Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear! Festive wishes from Greece…

A friend from Greece has just sent me the photo below…it shows  graffitti on a building wall at the corner of a busy street in Athens…I thought it is brilliant…it reminded me of the wall graffitti that was everywhere when I was growing up in Athens in the 1970s and 1980s…

graffitti that creatively  expressed strong political cynicism, sarcasm, resistance, rebellion, rage – usually in the context of anti-capitalist messages…that kind of graffitti was usually created and endorsed by left and anarchist groups, so it was often accompanied by anarchist signature symbols such as:

 

 

There is no such signature symbol accompanying the graffitti in the photo here…anybody could have created it…after all,  it captures very accurately what  Greeks and people living in Greece in general are thinking and feeling at the moment…

 

 

What are Greeks and people living in Greece in general  thinking and feeling at the moment?

 I think a video entitled ‘Central heating now a luxury for many in Greece’,  posted recently on Yahoo News UK (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/central-heating-now-luxury-many-040000369.html),  is indicative of that. The main message of the video is that after a mild autumn, temperatures are now falling fast in Greece but with the price of heating fuel higher than ever before owing to new taxes, many crisis-hit households fear that  they may  not be able to afford to warm their homes.

Greeks and  people living in Greece in general are also faced with the following:

(From an article entitled ‘Greek bailout ‘elements in place’www.bbc.co.uk/news, February 2012)

All the above (unemployment; homelessness; risk of poverty and social exclusion; suicidality) have created an atmosphere of intense fear, despair, helplessness and hopelessness, anger and racist violence among Greeks and people living in Greece in general…

Merry Crisis and  a Happy New Fear, compatriots