Something quite dreadful and shocking happened in the Peloponese in Greece the day before yesterday. A strawberry farmer who employed illegal immigrants from Bangladesh housing them in plastic green houses had failed to pay them their pittance for six months. These workers demanded their back pay. Instead of some kind of negotiation or partial payment or anything like that, the farmer’s supervisors opened fire with shot guns wounding a large number. Fortunately at least there were no deaths.
This is appalling and totally unacceptable. Nevertheless it is totally in line with the current ideology that has gripped Europe in its devastating madness. Profits above all and Competitiveness! It is what Olli Rehn demands of others. It is what Christine Lagarde requires. Competitiveness.
And it is not something confined to places like Greece either. Belgium has already accused Germany of employing dirt cheap labour at one Euro an hour. So though the criminal behaviour of the Pelopenese farmer cannot be excused in any way, it is the direct result of Olli Rehn’s philosophy.
Though an extreme manifestation of this ideology, it is not that far removed from what Olli Rehn and Christine Lagarde and all the rest of that criminal bunch have been imposing on the countries of the South through cold blooded blackmail.
Either you slash wages to below subsistence levels, abolish all legislation safe guarding labour rights or else! We shall cut off your very life’s breath! You will default, you will starve, you will die of cold! (That has happened anyway, but still). The infamous and villainous troika have absolutely no regard for human life, which is why they are so hell bent on getting rid of healthcare, and none for labour or even human rights.
It took this extreme manifestation of violence against helpless desperate illegal immigrants to highlight the fact. And though crocodile tears may be being shed by all those busily abolishing human rights and reducing work to slave labour, none of them, not one batted an eyelid at this outrageous slave labour going on not only in Greece, but throughout Europe, Germany too.
Provided it slashed the cost of labour, that was all that mattered. Think about it. If you ask the troika, and they are honest (which of course they would not be), the only thing the despicable strawberry farmer did wrong, was getting caught in flagrante. When these hapless, desperate souls are intimidated, bullied and exploited under the cover of darkness, then not one of them gives a sh*t. And that is the truth.
Shame on you. Shame on Europe,
