How the world sees Greece
While Cyprus’s President spent today in Brussels in last-ditch talks to stave off a banking collapse and secure a €10bn (£8.5bn) bailout, many Greek Cypriots were reassessing their ties with the eurozone.
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 CityNews | Campbell Residents Celebrates Greek Independence with Parade WKBN/WYFX-TV On Sunday, for the first time in nearly 40 years, Greek Americans in Campbell celebrated Greece's Independence Day. Hundreds of people did their part to resurrect the tradition: wearing traditional Greek clothing, carrying icons, and waving Greek flags ... Greek National Day Thousands turn out for Greek Independence Day parade Thousands celebrate Greek Independence |
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Greek National Day US Department of State (press release) Ancient Greeks forged the initial principles of democracy, the ideals that form the basis of our own system of government. In honoring the founding of the Hellenic Republic, we recognize the positive legacy of governance for the people and by the ... |
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CityNews | Thousands turn out for Greek Independence Day parade CityNews Thousands turn out for Greek Independence Day parade. 03/24/2013 09:38 AM 680News staff. Tweet · Share. Children take part in the Greek Independence Day Parade on the Danforth in Toronto on March 29, 2009. CITYNEWS. Close. Expand ... Thousands celebrate Greek Independence Greek Independence Day parade takes over the Danforth Sunday Greek Freedom Marked In Sydney, Melbourne |
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Archbishop Chrysostomos II says single currency will not last and appeals to Russian investors not to flee the island
The powerful head of the Orthodox church in Cyprus recommended his country prepare to abandon the euro as talks on an EU bailout came down to the wire.
Archbishop Chrysostomos II endorsed the position, increasingly popular inside Cyprus, alongside an appeal to Russian investors to continue banking with the island despite the threat of a government raid on their deposits.
"The euro cannot last," Chrysostomos told Realnews, a Greek newspaper. "I'm not saying that it will crumble tomorrow, but with the brains that they have in Brussels, it is certain that it will not last in the long term, and the best is to think about how to escape it.
"It's not easy, but we should devote as much time to this as was spent on entering the eurozone."
Anger with the European Union has been steadily growing as Cypriots blame Brussels for failing to agree the bailout needed to save the country from financial collapse.
The archbishop's comments carry considerable weight on the island, and not just because of his religious position. More than just a spiritual haven for Cypriots, the Orthodox church is the country's biggest landowner and a major investor in everything from hotels and construction to a brewery. It also holds a majority stake in Hellenic Bank, Cyprus's third biggest.
Last week, the church said it was prepared to mortgage its properties in order to contribute to saving the island's struggling economy.
Chrysostomos said in a second interview, published on Sunday, that he would appeal to rich Russian investors not to flee the island. A proposed levy on accounts over €100,000, designed to contribute to underpinning of a tranche of the bailout worth €5.8bn (£4.95bn), would hit foreign investors particularly hard. Russians are believed to hold nearly half of all deposits in Cypriot banks.
An estimated 50,000 Russians live on the island, taking advantage of its favourable financial infrastructure as well as close cultural ties between the two countries. Most people in Russia and Cyprus are Orthodox believers.
Chrysostomos said he would host a dinner on Thursday for the heads of Russian businesses active in Cyprus in an effort to convince them to remain on the island despite the growing uncertainty, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported on Sunday. "He went on to say that Cypriot people have got used to living comfortably, and should now learn to live on tighter budgets as well," the newspaper reported.
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From a Black Greek's View: A Note on Greek (Dis)unity Cistern Yard The air is electric. A distinctly African-American crowd forms in Cougar Mall while indistinct hollering and calling fills the night. Four guys stand in the middle of it all; they match each other, all wearing bright blue and white clothing with very ... |
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Holocaust commemoration marks shift for Greek Jews in fight against neo-Nazis Jewish Telegraphic Agency THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) -- Antonis Samaras stood in the pale morning light coming through the stained glass windows of the only Thessaloniki synagogue to survive World War II and vowed, “Never again.” For Greek Jews marking the 70th anniversary ... |
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 Jakarta Globe | Greek Cypriots show faith in church to save island Jakarta Globe Greek Cypriots flocked to Sunday mass hoping the island's powerful Orthodox Church, with assets worth hundreds of millions of euros, can help pull it out of its worst economic crisis in decades. "If they want to, the church can save Cyprus," said Panos ... |
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Failure to rescue the US bank will be borne in mind, but the European precedent to current woes is also worth consideration
One Sunday in September 2008, the world waited for the expected rescue of Lehman Brothers by the US Treasury. It didn't happen. When no buyer could be found, the plug was pulled on the investment bank. The assumption that Lehman was too small to matter proved wrong – disastrously wrong.
Unless Europe wishes to compound the follies of the past week, the Lehman precedent will surely be borne in mind at the talks on Sunday to piece together a bailout for Cyprus – the fifth in the eurozone in less than three years. Those who say the monetary union has been a success must have an interesting definition of failure.
The Cypriot storm came as a shock to Europe's policy elite. The assumption has been growing for the past few months that the crisis was over, which was true to the extent that the existential threat to the euro has greatly diminished. Financial markets were soothed by the pledge by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), to do "whatever it takes" to safeguard the euro, but life was not really returning to normal.
The rest of the eurozone knew Cyprus was festering away, but considered the country too inconsequential to worry much about. Meanwhile, complacency set in and there was no longer the urgency to make rapid progress on the economic and political integration necessary to underpin monetary union. Europe lapsed back into its default mode: muddling through. That was a mistake, because the problems of a country that accounts for just 0.2% of eurozone GDP have highlighted two structural weaknesses of the monetary union.
Firstly, it contains far too many countries that should not really be in the club, and were allowed in only because politics was permitted to trump economics.
The fact that Cyprus was an offshore tax haven was ignored, just as a blind eye was turned to Greece's lack of competitiveness and Italy's high level of public debt. This lack of cohesion can no longer be overlooked, and making the euro work will require a far greater centralisation of power. In reality, that means countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and indeed Cyprus taking orders from Germany, and accepting they have the status of regions rather than sovereign states.
This would be hard to stomach for these proud nations, even in good times. The fact that these are seriously bad times for Europe is the second big problem facing the single currency, because while finance ministers and central ministers have been preening themselves on "ending" the threat to the monetary union, the crisis was clearly not over for those eurozone citizens affected by slow growth, rising unemployment and painful austerity programmes. This meant most of them, since the weakness that started on the euro's fringes has since spread to the core nations. France is in a poor state, as is the Netherlands, and even Germany is starting to suffer.
Predictably, comparisons are being made between Europe today and Japan 20 years ago. Europe does indeed seem to share some of Japan's traits: an ageing population, a dysfunctional financial system and an inability to grow. The history of the past 150 years shows that most recessions are over within a year and few last longer than two.
Europe's downturn is five years old and shows no immediate sign of ending. Nor, unlike in the US and the UK, is there any sense of the ECB taking any policy initiatives that might boost growth. As David Owen, an economist at Jefferies investment bank, noted last week there have been few examples of recessionary conditions becoming ingrained, but Europe seems to be one of the special cases.
There is a European precedent for the current crisis, although it is not one the continent likes to be recall. A paper called Till Debt Do Us Part, by Bob Swarup and Dario Perkins of Lombard Street research, says there are direct parallels between Europe now and Europe in the 1920s, only with the roles reversed. Today it is Germany that is imposing austerity on the weak countries on the euro's periphery, at a time when they have no easy way out due to their membership of a fixed exchange-rate system.
Back in the 1920s, Germany was in a similar position to the Mediterranean countries today. It had financed the first world war through excessive borrowing and was then forced to pay reparations by the allies, with France in particular insisting on draconian conditions. Membership of the Gold Standard meant there was no escape.
When the Wall Street crash struck in October 1929, the dogged determination of Germany – fresh from the hyperinflation of 1923 – to stay on the Gold Standard meant it felt the full blast of the deflationary storm coming out of the US.
Swarup and Perkins note: "The German government, bowing to international pressure, haunted by fears of hyperinflation and facing reparations linked to gold, refused to either default on its debt or devalue its currency by suspending membership of the Gold Standard. Instead it adopted brutal austerity policies, much like those it is now forcing on the Mediterranean countries.
"This compounded the country's economic misery and sent unemployment surging higher. It pushed the economy into what today we might call a Greek-style austerity/depression trap."
A straight read across from the interwar years to 2013 is too simplistic. Europe's population is older and welfare provision more extensive, even in the countries where austerity is biting hardest. Slow to act it may be, but the ECB is there to ensure financial stability across the eurozone.
Even so, the growing popularity of antiestablishment parties is a warning. The same toxic mix of economic hardship, political impotence and resentment at outside interference that was evident in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s is again present.
Swarup and Perkins rightly warn it is vital that the economic lessons of the 1930s are remembered. There will need to be debt relief rather than restructuring, a realisation that aggressive fiscal austerity is a mistake when exchange rates are fixed, and a much more activist approach by the ECB to provide a growth stimulus.
The longer the depression lasts the stronger extremist forces will become and the greater the risk that one or more countries will decide to leave the single currency because they cannot tolerate the economic distress, the social unrest and the political instability. Germany, of all nations, should understand this.
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 Kathimerini | Piraeus Bank also in talks to buy Greek units of Cyprus's Hellenic, reports say Kathimerini Talks in Athens are underway with regard to the absorption of Hellenic Bank, the smallest of three Cypriot lenders with branches in Greece, by Piraeus Bank, according to the Cyprus News Agency. On Friday, the Greek Finance Ministry had announced that ... |
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 DigitalJournal.com | Gunmen attack Greek prison, 11 inmates in dramatic escape DigitalJournal.com This was the third dramatic escape attempt within the last month from overstretched Greek prisons, but the first successful one. In February convicted murderer and gang boss Panagiotis Vlastos was foiled in a helicopter escape bid from the same prison ... 11 escape in attack on Greek prison 11 inmates escape from Greek prison Greek prison break: Grenade and rifle assault leaves 2 wounded, 11 prisoners ... |
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 Yahoo!7 News | Thousands celebrate Greek Independence Yahoo!7 News Politicians and prominent Greek Australians have joined with thousands in a central Sydney park to celebrate Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, environment minister Tony Burke, opposition immigration spokesman ... Greek Community, County Mark 192nd Year of Greece's Independence Church celebrates Greek independence Hellenic Civic Club Celebrates Greek Independence Day |
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 RT | 11 escape in attack on Greek prison HeraldNet TRIKALA, Greece -- At least 11 inmates escaped from a Greek prison Friday night after gunmen brazenly attacked the site with grenades and automatic weapons, kicking off a nightlong standoff between police and prisoners. Two guards were injured, one of ... 11 inmates escape from Greek prison Greek prison break: Grenade and rifle assault leaves 2 wounded, 11 prisoners ... Greek inmates missing after gunmen storm jail |
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Khalifa, VP congratulate Greece's president on I-Day Gulf Today ABU DHABI: President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has sent a congratulatory cable to the President of the Greece Republic, Karolos Papoulias, on the occasion of his country's Independence Day. The UAE Vice President and Prime ... |
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Milk bars and rock music: Living the American dream in a Greek cafe The Age Early Greek migrants introduced Australians to American food well before they felt confident enough to treat them to their home-cooked moussaka. They opened cafes with names such as the Paragon, Olympia and Parthenon, serving US and British cuisine. |
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Greek community salutes 'The Bear' The Sun George Zaharoolis, second from right, accepts a plaque naming him the Greek Independence Day Man of the Year. Presenting the award are, from left, Olivia Sintros, of the Merrimack Valley Council of Eastern Orthodox Parishes, and George Christopulos, ... |
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New edition of author's work reveals him as a talented war poet who attacked British imperialism
DH Lawrence was an infamous victim of the censor as his sexually explicit novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in Britain until 1960. Now a new edition of Lawrence's poems, many rendered unreadable by the censor's pen, will reveal him as a brilliant war poet whose work attacking British imperialism during the first world war was barred from publication.
His poems took aim at politicians, the brutality of the first world war and English repression – but censorship and sloppy editing rendered them virtually meaningless, to the extent that the full extent of his poetic talent has been overlooked.
Deleted passages have now been restored and hundreds of punctuation errors removed for a major two-volume edition to be published on 28 March by Cambridge University Press – the final part of its mammoth 40-volume edition of Lawrence's Letters and Works.
The Poems, the first critical edition of Lawrence's poetry, sheds new light on the miner's son who became one of the 20th century's most influential writers, with novels such as Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love.
The new volume's editor, Christopher Pollnitz, told the Observer that it "radically shifts our understanding of Lawrence's significance as a poet". What was removed from the poems – by state censors or publishers fearing government intervention – was the "ultimate censorship", he said, because extensive and significant cuts made the texts virtually unreadable.
Lawrence wrote poetry from 1905 until his death in 1930, aged 44. Pollnitz said it is widely assumed that only the novels suffered censorship, "but it goes all through the poetry as well".
Some 860 poems are published in the new edition. They include All of Us, a sequence of 31 war poems never fully published before, which reveal Lawrence's preoccupation with the Allies' campaigns in the first world war.
Between 1916 and 1919, Lawrence struggled to get the sequence into print. Pollnitz said publishers who knew of the banning of The Rainbow would not touch a collection that criticised imperial policy – the opening up of eastern fronts in Turkey or Iraq – and poetry that explored the evil of self-sacrifice for some abstract greater good.
Lines now restored identify places such as Salonika and Mesopotamia – explosive references at the time, Pollnitz said. "While the war was continuing, the worst defeat the British suffered was in Mesopotamia … General Townshend's charge up the Tigris towards Baghdad was one of the most costly and wasteful ventures, in lives and money, of the first world war."
The subtitle Salonika appears in Rose, Look out upon Me, a previously unpublished work. Pollnitz said: "Salonika was the Greek city to which Allied troops were sent after the attempt to storm the Dardanelles failed."
In the poem, Lawrence portrayed a common English soldier, stationed in Salonika, who is attracted to a Greek woman, but it is a doomed passion: "Oh you Rose, look out/ On a miserable weary fellow./ For once she looked down from above/ And vanished again like a swallow/ That appears at a window …"
Lawrence also wrote about the home front, and the changing roles of women – a girl startling her boyfriend by asking him to stay with her before he leaves – and how childhood innocence can be wrecked by the stresses of war.
Pollnitz added: "Lawrence's writing on war and sex were censored by publisher timidity, making All of Us unpublishable at the time, and the sequence is being fully published almost 100 years after its wartime composition."
Ill-health meant Lawrence himself was never conscripted. His insight into the war probably came from his pacifist friend, Lady Cynthia Asquith, daughter-in-law of prime minister Herbert Asquith. While war poets such as Wilfred Owen depicted the cruelty of a bloody battlefield, Lawrence tackled the loss of lives and impact on loved ones from a political point of view. He also had to write with more subtlety because censors were already watching him. In a poem titled Dust, he wrote of a relative's horrible death: "My brother died in the heat/ And a jackal found his grave;/ Nibbled his fingers, the knave;/ No more would I let him eat."
In Antiphony, he wrote of a British prisoner of war in Turkey struggling to cope with captivity Р"Each evening, bitter again" Рand, in Needless Worry, he explored a young woman's loss of her soldier fianc̩, talking to her mother: "Why are you so anxious, there's no fear now he's dead."
In The Well of Kilossa, he referred to the war in German east Africa and the huge loss of lives in inhospitable terrain: "A draught of thee is strength to a soul in hell."
The poetry edition is published a century after 10,000 words were censored from Sons and Lovers, and nearly all copies of The Rainbow destroyed, with a sexual episode between Ursula Brangwen and her schoolmistress among offending passages. His sexually explicit 1928 novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, became a cause c̩l̬bre in 1960 when, after a much-publicised trial, Penguin won the right to publish the complete book Рa dramatic step towards securing freedom of the written word.
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Menzies studying abroad in Greece The Sun The program in Greece offers an in-depth introduction to the rich legacy of ancient cultures in the Aegean world. Menzies and her classmates will go on explorations in art and archaeology, taking them from Minoan palaces and Classical temples to ... |
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The week in football: Public money, social change, the week's best ambush plus a 'two-bob servant of Satan'
Greg Dyke: hired by the FA to rebuild their fractured relationship with Fifa's top executives - three years after he gave his view on the football family: "Football is the only business where you can be a crook, everyone knows you're a crook, and you can carry on working."
• Dyke's first test: winning formal ratification as FA chairman from the 118 members of the FA Council. In 1998 he publicly ruled out taking the FA job for one key reason: "I can't think of a worse job, the way the FA is structured … If ever there was an organisation where lots of men in blue blazers needed to fall on their swords …"
Theme of the week: football's relationship with public money:
• Club of the week: AEK Athens, facing action over £145m in unpaid taxes, with arrest warrants issued for "all AEK presidents from 2004 to 2012".
• Deal of the week: West Ham's £15m up-front contribution to the £150m cost of converting the Olympic Stadium – £2m less than it would cost them to sign Andy Carroll.
• Result of the week: Fifa's £58m tax-free profit for 2012 – taking their reserve fund to more than £905m. Fifa say the positive financial result allowed "key management personnel" to share £22m in wages.
Last week's other headlines from Zurich:
1) Diversity news: Alexandra Wrage, a member of Fifa's ethics reform group, on her experience of the organisation's desire to modernise: "I was told very directly that a woman applying for one of the two top jobs on the ethics commission is not acceptable."
2) Quote of the week: Sepp, discussing the nature of democracy when asked about the number of senior football family figures who win their elections unopposed. "Perhaps an election should have different candidates … [but] I think it is also a question of stability – and of the personality of whoever heads the organisation."
Last week's manager news:
• Brazil, 20 March: Vasco director René Simões addressing growing public pressure on coach Gaúcho. "Let's just be calm and relaxed about this. You need to allow time for a job to be done well, so let's be cool." 21 March: Sacks him.
• Romania: Sportul appointing a new manager after players protested about a "lack of direction". Squad member Daniel Novac told reporters about Ionut Voicu's arrival: "When we asked him what we should do, he said 'Keep doing what you've been doing.' We told him we've been doing nothing. 'Well, keep doing that.'"
£37m: Amount Barclays have put into their grassroots sport scheme to "create social change" since 2004. £39m: Amount they handed to nine senior staff last week in shares.
Helping address ethnic tensions ahead of last Friday's Croatia v Serbia game: Dinamo Zagreb owner Zdravko Mamic – paying tribute to Croatia's sports minister, an ethnic Serb: "Jovanovic is an insult to the Croatian brain. When he looks at you, blood squirts from his eyes. Looking at his smile, one can only see fangs ready for slaughter."
• The Croatian crowd's view on ethnic tolerance, as chanted during the game: "Kill, kill, kill a Serb."
Chechen president, warlord and ex-Terek Grozny owner Ramzan Kadyrov – fined £4,200 for calling a referee who ran Terek's game against Rubin Kazan a "biased donkey" with no sense of fair play.
Italy: Vibonese's Franco Da Dalt, sent off for a second yellow card, then ambushed as he walked into the players' tunnel by the opposition manager. Local media described how Cosenza manager Gianluca Gagliardi "lurked" in the tunnel after his own earlier dismissal, then "pounced on Da Dalt with a slap. It led to a brawl with stewards."
Qatar: Al Gharafa's Nene, issuing a statement after footage of him smacking an Al Arabi player went viral. "I apologise to both clubs, to the public, to all who I shocked with my deeply uncharacteristic act. I was not in a good mood."
Romania: Fringe politician Anca Carcu, reacting to Gigi Becali calling her a "two-bob servant of Satan" after she offered to "show the Steaua boys my boobs if they win in Europe". Carcu: "He called me all sorts on live television, so I'll sue him. It's not about publicity. I just want respect."
Argentina: Model Vitto Saravia says her time in football has been a "source of great pride". "I've had three footballer boyfriends, but I've never taken advantage. I didn't get any of them to give me a car or a house. I'm not like other models."
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