SYRIZA-TRYLIZA tic tac toe

Prime minister Tsipras and his finance minister Varoufakis must have set a new world record for meetings with counterparts of a newly elected government. Sworn in a week ago Friday they began meetings the very next day. They had a meeting with a Prime Minister or a minister of Finance of another EU nation or a top representative of the EU every single day. Cyprus, Italy, France where all visited for meetings with their respective Prime ministers by our own PM mr Tsipras. Varoufakis has visited the finance ministers of France and Germany. I have left things out like the European Comission, the president of the European Parliament and so on. Too much to write about on a single blog. Our government has kept its promise and refused to kneel to external pressures. The culmination of this game of nerves was the announcement by the European Central Bank that it will no longer be accepting or buying Greek bonds cutting off Greece from a 10 billion euro supply. The answer came spontaneously that very same day and into the night...

Power to the people seems to be the strategy of the newly elected government in Athens. After one of the most bizarre weeks in politics ever, full of historic firsts, people took to the streets to show their support. Unlike demonstrations in the past this one did not have a political focus but instead was born of the social media on the internet. People of every age, families with their children, seniors, many representatives of a wide range of organizations, marched infront of the Greek parliament, vouli, filling Syntagma square and the surrounding streets. There was for once no violence or tear gas or police presence. Just the people urging their newly elected government to continue demanding their rights and to not back down to external pressures. There can be no accurate estimate of the number of people as it was unlike other demonstrations a fluid one with people leaving and new arrivals taking their place. Considering that the press did not mention any estimates though, and taking into account the anti-SYRIZA and pro memorandum stance of the big networks, it is most likely in the hundreds of thousands.

I realy wish I could go into more detail but I fear everyone will lose interest. We await the Eurogroup meeting on Wednesday where Athens will be pressured to sign an extension to the existing memorandum and accept the final 8 billion or so payment. Both our Prime Minister and our Finance Minister have stated in no uncertain terms that there will be no renewal of the memorandum nor will Greece be asking for this money! Expect that there will be demonstrations of support in every city of Greece. Greeks do not respond well to threats or blackmail. Funny just how tight the timeline is. Tuesday we will have our first vote of confidence in Parliament and Wednesday is the Eurogroup deadline for our line of credit at the European Central Bank. Putin has already legislated and offered a ten billion euro line of credit to Greece. Above is a photo of the swearing in of Parliament last Saturday. Sunday was the first session and the vote for the speaker of the House. Ζοε Konstandopoulopu was elected with a record 235  votes. Mr. Tsipras made an impassioned speech showing Greece and the world that we have returned.

Oh and Greece is also re-openning the war reparations issue as they have never been payed. Along with the occupational loan that Nazi Germany forced on Greece, that had been paid in gold, along with interest, guess what the sum is... 310000000000 euros (310 billion). When paid it will mean that those relatives and those still surviving who lost their homes and loved ones to the occupational forces will finaly see the settlements they were awarded in the past. More on this in a seperate blog though as you may be asking "why were they never paid money that they were awarded in a settlement?"

HARATSI YOK - TROIKA ΤΕΛΟΣ

No more haratsi tax, an end to Troika. The last week has been beyond what could ever be described with words. Four long years that could be described as a second Nazi occupation have come to an end! To re-cap the week a total must read:

Monday- election results are final as SYRIZA wins the election and forms a coalition government with ANEL a right wing party with an anti-memorandum mandate.

Tuesday - the new Prime Minister is sworn in along with his cabinet that includes members of the ANEL party. Mr. Tsipras, Prime Minister, opts for a civilian oath, without a priest, and is the first Greek P.M. ever to do so.

Wednesday - Outgoing P.M. Samaras is not present to hand over the Prime Ministers' office breaking an ongoing tradition since the establishment of the Hellenic Republic in 1821! There is such a ruckus on the social media and later in the press  that none of the departing ministers repeat the same mistake. Incoming ministers make announcements of the new direction they will be taking reversing descisions and agreements of outgoing ministers.These include the return of the minimum wage to 750 euros, the re-hiring of the illegaly fired cleaning ladies of the ministry of finance, the rehiring of all "illegaly" fired doctors, teachers, civil servants, and the return of all employees fired from public televsion, the end to all privatization efforts, the end of the privatization of the energy sector, the re-embersement of armed forces, police, firemen and women and coast guard according to the as of yet unemforced court order. WOW! The financial markets did not like that! Oh and the re-enstatement of the epicuric pension-given to low bracket pensions. Oh and the cancellation of the unfair Haratsi tax that had been renamed ENFIA.

Thursday - scare mongering continues in the press, the stock market and the news. The news so far has been too good to be true and certainly there is a shaking of resolve as some of us, the people, await the next Blitzkrieg to end our little southern party. The Vice President of the Vouli (parliament) makes a public appearance to make assurances of the stability of the Greek banking system.

Thursday - somewhat informal crash visit by mr. Martin Schulz president of the European Parliament. He is informed by mr. Tsipras that Greece has no intent of co-operating with Troika or continuing with old policies but will be instead renegotiating its debt as that is the mandate he was elected upon. Schulz visits the River Party but does not visit the ruling coalition partners ANEL.

Friday - still numb here in Greece from four days of impossible reversals of our fates and the Troika arrives for its bi-annual visit to ensure that austerity measures are being properly enforced. Instead of the bootlicking by Greek officials he has been used to Jeroen Dijsselbloem president of the Eurogroup had a meeting with Prime Minister. Tsipras and then with mr. Varoufakis Greek finance minister. For some strange reason he had to be told three times that there was to be no cooperation with the Troika. Only during the press conference when he heard mr. Varoufakis stating that the Troika is loosely legislated did he get the message. "You have killed the Troika" Dijsselbloem blurted off mike and stormed out the room. Watch on video - http://newsofthewired.blogspot.gr/2015/01/blog-post.html - This is the turning point for the psychology of the Greek public that slowly starts to feel the effects of sovereignty.

Friday - Kammenos, leader of the ANEL party and minister of Defense lays a wreath, from a helicopter, at Imia, sight of a near open conflict with Turkey, to honour the two dead Greek servicemen 19 years ago. He is the first defense minister to do so and the Turks,thinking it is still business as usual in the Aegean, send F-16s to buzz overhead and frigates to patrol below. Greece scrambles her own forces to force them beyond the border. Sovereingty in action.

Weekend - Varoufakis visits with his French counterpart. President Obama sends a simple message to show his support of Tsipra's government and its strategy of economic growth. Watch interview here:   http://www.greekcrisis.net/2015/01/obama-on-austerity-programs.html
"I think the truth is that you cannot keep squeezing countries that are in the midst of a depression." President Obama continues to say that growth strategy is needed as part of the solution.

Monday - Prime Minister Tsipras begins his visits with foreign leaders in Cyprus with President Nikos Anastasiades.

After a tumultuous change of government and agenda mr. Meimarakis, president of Vouli (parliament),  greets his replacement Konstandopoulou with a tulip bouquet and a smile.

Mr. Kammenos the incoming minister of defense and leader of the ANEL party lays a wreath in memory of the fallen from a helicopter over Imia. I think his expression shows that closure is finaly achieved.

Grexit Exit...Greek elelction results.

In short the elections are over and we have a new coalition government complete with cabinet all sworn in and making waves. There is no exit of Greece from the EU in sight and I do not think there will be. It has been a hectic three days with so much going on that it could not possibly fit into one single instalment. Here are some of the highlights of  the inauguration.

Some lovely pictures for you dear readers to gaze upon. Above is a picture of our new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visiting our Ecumenical Patriarch, head of the Greek church, Ieronymous. Alexis asked for the reverends' wish or ευχή in Greek. It is a happy coincidence for mr. Tsipras that ευχή is also the word used to ask for the reverands' blessing. Mr. Tsipras also informed the Patriarch Ieronymous not to bother dropping by for the usual swearing in of the P.M. as he will opt for a civilian ceremony.

In a civilian ceremony the Prime Minister is sworn in by the President not by the Ecumenical Patriarch. As you can see in the picture above President Papoulias shakes hands with Prime Minister Tsipras folowing his inauguration. Back in Canada I would have had to keep writing "the right honorable so and so". Anyways the law alowing this has been in the books since the eighties when Andreas Papandreou seperated the church from the government....no Prime minister has dared to try it though. Till now.  Canadians repatriated their constitution in the eighties. I guess we're all late bloomers after all.

Mr. Tsipras is not alone... having won the elections he is two seats short of a majority so he will be ruling the land as part of a coalition government. Mr. Kammenos, leader of the conservative Independent Greeks party or ΑΝΕΛ party is giving his full support. The two had the deal already worked out well before the electoral result and are the only anti-memorandum parties still in parliament from the 2012 elections see http://ellinomangia.blogspot.gr/2012/06/3-party-government.html. Funny how a marxist and a conservative can cooperate so well when they share a firm belief in democracy...

Out with the old and in with the new. Former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras opted to stay home and let his secretary hand over the keys of the Prime Ministers office. This may well be a world wide first if we do not take into account the BC Socreds. The residency was void of any government computers, files or anything else for that matter only the telephones were in their place. Even the vault was empty when mr. Tsipras entered. A very embarassing moment for Greek conservatives as a political culture does not alow for sore losers or for temper tantrums. His fear and terror campaign did not catch on with Greeks and his attempt at a smear campaign was abandoned early on. People here are just not stupid enough for these types of  election campaigns. It is three days after the election and we already have a government and a cabinet and our first meeting with European counterparts on Friday. The whole Grexit scenario is quickly deflating and some former ministers are looking at possible jail sentences for embezzlement. Be patient mr. Samaras, as we all know you are an accomplice and your turn will come soon.

The wild card or joker of this election was the river party. Sorry, the River party. Not like the Canadian Dinosaur party, I hope it is still active, the River was supposed to be taken seriously and was supposed to come in third. It failed coming in fourth right behind the neofascist Golden Dawn party by a tight margin of a few thousand votes. This inspite of enjoying the full and undisputed support of the entire Greek media establishment. Its candidates participated on every tv panel, first time for an unelected party. The River was announced in the news on a drizzly Thursday last winter as a new party enjoying 17% support in gallup polls, having been founded the day before. Talk about the big lie. Its leader mr. Theodorakis is a tv personna who travelled the land this last year with a backpack sputtering all kinds of catchy rubbish to attract the young vote or anything else he could. Just like a pick-up artist or kamaki as we used to call them here. Their motto, Let's Change it All Without Demolishing the Country!

 

One could not write an article about these elections without mentioning former Prime Minister Goegre Papandreou, son of the late Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and grandson of  Prime Minister Goerge Papandreou, the late. Wow. Goerge decided it was time he founded his own party, named the Movement and ended up a few thousand votes short of entering parliament. This will be the first time in 92 years that the Greek parliament does not include a member of the Papandreou family.

Greek Election,The true face of terror...

Here in Greece we have our own way of dealing with extremists and their little groups. Last year we let our most dangerous inmate become our new most wanted. It was simple enough, they gave him a 48 hour leave and when he did not return on time he became the new face on Greece's Most Wanted. http://ellinomangia.blogspot.gr/2014/01/radioactive-pelletsavas-xiros.html

Then suddenly after a year in hiding the latest success story of the Hellenic P.D. came with the arrest of this 

 once at large terrorist hit man. It was hard to recognize him at first with his full blonde flock and prominent facial hair. A sort of salt and peppa look to throw off the authorites no doubt. But nothing gets past the houndogs of the Hell.P.D. who were onto his sent. Soon the man who was compared to the playmobil toy, his previous hairdo, was behind bars, along with  Zohan's The Avalon hairdo. Just goes to prove - you don't mess with the Zohan. 

Zohan...

                                               Savas Xiros...

So now that Savas Xiros is safely behind bars we can get on with life and elections. Our fearless Prime Minister, in his infinite wisdom and benevolent nature decided that it was a good time to elect a president. Seeing how it was the holidays and all and taking into account that gallup poll that said most Greeks would prefer to avoid national election he forced his hand. A real stupid bluff if you ask me. So although constitutionaly he could have waited till spring he decided to try for a new presidency now with the required 180 yes votes in the vouli, our house of commons. Of course despite all attempts, including outright bribery, he could not come up with that number, something that ammounts to a non-confidence vote. 
Can't blame him though as he had already agreed to a new round of taxes for the poor and tax breaks for the rich. People here have started to do desperate things like shutting down the courts in order to defend their right to own property. You can not simply take a Greek's house without a fight. Most of them have been in the family for generations. Maybe poor Samaras, our P.M. simply got tired of being the bad guy. So elections on January the 25th it is!

This is a very good picture of Antonis who is soon to be leaving his post as it is abundantly clear that he is going to lose the election. Some of his bigger blunders? The Haratsi tax - http://ellinomangia.blogspot.gr/2011/11/haratsi.html - the child tax and an entire tax system based on presumed income or "tekmirio" as it is called here.The more children you have the higher your assumed income that also goes up if you own a house, a car, an empty lot in the horio (village). So off to some pub to get drunk and remember the merrier days...

Above is a picture of Alexis Tsipras shaking hands with Paglo Iglesias. Tsipras is the leader of our left coalition party and posed to become the next Prime Minister on Monday. Pablo is the founder of a political party in Spain that sprung out of the antiausterity protests. We await Sundays election to see what the next day will be. Hopefuly it will be a better future for all of us. Stay tuned for more...

European Election Results

If ever there was a need for an EER check well, now is the time. All over Europe the extreme right is the big winner. In France Lepen and her band of merry fascists was the all out winner taking a quarter of the popular vote. In fact anywhere you hear the term Euroskeptic you can replace it with fascist. So why the rise in fascism, I mean what's up with that? Here in my home country of Greece the Communists won the election taking a quarter of the vote. They do not call themselves the communists but rather the left coalition. In the same way the wobblies or the NDP in Canada all became watered down versions of their former selves. We do have an official Communist party in Greece that struggles to remain at the five percent level. Gets a little confusing here. Tsipras is the leader of the left party and is also the European hard left coalition candidate. I can boil down the present European outlook to this: extreme rightist parties wanting to strengthen national boundaries or even dissolve the union alltogether, center right parties wanting to continue austerity measures and deindustrialization of the south, center left parties still searching for a spine or any kind of hard tissue at all, hard left parties proposing a Marshall plan for the south. Europe lacks many things these days. There is no clear foreign policy and so far policy has been banged out by Germany alone. There is no bill of rights and many times smaller nations constitutions are suspended in favor of European central bank policy. There is no constitution or central control of any kind or policy or anything. Brussels is without a road map and simply does the bidding of the most powerful member. There can be no happy end in a story whose central character lacks vision and has no moral backbone. Where everything is up for sale and the powerful get to pimp the weak without any restraint. In our little country with our suspended constitution they have achieved some amazing results. One million people are without medical insurance, two million people are without work, hospitals, schools, all public buildings are being closed and put up for sale. Nationalists gain in the polls as our country is slowly being annexed by Germany and this faceless European federalist monster. The extreme left too is on the rise with a solution for the hundreds of thousands of families facing homelessness and starvation. Merkel and her band of merry subhumans have brought us here. Where do we go from here nobobdy knows but it will be a tough journey with many pitfalls in the way... possibly the oddest of oddities is the election of Foondoolis father to the European parliament see: http://ellinomangia.blogspot.gr/2013/12/high-rollers-foondoolis-capellonis.html

itchin...

     I've been itching to write a blog about the situation in Crimea and the dissapearance of the Malaysian jumbo jet. I believe the two events are absolutely related. Certainly many of you will be expecting to hear a conspiracy theory that spans the globe. Certainly a jumbo jet dissapearing off of radar and suddenly becoming untraceable is something impossible to achieve. Also the sudden appearance of debris in four day old satellite images is also suspect. As is the endless coincidences that seem to make it impossible to find any physical evidence for more than two weeks now. An American base on a tiny island in the Indian ocean has been discussed much on the news here as well as another senario buzzing on the net with high tech stolen devices. Everything points to the Americans. They have always been the favorite culprits of any conspiracy theory. I can certainly see how they would be suspect in a jet crashing. Ooops, no palpable evidence of that yet. I certainly feel for the families of the passengers. To be fed blatant lies for two endless weeks and then to top it all off they are now being offered compensation! Definetely has all the elements of an americano- centralized conspiracy.
     I checked out my stats on this blog yesterday to find 20 hits from the Ukraine on March 25th. I do not know what they were doing since when I checked the stats article by article the numbers did not add up. I guess they visited without reading, or opening any specific page. Irregardless of that I will mention that March 25th is the day we celebrate our independence won from the Ottomans in 1821. It all started in Odessa, Ukraine, with the declaration of the circle of friends, Filiki Eteria, in 1814. The Filiki Eteria was a secret organization with the sole task of winning Greek independence. Something like a Greek IRA or ETA or PLO. Of course having eventualy achieved their goal they did not go down in history as a terrorist organization. As for the fate of the Greeks of the Ukraine and of the Crimea, well things here get very complicated. Today there are 150000 Greeks living in the Ukraine. The lands that are washed by the Black Sea are a part of ancient Greece. I was happy to see Barak Obama declaring March the 25th 2014 a day of Greek independence. However I do not understand his stance on the Crimean referendum. I certainly understand why people want to abandon the Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation. Better wages, more security, no Nazi freaks. I have been very timid writing my little blog here since the Nazi freaks got into the Greek Parliament. Generaly they are not nice people and only understand the law of the jungle. As a matter of fact if it was not for Obama and American pressure our Nazis would still be at large. So why the sudden support to neo-nazi supporters in the Ukraine? Maybe there is a lack of intelligence. It has been a common problem at the CIA. Maybe they aren't aware of the story behind the Kiev snipers and who bankrolled them. Maybe there is a lack of information about the recently murdered leader of the Ukrainian neo-nazis. Certainly there was a lack of American involvement before that little coup in Kiev. And what about Germany. Suddenly there is a new suspect. Merkel seems to be very guilty in her absolute silence. Any conspiracy theory about neo-nazi movements in Europe and their financing will probably point back to Germany and its totalitarian raised leader.
      So I am not alowed the usual luxury here of blaming everything on the Americans in a velvety smooth conspiracy theory. Now we have a German finger. Like an evil gerrymandering political power Germany has won its right to be part of any serious conspiracy theory. Of course the Germans have not learnt how to play chess yet and have so far managed to foul things up over and over again. Here in Greece, over there in the Ukraine, and with the loss of over a trillion in investments in the good old USA. Taking this into account along with the fact that Germany would instantly cease to be a player without Russian gas, well now I can certainly understand american pressure on Germany and Europe to condem those Ruskies. Reminds me of those good old KAL 007 days. The chessboard was much simpler then with only two players...and presidents did not visit popes.

Blind Wall

These two walls appear just about equal. However one of them is only partially legal. That glass block detail in the first wall is what one would call borderline legal. It is one of those quirky laws that we have in Greece. As a matter of fact a great deal of our building code deals with blind or adjoining walls. The wall awaits for a building to attach to it at some point in the future. Till then the adjoining wall will remain a blind wall. Nowadays with a weird kink in my neck and a numb left thumb one of the last things on my mind is to write another installment to my blog. However duty calls and this blind wall deal has been really tormenting me. So cheers to all until the next instalment.