How the world sees Greece
 Valdosta State University | VSU Recognizes Greek Life Valdosta State University The event provides an opportunity for the university to publically recognize the hard work and dedication of Valdosta State's 23 active Greek sororities and fraternities. The chapters are divided among three main governing boards: National Pan-Hellenic ... |
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 Brisbane Times | Greek drama lacks a happy ending Financial Times Five years and five rescue packages into Europe's sovereign debt crisis, the eurozone – and the world – pays scant attention to the country where the financial panic first began. After being lent hundreds of billions of euros by its neighbours, Greece ... IMF Says Greek Elite Still Protected Greek debt down but economy still limping Greece ordered by IMF to do more to crack down on 'notorious' tax evasion ... |
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We mustn't repeat the Baader-Meinhof trauma. Giving neo-Nazis a fair trial will prove they have no place in modern Germany
Postwar Germany has witnessed at least two trials of monumental historical significance: the 1963 Frankfurt trial against Nazis who organised and ran Auschwitz concentration camp, and the 1975 trial of leading figures in the Baader-Meinhof group, of which I was briefly a member.
Now there may be a third: Munich this week saw the start of the trial against Beate Zschäpe, a former member of a neo-Nazi terrorist group called the National Socialist Underground. Zschäpe is accused of complicity in 10 cases of murder between 2000 and 2007, mainly of citizens of Turkish descent. Turkish newspapers have described it as Germany's new "trial of the century".
It is not just details of the crimes that are shocking, but the fact that it has taken 13 years to bring the first murder to court, with investigators originally suspecting the victims' families. The whole episode seemed to show that institutional racism is still a much bigger problem in Germany than the authorities like to admit, and that the country is urgently in need of the kind of reforms that Britain saw in the wake of the death of Stephen Lawrence. Were the police just incompetent, or "blind in the right eye"? A placard at a demonstration outside the courtroom on Monday asked the same question in simpler and more urgent terms: "How could they kill so many?"
Yet it is crucial to remember that the answer won't be found at the high-profile Zschäpe trial, but in an investigation already under way into police conduct. Three senior officers from the domestic intelligence agency – have already lost their jobs. The Green party and leftwing Die Linke are furthermore calling for a ban on recruiting police informers from far-right circles. Recently many have criticised the authorities for failing to recognise that the trial against Zschäpe will fulfil a similarly political role: seats for the media were originally assigned on a first-come first-served basis, which meant Turkish and Greek newspapers were left out. The federal court intervened, seats were reassigned – to the effect that major TV outlets and newspapers were left out at the expense of local radio stations and a women's magazine. Add to the farcical tone of the proceedings, the defence team carries the surnames Sturm, Stahl and Heer (Storm, Steel and Army). But the courts insist that everything must be done to stop this becoming a show trial – and I believe they are right.
In many ways the judiciary's desire to scale back the trial is the logical conclusion of Germany's negative experience of the Baader-Meinhof trial, where paranoia was so ripe that a separate courtroom was built next to Stammheim prison and many felt that the trial became a stage for political propaganda.
This time the danger is not so much that the far-right could hijack the trial for their own means, but that the media will start to dictate and orchestrate proceedings: at worst, they will build up expectations that a trial of this kind can never fulfil. Above everything, the trial should be about proving Zschäpe's involvement in the murders: concrete proof is still missing.
I am cautious of drawing parallels between this trial and the one that shaped my generation. But one parallel seems relevant: the NSU trio all grew up in East Germany (Zschäpe was born in 1975, Uwe Mundlos in 1973 and Uwe Böhnhardt in 1977) , which is to say a state – the GDR – in which anti-fascism was often dictated from the top down. Ordinary citizens were given little chance to work through their historical inheritance themselves.
All three NSU members were radicalised around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the old order collapsed. In this ensuing vacuum, with the western media quick to brand anyone from the east as a former Stasi member, many from the former GDR felt left behind. The ideologies and costumes of National Socialism became attractive to them precisely because their parents had kept quiet about that episode in German history – an equivalent of the protest movement that West Germany saw in the 1970s, just on the other extreme.
I don't believe that modern Germany is full of Nazis or neo-Nazis – like most Germans, I believe it is predominantly a cosmopolitan, enlightened place. If we want the world to show that this is true, we need to guarantee that Zschäpe is given a fair trial. My generation fluffed the chance to deal with its own traumas properly – I hope this one gets it right.
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 CultureMap Dallas | Opa Greek Taverna opens in Rowlett, no relation to North Dallas restaurant CultureMap Dallas The menu features roasted chicken and assorted meat platters and pita wraps with gyros, falafel, skewered chicken, lamb and loukaniko (spicy Greek sausage). Greek comfort dishes are covered via moussaka and pastitsio, and there is both lemon and lentil ... |
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 Kathimerini | Acclaimed Greek poet Kiki Dimoula causes controversy with alleged rant against ... Kathimerini Acclaimed poet Kiki Dimoula has caused controversy by allegedly launching a tirade against immigrants in her neighborhood of Kypseli, near central Athens. According to Efimerida ton Syntakton daily, the 81-year-old said that there are too many migrants ... |
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 Telegraph.co.uk | IMF tells Greece to step up fight on tax evasion Telegraph.co.uk "Very little progress has been made in tackling Greece's notorious tax evasion," the IMF said in a report on Monday. "The rich and self-employed are simply not paying their fair share, which has forced an excessive reliance on across-the-board ... |
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Landmark Trust sets to work on historic seaside building, home of the author of The French Lieutenant's Woman until his death
In 1999, six years before he died, the novelist John Fowles wrote that despite its beauty, acres of garden, ravishing views and historic interest – not only as his home but that of the pioneering Georgian businesswoman, Eleanor Coade he – was failing to give away his beloved house in Lyme Regis, Dorset.
He dreamed the Grade II* listed Belmont House could become a centre "for young writers and artists" who would be as inspired by its beauty and history as he. The main windows of the room where he wrote look straight out to sea, or steeply down to the Cobb where he sent his melancholy heroine, The French Lieutenant's Woman, on her solitary walks. His desk, possibly to give him some defence from the distractions of such a view, was set at right angles to it.
He had lost count of the institutions he approached, he wrote sadly, including the University of East Anglia, famed for the creative writing course co-founded by his friend Malcolm Bradbury, of which he was an honorary graduate. None felt capable of taking it on.
One American demanded assurance that the property could never suffer from landslip: since the house is perched halfway up a cliff on the Jurassic Coast, where for centuries fossil hunters have flocked to pry treasures from the rapidly eroding slopes, he could give no such promise.
Now, though there are many more cracks in walls and terrace, and the garden is even more of a jungle than he affectionately complained of, his wishes may come true.
The Landmark Trust, which restores historic buildings, has bought Belmont from Fowles's widow Sarah, and is fundraising to restore it not just as a holiday rental like its other properties, but a residential centre for young writers. This time the University of East Anglia, whose graduates include Anne Enright, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, has said yes.
Discussions are also ongoing with Royal Holloway and other academic institutions.
The move is an innovation for the Landmark, but one which its new director Anna Keay hopes to build on at other properties.
"I love the thought of bringing that literary life back into the house, and making the whole place not just a nicely restored old building but a living memorial to Fowles and his work," she said.
"The history of this house is already so rich and multilayered, it's nice to think of adding another chapter."
Many of the trust's properties are eccentric, including a pineapple-shaped summer house, a palatial water tower and a pigsty designed as a Greek temple.
The extraordinary facade of Belmont, a plain Georgian box bristling with applied decoration including sea monsters, urns and a head of Neptune, will fit perfectly into the portfolio.
The house was a summer home and a sort of three dimensional trade card for the formidable Eleanor Coade, who manufactured classical figures, architectural ornaments and garden statues at Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory in Lambeth, out of an artificial stone which has proved astonishingly tough.
The facade is sadly damp-stained and cracked, and inside ceilings, verandah and windows are propped to prevent collapse: the fierce little dolphins, made in the 1780s, are as crisp as if made yesterday.
Fowles, who was for many years curator of the Lyme Regis museum, was fascinated by Coade – "that very rare thing, both an artist and a successful early woman industrialist".
The trust has now won planning permission to demolish the shabby stumps of once ornate Victorian wings added by later owners, but will keep a charming observatory added in the 1880s by a Victorian GP, Richard Bangay.
They plan to restore the surviving mechanism on which the entire roof once rotated and opened, and reinstate a telescope – and, they hope, some visiting astronomers too.
Another rare survivor, a little stable building, will become an exhibition space telling the story of the house and its owners.
When Keay first saw the building she felt she had been there before. "Everything about it, the views, the steep scramble down through the garden to the Cobb, even the fact that there really had been a telescope like the one the doctor in the French Lieutenant's Woman uses to spy on women on the beach, seemed so familiar it was almost eerie."
In fact, although Fowles had obviously already paced every inch of the settings he used in the novel, he bought the house just after he finished the book which became even more famous as the 1981 Harold Pinter-scripted film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.
In his journal for September 7 1968 he recorded both the house and the telegrammed reaction of his publisher, Tom Maschler.
"I have offered £18,000 for Belmont House. 'The French Lieutenant's Woman is magnificent, no less. Congratulations. Letter follows. Love Tom'. That's a relief."
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Acropolis Greek Taverna to Host Grand OPA-ning Party: Free Food and Drink Miami New Times (blog) The small Tampa-based restaurant chain, which has locations in New Tampa; Ybor City; Riverview; and St. Petersburg, has just opened in Coconut Grove, serving a dose of authentic Greek cuisine (with some very non-authentic choices thrown into the mix), ... |
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BUDAPEST, Hungary - The World Jewish Congress said Tuesday it is greatly concerned about the emergence of what it called neo-Nazi parties in Europe, singling out Greece's Golden Dawn, Hungary's Jobbik, and Germany's National Democratic Party.
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Papouli's Greek Grill to add healthier menu options under ¡Por Vida! program San Antonio Business Journal (blog) Some of Papouli's ¡Por Vida! meals include Chicken Salad España and Traditional Greek Side Salad. On the Kid's Menu, Papouli's will sell Beef or Chicken on a Stick, fruit, vegetables and non-sugar sweetened beverages that will be marked with the ¡Por ... |
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 Kathimerini | Greek scientist receives top US distinction Kathimerini A longtime leading researcher in NASA's space science mission, the Greek scientist conducts extensive research on a host of astronomical subjects and is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries recently announced as members. |
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Once popular with tourists, Famagusta is stuck in limbo within UN's 'green line' buffer zone set up after 1974 Turkish invasion
Cypriots see Famagusta as a lost paradise. Before the Turkish invasion in 1974 the resort on the island's east coast, with its beaches of white sand, was the main tourist attraction on Cyprus. The town looked back on a rich past spanning several centuries, with Venetian ramparts and the Lala Mustafa Pasha mosque, formerly Saint Nicholas's, a replica of Reims cathedral built by the French Lusignan dynasty, which ruled the island in the 14th and 15th centuries.
But for the past 40 years Famagusta has been in limbo. Deserted by its residents, closed by the Turkish military and ringed with barbed wire, a large part of the town is waiting for a long-awaited thaw. Thousands of expropriated Greek Cypriots, who have taken refuge south of the "green line", still refuse to forget their old home. The fate of Varosha, a district that has been empty since the invasion, is a recurrent topic for talks between the two halves of the island. Last year rumours claimed it might be handed back to end the deadlock, which has continued despite the good offices of the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. But nothing has happened.
"The question has been on the agenda since the 1980s," says Osman Ertug, the Turkish Cypriot presidential spokesman and special adviser on negotiations with the south. "It is one of the cards we hold, but it is part of an overall agreement and cannot be separated from a share-out of energy resources, or the blockade of sea and airports. The UN security council is mainly responsible for the inertia."
The financial crisis in the southern part of the island has, momentarily, sidelined the issue of reunification, barely mentioned during the presidential election campaign in February, which brought to power Nicos Anastasiades, generally thought to be in favour of talks with the north. "Dervis Eroglu [the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus] called him to congratulate him and suggest a meeting. We sent him an invitation to dinner to get the process moving again," Ertug explains.
Turkey is also keen to restart negotiations quickly. "We should encourage both sides in Cyprus to find a solution together," the Turkish minister for European affairs, Egemen Bagis, told the Luxemburger Wort daily. "They are like married couples. Turkey, Greece and Britain are like parents who want to save their marriage." But so far there has been no response to this offer. Sapped by the crisis, Nicosia is reluctant to enter negotiations at a difficult time. "But it never is the right time," Ertug counters. "There have been seven leaders in half a century, including an archbishop [Makarios] and a communist [Dimitris Christofias], but still no peace. A crisis may offer opportunities too," he adds.
According to the north, the question of hydrocarbon reserves off the coast of Cyprus could lead to useful negotiations for both sides. Turkey disputes Cyprus's right to exploit these resources on its own. It is demanding a fair share-out between the two communities.
Both parts of Cyprus certainly stand to gain from greater co-operation. "Gas is an opportunity to kick-start negotiations on reunification," says Cengiz Aktar, a Turkish columnist and specialist on European affairs. "We must knock down the walls," advocates the Turkish Cypriot economist Hasan Gungor, another presidential adviser. "The biggest Toyota car factory is located in Turkey but Greek Cypriots import their Toyotas from Japan, despite the fact that they cost less on the other side of the island," he notes. The cost of separation could be a powerful incentive for both parties to reach a compromise.
This story appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde
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 Haaretz | Greece to weigh anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial bill Haaretz BUDAPEST – A new legislative initiative in Greece promises a radical crackdown on anti-Semitism and other forms of racism in the country, David Saltiel, the head of the country's Jewish community revealed on Tuesday. The legislation will be submitted ... |
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They share tools, toys – and are planning their own hydroelectric plant. But is a new wave of DIY homes the answer to the housing crisis? Oliver Wainwright visits two pioneering northern co-ops to find out
'It's very difficult to walk down the street without bumping into someone," says Jan Maskell, as we stroll down a winding, car-free lane between whitewashed houses and rugged walls. Children play in the road, overlooked by adults preparing the evening's vegan meal beneath the lofty pitched roof of the common house kitchen. Another group sits out in the sun on the riverside terrace, discussing their plans for a hydroelectric plant. The place has the holiday atmosphere and dazzling white streets of a Greek island town, but in fact we're just outside Lancaster. A new co-housing development of 41 homes has just been completed here – and all without a developer in sight.
"One day I realised that I didn't even know my neighbours," says Maskell, who joined the Lancaster Cohousing group three years ago, having lived on the outskirts of Preston for 20 years. We've gone only half the distance to her front door and have already spoken to three other residents: one just back from helping his elderly neighbour, another couple on the way to pick up someone else's kids from school. "I also used to wonder why we all have our own lawnmower, and our own washing machine, and all this stuff cluttering up our homes that sits unused most of the time."
By sharing facilities, the Forgebank community aims to solve these problems, reducing costs and environmental impact. It has its own laundry and a workshop with shared tools. There are two guest bedrooms, freeing up space in individual houses, and a huge kitchen, dining room and living area in the common house, as well as a shared playroom – complete with big box of communal Lego. "It's a great place to bring up kids," says resident Huw Johnson. "We can be in the common house and send our daughter through to our house to collect something. It's a place where she can learn to be independent and interact with adults."
The houses are arranged in a snaking street that follows the curve of the river Lune, and incorporates several existing mill buildings – including an old factory that used to make mechanical elephants, and which the group is converting into rentable office space. The houses range from one-bed flats to three-bed family homes, and are grouped into four terraces, differentiated by pastel-coloured wooden plinths. Rooftops are set at different levels, giving the impression of a hamlet that has evolved over time, while porches and balconies are bolted on with galvanised metal frames, adding an industrial air that fits with the site's history – and indicating this is very much not another Poundbury.
"The ideal plan for co-housing is like a ring of wagons, with all the houses looking into a communal space," says Pete Bailey, a nurse who acts as the project's community director. "But we didn't have a circular piece of land, so we cut out coloured squares and arranged them on a plan along desire lines, with the help of various hippy architecture books." He points to Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language and a book by Californian co-housing evangelists Katie McCamant and Chuck Durrett on the common house shelves, which provided inspiration for their architect, the Kendal-based practice EcoArc.
The buildings are designed to the Passivhaus standard, which aims to reduce energy consumption. There are huge amounts of insulation and triple glazing; heat and power is provided by a central biomass boiler, solar panels on the roofs and, soon, a hydro plant. All of this should make the energy bills around 10% that of an average home, with plenty of surplus to sell back to the grid.
With all this high spec and desirable riverside location, the houses are no cheaper than the equivalent in the local village: a three-bed is priced at £250,000. But it is the shared, eco-focused lifestyle that has proved the biggest attraction. "It's an opportunity to live in an almost extended family context," says Maskell. "Our children grow up surrounded by people of different ages and from such different backgrounds – and they have friends on tap."
Across the Pennines on the outskirts of Leeds, another self-build co-housing project shows how the model can prove cheaper than conventional housing, and remain permanently affordable. Among the redbrick terraced streets of Bramley, set back from the street on a raised brick plinth, the Low Impact Living Affordable Community (Lilac) comprises stacked blocks clad in cedar boarding and white render. On the site of a former Victorian school, it looks a bit like a prefab school extension – which is exactly what this building method is more usually used for.
Developed by Bristol practice White Design, the structure is a prefabricated system of timber frames packed with straw bales and sprayed with lime render. Residents helped pack the straw off site, before contractors assembled the panels on site. JCBs are still digging out the pond in the central communal garden when I visit, but you can't hear a thing inside the houses: the straw keeps the heat in and the sound out, absorbing everything from rumbling trains to high-pitched sirens.
While the architecture might not win awards, Lilac's legal and financial model is nothing short of revolutionary. This is the UK's first Mutual Home Ownership Society, a setup popular in Scandinavia, whereby residents all pay 35% of their net income into the trust and receive a corresponding number of equity shares in the project – meaning those on salaries of £15,000 can still get a rung on the housing ladder.
"People can sometimes get trapped living in co-ops, because they can't afford to leave," says Tash Gordon, a GP and founding member of the Lilac group. "This way, everyone has equity in the project, so you can realise that if you decide to move on."
The community of 20 households ranges from single people in their 20s to retired couples in their 70s, and spans university lecturers to teachers, a bouncer to a professional storyteller. As at Lancaster, there is a common house with shared kitchen, laundry, workshop and meeting room, while the grounds include 25 allotments and space for almost 50 bikes: the aim is a zero-carbon lifestyle.
The initial funds came from several sources. At both Lancaster and Leeds, the capital build cost was covered by a loan from eco-friendly Triodos bank. Lilac acquired their site at a reduced rate from the council, and received a grant from the Homes and Communities Agency to support the planning application process.
Is their model of community self-build the future? Ted Stevens, chair of the National Self Build Association, points to a whole new generation priced out of the housing market. "Self-build always used to be about retired couples building their dream Grand Designs home," he says. "But now young people are coming together and finding it's cheaper to do it themselves."
The government has championed self-build, perhaps seeing it as yet another way of relinquishing its responsibility to provide housing, and has released pots of money to help cover initial costs. But is it enough? At present, only 10% of UK homes are self-built, compared to 80% in Austria, and 60% in Germany, where communities have been allowed to bypass commercial house builders. In both countries people tend to rent for longer, and then get their own place built. The route to ownership is so common it's not even referred to as "self-build".
As a culture, self-build has never really taken off in the UK – stifled by a combination of lack of available plots, the high levels of planning regulation, and little in the way of finance and mortgage products for first-time self-builders. "The biggest hurdle is still getting the land," says Stevens, "as well as defining a common brief between residents. Sometimes it can be like dealing with an octopus with 20 heads and one leg."
But this could be about to change. When surveys show that more than half of us don't know our neighbours, and that one in three people now live alone, there is plenty of room for growth. In Barnet in north London, the Older Women's Cohousing Company (OWCH) recently received planning permission for a group of 25 new homes, while parts of the Olympic site are set to be earmarked for community self-builds of up to 100 homes. In Middlesbrough, an area of the Middlehaven docks has been allocated for a competition for innovative self-build solutions; in Cornwall, regeneration company Igloo has launched a plan for 70 custom-build homes.
These may be niche projects for now, and often geared exclusively towards shared-lifestyle communities – but they do begin to point to an alternative at a time when conventional house-building cannot keep up with demand. The UK is expected to see annual growth of an average of 232,000 new households for the next two decades – yet only 146,420 homes were built last year.
In Lancaster, resident Pete Bailey is certain that co-housing is the future. "Throughout the history of human evolution, we've always spent time in big social groups," he says, pouring out multiple mugs of tea for the assembly in the common house. "It seems so unnatural that we've all come to live in isolated boxes behind privet hedges." Judging by the community spirit evident in Lancaster and Leeds, he may well be on to something.
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