EU on the freedom to violence

Just a few thoughts, no more than a short note really but longer than a tweet. Here in Greece the right wing opposition New Denmocracy party is demanding the intervention of police to clear out Idomeni of refugees and immigrants. Seems they (ND) are getting their directives straight from the right wing dominated EU. They  (EU) would like some news images of Storm Trooper attired riot police beating regugees with their billy bats while they scramble to collect their tents and protect their children and babies. FYROM police are very good at this kind of thing. The Greek government has taken a more passive aproach trying to convince refugees to leave Idomeni for one of the many organized camps around the country. Refugees and said camps remain unguarded and unhindered in their movements throughout Greece. This ires our European counterparts to no end as they try their best to deconstruct the Schegen treaty. At the same time the borders between Belgium and her neighbours shut down in violation of said treaty as a response to the terrorist attacks yesterday. Attacks perpetrated by European born muslims. Natives with Belgian passports that did not need to travel the Aegean in a homemade rubber dhingy. So if you are the victim of war trying to escape with your family Europe wants to send the message that coming here is a risk. It is a risk to cross the borders, to get trapped in Greece, to get seperated from your family, to lose your children. 10000 unescorted minors, recorded in Greece by police at refugee centers, are missing in Europe. If however you want to be part of a hard right organization and partake in violent acts there is little to stop you. If you are a native European muslim you can blow things up or if you are a native European christian you can beat refugees up. The new European morality is violence and Greece resists. Who is with us...leave a comment if you like.

NATO operating in the Aegean?

Times are changing, and rapidly. Try and bear with me as I give a short run down of the problems facing Greece and the EU as they are multilevel and intertwined like a Gordian knot. The summary goes like this:
1. Germany has an open border policy.
2. Turkey has an open border policy.
3. FYROM has shut her borders and refugees are trapped in Greece.
4. Austria spearheads group of Balkan states refusing to open borders even for transit refugees.
5. Germany is energy dependant on Russia for natural gas.
6. Germany wants access to middle east natural gas from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
7. Syria had refused to alow a pipeline to cross her territory to expediate point 6.
8. Austria is close ally to Germany.
9. Turkey is close ally to Germany.
10. Merkel sees threat to both Schengen zone and Euro zone from unilater Austrian actions.
Now taking into account point 1 and 2 consider point 10 to be realistic. Taking into account points 8 and 9 in combination with 5,6,7 suddenly point 10 is weakened. Countries become allies when they have common interests, I am not talking about hobbies and music, of economic, millitary and other such nature. Germany played hardball in the Ukraine supporting all kinds of pro-Nazi groups in order to tip the balance away from Russia. Failed miserably there. Germany went on to try and tip the balance by supporting ISIS in the middle east through Turkey. That episode ended with the shooting down of a Russian warplane that spent a few seconds in Turkish airspace. Turkey has been violating Greek airspace for years. Waterspace too. Now NATO warships are in the Aegean in an apparent attempt to stem the flow of refugees. The plan was that these warships would save refugees from their dinghies and then return them to TURKISH shores. Turkey has refused. The president of Turkey, Tagip Erdogan, went on a trip to west Africa to promote Turkish Airways service from Ghana and other countries with added daily flights to Istanbul at 50 euros a ticket and NO VISA REQUIRED. Turkey has an open border policy for anyone who wants to climb into a dhingy and attempt to cross the Aegean into Greece. Mekel claims to have an open border policy for any refugee that land on EU soil but NOT BY AIRPLANE. NATO has an anti-Russian mandate historicaly and is now operating in the Aegean. Russia of course has been sailing her warships down to Syria from the Black Sea through the Aegean. I think the conspiracy theory here has been proven. The only question that remains is what will the US public vote. If they vote either Clinton or Trump they will be voting for a Kissinger fan that will certainly increase the level of tension here.

Photo is from Idomeni at the Greek-FYROM border. 

Greek Referendum = Direct Democracy

The mood in Greece is calm and collected even after a week of closed banks and fiscal uncertainty. The sirens of the western world still beckon us to turn our backs on Ithaca but we sail on to the proverbial shore.

Inspite of a camapaign of terror and threats to the Greek people that many times violated ethics and even the law the Greek people answered with a resounding NO to austerity. The massive 62% majority of the plebiscite cannot and must not be ignored. Please assist me in petitioning the president of the Eurogroup to respect direct democracy. Just click on the linjk below:

Mr. Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem president of the Eurogroup: Respect the outcome of the Greek referendum!

				Mr. Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem president of t... 62% of the people of the Hellenic Republic answered with a resounding NO to the continuation of austerity. It would be a grave and unprecedented mistake to ignore t...
				Προβολή στη διεύθυνση secur...	Προεπισκόπηση από Yahoo

 

Commentary conflict-Τρολλ - Trolling on the net

     Imagine scrolling down to the bottom of a story on a popular website to see the readers comments and then realize that they are all written by neo-Nazis. Ever read the comments section at the end of a news story on Yahoo or MSN? It is a habit of many people to read the comments and to even voice an opinion of their own. Here in Greece there is a regular war of opinions in the comments section with all kinds of arguments over things like the debt or foreign policy. In the days leading up to the elections there was a regular war going on in the comments section. Every kind of fascist had wriggled out of the woodwork to leave their little poop in the comments section. After every story dealing with gallop polls or the rise of the radical left party SYRIZA there would be comments with all kinds of foul language. I too wrote comments answering to these fascists telling them that democracy will not be intimidated. I was not alone. Soon we got to learn each other by name. Avatar name that is. There was Greek23, a fascist, Π, a leftist and many others.
     In December then Prime Minister Samaras announced his Presidential candidate and set the 22nd as the election date. Seems our imminent exit from the oppressive memorandums was not to be, instead the so called e-mail Hardouvelis (finance minister at the time) was to be the future. Said e-mail described a horrific future of more pension cuts and wage rollbacks along with massive layoffs and the end to the first residency protection. The first residency, as described in the Katselis law, is to be protected from foreclosure by the banks as it is an indisputable human right, the right to shelter, regardless of ability to pay ones' mortgage. Imagine a law like that protecting over 300,000 homeowners and their families was introduced by a right wing Prime Minister! Samaras really had no choice, he would either protect the right to shelter or face a civil war. So under threat by the Troika to bring in more austerity measures or be led to a default Samaras chose his other option calling for the indirect presidential election five months prematurely. His candidate, a technocrat banker by the name of Dimos had no real chance of being elected. In spite of that there was a last ditch effort to bribe MPs so that he could win in the third parliamentary vote. The failure to install a new president leads to a new general election within about a month which brings us to the January 25th election of this year.
     So in December and as all this was starting to crystallize Yahoo pulled the plug on its comments section in Greece. I lost my ability to comment on Greek Yahoo although I can still comment on other Yahoo sites with my old avatar. The explanation given by Yahoo Greece was a long winded one at first about improving user services then followed by a more honest one that the comments section was supposed to be a place where people could constructively interact. Not a place for commentary warfare. I will not go into too many details other than to say that conversations did get quite nasty at times with threats and foul language way out of control. The fascist commentators usually worked in teams at the time and would not argue their point instead making threats to other commentators well being. Comments like "We will come and we will be many" a sort of storm-trooper SS kind of threat, may have been answered by a left winger saying "I will be armed and waiting". Then there were threats to family members and the like. I can't blame Yahoo for pulling the plug.
    So sometime in early December we lost our ability to write on all the old sites and then Disqus popped up on Yahoo. It is a forum to write comments that many new news sites were using. Iefimerida was one of them and we started writing there. Sometimes editorial writers would actually answer commentators trying to argue once more the point of their stories. Seems the commentators were often better informed than the journalists of said site. All the way up to the elections of January 25th Iefimerida kept the comments section open. The feud between left wingers and right wingers carried on. I should be more clear because it is not so much left vs right as pro-Greek vs pro-German that was at issue. It may seem strange to you dear reader that a Greek national would take the side of German interests but here I must remind you of a theme that has been part of this blog for the last four or five years. It is a fact that a minority of Greeks have benefited from the entrenched German interests and corruption in Greece. German law actually allows corrupt practices by German companies outside her borders! Iefimerida, as well as the River party are both financed by the Bobola group of companies. Bobolas has been making a killing. while not paying his taxes, throughout the Samaras years. His brother was jailed by the present SYRIZA government for tax evasion and opted to pay a 1.8 million euro fine to avoid felony charges. How things change.
     Iefimerida cancelled its comments section shortly after the election and continues without giving its readers a voice. Many other sites have comments sections that they heavily edit and censor. During the days leading up to the elections I would often leave comments to stories late at night or on the weekend to find that they had been answered to during working hours. After every comment there is the ability for another commentator to leave an answer to the comment. There is also the ability to give a vote of approval or disapproval,a like or dislike. So I would often challenge these commentators pointing out how obviously they were on the payroll and so on. We gave them a name. The name is Troll.

 

 Many commenters leave links to their blogs or to other sites or to statistics to prove their points. Their is also a new kind of animal here in Greece that lives on the net and lurks in the comments section. It is known as the troll..Now I do not know if this is a familiar occurrence back in Canada but here in Greece it is. Trolls enter sites just to leave comments with misleading information or to harass other commenters. We also say something is the action of a troll, a trollia, when official news sights publish false stories. So if you want to live in interesting times then Greece is the place to visit.
     Here are three links to some of the better blogs linked in comments section. They are from a news site called Pandora's Box. Please enjoy.
p.s. a good knowledge of Greek will be helpful.

                             http://nea-metra.blogspot.gr/2015/03/blog-post_15.html
 https://projectantisystem.wordpress.com
http://my-pillow-book.blogspot.gr/2015/04/champagne.html

Tsipras Russian visit - April 9th Fools Day

A new date has been given by the media for a Greek default, it is April the 8th. It is Easter here in Greece and the same day, Ash Wednesday, our Prime Minister will be visiting Russia. He was invited officially to visit on the 9th, I am not sure what they are celebrating but I do not think it is the Tbilisi massacre, Mr. Tsipras asked to begin his visit a day earlier. . So the 9th is given as the crunch day and supposedly we will be celebrating Easter Sunday with lamb on the spit paid in drachmas.

In this bluffing game that has been played since the Greek bailout of 2010 much has happened. Greece has restructured her debt of 90 billion plus interest and charges to a mere 330 billion total down from 570 billion in 2009. How does 90 become 570 you may ask dear reader. Well Greece was borrowing in drachma issuing eight and ten year bonds with an interest of five to eight percent. In 2002 the drachma locked at 340 drachmas to the euro and 400 drachmas to the dollar. Bonds bought in drachmas with dollars had to be paid back with interest at the locked exchange rate. In the meantime the dollar lost value against the euro and if you do the math, plus interest, you will see what needed to be paid back in euros. An extra 12 to 20 percent plus interest. Greek bonds sold like hotcakes. Greek debt after the bailout also sells well and in the last five years Germany has managed to make an 80 billion profit bailing out Greece. This according to German media and at a time when German bonds are stagnant or deflationary.

After a full week of trying to intimidate Greece into a bargain deal Merkel decides to invite her counterpart for an official visit but as you can see the plan goes awry. It was March 23rd and we had a lot of softening up of Greek positions by Schäuble the German finance minister. Unfortunately for him nobody in Greece was paying him any attention.

Instead of German threats of a Graccident the news was swamped with reports that Giakoumakis' body had been found in a swamp. For a full month volunteers and police had been searching for the missing young student of the Greek Dairy School. Yes there is such a thing and it is in the north of Greece outside of Iannena. Giakoumakis had been a victim of bullying and apparently had taken his own life. Greek society was so deeply shocked that the news dealt almost entirely with this story. German threats of an ensuing Greek default were barely noticeable. Tsipras asked for a meeting of European leaders and was granted it on Friday, along with Dijsselbloem Eurogroup president,  giving  a political solution to the financial crisis. So far it has been Germany that has had to double back and soften up. We wait for the results of our next bankruptcy appointment.

Tit for Tat on a Tightrope!

Walking the span between the towers pre 9-11

What a week in politics! I have lost track of where it all started. The German complaints about the Greek Finance minister and their request that he is replaced, mostly due to his popularity and public support. Then there was that insulting interview mr. Schuable gave wherein he called his Greek counterpart naive. The entire Greek media system spent the week attacking its own government, I can't blame them as the government is passing legislation that will require private t.v. stations to pay a broadcasting license fee. In the midst of all this turmoil our new Minister of Justice agrees to sign the supreme court decision on Distomo making it an act of law. In laymen terms that means that after nearly two decades of waiting for the court decision to be implied, no previews minister would sign it, survivors of the Nazi massacre at Distomo can finally expect compensation. This will mean, as a first phase, the confiscation of German non diplomatic property in Greece, namely the Goethe institute building in downtown Athens. Then the Greek parliament reinstated the committee on war reparations that the Germans had begun paying in the fifties. When Germany asked Greece, for humanitarian reasons, to give her some time to get on her feet before making payment, Greece accepted making her the only country in Europe to not have been paid said reparations. What a mouthful. Then there is the matter of the war loan that Nazi Germany forced on Greece taking all her gold and anything else promising to pay her back. Then there is a chest of over 400000 Nazi documents of the occupation of Greece that were acquired from the US in 2006. Amongst these documents are Nazi accounts, detailed lists in fact, of the plundering of ancient sights and artifacts, of illegal Nazi excavations both of minerals and of ancient artifacts, and of the general looting of an entire nation. These are to be part of new claims against Germany under international law that clearly states how crimes against humanity do not simply erase after the passage of time but must be reinstated. Justice is to be served even by the next generation. Germans want to forget and move on but Greece wont let them. Can't let them. We need closure and recognition of the hideous Nazi war crimes against Greece. We still live in the aftermath and there are still those amongst our population that would willingly support another Nazi occupation today.

This lovely German couple visiting Greece decided to pay their share of the German occupational loan that amounts to 958 euros.

The end of the Euro...Eurequiem eh!

Greece battles for an end to austerity but falls on the deaf ears of the power elite led by Germany. Tomorrows' Eurogroup is a last ditch effort for the two sides to reach an agreement and to persuade the remaining members to get on board. Anything can happen and all is in the air. There is even the possibility that the currency that attempted to challenge the dollar could come to an end.

Greek Finance minister Varoufakis, shown in the foreground above has done something more than simply stand up to German pressures. He has spearheaded a popular movement that is slowly growing across Europe to put an end to austerity. Only the numbers presented by technocrats have been winning and even those have been doctored to look good. For the most part austerity has not managed to lower deficits but has instead shrunk economies and caused deficits to blossom. There is a nouveau povre class spreading across Europe. Germany herself has reached 15.6 percent population as statisticaly poor (posessing less than 1/3 of the national average income)

 

For years a rather corrupt elite has enjoyed major perks. Dijsselbloem stormed out of a joint press conference with Varoufakis in Athens back when there still was a Troika. The translator while translating Varoufakis opening statements had wrongfully used the words rotten foundation instead of  "shaky foundation" that the Troika stood on according to Varoufakis. There have been so many cover ups of scandals in Europe that to say something like the Troika is rotten, or corrupt, may well be accurate. Regardless mr. Dijsselbloom chose to be insulted.

So we all wait anxiously for the results of tomorows Eurogroup with Germany pressing and Greece refusing to go back to austerity. More austerity here makes no sense. We are already standing at numbers similar to the great depression. Enough of the bullshit. We end austerity now and get on with our lives. People over markets. 25% unemployment (official) not counting the long term unemployed and a cool 2.5 million below the line of poverty (1/4 of the population). Tick tock the euro countdown starts...