 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.scmp.com |
How the world sees Greece
Monday, March 17, 2014
Greece’s tax officers being trained in anger management
Until Greece's economic meltdown, anger management was an alien concept at the country's finance ministry. Patience and politesse were qualities sorely missing in interactions between Greeks and officials tasked with prying duties out of some of the nation ...
Greek TV journalist makes waves with new political party
(ATHENS ) - A new Greek political party, formed by one of the country's leading investigative journalists, has made a surprisingly strong start two months ahead of European parliament elections.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.eubusiness.com |
Football fans from Turkey, Greece, Italy remember Berkin Elvan
National Turk EnglishFootball fans from Turkey, Greece, Italy remember Berkin ElvanHurriyet Daily NewsGreece's AEK also remebered the 15-year-old who died after spending 269 in coma due to a teargas canister iğnjury. Supporters of many football clubs both in Turkey and abroad commemorated Berkin Elvan over the weekend, unfurling banners and singing ...Turkish cleric says Erdogan crackdown worse than army coup eraAhram OnlineTurkey Election Campaign: Erdogan called dead boy “terrorist” / Breaking NewsNational Turk Englishall 163 news articles »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.hurriyetdailynews.com |
Greece: 235 mln euro from EIB to improve electricity network
(ANSAmed) - ATHENS, MARCH 17 - The European Investment Bank (EIB) is making a 235-million-euro loan to Public Power Corporation (PPC) to improve Greece's electricity network, it announced on Monday. "The multi-investment program covering the period 2013-15 ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT ansamed.ansa.it |
Greece vs. Nigeria Tickets: Ticket Down Slashes Prices on Greece vs. Nigeria Tickets at PPL Park in Chester, PA
Ticket Down announces they have rolled back ticket prices for the big soccer match featuring Greece vs. Nigeria at PPL Park. This trusted secondary ticket exchange is also offering their customer appreciation discount code SOCCER-2014 for added savings. (PRWeb March 17, 2014) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/03/prweb11675132.htm
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.prweb.com |
Promotion of Greek Language in U.S. Schools
Dody Tsiantar, professor of journalism at the Columbia University in New York and Niki Georgatou, business executive in Greece, have launched a campaign for the promotion of Greek language in the Greek schools of the U.S. Initially, the two ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT usa.greekreporter.com |
Cyprus To Lift Capital Controls Soon
Cyprus Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said he expects capital controls on banks begun a year ago will be taken off by the end of Spring.
The post Cyprus To Lift Capital Controls Soon appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Mercouri Estate Red: an Interesting Mavrodaphne with Italian Roots
This bottling is produced from two grapes – Mavrodaphne and Refosco. The second grape is not indigenous to Greece, but the Mercouri Estate imported Refosco vines from Italy as early as the 1800s. This bottle is 85% Refosco and 15% Mavrodaphne. Mavrodaphne is typically known for producing dessert wines, and its influence on this wine […]
The post Mercouri Estate Red: an Interesting Mavrodaphne with Italian Roots appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
SYRIZA Hangs On To Narrow Lead
The major opposition SYRIZA party is holding on to a narrow lead over New Democracy in polls that showed Greeks like the rising To Potami party.
The post SYRIZA Hangs On To Narrow Lead appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Greek Yogurt Takes HOW Much Water?! (Plus More Green News From the Week)
Care2.comGreek Yogurt Takes HOW Much Water?! (Plus More Green News From the Week)Care2.comget healthy living updates. Dairy products require a whole lot of water—and many of them come from drought-ridden California. California is experiencing one of its driest years in the past half millennium. It also happens to also be the country's ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.care2.com |
Troika Wants Union Powers Cut
Greece’s international lenders say the country’s state-financed labor unions are too powerful and want their powers reduced, including the right to strike.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Report Finds Waste and Luxury in Greek Public Sector
Such tales of lavish expenses defy the imagination and would be more likely found in a movie script than in modern-day Greece,
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Standard & Poor’s Positive Report for Greece
Standard & Poor’s will revise Greece’s rating for its autumn review scheduled for September 12, 2014. On Monday, March 17, the agency rated Greece with a “B-/B”, which leads to a steady outlook. This new rating is not expected to be ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
E-System to Trim Greek State's Phone Bills
Greek ReporterE-System to Trim Greek State's Phone BillsGreek ReporterGreek Parliament In light of recent research that suggested the state's phone bills amount to about 285 million euros a year, the Secretariat for Information Systems of the Greek Finance Ministry decided to launch an electronic system in order to ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Stournaras not certain talks with troika will conclude on Monday
Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has refused to commit on the question of whether Greece and the troika will conclude their talks on Monday after lengthy discussions over the weekend.
“I don’t know [if talks will conclude today],” said Stournaras after ... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Greek gov't trying to 'fool' voters with bid to return to markets, says SYRIZA
SYRIZA has accused the government of trying to “fool” voters ahead of May’s local and European Parliament elections by aiming to make a return to the markets.
The government has indicated it wants to start issuing sovereign bonds against this year, althou... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
EU imposes sanctions on 21 Russian and Ukrainian officials
People linked to unrest in Crimea face freeze on assets and travel ban after referendum vote in favour of union with Russia
European foreign ministers have imposed EU-wide sanctions against 21 Russian and Ukrainian officials linked to unrest in Crimea.
Ministers and EU officials said on Monday that the 21 people, mainly political figures involved in the breakaway of Crimea rather than business figures, would face a freeze on assets as well as a travel ban. That number could be expanded later in the week, they added.
The punitive measures announced on Monday came on the eve of an address to the Russian parliament by President Vladimir Putin on Crimea. He is expected to take steps to formalise the incorporation of Crimea into Russia but, if he felt the need to try to slow the imposition of sanctions, he could opt for a more measured response.
The sanctions followed the referendum in Crimea on Sunday in which there was an overwhelming vote in favour of union with Russia. The EU condemned the referendum as illegal and said it would not recognise the outcome. The US was also planning to impose sanctions against Russia.
It is notoriously difficult to secure European Union agreement on sanctions anywhere because they require unanimity from the 28 member states. The Associated Press reported that several countries – Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Cyprus – had expressed reservations, mainly about moving too quickly.
The naming of the 21 people was a watered-down version of an original list of about 120.
The Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, described sanctions as inevitable. "I hope the Russians will realise that sanctions will hurt everyone, but no one more than the Russians themselves."
Expanding those on the sanctions list is almost certain to be discussed at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday.
Some EU states are torn about taking punitive measures against Russia, undoing all the years of patiently trying to establish closer ties with Moscow as well as increase trade.
The EU has already suspended talks with Russia on an economic pact and a visa agreement.
The aim of some members is to gradually increase sanctions, just as the EU did with Iran, to put pressure on Putin.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said any measure must leave "ways and possibilities open to prevent a further escalation that could lead to the division of Europe".
After the breakdown of 11th hour talks in London on Friday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, hinted that a new diplomatic window might open after the referendum. But there is no sign as yet of any compromise by Russia.
UkraineEuropeRussiaEuropean UnionEwen MacAskilltheguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com |
Troika Wants Greek Unions Weakened
Greece's international lenders want the powers of the country's state-financed unions reduced as part of a series of undone major reforms.
The post Troika Wants Greek Unions Weakened appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Greece Misses Troika Deal Deadline, 9B Euros Payday
Greece didn't conclude talks with international lenders in time for an agreement before a March 17 meeting of Eurozone finance chiefs which could have authorized release of long-delayed nine billion euros ($12.5 billion) installment.
The post Greece Misses Troika Deal Deadline, 9B Euros Payday appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Deadline Missed, Troika Talks Push On
Having missed a self-imposed deadline to reach an agreement with international lenders, Greek government officials were meeting with them again on March
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Greek finance minister raises hope of deal with bailout creditors in dragging reform talks
Greece's finance minister says he is "close to" completing marathon negotiations with the debt-mired country's bailout creditors.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.foxnews.com |
Greece 'Close To' Elusive Deal With Creditors
Greece 'Close To' Elusive Deal With CreditorsABC NewsThe latest talks with representatives from Greece's European partners, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have dragged since September. The main sticking points include public sector layoffs and pressing ahead with policies ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT abcnews.go.com |
OAED launches 54-mln scheme to help create 10,000 new jobs
The Greek Manpower Organization (OAED) announced on Monday the launch of a subsidized program for businesses to hire a total of 10,000 unemployed Greeks.
OAED said that companies would be able to submit their applications from March 21. The program, which... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Number of pensioners in Greece edges up to 2.65 mln
The number of Greek pensioners edged up for a third month in a row in March, reaching a total of 2.65 million.
Greece spent a total of 6.8 billion euros on pensions in the first quarter of the year, according to the figures produced by the Ilios system ov... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Venizelos urges diplomatic channels with Russia to remain open after Crimea vote
Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos has called for a “diplomatic and political” solution to the dispute in Crimea after a referendum on Sunday indicated that the vast majority of its citizens want the region to join Russia.
With the European Union ... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Eurozone February inflation dips to 0.7%
Revised figure adds to worries about threat of deflation in the currency bloc where prices are falling in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ft.com |
Eurozone inflation back to lowest ever level in February, Greece at -0.9 pct
KathimeriniEurozone inflation back to lowest ever level in February, Greece at -0.9 pctKathimeriniIn February, there were four euro zone countries with negative annual inflation rates, Portugal and Slovakia both with -0.1 percent, Greece with -0.9 percent and Cyprus saw annual inflation rate at -1.3 percent. The ECB, despite forecasting low ...Eurozone inflation in surprise fall to 0.7 percentTbo.comall 1 news articles »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Marathon troika talks to continue in Athens later on Monday
Greek government officials are to continue talks with troika representatives on Monday after failing to reach an agreement on a range of issues over the weekend.
The two sides were locked in 14-hour negotiations, which ended at 5 a.m. on Monday, but there... ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Greek government and Troika agreed they disagree
Both sides keep their stance on all open issues, proving that the estimates and statements the deal could close on Sunday or today, and get a positive announcement from the troika, were rather premature. The Greek government will not back off from its "red ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.protothema.gr |
Greek artist killed in Harlem blast memorialized
Greek artist killed in Harlem blast memorializedNew York PostA Greek artist killed in Wednesday's tragic gas explosion in Harlem was the first of the eight dead victims to be memorialized Sunday. Friends and family of Andreas Panagopoulos, 43, gathered at Joseph Farenga and Sons Funeral Home in Astoria to honor ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT nypost.com |
Sydney Olympic signs Greek star Sotirios Kyrgiakos for two-game stint
Greek ReporterSydney Olympic signs Greek star Sotirios Kyrgiakos for two-game stintSydney Morning HeraldSydney Olympic pulled off one of the biggest shock signings in Australian soccer history by securing former Liverpool and Greek international Sotirios Kyrgiakos as a guest player, but the 34-year-old star denied he joined the semi-professional club in ...Greek star Kyrgiakos unveiled at OlympicSBSSotirios Kyrgiakos in Sidney for Two MatchesGreek Reporterall 6 news articles »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.smh.com.au |
Greek star Kyrgiakos unveiled at Olympic
NSW Premier League side Sydney Olympic have oficially unveiled Greek star Sotirios Kyrgiakosas their newest recruit.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT nz.sports.yahoo.com |
Drug problems Greece has an absolutely absurd number of pharmacists
Drug problems Greece has an absolutely absurd number of pharmacistsQuartzIn fact, Greece has the largest number of pharmacists, per inhabitant, in all of Europe. On a per capita basis, there are more than twice as many Greek pharmacists as French or Spanish ones, 74% more than in Bulgaria—Greece's nearest competitor in ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT qz.com |
Why Kenya should recall Greece crisis
The Standard Digital NewsWhy Kenya should recall Greece crisisThe Standard Digital NewsKenya: Retired President Moi has urged Kenyans to have the interests of the country at heart as the country faces austerity measuresto tame the ballooning public wage bill. He said the ultimate solution to Kenya's problems will be found locally and ...and more »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.standardmedia.co.ke |
Greek Food Truck Opens in Waco
Greek Food Truck Opens in WacoKCEN-TVSix kids and several years later, she became inspired by the food trucks in Austin. She thought it was the perfect way to showcase her Greek cooking, so Xristo's Cafe was born. The truck opened for business on the corner of University Parks and ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.kcentv.com |
Olympiakos clinch 41st league title in Greece ahead of Manchester United clash
Goal.comOlympiakos clinch 41st league title in Greece ahead of Manchester United clashSkySportsOlympiakos will head to Old Trafford next week having just clinched their 41st national league title in Greece. They secured the crown with a 2-0 victory over Panthrakikos at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium thanks to goals from Nelson Valdez and David ...Olympiakos beats Panthrakikos, clinches titleThe StateOlympiacos win Greek championshipFifa.comOlympiakos seal Greek Super League titleGoal.comall 26 news articles »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www1.skysports.com |
Will the River sweep Greek politics?
Will the River sweep Greek politics?Hurriyet Daily NewsAs we are entering the last dramatic phase of the municipal election campaign here in Turkey, next door neighbor Greece is at the start of its own problematic bumpy ride towards local elections and Euro-elections set to take place at the end of May. Of ...and more »
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.hurriyetdailynews.com |
Crowd Control
Political Revolt and the Accumulation of MoreCross-posted with TomDispatch.com
[This essay will appear in "Revolution," the Spring 2014 issue of Lapham's Quarterly. This slightly adapted version is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]
In case of rain, the revolution will take place in the hall.-- Erwin Chargaff
For the last several years, the word “revolution” has been hanging around backstage on the national television talk-show circuit waiting for somebody, anybody -- visionary poet, unemployed automobile worker, late-night comedian -- to cue its appearance on camera. I picture the word sitting alone in the green room with the bottled water and a banana, armed with press clippings of its once-upon-a-time star turns in America’s political theater (tie-dyed and brassiere-less on the barricades of the 1960s countercultural insurrection, short-haired and seersucker smug behind the desks of the 1980s Reagan Risorgimento), asking itself why it’s not being brought into the segment between the German and the Japanese car commercials.
Surely even the teleprompter must know that it is the beast in the belly of the news reports, more of them every day in print and en blog, about income inequality, class conflict, the American police state. Why then does nobody have any use for it except in the form of the adjective, revolutionary, unveiling a new cellphone app or a new shade of lipstick?
I can think of several reasons, among them the cautionary tale told by the round-the-clock media footage of dead revolutionaries in Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia, also the certain knowledge that anything anybody says (on camera or off, to a hotel clerk, a Facebook friend, or an ATM) will be monitored for security purposes. Even so, the stockpiling of so much careful silence among people who like to imagine themselves on the same page with Patrick Henry -- “Give me liberty, or give me death” -- raises the question as to what has become of the American spirit of rebellion. Where have all the flowers gone, and what, if anything, is anybody willing to risk in the struggle for “Freedom Now,” “Power to the People,” “Change We Can Believe In”?
My guess is next to nothing that can’t be written off as a business expense or qualified as a tax deduction. Not in America at least, but maybe, with a better publicist and 50% of the foreign rights, somewhere east of the sun or west of the moon.
Revolt from Thomas Jefferson to the Colossal Dynamo
The hallowed American notion of armed rebellion as a civic duty stems from the letter that Thomas Jefferson writes from Paris in 1787 as a further commentary on the new Constitution drawn up that year in Philadelphia, a document that he thinks invests the state with an unnecessary power to declare the citizenry out of order. A mistake, says Jefferson, because no country can preserve its political liberties unless its rulers know that their people preserve the spirit of resistance, and with it ready access to gunpowder.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Jefferson conceived of liberty and despotism as plantings in the soil of politics, products of human cultivation subject to changes in the weather, the difference between them not unlike that between the growing of an orchard and the draining of a cesspool, both understood as means of environmental protection. It is the turning of the seasons and the cyclical motions of the stars that Jefferson has in mind when in his letter he goes on to say, “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion” -- i.e., one conceived not as a lawless upheaval but as a lawful recovery.
The twentieth-century philosopher and political scientist Hannah Arendt says that the American Revolution was intended as a restoration of what its progenitors believed to be a natural order of things “disturbed and violated” by the despotism of an overbearing monarchy and the abuses of its colonial government. During the hundred years prior to the Declaration of Independence, the Americans had developed tools of political management (church congregations, village assemblies, town meetings) with which to govern themselves in accordance with what they took to be the ancient liberties possessed by their fellow Englishmen on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t bear the grievances of a subjugated populace, and the seeds of revolt were nowhere blowing in the wind until the British crown demanded new, and therefore unlawful, tax money.
Arendt’s retrieval of the historical context leads her to say of the war for independence that it was “not revolutionary except by inadvertence.” To sustain the point she calls on Benjamin Franklin’s memory of the years preceding the shots fired at Lexington in April 1775: “I never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.” The men who came to power after the Revolution were the same men who held power before the Revolution, their new government grounded in a system of thought that was, in our modern parlance, conservative.
Born 13 years later under the fixed star of a romantic certainty, the French Revolution was advertent, a violent overthrow of what its proponents, among them Maximilien de Robespierre, perceived as an unnatural order of things. Away with the old, in with the new; kill the king, remove the statues, reset the clocks, welcome to a world that never was but soon is yet to come.
The freedom-loving songs and slogans were well suited to the work of ecstatic demolition, but a guillotine is not a living tree, and although manured with the blood of aristocrats and priests, it failed to blossom with the leaves of political liberty. An armed mob of newly baptized citoyens stormed the Bastille in 1789; Napoleon in 1804 crowned himself emperor in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Jefferson’s thinking had been informed by his study of nature and history, Robespierre’s by his reading of Rousseau’s poetics. Neither set of political ideas brought forth the dream-come-true products of the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution -- new worlds being born every day of the week, the incoming tide of modern manufacture and invention (the cotton gin, gas lighting, railroads) washing away the sand castles of medieval religion and Renaissance humanism, dismantling Robespierre’s reign of virtue, uprooting Jefferson’s tree of liberty.
So it is left to Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, to acknowledge the arrival of the new world that never was with the publication in German of the Communist Manifesto in 1848: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”
Men shape their tools, their tools shape their relations with other men, and the rain it raineth every day in a perfect storm of creative destruction that is amoral and relentless. The ill wind, according to Marx, blows from any and all points of the political compass with the “single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade,” which resolves “personal worth into exchange value,” substitutes “callous ‘cash payment’” for every other form of human meaning and endeavor, devotes its all-devouring enthusiasms to “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the energies of the capitalist dynamic take full and proud possession of the whole of Western society. They become, in Marx’s analysis, the embodiment of “the modern representative state,” armed with the wealth of its always newer and more powerful machines (electricity, photography, the telephone, the automobile) and staffed by executives (i.e., politicians, no matter how labeled) who function as “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
What Marx sees in theory as an insatiable abstraction, the American historian Henry Adams sees as concrete and overwhelming fact. Marx is 17 years dead and the Communist Manifesto a sacred text among the left-wing intelligentsia everywhere in Europe when Adams, his habit of mind as profoundly conservative as that of his great-grandfather, stands in front of a colossal dynamo at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and knows that Prometheus, no longer chained to his ancient rock, bestrides the Earth wearing J.P. Morgan’s top hat and P.T. Barnum’s cloak of as many colors as the traffic will bear. Adams shares with Marx the leaning toward divine revelation:
“To Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s length at some vertiginous speed... Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force.”
The Sixties Swept Away in a Whirlwind of Commodities and Repressive Surveillance
I inherited the instinct as a true-born American bred to the worship of both machinery and money; an appreciation of its force I acquired during a lifetime of reading newspaper reports of political uprisings in the provinces of the bourgeois world state -- in China, Israel, and Greece in the 1940s; in the 1950s those in Hungary, Cuba, Guatemala, Algeria, Egypt, Bolivia, and Iran; in the 1960s in Vietnam, France, America, Ethiopia, and the Congo; in the 1970s and 1980s in El Salvador, Poland, Nicaragua, Kenya, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Jordan, Cambodia, again in Iran; over the last 24 years in Russia, Venezuela, Lebanon, Croatia, Bosnia, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Somalia, South Africa, Romania, Sudan, again in Algeria and Egypt.
The plot line tends to repeat itself -- first the new flag on the roof of the palace, rapturous crowds in the streets waving banners; then searches, requisitions, massacres, severed heads raised on pikes; soon afterward the transfer of power from one police force to another police force, the latter more repressive than the former (darker uniforms, heavier motorcycles) because more frightened of the social and economic upheavals they can neither foresee nor control.
All the shiftings of political power produced changes within the committees managing regional budgets and social contracts on behalf of the bourgeois imperium. None of them dethroned or defenestrated Adams’ dynamo or threw off the chains of Marx’s cash nexus. That they could possibly do so is the “romantic idea” that Albert Camus, correspondent for the French Resistance newspaper Combat during and after World War II, sees in 1946 as having been “consigned to fantasy by advances in the technology of weaponry.”
The French philosopher Simone Weil draws a corollary lesson from her acquaintance with the Civil War in Spain, and from her study of the communist Sturm und Drang in Russia, Germany, and France subsequent to World War I. “One magic word today seems capable of compensating for all sufferings, resolving all anxieties, avenging the past, curing present ills, summing up all future possibilities: that word is revolution... This word has aroused such pure acts of devotion, has repeatedly caused such generous blood to be shed, has constituted for so many unfortunates the only source of courage for living, that it is almost a sacrilege to investigate it; all this, however, does not prevent it from possibly being meaningless.”
During the turbulent decade of the 1960s in the United States, the advancing technologies of bourgeois news production (pictures in place of print) transformed the meaningless magic word into a profitable commodity, marketing it both as deadly menace and lively fashion statement. The commercial putsch wasn’t organized by the CIA or planned by a consortium of advertising agencies; it evolved in two stages as a function of the capitalist dynamic that substitutes cash payment for every other form of human meaning and endeavor.
The disorderly citizenry furnishing the television footage in the early sixties didn’t wish to overthrow the government of the United States. Nobody was threatening to reset the game clock in the Rose Bowl, tear down Grand Central Terminal, or remove the Lincoln Memorial. The men, women, and children confronting racist tyranny in the American South -- sitting at a lunch counter in Alabama, riding a bus into Mississippi, going to school in Arkansas -- risked their lives in pure acts of devotion, refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots.
The Civil Rights movement and later the anti-Vietnam War protests were reformative, not revolutionary, the expression of democratic objection and dissent in accord with the thinking of Jefferson, also with President John F. Kennedy’s having said in his 1961 inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.” Performed as a civic duty, the unarmed rebellions led to the enactment in the mid-1960s of the Economic Opportunity Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eventually to the shutting down of the war in Vietnam.
The television camera, however, isn’t much interested in political reform (slow, tedious, and unphotogenic) and so, even in the first years of protest, the news media presented the trouble running around loose in the streets as a revolution along the lines of the one envisioned by Robespierre. Caught in the chains of the cash nexus, they couldn’t do otherwise. The fantasy of armed revolt sold papers, boosted ratings, monetized the fears at all times running around loose in the heads of the propertied classes.
The multiple wounds in the body politic over the course of the decade -- the assassination of President Kennedy, big-city race riots, student riots at venerable universities, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy -- amplified the states of public alarm. The fantastic fears of violent revolt awakened by a news media in search of a profit stimulated the demand for repressive surveillance and heavy law enforcement that over the last 50 years has blossomed into one of the richest and most innovative of the nation’s growth industries. For our own good, of course, and without forgoing our constitutional right to shop.
God forbid that the excitement of the 1960s should in any way have interfered with the constant revolutionizing of the bourgeois desire for more dream-come-true products to consume and possess. The advancing power of the media solved what might have become a problem by disarming the notion of revolution as a public good, rebranding it as a private good. Again it was impossible for the technology to do otherwise.
The medium is the message, and because the camera sees but doesn’t think, it substitutes the personal for the impersonal; whether in Hollywood restaurants or Washington committee rooms, the actor takes precedence over the act. What is wanted is a flow of emotion, not a train of thought, a vocabulary of images better suited to the selling of a product than to the expression of an idea. Narrative becomes montage, and as commodities acquire the property of information, the amassment of wealth follows from the naming of things rather than the making of things.
The voices of conscience in the early 1960s spoke up for a government of laws, not men, for a principle as opposed to a lifestyle. By the late 1960s the political had become personal, the personal political, and it was no longer necessary to ask what one must do for one’s country. The new-and-improved question, available in a wide range of colors, flower arrangements, cosmetics, and musical accompaniments, underwrote the second-stage commodification of the troubled spirit of the times.
Writing about the socialist turbulence on the late-1930s European left, Weil lists among the acolytes of the magic word, “the bourgeois adolescent in rebellion against home surroundings and school routine, the intellectual yearning for adventure and suffering from boredom.” So again in America in the late 1960s, radical debutantes wearing miniskirts and ammunition belts, Ivy League professors mounting the steps of the Pentagon, self-absorbed movie actors handing around anarchist manifestos to self-important journalists seated at the tables in Elaine’s.
By the autumn of 1968 the restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan served as a Station of the Cross for the would-be revolutionaries briefly in town for an interview with Time or a photo shoot for Vogue, and as a frequent guest of the restaurant, I could see on nearly any night of the week the birth of a new and imaginary self soon to become a boldfaced name. Every now and then I asked one of the wandering stars what it was that he or she hoped to have and to hold once the revolution was won. Most of them were at a loss for an answer. What they knew, they did not want, what they wanted, they did not know, except, of course, more -- more life, more love, more drugs, more celebrity, more happiness, more music.
On Becoming an Armed Circus
As a consequence of the political becoming personal, by the time the 1960s moved on to the 1980s and President Reagan’s Morning in America, it was no longer possible to know oneself as an American citizen without the further identification of at least one value-adding, consumer-privileged adjective -- female American, rich American, black American, Native American, old American, poor American, gay American, white American, dead American. The costumes changed, and so did the dossier of the malcontents believing themselves entitled to more than they already had.
A generation of dissatisfied bourgeois reluctant to grow up gave way to another generation of dissatisfied bourgeois unwilling to grow old. The locus of the earthly Paradise shifted from a commune in the White Mountains to a gated golf resort in Palm Springs, and the fond hope of finding oneself transformed into an artist segued into the determined effort to make oneself rich. What remained constant was the policy of enlightened selfishness and the signature bourgeois passion for more plums in the pudding.
While making a magical mystery tour of the Central American revolutionary scene in 1987, Deb Olin Unferth remarks on the work in progress: “Compared to El Salvador, Nicaragua was like Ping-Pong... like a cheerful communist kazoo concert... We were bringing guitars, plays adapted from Nikolai Gogol, elephants wearing tasseled hats. I saw it myself and even then I found it a bit odd. The Nicaraguans wanted land, literacy, a decent doctor. We wanted a nice singalong and a ballet. We weren’t a revolution. We were an armed circus.”
As a descriptive phrase for what American society has become over the course of the last five decades, armed circus is as good as any and better than most. The constantly revolutionizing technologies have been spinning the huge bourgeois wheel of fortune at the speed of light, remaking the means of production in every field of human meaning and endeavor -- media, manufacturing, war, finance, literature, crime, medicine, art, transport, and agriculture.
The storm wind of creative destruction it bloweth every day, removing steel mills, relocating labor markets, clearing the ground for cloud storage. On both sides of the balance sheet, the accumulations of more -- more microbreweries and Internet connections, more golf balls, cheeseburgers, and cruise missiles; also more unemployment, more pollution, more obesity, more dysfunctional government and criminal finance, more fear. The too much of more than anybody knows what to do with obliges the impresarios of the armed circus to match the gains of personal liberty (sexual, social, economic, if one can afford the going price) with more repressive systems of crowd control.
To look back to the early 1960s is to recall a society in many ways more open and free than it has since become, when a pair of blue jeans didn’t come with a radio-frequency ID tag, when it was possible to appear for a job interview without a urine sample, to say in public what is now best said not at all. So frightened of its own citizens that it classifies them as probable enemies, the U.S. government steps up its scrutiny of what it chooses to regard as a mob. So intrusive is the surveillance that nobody leaves home without it. Tens of thousands of cameras installed in the lobbies of office and apartment buildings and in the eye sockets of the mannequins in department-store windows register the comings and goings of a citizenry deemed unfit to mind its own business.
The social contract offered by the managing agents of the bourgeois state doesn’t extend the privilege of political revolt, a point remarked upon by the Czech playwright Václav Havel just prior to being imprisoned in the late 1970s by the Soviet regime then governing Czechoslovakia: “No attempt at revolt could ever hope to set up even a minimum of resonance in the rest of society, because that society is ‘soporific,’ submerged in a consumer rat race... Even if revolt were possible, however, it would remain the solitary gesture of a few isolated individuals, and they would be opposed not only by a gigantic apparatus of national (and supranational) power, but also by the very society in whose name they were mounting their revolt in the first place.”
The observation accounts for the past sell-by date of the celebrity guest alone and palely loitering in the green room with the bottled water and the banana. Who has time to think or care about political change when it’s more than enough trouble to save oneself from drowning in the flood of technological change? All is not lost, however, for the magic word that stormed the Bastille and marched on the tsar’s winter palace; let it give up its career as a noun, and as an adjective it can look forward to no end of on-camera promotional appearances with an up-and-coming surgical procedure, breakfast cereal, or video game.
Lewis H. Lapham is editor of Lapham’s Quarterly and a TomDispatch regular. Formerly editor of Harper’s Magazine, he is the author of numerous books, including Money and Class in America, Theater of War, Gag Rule, and most recently, Pretensions to Empire. The New York Times has likened him to H.L. Mencken; Vanity Fair has suggested a strong resemblance to Mark Twain; and Tom Wolfe has compared him to Montaigne. This essay, slightly adapted for TomDispatch, introduces "Revolution," the Spring 2014 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, soon to be released at that website.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.huffingtonpost.com |
Lenten Recipe 17: Persimmon, Feta, Radicchio, Olives: Not a Boring Salad!
Regular salad can get boring and monotonous. Hearty greens with salty feta, earthy olives, and sweet persimmons will make you forget this is salad! Serves 4 Ingredients: ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil 5½ teaspoons white wine vinegar 1teaspoon dried Greek oregano leaves, crumbled 1 clove garlic, crushed 2 large persimmons, peeled and cut into […]
The post Lenten Recipe 17: Persimmon, Feta, Radicchio, Olives: Not a Boring Salad! appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Restaurant business not all Greek to Athena owners
Restaurant business not all Greek to Athena ownersTyler Morning TelegraphGrowing up in their family restaurants in Greece before moving to the United States, they are continuing the family tradition with Athena Greek & American Family Restaurant in Tyler. The family had a restaurant in Greece before moving to North Carolina ...
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.tylerpaper.com |
With Madrid, Dortmund all but through, focus is on Chelsea, Man United in Champions League
by
Associated Press
England's European hopes rest with Chelsea, United
by STEVE DOUGLAS, Associated Press - 16 March 2014 18:25-04:00
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — With Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund all but through to the Champions League quarterfinals, the focus this week is on whether Chelsea and Manchester United can preserve English representation in the competition in what is proving a miserable season in Europe for Premier League clubs.
Chelsea is tied at 1-1 with Galatasaray ahead of their last-16 second leg at Stamford Bridge and United is in deeper trouble, behind 2-0 to Olympiakos after a wretched performance in the first leg in Greece.
Arsenal and Manchester City have already been eliminated from the Champions League and Tottenham, the sole remaining English representative in the Europa League, is also close to the exit after losing 3-1 at home to Benfica in their last-16 first leg.
Madrid has a 6-1 lead over Schalke and Dortmund is ahead 4-2 against Zenit St. Petersburg.
Here is a lookahead to this week's last-16 second legs in the Champions League:
___
CHELSEA-GALATASARAY
Didier Drogba is set to be afforded a hero's welcome when he returns to Stamford Bridge with Galatasaray for the first time since leaving Chelsea in 2012, two days after winning them the Champions League in his final match for the club.
"I am quite apprehensive about it," Drogba told UEFA.com.
Whether Chelsea fans will be singing Drogba's name at the end of the second leg remains to be seen.
The Ivory Coast striker, who scored 157 goals in eight years at Chelsea, is the biggest threat to his former team's chances of progression and Jose Mourinho's hopes of becoming the first manager to win the Champions League with three different clubs.
Chelsea will be disappointed not to have brought a lead back to London after dominating the first half in Istanbul but failing to add to Fernando Torres' early goal. On the other hand, the Premier League leaders have lost just twice at Stamford Bridge in the Champions League since 2003 and are big favorites to advance.
___
REAL MADRID-SCHALKE
Nobody could blame Real Madrid if it is looking past Schalke to its next game, which is none other than a visit by Barcelona for a "clasico" match that will have huge implications in the Spanish league title race.
Madrid is undefeated in 30 games in all competitions and has a comfortable cushion over Schalke after its 6-1 thrashing in the first leg in Germany. That should allow coach Carlo Ancelotti to rest some of his first-choice players, who looked exhausted in the final stretch of Saturday's lackluster 1-0 win at Malaga when Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 39th goal in 36 games in all competitions this campaign.
"After Schalke, we will have four days to prepare for the clasico," said Madrid goalkeeper Diego Lopez. "We know its importance and we are anxious for Sunday to arrive."
Besides Iker Casillas returning in goal, Ancelotti could give starts to young forwards Jese Rodriguez and Alvaro Morata and midfielder Francisco "Isco" Alarcon.
While Schalke would like to pay farewell to the competition "with dignity," as defender Benedikt Hoewedes put it, as manager Horst Heldt's main concern is getting through the Madrid match without injury. Schalke is now third in the Bundesliga and wants to lock its grip on a direct slot into next season's Champions League.
___
BORUSSIA DORTMUND-ZENIT ST. PETERSBURG
Borussia Dortmund, last season's beaten finalist, can take some solace from a 2-1 home defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach on Saturday that it usually wins in the Champions League after losing in the Bundesliga.
The last three wins in the Champions League all came after domestic losses, but midfielder Jonas Hofmann says this is not because the players already focus on the European stage.
"It's definitely not so that we are trying to take it easy or that we already thinking ahead," he said.
Coach Juergen Klopp's volatile temper was in evidence again and he was sent off the pitch after a noisy reaction to a referee decision. Klopp already had sat out two Champions League games at the start of the campaign over an argument with the fourth official.
___
MANCHESTER UNITED-OLYMPIAKOS
The teams come into the match in very different states of mind.
While Olympiakos celebrated sealing the Greek title on Saturday with five games remaining in the season, United slumped to its most humiliating defeat of an already disappointing season on Sunday, a 3-0 loss to big rival Liverpool that virtually ended its chances of qualifying for next season's Champions League.
United's best chance now of being back in Europe's top competition is winning it this season, but that is unlikely on current form, and especially given the deficit it has from the first leg.
"We have a chance," United midfielder Marouane Fellaini said. "We need the fans to stay behind the team and the club and we will fight to win in the game against Olympiakos."
United was eliminated in the round of 16 last season, against Real Madrid.
News Topics: Sports, UEFA Champions League, Men's soccer, Professional soccer, Men's sports, Soccer, EventsPeople, Places and Companies: Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres, Carlo Ancelotti, Diego Lopez, Alvaro Morata, Jonas Hofmann, Marouane Fellaini, Manchester, England, Vermont, Madrid, Europe, United Kingdom, Western Europe, United States, North America, Spain
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.neurope.eu |
Friends of Andreas Panagopoulos Fill Evangelismos
NEW YORK – Tears flowed as the friends and family of Andreas Panagopoulos and of his wife, Liseth Perez Almeida, and Greek-Americans gathered at the Church of the Evangelismos to bid him farewell at a Trisagion service on March 16 after the Divine Liturgy. The service for the repose of the soul of the gifted Greek […]
The post Friends of Andreas Panagopoulos Fill Evangelismos appeared first on The National Herald.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)