response to all this: the silence of the lambs with dirty hands.

Greece owes 94% of its GDP according to Der Spiegel. Europe practically owns us. Not a very sound investment on their part but I guess they see us as a fixer-upper. Provided the current tenants move out. Because until they do, Greece will retain the lowest credit rating in Europe.

So: corruption in the public sector, bankrupt pension funds, underemployment, unemployment and rising taxes. No wonder the Prime Minister is tired. Inheriting chaos and making it worse must be hard work indeed. Wait till the global recession hits Greece, we won’t be able to get him out of bed he’ll be so exhausted.

So the world is floundering and so is Greece.
But don’t let them fool you. The world’s problems are not at our doorstep yet. As the summer nears, dipping tourism figures will bring the global crisis home to roost. Greek investment in Eastern Europe will also soon be in danger.
But things are bad already. Without the credit crunch.
And although the credit crunch will come to our corner of the world sooner or later, merging with our own troubles and magnifying our woes, don’t let them fool you: this one is a crisis made in Greece.

The joke that was the G20 summit or why many potential protesters stayed at home

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165382-04255381000005DC-599_468x314.jpg
Sure, protesters marched through the City of London, flanked by police. Loads of police. But, let’s face it, their heart wasn’t really in it. And there weren’t that many of them. Even the Countryside Alliance has fielded more people than hit the City last week.

All the banks were on high alert of course. City workers were told to work from home or dress down, come in earlier than normal (protesters are not used to early starts, you see, they sleep in, lazy people that they are) but really when it came down to it, things were quiet in the City. Eerily quiet most of the time.
And that’s as it should be. Contrary to pet fears, protesters are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have no quarrel with City workers, the number-crunchers that get crunched by the crisis worse than anyone. The people they have a quarrel with were either not coming into work on those days or sitting right at the heart of the G20 summit. So City workers were left to their own devices, largely.
Their bosses were largely not there, so they weren’t hassled.
And the G20 bosses, well, they have security details and traffic police clearing the way so they can’t have noticed much either.

Uneventful, is what the protests were.
Now that’s no bad thing. The people who hit the streets were pacifists, issue-focused and politically aware. Destruction and havoc was not on the agenda so the fact that the protests were uneventful was part of the plan and not, as the BBC seems to suggest, a lucky accident. These people protested our leaders’ inaction in the face of a financial crisis that has been raging and deepening for months now; they protested the indecision and lack of vision that plagues the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; they protested climate change and the lack of any policy to combat it. They protested real issues affecting us all, in the presence of people who can do something about it. Not the junior associate from HSBC, but the presidents and prime ministers of powerful nations sitting in consultation with each other for the good of their people.

Well some of their people were outside the building trying to get heard but, as usual, they got penned in out of the way until the leaders were out of earshot. Predictably no leader or representative even attempted a sortie even though the protesters were peaceful.

‘We are not all like that Mr President’ said the Sun, juxtaposing a picture of a protesting crowd in the City of London and a photo of the Queen with the Obamas.
What does that mean anyway? We are not like what?
We are not all like a kindly, elderly monarch with a strange taste in clothes? No, I’d think not. But obviously that’s not what it means at all. What it means is we are not all like ‘the great unwashed’, the filthy hippy protestors. We wouldn’t protest, oh no, not us!
And what I want to know is how is that a good thing?
If something is worth protesting against and you do so peacefully and respectfully, how is a protest not proof of care, compassion, humanity and engagement?

Oh yes, the Sun never fails to offend me.
But strongly as I do feel about all this, I must confess that I was not out there on the streets last week.

In the past, I have joined demonstrations even though I knew the government would not listen. Stop the war coalition – I was there, in the cold and rain every time although I knew Blair would take no note. It was important to me to stand up to be counted.
Now?
I care. Oh do I care. I wish I didn’t, it may help me sleep at night, caring less. But much as I care, I could not take the G20 summit seriously enough to protest against it. And I could not take the leaders involved seriously enough to try and get their attention.
It was clear even before the summit started that nothing would come of it. No new idea, no commitment, no genuine debate, no genuine falling-out, even, helping to clarify where the global politico-economic fault-lines lie.
We knew, before the debates even started, that we couldn’t even hope for radical disagreement showing us, the voters, that there are genuine, thought-through viable options to choose from.
Nobody had any expectations from the summit. Nobody has any expectations from the leadership.

So I stayed at home alongside millions of people.
Some disagreed with the protesters. The Sun and the man down my local pub feel squeamish at the sight of a protest, those dirty hippies and all that. That’s not me.
The cynics say we are not in Kansas any more and only the protesters can’t see it. That’s not me. Others stayed at home because they have more influence when they are near their phones and laptops than if they are waving placards at passing cars. Well that’s not me either.

I just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that even if we were to rally the mighty, it will make not a jot of difference as they are largely to blame for the mess we are in anyway. The feeling that the protests had loads of goals but no real aim. A lot of issues but no real focus because it is no longer clear who can solve these problems and how – our leaders lacking both means and will, both ideas and a backbone.

So I stayed at home.
But I am comforted by the fact that not everyone did.
Because when there is this much wrong with the world giving up and going home seems like the sensible option. But it’s not the responsible option.
And still I stayed at home.
Because I knew that everything would come down to cash injections and I just couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm or anger to get out onto the streets to be yelled at by policemen over that. Of course other things were on the agenda. I’m sure Sarkozy suggested radical solutions Obama shrugged off because, generally speaking, the sort of thing the French like gets shot down on the Hill before you can even blink. So we are left with cash injections. And the problem with cash injections is that you and I, long-suffering tax payers, finance those thus salvaging the banks the bosses of whom brought us to where we are today.

And the protesters know that, of course. And I know that.
The difference is I stay at home while they obviously still shout in hope and anticipation even though they are bound to know the paradox – the lack of clear solutions, the total lack of grounds for inter-governmental collaboration and agreement. They are bound to know. Because if they care enough to be angry, if they care enough to be there, they care enough to know.
They know. And they still hope.
They were out on the streets because they still have faith.
And I was at home because I’m all out.

G20 stands for ‘pollution, traffic jams and white noise’

What comes to mind when a large-scale political bigwig summit takes place?
I don’t know about you, but I think of their carbon footprint.
I mean, the only thing that can be taken for granted when it comes to summits like London’s recent hosting of the G20 talks, is that the heads of state and their delegations will cause an inordinate amount of pollution by flying large numbers of people across the world, not to mention motorcades and mountains of wasted paper; they will then cause traffic jams as their security details completely ignore the fact that these summits are held in inhabited areas and other people need to get about too; and they will finally produce endless amounts of white noise – long words that sound right until you string them together, when they tend to mean that the leaders agreed on the significance of the matters on the agenda but could not reach agreement on specifics (read: actual solutions) but we shouldn’t worry our pretty heads as their staffs will sort out all the ‘detail’ (read: actual solutions) at a later date.
By its conclusion, the summit has caused pollution, traffic jams and white noise.

Was this one different?
Well.
We’ve definitely had pollution and traffic jams. And white noise.
As for substance, I don’t think anyone really expected much in the first place.

Just take a look at who the G20 actually are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU.
See what I mean?
What are the chances of that lot agreeing on a solution to a problem that affects them in fundamentally different ways, largely because of each other?

Of course it would be lovely if they all agreed on a set of real solutions. The world would suddenly go cinemascope and we would all live happily ever after.
But the hope that the G20 would unveil a great new initiative had died a death before the leaders even started arriving in London. Or, if truth be told, no one ever expected much more than pollution, traffic jams and white noise.

So what did we get?
A new name for the Financial Stability Forum – now called the Financial Stability Board. More regulation for all financial institutions, instruments and markets. That’s good, of course. But also expected. And as the ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ are, predictably, left to be worked out at a later stage, it all boils down to white noise.
Don’t hold your breath while waiting for change to happen, everybody.

Tough new rules for hedge funds, pay and bonuses and new accounting standards were promised and a ‘shared approach’ was announced. You guessed it. Detail and implementation to be fleshed out at some other point by less important people.

Meanwhile the leaders wagged a finger at tax havens that don’t share information readily. That will teach them.

Oh and more money will be poured into the IMF – three times as much money coming to approximately $750bn.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Yeah. We (the Long-Suffering Tax-Payers' Club) just paid for a summit that simply repeated what we already knew. Couldn’t we have just skipped the party, pollution, traffic jams and white noise and spent the money on cash injections directly?

I can see you are yawning already but there’s a little more I’m afraid. A little more white noise.
The G20 supports increased lending for developing nations, you’ll be pleased to hear – more debt that our erstwhile leaders can then act surprised at in a few years’ time. Trade assistance, export credit, investment agencies all meet with G20 approval. Blah blah on how the rich will help the poor. Meanwhile the rich are floundering just as badly if not worse than the poor and nobody can help them. Not even each other. And how they will help the poor when they can’t help themselves is anybody’s guess.

So the white noise continues. Pledges to resist protectionism and protect free trade. Pledges to notify the WTO if any children don’t play nice. White noise promising more white noise. Oh and a request that the WTO produce their own white noise in the form of regular reports. Now that’s reassuring.

And there is no new fiscal stimulus. There is but there isn’t. Trust Gordon Brown to come up with that one.

And although all leaders were triumphant at the end of the summit, I have to wonder whether things would have been better had they stayed at home. Since they said nothing new, they failed to really address let alone solve anything, they did not alleviate anything or punish anyone all we got was pollution, traffic jams and white noise.
So they should have stayed at home. They came all this way to bore, anger and disappoint us. Well they could have done that from their respective capitals and they would have, at least spared, the environment.