How the world sees Greece
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) --A former treasurer with the St. George Greek Orthodox Church will serve a 10-year sentence for stealing more than $400,000 from the church. Under the terms of Constantine Dimitri Christodoulou's guilty plea deal, he will serve one ...
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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is looking for a change in the European Union member-state’s approach to the challenges the union faces. In an article he penned on the Project Syndicate on the need for European solidarity and ...
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The European Union should establish a new frontier on the northern border of Greece because an agreement with Turkey would not suffice to stop the massive inflow of migrants coming to Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.
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Hungarian prime minister calls for fences to be built on Greece's northern border to stem flow of refugees
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Politicians crying in public always make the headlines – and the tears shed recently by US president Barack Obama have triggered a new round of debate about whether it is acceptable for public figures – particularly male public figures – to express their emotions so openly. Most of us will remember the picture of the tearful Mrs Thatcher as she was driven away from Downing Street after being toppled by her colleagues. Over the last generation it has become more acceptable for rulers – monarchs, presidents, prime ministers – to show their emotions in public. After the Madrid train bombings we saw the king of Spain in tears at the commemoration service. But in most cases, these tears have been shed in the immediate aftermath of a national or personal disaster – and what is unusual about Obama’s tears is that they were triggered by the recollection of tragedies in the recent and not so recent past, and his frustration at being unable to tackle the problem in the face of a hostile congress and powerful gun lobby. The “stiff upper lip” is clearly now a thing of the past. Sports stars and film and TV actors repeatedly shed public tears at moments of triumph or disaster, and the public more often responds now with sympathy than disapproval. In politics the public mood is more ambivalent. Most of the MPs defeated at the last election tried to maintain a dry-eyed dignity – and when Jeremy Corbyn’s victory was announced after the Labour Party’s leadership battle, his rivals all felt obliged to smile and attempt to look pleased for him. We know now that this approach is not a timeless feature of British culture. Thomas Dixon’s fascinating new book, Weeping Britannia, argues that the “stiff upper lip” was no more than an aberration of the early and mid-20th century, a view taken up by Ben Macintyre in The Times. But it might be better to see a pattern of cultural cycles across the generations, with the cultural pendulum swinging to and fro between the rival virtues of self-control and emotional honesty. JESUS WEPT (AND SO DID OLIVER CROMWELL) The Bible is full of crying men, and tears are plentiful among the Greek heroes such as Achilles in the Iliad. In medieval Europe the elite felt little obligation to conceal their emotions and that continued as late as the reign of Henry VIII, when we find his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, repeatedly weeping in public without embarrassment after his fall from power. The Renaissance ushered in a different set of attitudes. In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the influence of Stoic and other classical authors, it became essential for elite men to command their emotions, especially in public. Civility and decorum demanded self-control, even in the most distressing circumstances – if a man could not govern himself, how could he be capable of governing others? This new culture applied primarily to aristocrats and gentlemen; those without education or “breeding” were not expected to possess such self-control. Religious tears became increasingly associated with Puritans and later the Nonconformists – Oliver Cromwell was notorious for his readiness to cry in public. As a result, the idea of a man crying became far less acceptable to royalists and Anglicans, who came to associate spiritual tears with fanaticism and hypocrisy. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY The mid-18th century witnessed another reversal. The Methodists revived much of the emotional fervour of the Puritans, while a new culture of “sensibility” made tears acceptable among sections of the elite as a sign of refinement. The novelist Laurence Sterne reflected this culture in works such as A Sentimental Journey and it reached its apogee in Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). This featured a gentle, sensitive hero who melts into tears at every sad story he hears. The novel enjoyed huge success, even among such unlikely readers as the economist Adam Smith. We think today of the Victorian period as the high point of emotional repression and the brutal discipline of the public schools was explicitly designed to instil such behavioural values. But even in the Victorian period there was a countervailing strand present in the sentimentality of Dickens’s novels – and the emotional flavour of his public readings exemplified this (remember the outpouring of public grief at the death of Little Nell). Paul Gascoigne shed tears when he talked of his alcohol-related depresion. Owen Humphreys/PA A generation ago the tears of England’s first crying footballer Gazza (Paul Gascoigne) created a media sensation, but today footballers’ tears pass almost unnoticed and it’s a similar story in other sports; pictures of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer shedding tears at a Wimbledon final no longer attract surprise or disapproval. LOOKING FOR ONIONS But as far as US politics is concerned, the precedents should be a concern for Obama. In 1972 the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Ed Muskie, found his political career destroyed overnight after he shed tears at a press conference responding to personal attacks on his wife. His annihilation was one of Nixon’s “dirty tricks”, and a pundit remarked: “There is no crying in presidential politics.” The conservative reaction was as you might expect: Fox News' Andrea Tantaros said she would “check the podium for onions” because she felt Obama’s reaction was “not really believable”, while co-host Meghan McCane dismissed it as “bad political theatre”. So it seems highly unlikely that the president’s tears will change public opinion in the US. More likely, opponents will brand them a sign of weakness or hypocrisy, which is how opponents have dismissed the tears of public figures down the centuries. [The Conversation] _Bernard Capp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above._
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[greece protest iran shiite nimr]Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Photo Iranians held mass protests Friday across the Islamic Republic, angered by Saudi Arabia's execution of a Shi'ite cleric that has enflamed regional tensions between the Mideast rivals. The crisis has seen Saudi Arabia sever ties with Iran after crowds of protesters in Iran attacked two of its diplomatic posts. Those assaults came after Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Shi'ite cleric, on Jan. 2. After Friday prayers in Tehran, thousands of worshippers joined the rally, carrying pictures of al-Nimr and chanting "Death to Al Saud," referencing the kingdom's royal family. They also chanted "Down with the U.S." and "Death to Israel," traditional Iranian slogans at protests. The rally in Tehran lasted some 40 minutes and took place in an outdoor space at the Mosalla Mosque, the main site for Friday prayers in Tehran. Iranian state media reported similar protests taking place in other Iranian cities and towns. In Bahrain, more protests were planned Friday, while Shi'ites across the greater Mideast have rallied throughout the week over al-Nimr's execution. The protests come after Iran claimed Thursday that a Saudi-led airstrike the previous night had hit the Iranian Embassy in Sanaa, citing Iran's Foreign Ministry. However, an Associated Press reporter who reached the site just after the announcement saw no damage to the building, which sits in a neighborhood near a presidential palace that's seen many previous strikes. [Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr during a protest against his execution in Saudi Arabia, in Basra, January 6, 2016. REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani]Thanassis Stavrakis/AP PhotoIran vowed to file a report about their claim to the United Nations, while the Saudi military issued a statement through the kingdom's state news agency, dismissing the allegation as false. In eastern Saudi Arabia, the home of al-Nimr and much of the kingdom's roughly 10 to 15 percent Shi'ite population, Shi'ites held a memorial service for the cleric Thursday night. It wasn't a funeral, as the sheikh's brother has said Saudi authorities had already buried his body in an undisclosed cemetery. The service ended peacefully, despite gunfire echoing in the night in the region over the last week. On Friday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said that a man complained of being kidnapped at gunpoint by a gang and beaten in eastern Saudi Arabia. It quoted police as saying an investigation was ongoing. _(Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Reem Khalifa in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this report.)_
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[crowd]Getty Images/Oli Scarff OSLO (Reuters) — The indelible imprint left by human beings on Earth has become so clear that it justifies naming a new geological epoch after mankind, experts said on Thursday. The dawn of the "Anthropocene" would signal the end of the Holocene epoch, considered to have begun 11,700 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. The new term, suggested in 2000, is based on the Greek word "anthropos", meaning "man". “Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth,” said a report in the journal Science by an international team led by Colin Waters of the British Geological Survey. “We are becoming a geological agent in ourselves,” Waters told Reuters. The start date could be around the mid-20th century, the authors wrote. They said the atomic age, starting with a bomb test in New Mexico in the United States on July 16, 1945, and the post-war leap in mining, industry, farming and use of manmade materials such as concrete or plastics all left geological traces. Concrete, invented by the Romans, was now so ubiquitous that it would amount to one kg (2.2 lbs) for every square meter (11 sq feet) of the planet's surface if spread out evenly, they said. Any formal recommendation to adopt the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch would require years of extra research, partly to pin down a start date, Waters said. Some experts reckon the Anthropocene began with Europe's Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Others would give it a more widespread origin, dating it from the spread of agriculture several thousand years ago. "Any definition will inform the stories that we tell about human development," said Professor Simon Lewis of University College London, who was not involved in the study. He favors 1610 as a start date, marking the spread of colonialism, disease and trade to the Americas from Europe. Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, a co-author of the study released on Thursday, said pinning down the Anthropocene would transform understanding of humanity's role on the planet. He said it was a "challenge no smaller than a second Copernican revolution". In the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus helped show the Earth rotates around the sun. NOW WATCH: Animated map shows all the major oil and gas pipelines in the US
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