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108 Greeks Executed For Abusing The Welfare System
Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
Thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece, it was a commonly held belief that the gods walked the earth among us humans.
And that perhaps even Zeus himself might show up at your doorstep disguised as a vagabond.
From this sprang the legendary sense of Greek hospitality, known as ‘xenia’.
It meant that a complete stranger could walk into your home unannounced, and you had an obligation as the host to take care of him.
To feed him. To house him. To bathe him. To let him freeload for as long as he needed.
And since no Greek was willing to risk the wrath of the gods by being a bad host, xenia was one of their most important customs.
Homer tells us of one famous instance of xenia in his epic poem The Odyssey.
You’ll probably remember it from high school– the never-ending saga of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, as he makes his way home from the Trojan War.
The war lasted ten years. Then Odysseus’ journey home lasted another ten years.
And I think it’s the perfect analogy to the situation Greece finds itself in now.
After the war, Odysseus’ fleet is blown off course by a massive storm during the voyage home, resulting in one misadventure after another.
They’re captured by a savage Cyclops from whom they narrowly escape after blinding him with a wooden stake to the eye.
His men become enchanted by magic fruit, causing them to completely lose their senses.
Later they encounter cannibals who destroy nearly the entire fleet.
Then the witch-goddess Circe turns half of his men into swine, and reverses her spell only when Odysseus agrees to be her sex slave.
They pass by dangerous sirens, narrowly avoiding disaster by strapping their captain to the mast and stuffing their ears with beeswax.
They barely fend off the six-headed monster Scylla, and then nearly all die at the whirlpool Charybdis, after which Odysseus is taken prisoner once again.
He ultimately escapes, then almost dies (again) in a terrible storm (again) and gets shipwrecked (again), this time on the island of Scherie.
It’s always something with this guy.
I mean… seriously. Odysseus goes from one disaster to the next. Just like Greece today.
Greece is in a never-ending crisis, going one misadventure to another.
And right before they collapse, someone always comes to the rescue. The IMF writes a temporary bailout check, and Greece just barely escapes disaster… only to fall into another disaster.
It happens over and over like a never-ending odyssey. Except that eventually it does end. And rather poorly.
When Odysseus finally makes it back home to Ithaca after two decades away, he finds that he’s completely broke because 108 Greek men had been staying at his house and mooching off the estate.
And as was Greek custom at the time, his wife Penelope had an obligation to take care of these men, all of whom abused the xenia tradition for their personal benefit.
Modern Greece is legendary for its absurd public benefits.
Hairdressers get to retire with full benefits on a taxpayer-funded public pension at age 50; dead people receive welfare benefits.
This modern-day version of ‘xenia’ is an insane, easily abused system that’s brought Greece to bankruptcy.
Odysseus responded by killing every one of 108 men who milked the system.
The Greek government is certainly set on doing the same. But since they can’t identify any single perpetrator, they’re going after the entire nation.
The capital controls the Greek government has implemented are punitive to nearly every man, woman, and child in the country. People can’t even access bank safety deposit boxes.
And there’s clearly more punishment to come.
This theme is not new. For thousands of years, nations have gone bankrupt from their own stupidity.
And on the way down, they impose an escalating series of controls designed to keep the party going for just a little bit longer.
Wage controls. Price controls. Capital controls. People controls.
Greece is once again in this position, along with nearly every government in the West.
Even the US has been narrowly escaping collapse for years. Government shutdowns are narrowly averted by some last-minute magic trick. Temporary emergency measures bail out the banking system. Etc.
It’s an odyssey. But it too shall come to an end… rather poorly for those involved.
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Oh come on, there MUST be more than 108 bankers in Greece...hang all them parasites.
+1
Greece stock symbol - OPM
For a minute there I thought Gruppenfurer Merkel showed up to clean out the joint.
Then I saw it was a Simon Black post.
Kinda’ sounds like that last two weeks I spent in Vegas (which I am still trying to mentally reconstruct).
Gotta’ watch out for that magic fruit.
Not even the Titans can rescue this venture.
Italy ... Portugal ... and France are all in line for the same Fate.
If we only had Odysseus in charge...
if we only had less childishness...
also here, on ZH. thousands get killed in wars, millions are refugees, and this ZH article has a title like "108 Greeks Executed for..." ?
I repeat: childish
LOL!!! Very cute, sweetie.
It's not "childishness" that kills the vast majority of human beings. It is narcissistic totalitarian/socialist/communist regimes that slaughter people. Please read up some...
Bunch of oximorons.
Now THAT is damn clever.
This Penelope would have thrown the bums out way before then.
Actually, the myth as written portrays those people as Penelope's suitors, who expected that Odysseus was dead after his long absence, while Penelope kept faith that her husband (a king mind you) was alive.
Indeed.
"AND WHAT DID THE GREEKS EVER DO FOR US" you ask?
Phew..."they gave us the Romans"?
Nice bridges and Law mind you...but to dussemble the Andient Grreks down to some capitalist screed really is TRULY ridiculous.
Where is Aristophones when you need him.
ALL OF EUROPE IS ANCIENT GREECE NOW.
Are The Americans the New Rome?
"STAY TUNED"....
More like the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.
Those Christian Democrats...
Seems like a good time to go long on guillotines.
this is certainly an original take on the Homeric classic (original but suspect)
this is the insane, classicist Tyler. okay
You mean the insane classicist Simon Black?
"Hunkered Down in Ecuador" no doubt.
El Vaquero ... how ironic.
If only the present day "Euclid" had said "these two parallel lines shall never meet...
I'm tired of the greek mythology references. It must have been the 500th that did it.
Dont fret, Greece will be saved this week, again...pinky swear.
Greece never recovered from their brilliance.
And insodoing they gave...some at least...Civilization.
"In all their Math, Engineering and technological marvel was a Humanity."
Ironic too...since slavery was integral to their Society.
"How does one live?" Plato asked.
"Quite well" was the answer...
I'm not a historian, but now am thinking it was a melding pot of people.
You look at old maps and they show a peoples located in isolated cities maybe with fortifications, protected harbors, defenses, walls. Rome was this way. They didn't start out owning all of Italy. Greeks had the Tip of Italy if I remember one map correctly while Rome was completely separate. Maps can generalize too.
Suppose Ancient Greece or Prehistoric Greece had Phoenicians, Minoans, Egyptians, Tunisians, Saracens, Persians, Jews, Moors or Black Africans.
Does anyone know if the Father of Geometry was Black or White?
But I would suppose if Cities were largely by an Ethnic group with slaves and non-voting citizens that makes more sense that Ruling Class of Greeks would be uniform in culture and ethnicity.
Greek is an Indo-European language. That should give you a hint.
language isn't at all a good measure of ethnicity/genetic relationship.
upheaval around the mediterranean mixed up things pretty good, though.
http://scienceheathen.com/2015/02/11/late-bronze-age-collapse-mycenaean-...
junked already eh?
Well, you're an idiot.
Right, I speak english but I am not an english man.
Thanks. I was just reading about this last week in Wikipedia, but they left me with questions about the causes of this "Dark Age" and the end of the Hittites.
So I'll have to check this out. The war between Egypt & Hittites in Turkey didn't seem to explain it. I got a hint that maybe Social Disorder/Revolt might have happened. Or of course great weapons or natural disaster.
You link seems to fill this out better.
Well we know Semitic people came out of Assyria in the area of Sumer with the Laws of the Jewish people that look so much like the Code of Ur-Nammu an Code of Hamurabi.
There is no Original Art.
There is nothing new under the Sun.
In these codes over 6,000 years old you see they are the first civilization and they were a modern people with all the things we have today including money, weighted silver shekels, socialism, education reform, writing, record keeping, contract law, liability for property damages listed, bicameral parliament or congress, medicine, alcohol, agriculture, animal husbandry, fuel, tar, bitumen, arts, voting citizens and non citizens.
Hell the only difference is the Slaves, but we still have those too.
Did Greek culture come from Minoans, Did Minoan culture come from the area in Mesopotamia.
I forgot the question now.
Most people can't explain why we claim to have Indus Valley Linguistic Lineage.
Oh... I guess that is your point. We all have linkage to the past.
Very good.
What else did I forget:
Writing, Clay tablets for Recording Contracts & History & Laws, The most Ancient Tablets in all Ancient Civilizations, Scrolls for Signatures and Authentication of Official Acts or Contracts, Warfare, Forts, Ziggurats, Kilns, Beer, Wine, Malting of Barley/Wheat/Grasses, Lacquer Products, Obviously they collected seeds and that led to the Grasses, Wheat, Enmer that we have today for Breads & Pasta.
What shame that ZH is so trendy.
You should take a look at Grecoroman Egyptian Papyri. Tens of thousands of contracts.
Having port cities as claimed territories seems normal like a king in a castle. The territory held is by agreement or by reach of the Army/Navy/Slaves Impressed into Service.
A castle surrounded by defenses. Is that a country or a nation?
Could the nation have been a philosophy of learning, a belief in God, an Optimism in Nature and how things work out according to nature??
Maybe what we consider Greece was a collection of City on the Sea that had Libraries, had defenses, had armies and navies, had technology, had great sailing ships. Later in the Greece Periods we had Linear A, Linear B, we had recordings of Greek Oral Stories and History.
We don't know how old these histories are. And we surely don't know that they are Greek in origin or that they are only made up stories.
What a shame.
Many Governments and people have laid claim to Sumerian Tablets. There are like Half a million of them and they describe everyday life and contracts and laws passed... they are a treasure trove. But after 150 Years few in the USA know what they say. Such a shame.
And we don't know what the Gnostic Gospels or the Dead Sea Scrolls say either. Boom. Property Rights.
Hey Maybe we can get the Chinese to Force the opening of our Superstitious Writings.
Narcissist.
The welfare system was indeed harmfull in a big way... but it doesn't even go near to the thieves that was apointed as ministers and politicians in general! the destruction of any kind of industry with mafia kind of treatment and most of all... public contracts with you know who companies! From siemens to english wellknown companies for security in 2004 olympics! the list goes on and on... but be certain... the wellfare system was not all to blame!
Xenia? Isn't that Hercules friend?
In the poem Odysseus killed the rich suitors who were taking advantage of xenia, not the poor
There are over 1.2 million people in Greece in a population of 11 million who are receiving between 2 and 10 pensions each. This includes 1953 people receving between 6-10 pensions each.
There are over 2000 people working for the Bank of Greece (the FED equivalent). WTF do they do when the country is so broke?
And by the way, Greeks are as homogenous as they come and are directly linked to their ancient forefathers. The proof of this is that they still speak the same language and they are still fighting amongst themselves like they used to. And still making the same mistakes.
I imagine in the US we have ways of hiding compensation and even retirement benefits. Like the woman consultant to Hillary or HHS, but is a corporate leader at the same time. Now if you wanted to do that, they would tell you it is moonlighting, or conflict of interest, expect you to submit timesheets or punch a time clock to log your hours with a supervisor to verify. Consultant Board member in Government... sounds like $150K a year with little work except a few meeting, phone calls, and networking/socializing through most if it.
I can pull US Railroad Retirement Dollars from the Monthly Treasury Report Table 5 30 September 2014... it is more than I thought for an old program.
Other Independent Agencies:—Continued
Railroad Retirement Board:
Total Federal Windfall Subsidy Outlay $36 Million
Total Federal Payments to the Railroad Retirement Accounts $631 Million
Total Rail Industry Pension Fund:
Benefit Payments $4.88 Billion Dollars
National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust:
Total Administrative Expenses $76 Million
Total Transfers to the Railroad Retirement Trust Funds from
the National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust $1.4 Billion
Railroad Social Security Equivalent Benefit Account:
Total Benefit Payments $7.1 Billion
So total Major Outlays for Federal RailRoad Benefits = $13 Billion
I met a guy, a German with 2 German Retirements, one a Railroad Retirement, plus a third one from US Army Service. He drove around in a Very nice Car, Spent Weekend in a Bavarian Resort area, and was being paid by DoD for some Civilian Job probably over $100K a year.
Hard to compare Greece to the USA without finding that the USA is just as Problematic.
Greece probably had railroad Retirement, Merchant Marines, Military, Government, Post Office?? Telephone?? Public Utilities?? Police & Fire??
Obviously you can get a small retirement if only a few years in the system.
we could be headed for a new collapse....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
of course, what's happening in Syria and Iraq is planned chaos.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...
Still.... shit's fucked up all over.
When Odysseus killed the 108 suitors he also cured the headache problems of 108 women on the island.
Simon Black, I'm not sure.
I know I live in a land that has produced Propaganda and manipulated the press at least since the 1960s while conducting Intelligence Operations in Europe to pull people to the Political Right. USA has fought in Greece since 1947, against communism. They like the Ports and strategic location while also see a perpetual war in Europe against the Communists.
In this sense if fits the USAs detour to Afghanistan & Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, et al ... along with the 72 years of Cold War.
We get little correct context about the US Unemployment, US GDP, US Inflation, US History, US Wars... given that they have lied and omitted their activities in Europe for 50 years how can we believe a narrative about Greece.
Nomi Prins states that Greece was targeted and that their GDP was equal to France in 2008 before the Crisis.
In fact all bank deposits are being targeted as you so often say.
Some history might put the Greek situation into perspective:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/greece_physio-2010.pdf
Greek Post WW2 arrangement between Britain and America was one of security guarantees. Greek Political Oligarchy was funded by transfers of money to thus secure the region.
One look at a map, and it is clear that Greece is in a strategic location. For NATO to bottle up the Soviet Union, it was key to control both Bosporous and Dardanelles. Shipping must transit these waterways to get to the Black Sea. Turkey, as a NATO member allows these strategic waterways to be controlled.
Dardaelles dumps into the Aegean Sea, and the Aegean is Greece’s bathtub. Nato’s attempt to make gains in the black sea failed in Ukraine, Georgia, and Crimea.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the security arrangement no longer was operative. Greece joined the Eu in 1981 and adopted the Euro in 2001. Upon adoption of the Euro, Greek Oligarchs along with Goldman Sachs hid their debt position in 2002:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html
The post war arrangement changed, but the political arrangement remained. The former favored ruling class of Greece no longer was given direct subsidy to counter the Soviet threat, especially after 2001.
But, it is clear now that the U.S. will not allow NATO to unravel, as the Strategic Position of Greece once again occupies Washington’s mind:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/07/07/greece-eu-situation-paul-craig-roberts/
From PCR
“Washington has a higher interest than the interests of the US financial interests who purchased discounted sovereign debt with a view toward profiting from a deal that pays 100 cents on the dollar. Washington also has higher interest than the interests of the European One Percent intent on using Greece’s indebtedness to loot the country of its national assets. Washington’s higher interest is the protection of the unity of the EU and, thereby, NATO, Washington’s mechanism for bringing conflict to Russia.”
I was just going to add something about how the Oligarchs should be more of a target in Articles about Greeks. So you reminded me and I agree with your post.
Wealth, Status, Official Position, Power positions in Government, those from Well-To-Do Families feel pressure as humans ... away from Ethos, Principals, and Values that common people hold.
And it can't be underestimated the influence of being in a group, a long term employee or career builder, having a professorship, and even being in a successful network or association... human emotions & motivations drive us.
We can't get rid of human frailty. But don't' blame a whole people or become prejudiced against a whole people. This is what we do when we prepare men to go to war so that they can kill without thought. Without Thought.
Blame the people who are guilty and who have held power, wealth, status, influence.
Many articles on Greece contain obvious cognitive errors.
America has done things of incedible stupidity, mostly out of greed, misgudied patriotism and pure selfishness. We don't pay the price, because we can print our wealth. That can't keep going on, the world will catch on to the game of "working and producing" for dollars, handing over the goods, resources and services to the USA for green paper and a promise to pay in the future. Lets be clear, that dollar hegemony is being enforced by military means, if ever lost, dollar hegemony will be replaced by something else, no matter what it is, if king dollar loses it's special status, we as Americans will be faced with utter collapse. 13.5 trillion owed, much more off the books, it will never be paid, never.
Don't forget the 108 men were all at Odysseus' palace in the first place because they wanted to fuck his wife---or at any rate convince Penelope to marry one and declare him king.
Penelope refused, officially because she refused to believe Odysseus was dead. Unofficially, I suspect she was doing just fine without him as long as she had his money.
Odysseus would kill Simon Black as well.
Time that the ancient gods got of Mount Olympus once again and kick the Greek into action. All the ancient gods, mythological figures and rulers would be furious if they would see what happened to Greece. They would slaughter plenty of Greek for the mess they made and certainly would slaughter the Troika.
Instead of ancient religion, the Greek now adopted orthodox christianity. That flavour of christianity never received the reformation, the reason for the success of Western European and American societies. Just like their catholic counterparts, this religious flavour leads to idleness and taking the easy way out. I see it happening in many Eastern European countries. If the Greek want to restore some of their former glory they should go back to their ancient religion and folklore. Much more interesting that christianity with their doctrine of 'you're a sinner the moment you are born'. Some take that to heart as their life's motto.
Oh, and 500 years of Ottoman rule didn't help either.
Nevertheless, Greece is a great country and many people take Xenia to heart being very hospitable. Xenia is btw the name of Varoufakis's daughter.
That potion that turns men into swine, does it involve cheap vodka?
what about nanuati? surely someone has seen this great film....
Speaking of Greek scammers - on the Greek Island of the Blind over 600 registered blind residents are not blind but claim E320 in monthly disability benefits. Many of the blind residents also have driver licenses
Ages are also faked in order to get retirement benefitshttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3148451/A-island-pretending-blin...
The father of beautiful Helen obliged all greek kings to take an oath to defend her, before Menelaos was chosen among them, as her husband. So when the war started every greek king had to defend Helen by his own means. Odysseus who was fresh-married, with Telemachus only months old and rather poor wanted to avoid the oath and pretended the fool cultivating the sand by the sea. These 108 men were not strangers to him -deserving Xenia- but rich lenders who wanted all assets and his wife.
Worried about the inevitable?
Let's take a tip from Penelope.
In order to put off having to pick one of the slothful suitors to climb in her bed, Penny told all the suitors she would make up her mind after she and the Ithaca Quilting Society finished a tapestry of Obama, God of Black Holes, pushing Stephen Hawking's wheelchair up Mount Olympus. She wove all day long, but at night she tore out what she done that day.
Just as the suitors insisted she pick one of them, Ulysses returned home and slew them all. (there's a wonderful painting by Gustave Moreau, The Suitors, which illustrates that notorious event. If you like that sort of thing.)
Let us weave Wall Street's tapestry of lies, criminality, and manipulation during the day and tear it apart at night with some ice cold beer.
And as Penelope put of the dreaded suitors until her beloved husband returned, perhaps we can put off the dreaded down 20% day until Bernie Sanders or Vladimir Putin come home and 'kill the suitors'.
Odyssey story sort of nice but a little too dreamy about current events
"When Odysseus finally makes it back home to Ithaca after two decades away, he finds that he’s completely broke because 108 Greek men had been staying at his house and mooching off the estate."
They were suitors for his wife and his throne.