How the world sees Greece
Karon Grieve decided to treat herself to a trip to the Greek island of Crete, but the Scottish author didn't realise how VIP the trip was going to be until she stepped onboard the Jet2 flight from Glasgow - only to find she was the only passenger.
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October 24, 2017 Ancient Olympia, GREECE—The torch for the Pyeongchang 2018 winter Olympics was lit in ancient Olympia on Tuesday using the ...
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The Town of GREECE has added bocce courts and a horseshoe pit to the town campus. As of late last week, residents could play bocce and ...
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Watching the 'GREEK Freak' drive in the lane is a lot like watching LeBron James bulldoze his way to the hoop. The only difference? Giannis is ...
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The GREEK Theatre has a pre-Halloween treat for horror comedy fans: an outdoor screening of Shaun of the Dead. The event is hosted by Fandango ...
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GREEK Economy and Development Minister Dimitris Papadimitriou will attend the Economic Forum of the Aegean in Izmir on October 25-26, ...
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Defying the rules of diplomacy, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on Greece to handout several hundreds alleged coups supporters the regime in Ankara describes as “Gulenists”. “We don’t want Greece to become a safe haven for FETÖ [Fetullahist Terrorist Organization],” Çavuşoğlu told reporters speaking at a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart, Nikos … The post FM Cavusoglu tells Greek counterpart Kotzias to handover 995 “coup supporters” appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
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… in the city of Thessaloniki (Greece). 270 athletes from 18 countries …
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… Winter Olympic flame lit in Greece Now Playing: Man stabs top …
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… distributed to EuroWorking Group members Greece’s creditors are expected to … between the lenders’ representatives and Greek government officials. A note distributed … . According to the document, the Greek side exceeded the target, repaying …
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It just got way easier to get Greek food in Philly. But over the past few months, not one, not two, but three brick-and-mortar spots specializing in gyros — the street food staple that, after its namesake salad, is probably the best-known Greek dish ...
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It is often said that the acoustics of ancient Greek theaters were so sophisticated that spectators in the back row could hear the actors with perfect clarity, long before microphones came into the picture. In modern times, tour guides will often drop a ...
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That this is now a thing in the world should cause every Christian church to respond with similar shows of peaceful mourning. The Greek Orthodox church is protesting a recently passed transgender law that would allow for someone as young as 15 years old to ...
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Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have a combined net worth of approximately $195 billion. Together they have amassed more money than the GDPs of Greece, Hungary, or Algeria. While each entrepreneur has a unique set of traits that has made him successful, these three tech founders also have a few things in common that have allowed them to build some of the world's most respected and innovative organizations. 1. IMPECCABLE PATTERN RECOGNITION. Scott Olson/Getty Images In 1975, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard after just two years. He reportedly spent more time using computers in the computer lab than studying for exams. Gates, along with his co-founder Paul Allen, realized that the personal computer was going to need software to run it successfully. After purchasing an Altair 8800 (an early home computer), he and Allen projected that a computer would eventually make it into every home in the United States. In 2004, Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard sent an email to Elon Musk, who had already successfully participated in PayPal and founded SpaceX, asking for an interview to discuss an investment in his new electric car company. Musk, who had believed in the power of electric cars for a decade, was keen to invest. Musk's involvement generated a $7.5 million round of funding. Eventually Musk would go on to become the chairman and CEO of Tesla. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1995. At the time Amazon only sold books, though Bezos knew from the moment he founded the company that the ecommerce platform should become an "everything store." When Amazon was founded, eBay did not exist, and Barnes and Noble was not yet selling books online. Bezos had a premonition about the future, and acted quickly to establish what is now a nearly $500 billion company. 2. FAITH IN THEMSELVES AND IN THEIR FOUNDING TEAMS. Gates, Bezos and Musk all had profound belief in their own capabilities and those of the founding members of their teams. It is one thing to have a visionary idea; it is another thing to drop out of Harvard, invest millions in a small electric car company or risk insurmountable debt. Take Jeff Bezos as an example. After graduating from Princeton, he eventually ended up as a senior vice president of DE Shaw, an investment company. When he hatched the idea of an online bookstore, he left his job at DE Shaw in the middle of 1994. In other words, Bezos walked away from a considerable end-of-year bonus in favor of founding a small company headquartered in his garage. 3. HIGH RISK TOLERANCE. OnInnovation/Flickr Founding a startup entails a great deal of risk. One study found that after 10 years of being in business, 96% of startups fail. This means that, statistically speaking, Gates, Musk and Bezos were facing tough odds when they decided to leave otherwise comfortable lives to start a risky business venture. For example, Musk left his PhD program at Stanford University to found a company called Zip2 with his brother. The company was sold to Compaq, netting Musk a bit over $20 million. But rather than pocket the cash and ride off into the sunset, Musk once again took a great risk by investing millions of dollars to found a company called X.com, which would later merge with another company to form PayPal. SEE THE REST OF THE STORY AT BUSINESS INSIDER
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If you haven't tried Greek yogurt yet, these five benefits could convince you. 1. Protein. It boosts your protein levels, helping you build muscle and repair tissue. 2. Probiotics. It keeps your intestines healthy and aids in the digestion process.
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This article originally appeared on Travel+Leisure. When Karon Grieve showed up to Glasgow airport on Sunday, she expected her Jet2 flight to Crete to be fairly quiet. It’s the tail-end of the season and she imagined that not many people were headed to ...
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Lockheed Martin has tapped Rockwell Collins for its Flight2 integrated avionics system, Rockwell Collins said. The system is to be used to upgrade the Greek navy’s Lockheed Martin P-3 aircraft. The Hellenic Navy is looking for an upgrade, according to ...
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In an interview with Austrian newspaper Der Standard, IMF’s head of European department Poul Thomsen claimed that extending maturities of the Greek debt is enough to make it sustainable in the long run. “Greece needs long term deadlines to pay off its ...
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Olympic flame begins journey from Greece to South Korea for 2018 Games An actress in the role of a priestess, holds an archaic pot with the Olympic Flame during the Lighting Ceremony of the Olympic Flame for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games in ...
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By the next morning, the coach started catching up on tape of the GREEK Freak. Clifford freely admitted it: It was fun. He took joy in watching such a ...
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The GREEK-American official was at the prime minister's side for much of the Washington leg of his trip to the US: He welcomed Tsipras at Andrews Air ...
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Ball State greek life has been suspended until Jan. 31, 2018. According to a reddit thread, no chapters can hold any events unless they are philanthropy or community service events. Users on Reddit theorized that president Mearns was trying to make a ...
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Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM) - The Greece man who admitted to having tens of thousands of images of child pornography was back in court Tuesday. Kevin DiMartino is now facing allegations for sexually abusing a 4-year-old boy. In court, DiMartino's lawyer ...
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Greece’s main opposition party, conservative New Democracy has brought back to debate the right to vote for diaspora Greeks. On Monday, ND leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, resubmitted to Parliament his legislative proposal to give diaspora Greeks the right to vote in Greek elections. Complaining that his original proposal he submitted 18 months ago was never not … The post Granting voting rights to diaspora Greeks back in the agenda appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
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With Education Secretary Betsy Devos announcing the dismantling of Title IX guidance in September and with the major threat to sexaul assault survivors on campus, we have to keep taking steps toward fighting for the end of sexual violence on campus.
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He also shot the 1964 best picture 'Tom Jones' for Tony Richardson and worked six times with James Ivory. Walter Lassally, who won an Academy Award in 1965 for his black-and-white cinematography on Zorba the Greek, has died. He was 90. Lassally died Monday ...
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Cinematographer who won an Oscar for the 1964 film classic Zorba the Greek The title of the cinematographer Walter Lassally’s 1987 autobiography, Itinerant Cameraman, could not have been more apt. Lassally, who has died aged 90, was born in Germany (he had a German father and a Polish mother), lived and worked in the UK, and made films in, among many other countries, Czechoslovakia and Greece. It was the last of these, where he shot Zorba the Greek (1964), which won him best black-and-white cinematography Oscar, that meant the most to him. Known locally as “Walter the Greek”, Lassally lived for many years outside the city of Chania, on the island of Crete, near the beach that had served as location for the movie’s celebrated final scene, with Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates dancing to the music of Mikis Theodorakis. He shot six films with its Greek director Michael Cacoyannis, but he had earlier been associated closely with the Free Cinema movement in the UK and the directors that came out of it, and his other celebrated connection was with the American director James Ivory. Continue reading...
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… ;s serves-up traditional, authentic, hand-made Greek favorites in a warm and … this is the only true Greek restaurant in the area. Your …
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Acropolis GREEK Taverna, which has locations throughout Tampa Bay, has announced that its restaurant at 229 N. Cattlemen Road in Sarasota will ...
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GREEK said of the 15 people on the boat, 14 were injured, two were in critical condition and three were in moderate condition. The others were not ...
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Whether you read Truthout daily, weekly or even once a month, now's the perfect time to show that you value real journalism. Make a donation to Truthout by clicking here! When the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published his bestseller _The Disuniting of America_ in 1991, he didn't seriously entertain the worst-case scenario suggested by the title. At the time, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were imploding, while separatist movements in Quebec, East Timor, Spain's Basque country, and elsewhere were already clamoring for their own states. But when it came to the United States, Schlesinger's worries were principally focused on the far smaller battlefield of the American classroom and what he saw as multiculturalism's threat to the mythic "melting pot." Although he took those teacup tempests seriously, the worst future Schlesinger could imagine was what he called the "tribalization of American life." He didn't contemplate the actual dismemberment of the country. Today, controversies over hate speech and gender justice continue to roil American campuses. Add these to the almost daily evidence of disintegrative pressures of every sort. These, however, are probably the least important conflicts in the country right now, considering the almost daily evidence of disintegrative pressures of every sort: demonstrations by white supremacists, mass shootings and police killings, and the current dismantling of the federal government, not to speak of the way cities and states are defying Washington's dictates on immigration, the environment, and health care. The nation's motto of _e pluribus unum_ (out of many, one) is in serious danger of being turned inside out. A country that hasn't had a civil war in more than 150 years, where secessionist movements from Texas to Vermont have generally caused merriment not concern, now faces divisions so serious, and a civilian arsenal of weapons so huge, that the possibility of national disintegration has become part of mainstream conversation. Indeed, after the 2016 elections, predicting a second civil war in the United States -- a real, bloody, no-holds-barred military conflict -- has become all the rage among journalists, historians, and foreign policy pundits across the political spectrum. Particularly after Charlottesville, the left warns that President Trump and his extremist allies are inciting are intent on inciting the "alt-right" toward violence against a broad swath of his administration's opponents. The right is convinced, particularly after the shooting of Louisiana Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, that the "alt-left" is armed and ready to revolt alongside "Mexican murderers and rapists." Foreign Policy columnist Thomas Ricks has been taking the temperature of national security analysts on the likelihood of a future civil war. In March, their responses averaged out to a 35% chance -- and that number's been climbing ever since. A sign of the times: Omar El Akkad's American War, a novel about a second civil war, has been widely reviewed and has sold well, though whether readers are taking it as a warning or a how-to manual is not yet clear. Sure, most Americans don't yet fall into irreconcilable factions. But if you consider the transformation of Yugoslavia from vacation spot to killing field in two short years after 1989, it's easier to imagine how a few demagogues, with their militant supporters, could use minority passions in this country to neutralize majority sentiments. All of which suggests why the "American carnage" that Trump invoked in his inaugural address could turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, it's not just Donald Trump. Globally speaking, the fledgling American president is more symptom than cause. The United States is just now catching up to much of the rest of the world as President Trump, from his bullying pulpit, does whatever he can to make America first in fractiousness. When it comes to demagogues and divisiveness, however, he has plenty of competition -- in Europe, in the Middle East, indeed all over our splintering planet. THE MULTIPLICATION OF DIVISION The recent referendum on independence in Catalonia is a reminder that a single well-timed blow can break apart the unitary states of Europe as if they were nothing but poorly made piñatas. True, it's not clear how many Catalans genuinely want independence from Spain. Those who participated in the referendum there opted overwhelmingly in favor of secession, but only 42% of voters even bothered to register their preference. In addition, the announced relocation of 531 companies to other parts of the country is a sobering reminder of the potential economic consequences of secession. However the standoff may be resolved, though, separatist sentiments are not about to vanish in Catalonia, particularly given the Spanish government's heavy-handed attempts to stop the vote or the voters. Such splittism is potentially contagious. After Britons narrowly supported Brexiting the European Union (EU) in a referendum in 2016, the Scots again began talking about independence -- about, that is, separating from their southern cousins while remaining within the EU. Catalans have a different dilemma. A declaration of independence would promptly sever the new country from the European Union, even as the move might spread independence fever to other groups in Spain, particularly the Basques. The British and the Catalans have delivered something like a prolonged one-two punch to the EU, which until recently had been in continuous expansion: from six member states in 1957 to 28 today. Losing both Great Britain and Catalonia would mean kissing goodbye to more than one-fifth of that organization's economic output. (According to 2016 numbers, the United Kingdom contributes 2.7 trillion euros and Catalonia 223 billion euros to the EU's 14.8 trillion euro gross domestic product.) That's the economic equivalent of California and Florida peeling off from the United States. The question is whether the British and Catalan votes are the culmination of a mini-trend or the beginning of the end. Although Brexit actually gave a boost to the EU's popularity across its member states (including England), Brussels continues to experience pushback from those states on immigration, financial bailouts, and the process of decision-making. Euroskeptic movements like the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Freedom Party in Austria have met with growing success and rising voter support, even in Euro-friendly countries. In that continent's future lie: a possible Czexit as a right-wing billionaire takes over as prime minister of the Czech Republic and looks to create a governing coalition with a vehemently anti-immigrant and anti-EU partner; a Nexit if Euroskeptic Geert Wilders succeeds in expanding his political base further in the Netherlands; and even an Italexit as voters there have bucked the "Brexit effect," with 57% now favoring a referendum on membership. Outside actors, too, have been hard at work. The Kremlin under Vladimir Putin relishes a weaker EU, if only so that its own immediate neighbors -- Ukraine and Georgia -- will stop leaning westward. Donald Trump has similarly embraced the Euroskeptics in a bid to spread to Europe what former top adviser Steve Bannon has termed the "deconstruction of the administrative state" to Europe. Those who might enjoy an EU-style_ frisson_ of _schadenfreude_ look at Europe's ills as a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Many European governments supported the American-led conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria that have shattered the Greater Middle East, sending refugees by the hundreds of thousands toward the EU. One crucial result: anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia have fueled far-right "populist" parties across Europe. In the process, the continent is threatened with being torn apart at the seams in an echo of the developments in the countries from which the refugees are streaming. Think of it as the war on terror transposed to a different key. This parallel could be seen in a particularly poignant fashion in the independence referendum in Kurdistan that was held just before the Catalan vote. Iraq has been at risk of disintegration ever since the United States invaded in 2003 and removed the tyrannical but unifying hand of Saddam Hussein from the tiller of state. Proposals to divide the country into three autonomous parts presided over by Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia began circulatingin Washington within years of the invasion, then-Senator Joe Biden's "soft-partition plan" being perhaps the best known of them. The Kurds made Biden's proposal a reality by carving out their own autonomous region in the northern part of Iraq. Now, after a referendum that secured overwhelming support (with a turnout of more than 70%), the Kurds, with their peshmerga forces, are trying to make the divorce official. The Iraqi military has been on the move to stop them and now two American-trained and armed militaries face off against each other in that explosive region. The Turks and Iranians similarly eye the effort to secede with considerable wariness in light of Kurdish autonomy movements in their own countries. Syria too, despite the recent military victories of the Russian-backed government in Damascus, remains divided with a _de facto_ Kurdish state of Rojava in its north. And it's not just the Kurds. Libya is in the midst of a civil war. In devastated Yemen, various conflicts continue, all aggravated by an intervention and brutal air campaign sponsored by the Saudis and other Gulf States with the assistance of Washington. And Saudi Arabia and Bahrain face significant Shia challenges within their borders. Elsewhere in the world, too, the center is anything but holding, as things threaten to fall apart. Around Russia, frozen conflicts -- in Ukraine and Georgia -- have paralyzed states that otherwise might make a bid to join the EU or NATO. In China, separatist movements burn on a low flame in Xinjiang and Tibet. The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya is just one of many problems of fragmentation in Myanmar. Secessionist movements are gaining momentum in Cameroon and Nigeria. In Brazil, three southern states are mobilizing to secede from the rest of the country. In the Philippines, a Muslim terror insurgency in southern Mindanao took and held much of a major city for months on end. In the past, secession was all about creating new, smaller nation-states. The most recent wave of division, however, may not stop with the breakdown of states into smaller pieces. THREE GREAT SHATTERINGS Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the consolidation of the French nation in the nineteenth century, for instance, the inhabitants of the country thought of themselves as Bretons, Provençals, Parisians, and the like. Contrary to various founding myths, the nation didn't exist from time immemorial. It had to be conjured into existence -- and for a reason. The nineteenth century witnessed the first great modern shattering as people weaponized the new concept of "nation" and companion notions of ethnic solidarity and popular sovereignty in their struggles against empires. The revolutions of 1825 in Greece and Russia, the 1848 "spring of nations" throughout Europe, the subsequent unification of Germany and Italy -- all were blows against the empires presided over by the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottoman sultans. World War I then dispatched those weakened empires to their graves in one huge conflagration. After the war ended, a Middle East of heterogeneous nation-states and a new group of independent Balkan countries emerged from the defunct Ottoman Empire. Imperial Russia briefly fragmented into dozens of smaller states until the Soviet Union glued them back together by force. The house of the Habsburgs fell and the Central European countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary crawled out from under the wreckage. The second great shattering, which stretched across the middle span of the twentieth century, accompanied the collapse of the colonial empires. The British, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and German overseas colonies all achieved independence, and a new global map of nation-states emerged in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent Latin America where decolonization had largely occurred a century earlier. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in Europe in the early 1990s precipitated the third great shattering. Gone suddenly was the subordination of national priorities to larger ideological structures. The countries of Eastern Europe voted their way out of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia all collapsed with varying degrees of violence and suffering, producing more than 20 new UN members. Further afield, Eritrea, East Timor, and South Sudan were able to secure their independence in part because the end of the Cold War meant that the international community could permit a freer exercise of self-determination. (During the nearly half-century of the Cold War, the only new splinter state welcomed into the United Nations was Bangladesh.) The end of empire, of colonialism, and of the Cold War thrice shattered and remade the map of the world. You could certainly argue that the fracturing taking place today is nothing but the continuation of those three transformations. The Cold War demanded the unity of Europe (and the unity of its component parts), so only in the post-Cold War era could Catalans and Scots explore the option of independence with any hope of success. The emergence of Kurdistan had been made possible by the breakdown of the arbitrary Middle East borders created in the aftermath of World War I, and so on. Historical change isn't ever going to wash over the world in one even wave. That's a hard reality to which North Koreans, who still live in a semi-feudal, putatively Communist, and fiercely nationalist state, can attest. THE FOURTH GREAT SHATTERING Yet the most recent events undoubtedly represent not just a fourth great shattering, but one that falls into a new category entirely. The current divisions in the United States have little to do with empires or possibly even the Cold War. The debates over the EU's viability center on the obligations Europeans have to each other and to those arriving as refugees from distant conflicts. The forces threatening to tear apart nation-states elsewhere suggest that this elemental unit of the international system may be nearing the end of its shelf life. Consider, for instance, the impact of economic globalization. The expansion of trade, investment, and corporate activity has long had the effect of drawing nations together -- into cartels like OPEC, trade communities like the European Union, and international institutions like the International Monetary Fund. By the 1970s, however, economic globalization was eating away at the exclusive prerogative of the nation-state to control trade or national currencies or implement policies regulating the environment, health and safety, and labor. At the same time, particularly in industrialized countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, income inequality increased dramatically. The wealth gap is now worse in the United States than in Iran or the Philippines. Among the top industrialized countries, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the gap between the richest 10% of the population and the poorest 10% has grown appreciably larger. Even among countries where inequality has dropped because of government efforts to redistribute income, the perception has grown that globalization favors the rich, not the poor. Fewer than half of French respondents to a 2016 YouGov poll believed that globalization was a force for good -- even though income inequality has fallen in that country since the 1970s. Having once reduced tensions among countries and strengthened the nation-state, economic globalization increasingly pits peoples against one another within countries and among countries. Other forms of globalization have had a similar effect. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, have connected people in unprecedented ways and provided a mechanism to mobilize against a variety of societal ills, including dictators, trigger-happy police, and sexual harassers. But the other side of the ability to focus organizing efforts within digital affinity groups is the way such platforms Balkanize their users, not by ethnicity as much as by political perspective. Information or opinions challenging one's worldview that once appeared in the newspaper or occasionally on the evening news get weeded out in the Facebook newsfeed or the Twitter stream of one's favorite amplifiers. Ethnic cleansing by decree has been largely overtaken by ideological cleansing by consent. What's the point of making the necessary compromises to function in a diverse nation-state when you can effectively secede from society and hang with your homies in a virtual community? Given the polarizing impact of economic and technological globalization, it's no surprise that the politics of the middle has either disappeared or, because of a weak left, drifted further to the right. Donald Trump is the supreme expression of this stunning loss of faith in centrist politicians as well as such pillars of the institutional center as the mainstream media. Since these figures and institutions delivered an economics of inequality and a foreign policy of war over the last three decades, the flight from the center is certainly understandable. What's new, however, is the way Trump and other right-wing populists have stretched this disaffection, which might ordinarily have powered a new left, to encompass what might be called the three angers: over immigration, the expansion of civil rights, and middle-class entitlement programs. Fueled by a revulsion for the center, Trump is not simply interested in undermining his political opponents and America's adversaries. He has a twin project, promoted for decades by the extreme right, of destroying the federal government and the international community. That's why the fourth great shattering is different. In the past, people opposed empires, colonial powers, and the ideological requirements of the Cold War by banding together in more compact nation-states. They were still willing to sacrifice on behalf of their unknown compatriots -- to redistribute tax revenues or follow rules and regulations -- just on a smaller scale. Nationalism hasn't gone away. Those who want to preserve a unitary state (Spain) as well as those who want out of the same state (Catalonia) appeal to similarly nationalist sentiments. But today, the very notion of acting in solidarity with people in a territorial unit presided over by a state is fast becoming passé. Citizens are in flight from taxes, multiculturalism, public education, and even the guarantee of basic human rights for all. The fourth great shattering seems to be affecting the very bonds that constitute the nation-state, any nation-state, no matter how big or small. THE FUTURE OF DYSTOPIA In 2015, before the Brexit vote and before Donald Trump emerged as the frontrunner in the Republican Party primary, I published an "essay" at TomDispatch in which a geo-paleontologist (a field I made up) looked backward from 2050 at the splintering of the international community. "The movements that came to the fore in 2015 championed a historic turn inward: the erection of walls, the enforcement of homogeneity, and the trumpeting of exclusively national virtues," he observed with the benefit of history I hadn't yet experienced. "The fracturing of the so-called international community did not happen with one momentous crack. Rather, it proceeded much like the calving of Arctic ice masses under the pressure of global warming, leaving behind only a herd of modest ice floes." That piece later became my dystopian novel, _Splinterlands_, which spelled out in more detail how I imagined those fracture lines would widen over time until geopolitics became micro-politics and only the very smallest units of community were able to weather the global storm (including, of course, the literal storm of climate change). Dystopian novels are supposed to be warnings, but let me assure you of this: dystopian novelists rarely want their predictions to come true. I've watched, horrified, as the words of _Splinterlands_ seemed to leap off my pages and into the world in 2017. I'm no Cassandra. I don't believe that this fourth great shattering is inevitable. Empires, colonialism, and the Cold War are largely things of the past. But the fracturing of that hitherto indivisible unit of the world community -- the nation-state -- could still be arrested. It's not particularly popular to defend the state these days in the United States. Even before Trump came to power, the American state was radically expanding its surveillance capabilities, its war-making capacities, and -- among other grim developments -- its punitive policies toward the poor. No surprise then that Trump's promise to deconstruct the federal government struck such a chord among voters, even some on the left. But the alternative to the current state should not be the non-state. The real alternative is a _different_ state, one that is more democratic, more economically just and sustainable, and less aggressive. For all of its institutional violence and bureaucratic flaws, the state is still the best bet we have for protecting the environment, stretching out a safety net for all, and providing equitable education opportunities to everyone, not to mention its ability to band together with other states to tackle global problems like climate change and pandemics. French king Louis XIV famously said, "_L'etat, c'est moi_." Today, thanks to the first three shatterings, across much of the globe the state is no longer Louis XIV or a colonial administration or a superpower overlord. The state is -- or at least should be -- us. If we lose the state in a fourth great shattering, we will lose an important part of ourselves as well: our very humanity.
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[Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall]AP Photo * MANY PITHY, MEMORABLE FAMOUS LAST WORDS ARE POSTHUMOUS FICTION. * CONFLICTING HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS AND SPARSE WITNESSES MAKE THEM HARD TO VERIFY. * THE REALITY OF FAMOUS FIGURES' DEATHS TENDS TO BE MORE SOBERING. ------------------------- Don't trust everything you read on the internet — especially when it comes to historical quotes. And that goes triple for famous last words. Final words are often notoriously difficult to verify. There are fabrications that are just completely made up for one reason or another. Then there are exaggerations — sayings twisted into more quotable turns of phrase or modern vernacular or authentic quotes said long before the individual ended up on their deathbed. Lastly, there are some plausible sayings that are simply impossible to confirm either way, because they happened too long ago or in front of people with an agenda. With that in mind, here's a roundup of some famous last words floating around there that are almost certainly somewhat inaccurate: 'ET TU, BRUTE?' — JULIUS CAESAR, ROMAN DICTATOR AND GENERAL Anaele Pelisson/Business Insider "Et tu, Brute?" is likely one of the most widely remembered and quoted Latin phrases out there, thanks to William Shakespeare's dramatic retelling of the Roman strongman's life. The words conjure up a stirring image — a powerful politician realizing he's betrayed — and stabbed — by a beloved adopted son. However, Roman biographer Suetonius claimed the man's last words might have been even sadder. He reports Caesar possibly said, "You too, my child?" in Greek, before succumbing to his injuries, according to Livius.org. Suetonius himself, however, believed it was more likely Caesar had died without saying a word. 'EITHER THIS WALLPAPER GOES OR I DO.' — OSCAR WILDE, IRISH PLAYWRIGHT Anaele Pelisson/Business Insider No, Oscar Wilde didn't leave this world complaining about tacky interior design choices. Records indicate the famously witty Wilde did once utter a similar phrase: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go." However, according to the book "Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years," he said this to a visiting friend a few weeks before he passed away in Paris in 1854. 'I SHOULD NEVER HAVE SWITCHED FROM SCOTCH TO MARTINIS.' — HUMPHREY BOGART, ACTOR Anaele Pelisson/Business Insider The Hollywood star didn't die mulling over his preferred drink when he passed in 1957. According to the blog Phrases.org, the quip about the martinis actually might come from a 1975 novel called "What Are the Bugles Blowing For?" In reality, according to his wife Lauren Bacall, his final words before slipping into a coma were, "Goodbye, kid. Hurry back." SEE THE REST OF THE STORY AT BUSINESS INSIDER
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“The alternative is a gigantic dystopia, because the way we are moving today is creating nothing but hopelessness and despair and a shrinking middle class.” Those aren’t the words of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. They’re from someone who watched ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.vox.com |
Athens, Oct 24 (IANS) The Olympic flame for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics was lit on Tuesday in the ruins of ancient Olympia during a traditional ceremony ahead of its crossing through Greece before being transported to South Korea. Rain prevented ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT in.news.yahoo.com |
She then passed the flame to the first relay runner, GREEK skier Apostolos Angelis, who ran with it for a short distance before handing over to former ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.syracuse.com |
The already poor conditions under which thousands of refugees and migrants live on the GREEK Aegean islands have significantly deteriorated over ...
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More than a dozen organizations assisting with various refugee initiatives in Greece have sent an open letter to GREEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.pappaspost.com |
Turkish authorities obtained information that 995 Turks have applied for asylum in Greece after last year’s coup attempt, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Oct. 24. “We don’t want Greece to become a safe haven for FETÖ [Fetullahist ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.hurriyetdailynews.com |
WASHINGTON and ATHENS, Greece, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Distinguished Leaders from across the globe were recognized at the 21st Global Goddess Artemis Award Ceremony held at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The program was under the ...
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Turkey doesn't want GREECE to become a refuge for members of FETO, the terrorist group behind last year's defeated coup attempt in Turkey, the ...
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The sale follows on from a successful €750m covered bond issue from National Bank of GREECE earlier this month, which brought in over €2bn of ...
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Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said yesterday Turkey does not want GREECE to be an asylum for Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) fugitives, citing that ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.dailysabah.com |
Athens—Lt. General Mark Schwartz, the Commander of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR), recently visited GREECE. During his brief ...
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The tzatziki at fast-casual Kairos Greek Kitchenwins overCharleston City Paper critic Vanessa Wolf. “Thick and garlicky, with thin strands of cucumber and dill, it's excellent and should be ladled upon everything,” she says, before knocking the poultry ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.msn.com |
MILWAUKEE – For four years, John Henson has looked across the locker room at Giannis Antetokounmpo. He remembers the skinny, 6-foot-9, 196-pound teenager who began his NBA career with little fanfare. And he marvels at the rock-solid, 6-11, 222-pound ...
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ANCIENT OLYMPIA, GREECE (Reuters) - The torch for the Pyeongchang 2018 winter Olympics was lit in ancient Olympia on Tuesday using the backup ...
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A BRITISH passenger couldn't believe her luck after paying £46 for a flight to GREECE - and getting all 189 seats to herself. Chuffed author Karon ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thesun.co.uk |
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu warned GREECE on Tuesday that Ankara didn't want it to become a "safe haven" for FETÖ terrorists who ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.yenisafak.com |
The recent meetings of the Holy Eparchial Synod and the Archdiocesan Council of the Greek-Orthodox Archdiocese of America mainly proved three things: first, that the […] The post Analysis: All are Responsible appeared first on The National Herald.
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NEW YORK – The Department of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical & Interfaith Relations of the GREEK Orthodox Archdiocese of America is pleased to ...
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