Xάος

από τη γαλλική Libération


Letter to London, Athina, 2/11/11

Kale mou,

efharisto poly ya tin prosklisi, den ksero ya ton Y. alla toulahiston ego afti ti stigmi den mporo na apofasiso ya to pos tha eimai se 3 mines apo simera. Parakoloutheis osa ginontai, kathe mera erhetai kai kati kainourgio, ki einai anagi pia na eimaste oloi edo kai oso ginetai mazi! (milao vevaia ya tous filous alla kai tous "synagonistes" mou, opos ki an akougetai afto).

Evlepa to thread tis syzitisis sou me ton Y., malista vrethikame htes sti dialeksi tis Sasskia Sassen, mias social scientist pou didaskei sto Columbia, kai ehei kanei kales analyseis tis koinonikooikonomikis katastasis. Google her, aksizei ton kopo.

Me ton Y. fovamai pos de mporo na symfoniso, oute ya ton koinoniko dihasmo, pou edo pou ta leme einai panta apotelesma kriseon, alla oute kai ya tous logous ya tous opoious ena dimopsifisma tha itan lathos.

Afto de simainei pos diafono telika me ta apotelesmata tis syllogistikis tou alla pos vlepo diaforetikes aities piso apo afta, dld, ya mena to heirotero dihastiko fainomeno parousiastike poly prosfata, sti sygentrosi me ton ena nekro, otan to KKE eftase na perifrourei (sic) ti Vouli anti ton MAT, thelontas na deiksei pos einai pia enas ypologisimos paiktis ya tin epomeni mera. Pou mas odigise afto? sto na perithoriopoiithei -ektos pou ksanadihastike...- oli i ypoloipi kinimatiki aristera kai ohi mono, pou meta to Syntagma eihe sikosei kefali kai isos apotelei ti moni adokimi men alla elpidofora lysi mprosta se ena tetoio adieksodo.

(Ya tin pithanotita "oudeteris" kyvernisis ethinkis sotirias, den eho kanena sholio, eisai tehnokratis kai ksereis pos den yparhoun oudeteres politika lyseis)

Tora oson afora to dimopsifisma pou evgale o apithanos prothypourgos mas apo to maniki tou, afto mou thymizei kati pou diavasa sta comments enos freepress. Se eleftheri apodosi:

"einai san na s' ehoun eksfendonisei me 1000 pano s' enan toiho kai ligo prin stoukareis na sou zitane n' apofasiseis an thes na stripseis deksia i aristera..."

Tespa, taragmenes epohes, dld endiaferouses kata tin kineziki katara, alla aftes einai. Sto kato-kato opos leei ki i Sassen to provlima einai global kai systimiko, apla i Ellada tha einai i proti mikri apoleia.

sas perimeno ta Xristougenna,

filia

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Standing our ground

Athens, Syntagma, 28 & 29/6/2011

letter from Barcelona:

We stopped...and you began.

We are all fed up with not being able to control what happens around us...even if it affects our lives strongly. Keep up.

Strange world this is,...but it is worth defending what you think.

Really, best wishes,

A.


A. is a Catalan architect living in Barcelona.

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Letter from London

date Sun, May 22, 2011 at 1:45 PM
subject Re: citizens movements

Hi F.,

Part of me is looking at it with skepticism:

It may be coming late, they know what they don't want, and they are trying to figure out what they want, but I still believe that they don't really know what they want (so difficult to change anything and easy to fall in the rhetoric). As if it is a scape valve of a general discontent of the system, but the system itself benefits from this, as people express the discontent, they feel great and then they go home to eat the same shit. It is like taking a dose of the drug that you need and then enjoy the high.
Make people comfortable on their discontent and keep going on the same system if they don't know how to change it.

But the other part is looking at it with lots of enthusiasm and optimism:

Hopefully this becomes to May of 68, where there are tangible proposals in the table and there is a bottom up revolution to make little but needed changes in social responsibility and political class change. It seems that it is not only a demonstration of discontent ("a la grec", destroying urban furniture and rioting the police). It seems that is going beyond that and some good outcome may come from this.

I am hopeful that the balance will go for the second more optimistic.

U.


Sent: Sat, 21 May, 2011 14:09:11
Subject: citizens movements

Hi guys,

I am watching the live streams from Madrid and Barcelona and it seems very exciting! What do u think?

May be we should follow here..

take care,
f.

U. is α Basque engineer living in London

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Athens calling

Dear J.+B.,

Txnx for your email and for your concern. I am doing ok for now but like everybody else can’t help wondering how even the very near future will unfold. Fortunately the media once more has blown the whole thing out of proportion, which means that at least for now we don’t kill each other in the streets…

Still, there were 3 dead people last Wednesday and no matter whom we blame: be it agitators, extremists of the right, «anarchofascists» -term borrowed by a friend’s blog-, the respectable head of the bank who threatened layoffs if employees participated to the general strike, the listed building which didn’t provide for a fire-escape, or most worrisome, the indifferent crowd/spectator, the collective numbing that followed compares only with the aftermath of Dec 6th 2008. Of course no massive outpouring of sympathy occurred this time, possibly because bank employees are not exactly popular at the moment, and here is the problem: when we reach the point when the bank employees stand for «the banks», abstract and hateful idea as may be, then we are heading for big trouble (Insert your favorite group target in «the banks» field…).

Last night the nominally democratic Parliament approved the cuts demanded by IMF. As expected there was protest and this is bound to happen regularly from now on establishing the centre of Athens as a no-man’s land. Like you say the small people are called to pay and what’s to be afraid of, the current weak government can’t guarantee that Greece will avoid bankruptcy in the end. Among those people though they are distinct groups which will suffer in various degrees and the ones that burn with holy wrath are not necessarily suffering the most.

The shift affecting public servants is of great importance since it would be considered unthinkable some months ago. A comparatively comfortable middle class mostly benefiting from a disproportioned public sector all of sudden (?) confronts with pension cuts, longer working years and worse, will have to see its offspring leaving the country if they are going to have any future at all. Greece may used to be an immigrant nation only a few generations ago but peace and borrowed prosperity erased the memory.

Vastly hit by this change are old people/people with –real- disabilities of no means, so-called illegal and not only immigrants, temps, part-timers and free-lancers working in the private sector wild-west style, «lowly» public servants who –surprise!- work hard, and in sum, whatever vestige of social security net remains.

Somewhere in between lies stuck the enterprising factor: small scale -very often family- business with little hope to innovate/restructure or even survive.

There are people who have been living within or even beneath their modest means by choice that soon turned into necessity before the «golden» Olympics and even during the stock market bubble, and I see me and many among my not-so-young friends in that place. To paraphrase a slogan: we didn’t benefit from any kind of public favor neither vote for them –and by «them» I mean the so-called right and socialist parties/«families» that take turns in power for the last 36 years. We mostly lived alternative-style lives, often turned green, sometimes contributed to culture/society, even tried by example to open a little more our «greekness» to the world. Does it make any real difference?

As I wrote to another concerned friend: «Too bad on top of «our» own bad management, corruption and big spending, we are being used as the proverbial canary in the coal mine of E.U.» We’ll probably get to know first the shape of things to come…

Till then and in spite of all this I am glad that things look promising for you and your country and still hope I may have the chance to see in person how great your attic turned!

Genki de, (*)
F.

(*) bless you (in Japanese)

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A letter from Budapest

Hi F.!

How r u? News about Greece is really dramatic. I hope the situation is not as tragic as it's presented in the media. We read about 3 people who died and various cars burnt, apart from the tough economic condition.

I understand quite well the feelings of disappointment because in Mexico it has happened too MANY times that politicians make economic commitments for small people to pay the debts, and Mexican foreign debt is HUGE!

Here in Hungary we just had elections and the opposition won; people were fed up with the so-called socialists, because they lied too much about the economic condition of the country and there was rampant corruption. People now have some hope that at the end of the month the new -right wing- government will make a difference. As far as I' m concerned I don't trust politicians too much. But it's true that in Hungary right and left have different meanings than in other countries. The right wing majority party is not my favorite but they aren't extreme.

Unfortunately an extreme-right party also made it to the Parliament because their motto was Delivering Justice against corruption, which is ok but also some of its members are against gay rights and talk against immigration: for a Hungary for Hungarians (!) -when their leader was publicly asked what that meant in the context of the E.U. he hesitated and said that a Hungarian is not a person who has just a passport but one who feels Hungarian…

Besides that we are doing more or less ok. B. got back his previous job and they started by paying him the holidays they owed him for 4 (sic) years! So now he's starting a very looong holiday. When he goes back to work by mid Sept. we expect his former bosses will have been replaced –because of the political changes.

I keep teaching and it's something I really enjoy. We'll very likely start building an attic to extend the space of our apartment. I guess you'd like to see it, it's quite interesting!

What about you? Please let me know how r u and any special news there is in Athens…

Hugs, 

J.

P.S. Greetings from B.

(*) J. is a Mexican graphics designer and an activist for the rights of Chiapas living in Budapest. B. is a Hungarian journalist. We all three met in Tokyo back in 1994.

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