The Greek Resistance

EUROPE, ECONOMICS, IN-DEPTH VIDEOS, 26 Nov 2012

Barnaby Philips – Al Jazeera

Tied together by a painful history, Greece and Germany are locked into a new conflict that has reawakened old ghosts. Greece – it is where Europe’s civilisation and the very idea of democracy began. But today the country is in crisis; a crisis that may well destroy the dream of a unified Europe. A dream born out of the nightmare of World War II, a dream to unite different nations under one currency, has become a tragedy.

Ten years after joining the eurozone, the Greek economy has collapsed, living standards have plummeted, hundreds of thousands are out of work and thousands more have left the country to find a new future. Many Greeks blame the European Union, and Germany in particular, for the crisis they are in. Today, almost 70 years after its military defeat in World War II, Germany is the strongest economic power in Europe and its political leadership holds the future of Greece in its hands.

Al Jazeera correspondent Barnaby Phillips travels to Greece to discover why these two countries, tied by history and culture, are now locked into a conflict. Why has the European vision, designed to heal the wounds of the past, instead brought them back to the surface? And who is to blame – the Greeks themselves, the EU or the old enemy, Germany?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjFAzd5J4JY

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Nov 2012.

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