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In reply to the discussion: Fast moving Events in Greece: Far left ascendant [View all]Berlin Expat
(951 posts)Last edited Tue May 15, 2012, 06:50 PM - Edit history (1)
really don't imagine anyone wanting to take a vacation there if the worst should come to pass and a civil war breaks out, and I'll be honest, that's a distinct possibility.
Here's how it goes down:
The leader of SYRIZA is bumped off by some idiotic RWNJ who thinks he's "saving Greece from the catastrophe of Bolshevism" or some such twaddle. That in turn begets a wave of retaliatory assassinations by the Left upon the Right, who themselves retaliate in turn with typical methods such as car bombings, assassinations of prominent political figures and maybe the occasional mass shooting of demonstrators for a little variety. The police, now unpaid, and the Army, equally unpaid, decline to do their respective jobs of maintaining any semblance of civil order and decide to take part in the carnival-like atmosphere of wide-spread looting or go home to look after their families. In the meantime, what little is left of the Greek economy is now beset by; 1) a complete lack of money and 2) batshit insane political violence with no authority of the Greek state at any level.
Outcome: Civil war. Or a military coup d'etat in the name of "restoring order", followed up by the usual business of large-scale liquidations of political opponents, which in turn ignites a low intensity civil war that lasts for about four years or so like the last Greek civil war of 1945-1949.
Either way, I really don't see Greece's lovely beaches, feta cheese, ouzo and pretty women being much of an attraction at that point, what with the streets running red with blood, when let's face it, Turkey and Croatia aren't much farther away and a whole lot more mellow.
End result; Greece's "cheap Drachma tourism-led economic recovery" as well as the future of probably two generations goes down the toilet, with tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands having fled the country as the result of the complete and utter breakdown of Greek society. And if you look back at Greece's very, very long recorded history, you'll see they have an unfortunate tendency to occasionally settle their political disagreements with nation-destroying epic violence, and that tendency towards a violent solution is inexorably building within Greece. All it's going to take is a spark to set it off.
You'd be better off going for a nice relaxing vacation in Somalia or Syria.
But hey, them Greeks sure told off them Germans!