How the world sees Greece
 International Business Times | Greece On The Auction Block: Country Seeks Bidders For Sale Of Its Railroad ... International Business Times A passenger feeds a cat at Domokos railway station, central Greece Nov. 29, 2012. Once an unpopular travel option, Greece's slow and creaky trains are winning new fans for the first time in decades as Greeks struggling with soaring fuel prices and high ... |
 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ibtimes.com |
Classic Home & Garden to open store in Greece Rochester Business Journal Classic Home & Garden, a specialty retailer of pre-owned, vintage and handcrafted home items, plans to open its first retail store in Greece on April 13. The store is to be located at 2854 Dewey Ave. Officials said the store will sell discounted high ... Classic Home & Garden to open first store in Rochester area |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.rbj.net |
 Raw Story | Greece to begin privatizing rail system in June Raw Story Greece will in June launch a tender to privatise the national rail operator Trainose, officials said on Monday, with the aim of finding a buyer by early 2014 to keep international credits flowing. “The privatisation of Trainose is now on track ... Greece aims to start privatization of railway network within next three months Greece starts railway company privatization procedure |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.rawstory.com |
Archaeologists have discovered a "trove" of neanderthal bones in Greece io9 In an interview with LiveScience's Charles Choi, paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati explains that Greece is a prime location for investigating the dispersal of early modern humans and earlier hominins – like neanderthals – throughout Europe ... Trove of Neanderthal fossils found in Greek cave Neanderthal fossils disocvered in cave shed light on Greek prehistory |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT io9.com |
Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to expand 'wherever there are Greeks'
Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to "create cells in every corner of the world". The extremist group, which forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.
The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn entrenching its position as Greece's third, and fastest growing, political force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by polling company Public Issue.
The group – whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to give Nazi salutes – has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as the only force willing to take on the "rotten establishment". Amid rumours of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party offices across Greece.
It is also concentrating on spreading internationally, with news last month that it had opened an office in Germany and planned to set up branches in Australia. The party's spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, said it had decided to establish cells "wherever there are Greeks".
"People have understood that Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] tells the truth," he told a Greek-language paper in Melbourne. "In our immediate sights and aims is the creation of an office and local organisation in Melbourne. In fact, very soon a visit of MPs to Australia is planned."
But the campaign has met with disgust and derision by many prominent members of the Greek diaspora who represent communities in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
"We don't see any gold in Golden Dawn," said Father Alex Karloutsos, one of America's leading Greek community figures, in Southampton, New York. "Nationalism, fascism, xenophobia are not part of our spiritual or cultural heritage."
But Golden Dawn is hoping to tap into the deep well of disappointment and fury felt by Greeks living abroad, in the three years since the debt-stricken nation was plunged into crisis.
"Golden Dawn is not like other parties in Greece. From its beginnings, in the early 80s, it always had one eye abroad," said Dimitris Psarras, whose book, Golden Dawn's Black Bible, chronicles the organisation since its creation by Nikos Michaloliakos, an overt supporter of the colonels who oversaw seven years of brutal anti-leftist dictatorship until the collapse of military rule in 1974.
"Like-minded groups in Europe and Russia have given the party ideological, and sometimes financial, support to print books and magazines. After years of importing nazism, it now wants to export nazism," added Psarras. By infiltrating communities abroad, the far-rightists were attempting not only to shore up their credibility but also to find extra funding and perhaps even potential votes if Greeks abroad ever won the right to cast ballots in elections.
"[Golden Dawn] not only wants to become the central pole of a pan-European alliance of neo-Nazis, even if in public it will hotly deny that," claimed Psarras, who said party members regularly met with neo-Nazis from Germany, Italy and Romania. "It wants to spread its influence worldwide."
With its 300,000-strong community, Melbourne has pride of place in the constellation of Greek-populated metropolises that dot a diaspora officially estimated at around 7 million.
As part of its international push, Golden Dawn has also focused on the US, a magnet for migrants for generations, and Canada, which attracted tens of thousands of Greeks after Greece's devastating 1946-49 civil war.
"It's a well-studied campaign," said Anastasios Tamis, Australia's pre-eminent ethnic Greek historian. "There is a large stock of very conservative people here – former royalists, former loyalists to the junta, that sort of thing – who are very disappointed at what has been happening in Greece and are trying to find a means to express it. They are nationalists who feel betrayed by Greece over issues like Macedonia, Cyprus and [the Greek minority] in Voreio Epirus [southern Albania], who cannot see the fascistic part of this party. Golden Dawn is trying to exploit them."
The younger generation — children of agrarian and unskilled immigrants – were also being targeted, he said. "They're the generation who were born here and grew up here and know next to nothing about Greece, its history and social and economic background. They're easy prey and Golden Dawn will capitalise on their ignorance."
Tamis, who admits that some of his students support the organisation, does not think the group will gain traction even if Australia's far-right party has been quick to embrace it. But the prospect of Golden Dawn descending on the country has clearly sent tremors through the Greek community.
"This is a multicultural society. They are not wanted or welcome here," said one prominent member, requesting anonymity when talk turned to the group.
Greek Australian leftists have begun collecting protest signatures to bring pressure on the Australia immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, to prohibit Golden Dawn MPs from entering the country. In a statement urging the government not to give the deputies visas, they said the extremists had to be stopped "from spreading their influence within the Greek community and threatening the multicultural society that Greek Australians and other migrants have fought to defend".
The neo-Nazis have been given a similar reception in Canada, where the party opened a chapter last October. Despite getting the father of champion sprinter Nicolas Macrozonaris to front it, the group was quickly denounced by Greek Canadians as "a black mark".
The culture of intolerance that has allowed racially motivated violence to flourish in Greece – with black-clad Golden Dawn members being blamed for a big rise in attacks on immigrants – had, they said, no place in a country that prides itself on liberal values.
"Their philosophy and ideology does not appeal to Greeks living here," insisted Father Lambros Kamperidis, a Greek Orthodox priest in Montreal. "We all got scared when we saw they were giving a press conference. But it was a deplorable event and as soon as we heard their deplorable views they were condemned by community leaders and the church."
"We are all immigrants in Canada," added Kamperidis, referring to Golden Dawn's tactic of tapping into anti-immigrant resentment. "The conditions that apply in Greece do not apply here, so there is no justification for the party to flourish. The really bad thing is that in opening here it gives the impression, to people who don't know the situation, that it is supported by a lot of Greeks, which is not the case. It has hurt Greece, the Greek cause, and Greeks' reputation more than anything else."
Despite the resistance, the far-rightists have made concerted efforts to move elsewhere, with Golden Dawn supporters saying Toronto is next. But the biggest push by far to date has been in the US. As home to close to 3 million citizens of Greek heritage, America has the diaspora's largest community. At first, cadres worked undercover, organising clothes sales and other charitable events without stating their true affiliation. Stickers and posters then began to appear around the New York suburb of Astoria before the organisation opened a branch there.
But while Greek Americans have some of the strongest ties of any community to their homeland, senior figures have vehemently denounced the organisation for not only being incongruous with Greece's struggle against fascism, during one of Europe's most brutal Nazi occupations, but utterly alien to their own experience as immigrants.
"These people and their principles will never be accepted in our community. Their beliefs are alien to our beliefs and way of life," said Nikos Mouyiaris, co-founder of the Chicago-based Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), whose mission is to promote human rights and democratic values.
The victims of often violent persecution at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan as well as wider discrimination (in Florida in the 1920s restaurant noticeboards declared "no dogs or Greeks allowed") Greek Americans proudly recount how, almost alone among ethnic minorities, they actively participated in the civil rights movement, their spiritual leader Archbishop Iakovos daring to march alongside Martin Luther King. "Our history as a diaspora in the US has been marked by our fight against racism," said Mouyiaris.
Many in the diaspora believe, like Endy Zemenides who heads HALC, that Golden Dawn has deluded itself into believing it is a permanent force because of its soaring popularity on the back of the economic crisis. "The reality is that it is a fleeting by-product of failed austerity measures and the social disruption this austerity has caused," he said.
In Greece, where Golden Dawn has begun to recruit in schools, there are fears of complacency. Drawing parallels with the 1930s Weimar period and the rise of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' party, the historian Mark Mazower recently warned against underestimating the threat posed by a party whose use of violence was so disturbing. "Unfortunately, the Greek state does not seem to realise the urgency of the situation," he told an audience in Athens.
After spending almost 30 years following Golden Dawn, Psarras agrees. Only weeks ago, he claimed, Michaloliakos held talks in the Greek parliament with two German neo-Nazis posing as journalists. Golden Dawn rejected the claim as "old mud".
"It is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and do I think it will get worse? Yes I do," Psarras said, lamenting that, with living standards plummeting, the organisation was opening offices in traditional middle-class neighbourhoods. There remained a simple fact too big to ignore: in 2009 the party was a political pariah, gaining a mere 0.29 % of the vote; today it had global ambitions.
"Ten years ago, if you had said Golden Dawn would become the third biggest force in Greece, you'd be called crazy," said Psarras. "Now look where it is."
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.guardian.co.uk |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.huffingtonpost.com |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.huffingtonpost.com |
Media take annual chance to demonstrate their hilarity with 1 April stories that are just too far-fetched to be true – or are they?
Guardian readers taking off their Guardian Goggles – the revolutionary web-connected glasses the paper claimed to have produced to immerse users in its journalism – to flick through rival newspapers or surf the web on Monday found themselves assailed by April fools on all sides.
The Daily Mirror reported on Virgin's new glass-bottomed plane; the Telegraph claimed the government was appointing a "lights tsar" to get Britons switching their lights off and saving electricity; and the Sun claimed Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood went camping over the chilly Easter weekend to prepare themselves for Glastonbury.
But some were harder to spot. Many thought the Times story about Nasa planning "a $2.6bn robotic mission to catch an asteroid in a giant bag and tow it to the moon" was a spoof. It wasn't. Instead its enjoyably convoluted tale about a set of newly discovered papers written by Captain Jasper Speedicut – a Victorian officer who "somehow, against all plausibility, fought in all the major expeditions of the period" – was the April fool.
The Independent's memorable headline "Freddie Mercury 'smuggled Princess Diana into a gay club dressed as a man'" fooled many into thinking it was bogus, while the Daily Mail's exclusive about Asda's 50 Shades of Grey toilet paper ("each 'shade' has been named after lead character Christian Grey's traits, from 'enigmatic' to 'obsessive'") was too convincing for one reader, who left this appalled comment on the paper's website: "This is plain wrong. Toilet-related activities and matters of the bedroom should not be associated!"
Metro published an amusing and very postmodern blog featuring fake April fools from the BBC (Nasa's Curiosity rover quits Twitter after abuse from trolls'), Facebook (introducing a $1.99 paywall with the convincingly cuddly name the Facebook Friend Fence), Buzzfeed ("27 reasons why this writer is slowly dying on the inside" – a headline that may suggest the Metro piece was even more self-referential than it first seemed), and even the Guardian.
For men seeking that must-have fashion item for the moment when spring finally arrives – surely just a few months away now – Boden was proud to present the Marylebone Man-Skirt. "Trousers made sense when men rode horses, ploughed fields and trawled for fish," the clothing company explained. "But now that so many of us are sat in front of a computer monitor all day the man-skirt is a smart choice." Eager to have its cake and eat it, the company added that "we won't rule out producing a real one should demand dictate it".
Among the most frighteningly convincing April fools was that by Greek news website Enet English, which reported that the dreaded troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund were asking Greece to abandon its unique alphabet and embrace Latin script as a "strong confidence-building gesture that could help the state's privatisation programme by making it easier for investors to find their way around the country".
The media was awash with false information. Radio 4's Today programme announced that smartphone-readable barcodes would replace numbers on the sides of trains; Google launched Google Nose, which produces the smell of whatever you type into the search engine (just "bring your nose as close as you can to the screen and press enter"); and Twitter revealed it was going to start charging tweeters to use vowels.
Anyone failing to take precautionary note of the date would be forgiven for believing that Boris Johnson was about to stand for David Miliband's South Shields seat (Channel 4 News), a Qatari-funded helter-skelter called the Shlide was about to be fitted to the Shard (Huffington Post), Battersea Dogs and Cats Home was training four-legged friends in housework and gardening to make them more likely to find a home, or even that work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith had claimed he could live on £53 a week. Oh, wait a minute …
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.guardian.co.uk |
 FRANCE 24 | Greece to launch rail sale in June FRANCE 24 A suburban train is seen at Athens airport station after it completed a test drive, 28 May 2004. Greece will in June launch a tender to privatise the national rail operator Trainose, officials said, with the aim of finding a buyer by early 2014 to keep ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.france24.com |
Trove of Neanderthal fossils found in Greek cave NBCNews.com (blog) A trove of Neanderthal fossils, including bones of children and adults, discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers say. The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and humans may have ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT science.nbcnews.com |
Huge kids menu at Mad Greek in Cleveland Heights will help make them mad for ... Plain Dealer With such a wide-ranging menu, the Mad Greek is an ideal place to introduce young diners to ethnic cuisines. The children's menu, like the adult entrees, is divided about half and half between Greek and Indian, with a few American standbys thrown in. |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.cleveland.com |
Europe could have dealt with Cyprus cheaply and painlessly with a pan-European body able to recapitalising the country's banks
It had all started to look quite promising. The US was picking up, China had avoided a hard landing and in Japan the early signs from the new government's anti-deflation approach were encouraging. Even in Britain, the first couple of months of 2013 provided some tentative hope – from the housing market and consumer spending, mainly – that the economy might escape another year of stagnation.
Then Cyprus came along. The last two weeks of March brought the crisis in the eurozone back into the spotlight, and by the end of the month the story was no longer rising share prices on Wall Street on the back of strong corporate profitability or the better prospects for Japanese growth. It was, simply, which country in the eurozone will be the next to require a bailout.
The past few days has seen what Nick Parsons, the head of strategy at National Australia Bank, has called the "reverse Spartacus" effect after the scene at the end of Stanley Kubrick's epic in which captured slaves are offered clemency if they identify the rebel leader. All refuse.
In the aftermath of Cyprus, it has been a case of "I'm not Spartacus". Four members of the eurozone felt the need to issue statements explaining why they were different from the troubled island in the eastern Med. We now know that Portugal is not Spartacus, and neither is Greece, Malta, or Luxembourg, which has a higher ratio of bank deposits to GDP than any other eurozone country. As Parsons noted wryly, Italy was unable to say it was not Spartacus because it still doesn't have a government to speak on its behalf. Otherwise it would probably have done so.
Few of the independent voices in the financial markets take such attempts at reassurance seriously. Another crisis in the eurozone could be avoided, but only if those in charge (sic) act more speedily and effectively than they have in the past. As things stand, another outbreak of trouble looks inevitable.
Cyprus has enough money to get by for a couple of months, but by then will be feeling the impact of a slow-motion bank run as depositors remove their money at the rate of €300 (£250) a day. The economy has been crippled by the terms of the bailout, a Carthaginian peace if ever there was one, and the country's debt ratio is bound to explode.
Investors are already casting a wary eye over Malta, which appears to have been the short-term beneficiary of capital flight from Cyprus, but the bookies favourite for the next country to need a bailout is Slovenia, where the government is already making contingency plans for coping with bank losses.
By focusing on the eurozone's minnows, the markets are in danger of overlooking a much bigger potential problem. If attempts to put together a new government in Rome fail, Italy will be facing a second general election and in such a scenario opinion polls currently put Silvio Berlusconi ahead.
It is not hard to sketch out a sequence of events in which Berlusconi completes a political comeback, the markets take fright, Italian bond yields go through the roof, the European Central Bank under Mario Draghi says it will only buy Italian debt if Berlusconi agrees to a package of austerity and structural reforms, the new government refuses and then calls a referendum on Italy's membership of the single currency. Italy has already had six consecutive quarters of falling GDP and is on course for a seventh, making the recession the longest since modern records began in 1960. So when Berlusconi says he cannot let the country fall into a "recessive spiral without end", he strikes a chord.
If policymakers are alive to the threat posed by one of the six founder members of the European Economic Community back in 1957, they have yet to show it. The assumptions seem to be that Cyprus is exceptional, that the ECB will ride to the rescue if it proves not to be, and that Europe will be dragged out of the danger zone by the pickup in the rest of the global economy.
This is the height of foolishness. The factors causing the crisis in Cyprus are replicated in many other member states. The ECB's so-called "big bazooka" has yet to be tested, and because Europe is the world's biggest market, the likelihood is that the re-emergence of the sovereign debt crisis will seriously impair growth prospects in North America and Asia.
Economists at Fathom Consulting draw a comparison between the eurozone today and the UK at the very start of the financial crisis. Mistakes were made with the handling of Northern Rock because of fears that a bailout would create problems of moral hazard – in other words helping a bank that had got itself into trouble through its own stupidity would encourage bad behaviour by others. The systemic risks were not recognised, with disastrous consequences.
Similarly, Fathom argues, the eurozone has not understood the systemic potential of the current crisis, not least the "doom loop" between fragile banks and indebted governments. Austerity is making matters worse because cuts to public spending and higher taxes hit economic activity by more than they reduce government deficits. Public debt as a share of national incomes goes up, not down.
Austerity can work, but the conditions have to be right for it. It helps if a country's trading partners are growing robustly, because then the squeeze on domestic demand can be offset by rising exports. It helps if the central bank can compensate for tighter fiscal policy by easing monetary policy, either through lower interest rates or through unconventional measures such as quantitative easing. And it helps if the exchange rate can fall. Not one of these conditions applies in the eurozone, which is why the fiscal multipliers – the impact of tax and spending policies on growth – are so high. Put bluntly, removing one euro of demand through austerity leads to the loss of more than one euro in GDP.
So what should be done? Clearly, the self-defeating nature of current policy needs to be recognised. Countries need to be given more time to put their public finances in order. The emphasis should be shifted from headline budget deficits to structural deficits so that account is taken of the state of the economic cycle, and the ECB needs to be ready with its own version of QE.
Simultaneously, work needs to speed up on creating a banking and fiscal union. Europe could have dealt with Cyprus cheaply and painlessly had there been a pan-European body capable of recapitalising the country's banks. Delay in setting up such a body threatens to be costly.
Finally, the eurozone needs to start talking with one voice. A bit of "I'm Spartacus" would not go amiss.
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.guardian.co.uk |
 PotomacLocal.com | Jimmy the Greek Restaurant: Family Friendly Greek Fare PotomacLocal.com The menu, which covers breakfast, American favorites, traditional Greek fare and lunch and dinner specials, can make it very difficult to decide on one dish. Making the decision to tread new waters and try Greek cuisine, I settled on the Greek plate ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT potomaclocal.com |
Trove of Neanderthal Bones Found in Greek Cave Yahoo! News (blog) A trove of Neanderthal fossils including bones of children and adults, discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers say. The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and humans may have ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT news.yahoo.com |
Germany Agrees: There Is A Solar-Powered Solution To Greek Debt Crisis CleanTechnica It was a deal that looked all but dead last year, but now Germany and Greece have formally agreed to an initiative that will enable Greece to profit from one of its most valuable natural resources: the sun. The new Germany-Greece solar power agreement ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT cleantechnica.com |
 Kathimerini | Greece aims to start privatization of railway network within next three months Kathimerini Development Minister Costis Hatzidakis and the managing director of Greece's privatization fund, Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund's (HRADF), Yiannis Emiris said that the aim is to pick an investor by the end of this year or the beginning of 2014. |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |
Lapid: I won't let Israel become Cyprus or Greece Jerusalem Post Referring to Israel's Meditteranean neighbors who have undergone economic crises, Lapid added that he had to make those difficult decisions because he was not prepared that on his watch "we will turn into Greece and Cyprus." Send; Large; Small; Print ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.jpost.com |
 BBC News | Greek villagers block Golden Dawn food handout on Thassos BBC News Villagers on the Greek island of Thassos have prevented the nationalist Golden Dawn party from handing out free food and other basic goods. To Vima newspaper said residents of Potamia did not let Golden Dawn members unload their truck and forced them ... Controversy over Golden Dawn's distribution of free food, Thasos Golden Dawn's free food not welcome on Thasos |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.bbc.co.uk |
 gulfnews.com | Obama, Israel, and Palestine Jerusalem Post (blog) We did not intend to flee Jerusalem when the great man arrived, but we saw no reason to change our plans when we heard about his trip. On the basis of previous presidential visits, we knew that the city would be dysfunctional. Our visit to Greece provided ... Soothing words in Israel won't pull peace from Mideast flames Obama and Israel Reconfigured Official: US to bring Arab states into peace push |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT blogs.jpost.com |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.bbc.co.uk |
 Kathimerini | Greek manufacturing suffered further slump in March, PMI shows Kathimerini Greece's manufacturing slump deepened in March as new orders shrank again, with the impact of the crisis in Cyprus yet to take its toll on the local economy, a survey showed on Monday. Markit's purchasing managers' index (PMI) for Greek manufacturing, ... |
|
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ekathimerini.com |