Work Those Greeks! Advent of Modern Slavery?

EU Says Greeks Should Work Six-Day Week: Report ... In the leaked letter, reported in The Guardian newspaper, the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund call for Athens to implement the measure as part of the bailout agreement with lenders. According to the paper, the letter states that more flexibility must be implemented to work schedules, including working into the weekend by increasing the number of maximum working days to six. The paper printed the following extract from the letter: "Increase the number of maximum workdays to six days per week for all sectors. Increase flexibility of work schedules; set the minimum daily rest to 11 hours; delink the working hours of employees from the opening hours of the establishment; eliminate restrictions on minimum/maximum time between morning and afternoon shifts; allow the consecutive two-week leave to be taken anytime during the year in seasonal sectors." – CNBC

Dominant Social Theme: If you are Greek, you are lazy and need to work harder. You have weak blood.

Free-Market Analysis: Are leaks always a mistake? Someone may have wanted this memo disseminated and we figure it might be the troika itself: the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

These are the new powers in Europe and represent the construction of a new society that one could call "technocracy." Of course, we know where technocracy comes from. It comes from Plato and his idea of philosopher kings.

Plato felt that a handful of very smart people should rule the world and the power elite feels the same way. But there is a difference between policy and publicity. Policy matures via publicity. Only when the public comes to understand a specific policy does it have the requisite impact.

The policies come from a Western power elite. It has media arms like Tavistock and whole geographical regions serve its bidding. London's City is the likely brain; Washington DC is the muscle; Israel provides black ops and the Vatican offers religiosity.

It serves the purposes of these cold top men to portray their venture as "magical" and "religious." It helps them to hide and, unfortunately, some in the alternative media for reasons of prejudice, business or simple naïveté are willing to propagate the desired memes.

But, again, that's how they work: They apparently cultivate dominant social themes and disseminate them as best they can. Before the Internet, they had a virtually seamless distribution system.

But actually, it's a cold-blooded business, the biggest business in the world, encompassing the totality of Western finance and culture. The power elite controls banks, finance, popular entertainment – virtually every aspect of life has been seemingly penetrated and shaped by their agenda.

The goal apparently is full-fledged and formal world government.

In the 21st century, because of the unforeseen challenge of the Internet, it seems the tactics of the elites have gotten more authoritarian once more. Wars, economic depressions and regulatory authoritarianism are being deployed to intimidate the mass of an awakening people.

We can see this neo-authoritarianism in this leaked memo about the Greeks. It is not likely a mistake but another deliberate message to the world about where things are headed. Nothing says "New World Order" better than a memo from faceless bureaucracies ordering an entire nation to work harder.

"They" are taking off the proverbial gloves. "They" are making it clear that this is indeed a new era.

As all this unfolds, it becomes clear that our instinct about the manipulated nature of the Euro-crisis was accurate. One can see the pegs slotting into holes. The idea was to create a crisis and then centralize political authority.

It is not exactly a subtle maneuver. But the powers-that-be rely on the sheer bigness of the manipulation to shield them from discovery. Most people just don't have the emotional capacity to accept the idea of "directed history" on this scale.

Most people, in fact, will need considerable exposure to the argument before they are willing to accept it cognitively. Of course the elites do not work cognitively. They work in the realm of pure emotion. Human beings operate in the realm of emotion. Even our intellect is charged with emotion.

At least some people reading this story about the Greeks will intellectualize it along the lines that the power elite offers in the mainstream: The Greeks are lazy and need to work harder. But there is a powerful subliminal message at work as well.

This has to do with the message that debt is being re-criminalized. Money after all is the most powerful weapon of control. It is not called Money Power for nothing. Some months ago we wrote about the re-criminalization of debt. You can see the article here:

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization

Here's an excerpt:

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization ... The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally.

This phenomenon is advancing domestically and now, increasingly, internationally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It demanded, basically, that foreign banks withhold up to 30 percent of the income that an American abroad might earn.

This bill isn't working so well because overseas banks are not cooperating (a state of affairs that was certainly expected). Thus, there is a need for something else: Senate Bill 1813, recently introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill, in part, states that taxpayers with unpaid taxes over US$50,000 may find their passports confiscated.

This isn't criminal per se, but the IRS has recently made noises about "sharing" information with police authorities. The last time it was an institutionalized crime to owe money within the context of the Anglosphere was during the British industrial revolution when there were such things as debtors prisons. Those were eventually disbanded as it was seen as counterproductive (and even inhuman) to put a man in prison for a debt he could not pay.

But both in the US and in Europe, the concept of imprisoning an individual over debt is making a comeback. In the US it is especially clear. There are plenty of people, mostly men, who are behind bars for falling behind on their child support payments.

Current US incarceration for debts takes place mostly at the state level. But the IRS – and other taxing facilities throughout the Western world – are increasingly putting people in prison for falling behind on their taxes.

... This is not a coincidence. It is part of a gradual process of increasing global control by using money as a weapon to control middle classes.

If one accepts the idea of directed history, there are no such coincidences. A message is being sent. It is intended to be absorbed on several levels. But at the most basic it is one of intimidation. It is the idea that powerful forces are going to organize your life and work environment in the 21st century even more so than in the 20th and that these forces will be global in scale.

The idea that faceless technocrats want to dictate the Greek workweek is ridiculous on its face – and much will be written about the IMF's wrong-headedness. But again, that's just the point.

It is supposed to be written about. It is supposed to be discussed. We have moved into an era of financial despotism where people will be identified entirely by the geographical regions from which they hail.

We've already speculated that the period of Western "colonialism" was in part a way of setting up the current paradigm. After all, the elites of the day didn't need to divide their properties into countries. But they did. And now those countries are gradually being agglomerated into unions. Directed history has a long pedigree!

Many will rail against this "leaked" missive. In a sense, we'd speculate this is exactly what is desired. Sure, the average Greek is not responsible for the recklessness of his government but in THIS world at THIS time, that's how it works.

Conclusion: Your leaders spend recklessly and you work six days a week for the rest of your life just because you happen to live in a given geographical region. Welcome to the 21st century.