Dealing with the refugee crisis has become part of the GREEK political parties' agenda due to the forthcoming elections on September 20. Greece like ...
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How the world sees Greece
Friday, September 11, 2015
Report: UM president tells GREEK students party culture hurts school's reputation
Every GREEK organization on campus was required to have 70 percent attendance at the meeting, which also featured addresses from Dean of ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.mlive.com |
GREECE: Closure of Captain Elias camp in Kos leaves refugees even more vulnerable
Migrants at the Hotel Captain Elias. The Captain Elias hotel has been abandoned for many years. Yesterday, 10 September, saw the immediate ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.msf.org |
Syrian Refugee brings his kitten all the way to GREECE
As you can see he's a kitten and he was just too precious to leave behind. Along with thousands of other Syrians, Zaytouna's owner fled the dangerous ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT metro.co.uk |
The Debate’s Over: Where’s the Hope?
The debate among the major political party leaders in Greece ahead of the Sept. 20 elections was a timid affair shorn of new ideas. The post The Debate’s Over: Where’s the Hope? appeared first on The National Herald.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.thenationalherald.com |
Syrian toddler Aylan's father drove capsized boat, other passengers say
The father of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi was working with smugglers and driving the flimsy boat that capsized trying to reach Greece, other passengers on board said, in an account that disputes the version he gave last week. Ahmed Hadi Jawwad and his wife, Iraqis who lost their 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son in the crossing, told Reuters that Abdullah Kurdi panicked and accelerated when a wave hit the boat, raising questions about his claim that somebody else was driving the boat. "The story that (Aylan's father) told is untrue.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.news.yahoo.com |
A far-right political party is exploiting a darker side of Greece's discontent
… as ever for everything tormenting Greece," the retired lieutenant general … in the Greek parliament. REUTERS/John KolesidisGolden Dawn rally in Greece.Its … rally in Greece."We were a handful of Greeks under Nikos …
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT world.einnews.com |
Macedonia University poll gives Greece's Syriza small lead in election run-up
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's leftist Syriza party has a 1 percentage point lead over its conservative rival New Democracy, a poll published on Friday showed.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.reuters.com |
Greece's Syriza heads pre-election polls, but lead unclear
ATHENS (Reuters) - Opinion polls on Friday put the leftist Syriza party of former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras ahead by margins ranging from wafer-thin to its widest yet as elections draw near.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.reuters.com |
Greece, the World's Best Investment: Matthew Winkler
Remember last February, when former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Greece would leave the euro and that the common currency would collapse?
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.newsmax.com |
Mamakas: By far the best GREEK restaurant in Toronto
First principles. Real chefs. For GREEK cooking to catch up with the times in the city, it would have to be properly GREEK: great ingredients, prepared with ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theglobeandmail.com |
With The Lobster and Chevalier, GREEK satire is having a moment at TIFF
Her latest, Chevalier, features six well-off GREEK buddies enjoying a bit of R&R from the deck of a luxury yacht. Their natural competitive instincts soon ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theglobeandmail.com |
Little Big Town goes over big at the GREEK
Little Big Town performs at the GREEK Theatre on Thursday night. ARMANDO BROWN , CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER. BY GEORGE A. PAUL ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.ocregister.com |
S&P keeps credit rating for GREECE unchanged but warns of future downgrade
BANGALORE: Ratings agency Standard & Poor's kept its sovereign rating on GREECE unchanged at 'CCC+/C' but warned it could be downgraded if ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT economictimes.indiatimes.com |
Gormley: As GREECE fills up with migrants, a caste system emerges
KOS, GREECE — Every now and then, Nikos Grivas walks his German Shepherd along the sea and down to the police station in Kos to give the ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT ottawacitizen.com |
European Union Faces Uphill Battle In Fight To Help Refugees
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held nothing back during his state of the union speech Wednesday, proposing a quota system to redistribute refugees across 22 of the European Union's 28 member states. But the plan's effectiveness is still uncertain. Juncker urged the bloc to unify around a moral obligation in a 38-minute tirade. “There is not enough Europe in this union,” he said. “And there is not enough union in this union. We have to change this. And we have to change this now.” Members of the Commission, the EU's executive body, hope that the horrifying events that have transpired this summer -- 71 refugees suffocated in a truck in Austria, thousands of people camped out near the Budapest train station because they were refused entry onto trains, the harrowing drowning of a young Syrian boy on his way to Italy -- will push member states to show support for the plan. Yet the plan's limitations make it difficult to accept blindly. Juncker has dubbed the plan the "second emergency mechanism"-- he originally proposed a mechanism for relocating 40,000 people in May. The new plan adds 120,000, with the aim to relocate 160,000 people from Greece, Hungary and Italy to other EU states. This proposal is glaringly modest when compared to the number of people in need of assistance. "Although the desire is to distribute 160,000 migrants, this figure is already insufficient as the number of migrants continue to arrive to Europe," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Germany alone expects to receive up to 800,000 people by the end of the year. Germany's vice-chancellor dubbed the Juncker plan a "drop in the ocean." More than 100,000 people were detected along EU borders just last month, according to Frontex, Europe's migration monitoring service. The quota plan is, however, "just one component of a package of proposals that have been put forth," said Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, assistant director of the Migration Policy Institute's International Program. "It's basically designed to be an emergency measure to alleviate pressure felt by front-line states," meaning that it will eventually need to be supplemented by a more robust, longer-term strategy. > We Europeans should remember well that Europe is a continent where > nearly everyone has at one time been a refugee. > Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission President Juncker also plans to use a mandatory distribution formula to determine relocation figures for each country. Nations that are unable to take in refugees will have to contribute 0.002 percent of their GDP to finance other countries' efforts. France, Spain and Germany are slated to accept the most refugees and would receive 6,000 euros per person under the plan for relocation assistance. Italy, Greece and Hungary -- the primary countries that serve as places of transit for refugees -- would be given a budget of 500 euros per person for transportation. Experts fear that the sheer costs of such a plan will render it ineffective. "No European government has anticipated the costs of resettling 160,000 migrants amid a very austere budget environment," Conley said. "This may re-prioritize development aid and defense budget priorities, reducing Europe's policy effectiveness." In addition, there's a top-down directive for countries to improve their own infrastructure to lessen the burden on the state. "The help being offered to these frontline countries is contingent on them putting in place structural reforms to improve the capacity of their asylum systems," Banulescu-Bogdan explained. Given that there's already a clause in the plan for countries incapable of contributing, it's clear that expectations for participation are low. And these strains on costs and infrastructure would only be exacerbated by the series of budget cuts enacted across many Mediterranean states in recent months, spurred by the economic downturn. Experts also worry that pitting state sovereignty against EU mandates will endanger the survival of the political and economic union. In particular, the tremendous strain the crisis has put on the Schengen system, which allows for free movement across 22 of the EU's 28 member states, may spell the end of open borders. "Juncker is attempting to craft a European policy but border control is the last bastion of sovereignty," Conley said. "The 28 EU countries, with vocal and growing anti-immigrant parties, are loath to this transfer of authority to Brussels." "The failure to provide solidarity to these states at this moment will have serious implications for the functioning of the EU as a whole," added Banulescu-Bogdan. "It may potentially erode the Schengen area." Some countries have already tried to bypass directives from EU leadership. Hungary is intent on closing off its borders; it is nearing completion of a 110-mile-long barbed wire fence along its border with Serbia. On Thursday, the Hungarian army began military exercises to patrol the border. Because the deal "addresses the acute short-term need" faced by refugees fleeing war and persecution, Banulescu-Bogdan said, it leaves out the masses of people who come to the EU for economic reasons and don't qualify as refugees. Most of them come from the Balkan countries; in Kosovo, the youth unemployment rate is about 60 percent. Central European countries will continue to struggle with large numbers of economic migrants traveling through their borders via the "Balkan route." Out of the 200,000 asylum requests that Germany has received so far in 2015, more than 40 percent came from the western Balkans. Juncker did, however, outline a regulation to establish a common list of "safe countries of origin." People coming from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey would eventually be privy to a speedier asylum application process. Officials will meet on Monday to consider Juncker's proposal at a meeting led by the home affairs minister. In the meantime, foreign ministers of Germany and Luxembourg met with their Central and Eastern EU counterparts on Friday for preliminary discussions. At its core, Juncker's solution remains a short-term one. "We need to be discussing more long-term solutions" that go beyond the territorial asylum system, said Banulescu-Bogdan, such as resettlement and increasing livelihood opportunities across the region. When the Commission does eventually look to the longer term, xenophobia may continue to infuse policy decisions. "Europe has historically embraced more ethnic than civic approaches to nationhood, unlike the United States, and that is part of the reason immigration is proving so difficult," Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, told the Council on Foreign Relations. In many European countries, the relationship between Muslim minorities and the rest of the population remains strained. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Debt campaigners hail UN vote as breakthrough
United Nations general assembly agrees set of principles on debt restructuring, although US, UK and Germany vote against The United Nations general assembly has approved a set of principles to resolve disputes between bankrupt countries and their creditors that the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said would have “avoided the pitfalls of the Greek crisis”. The vote, with 136 supporting the scheme to six against, and 41 abstentions, comes after years of lobbying by Argentina and latterly Greece for a debt restructuring process to shield them from draconian cutbacks and reforms that threaten their political and economic stability. Continue reading...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com |
Greek Festival blends culture, cuisine
Nicole Malahias had two rules for her students: "Rule 1 - don't kick anyone," she said, reaching over to turn on the music. "And Rule 2 - don't fall off ...
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Migration Trail: Sky Travels With The Refugees
There's a family of five children right next to me, toddlers' arms and legs are splayed across the family's rucksacks. Sky cameraman Garwen McLuckie and I have joined the migration throng trying to get to Greece, and have witnessed how the people smugglers operate , with adults paying $1,200 to cross over to Greece.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.news.yahoo.com |
Migration minister: Media reports on jihadists entering Greece are 'dangerous misinformation'
#politics
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT en.enikos.gr |
Juncker on GREEK crisis: 'Failure was not an option'
STRASBOURG – The European Commission and its president felt that it was not an option to fail to find a solution to the GREEK crisis, Jean-Claude ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT neurope.eu |
Pumpkin Everything, Part 2: Bagels, Biscuits & GREEK Yogurt
Chobani Flip Pumpkin Harvest Crisp: What does your GREEK yogurt need more of? Pumpkin, of course! The yogurt magnates at Chobani released their ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.orlandoweekly.com |
Cardiff GREEK Festival celebrates culture
SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - Each year a local church invites people to celebrate GREEK culture at the Cardiff GREEK Festival. There will be Authentic GREEK ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.cbs8.com |
GREECE might be the best place in the world to be a graffiti artist
"In GREECE, and especially in Athens, you can find graffiti everywhere. It is really amazing how much freedom you've got in the public space. Nowadays ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.pri.org |
Touring Greece without the usual script
Unconventional tour company lets travelers take Greece at their own speed, on their own itinerary.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT my.chicagotribune.com |
S&P affirms Greece's credit rating
… outlook remains stable, weeks after Greece's Prime Minister Alexis … in June. "Although the Greek economy remains fragile and the … repaying Greece's debts. The implementation of reforms required under Greece …
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT world.einnews.com |
ASE President: There is Still Opportunity in GREEK Stock Market
Lazaridis noted that the most important problem the GREEK stock market is facing is the limitations that exist for GREEK investors due to capital controls, ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Austria releases 71 bodies found in truck for burial
(Reuters) - The 71 badly decomposed bodies found in the back of an abandoned truck in Austria last month have been released for burial, the institution that carried out autopsies on the corpses said on Friday. The discovery of the remains, presumed to be those of refugees who had to rely on people-smugglers to help them cross the border between Austria and Hungary, caused widespread shock and drew attention to the conditions in which many have fled conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Days after they were found, Austria and Germany threw open their borders to tens of thousands of people making their way north across Europe via Greece and the Balkans.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.news.yahoo.com |
Greece's Syriza maintains slim opinion poll lead
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's leftist Syriza party has a 0.2 percentage point lead over the conservative New Democracy, a poll showed on Friday ahead of a general election on Sept. 20. The poll by GPO for Mega TV found Syriza was set to get 26.0 pct of the vote while the conservative New Democracy party would get 25.8 pct. The far-right Golden Dawn party ranked third with 6.5 percent. New Democracy leader Vangelis Meimarakis was the most popular party leader with 45 percent, while Syriza leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras scored 42.9 percent, the poll showed. ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.news.yahoo.com |
If aid budgets are used to help refugees at home, is it still foreign aid?
A new start: Syrian refugee Raghad al Sous now lives in Huddersfield. Reuters/Andrew Yates George Osborne recently announced that the UK government’s commitment to accept 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years would be partially funded through the UK’s foreign aid budget. At first sight the chancellor’s move is a very strange decision: how can money spent in the UK be counted towards the country’s contribution to humanitarian development? Yet costs to support refugees in donor countries have been an internationally recognised component of aid budgets since new directives by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were issued in 1988, and counting in this way is now very widespread among aid donors. It is also growing, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total reported Overseas Development Assistance (ODA). But this is bad for aid and it is also bad for social policy in the UK. In the context of widespread cuts to core services, such as housing support, it creates a special category of people who will continue to receive support under different rules. This is bound to fuel resentment against a group who are already widely resented. Despite these obvious drawbacks, it might yet be good for global solutions to the ongoing refugee crisis – providing the rules governing these aid calculations can be reformed and harmonised. For most of the period since 1988, successive UK governments have been firmly opposed to the idea of including refugee support costs in ODA. Over the last decade, however, the UK position on the inclusion of refugee support in aid budgets has gradually changed. In 2009, some costs to support asylum seekers crept into UK aid calculations for the first time, accounting for 0.1% of total ODA, and by 2013, this had increased to 0.8%, according to the OECD. This is still well below the OECD donor average of 4.3%, and far behind other countries, particularly the Nordics, as the graph below shows. Osborne’s announcement signals a substantial further increase for the UK. WHAT CAN BE COUNTED AS AID ODA is defined by the OECD as “government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries”. The rules governing what expenditure can be counted as ODA are set by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Discussions around the inclusion of costs incurred by supporting refugees who have arrived in a donor country began in the early 1980s and it became an agreed budget line in 1993. Since then there have been several attempts to harmonise how in-country refugee support is calculated, but there is still significant disagreement and tremendously wide variation between DAC members. Between 2007 and 2013 (the last year for which information is available) the total amount of in-country refugee support reported as ODA by DAC members more than doubled, from just under US$2 billion to just under US$5 billion. As a proportion of total ODA spent by donors this marks a change from 1.9% in 2007, up to 4.3% in 2013. The most recent discussions within the DAC committee about abolishing the budget line on in-country refugee support were in 2001. It recorded that: > The secretariat retains its long held view that donors' expenditures > on refugees who arrive in their countries – while commendable from > a humanitarian point of view – do not make a sufficiently direct > contribution to the economic development and welfare of developing > countries to qualify as official development assistance. Including > such data undermines the credibility of the ODA concept. ONE YEAR ONLY At that time, in addition to the UK, the proposal to remove such aid from official ODA figures was supported by Belgium, Finland, Switzerland and the US but rejected by Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The OECD did not therefore change the reporting mechanisms. Subsequent attempts to clarify the way the data is recorded have had no more success. There is general agreement that only support during the first 12 months a refugee arrives in a country can be counted as ODA and that this should include costs such as housing and income support, but not integration measures such as language training. There is no agreement about when the 12 month period starts (for example, on registering an asylum claim or being recognised as a refugee) or how per capita costs should be calculated. Data from 2009 shows that costs recorded per refugee varied from US$1,803 in Portugal to US$32,596 in Belgium, with the UK near the bottom at US$3,261. There is no reason why the DAC secretariat’s view in 2001 should have changed: including refugee costs, along with a number of other in-country costs, still undermines the credibility of ODA, though it has obviously become much more significant since then. Yet there is reason to support the substantial reform of this budget line, rather than its elimination, which still seems politically impossible. A return to efforts to harmonise data collection methods for refugee support would allow a clear, comparable evaluation of the efforts each country was making. This information should be clearly separated from ODA. It should include positive measures to support refugees, including provision of language training, and it should extend beyond the first 12 months to recognise support that goes beyond that. If a more organised approach is taken, pressure could then be brought on countries that were not contributing and collective efforts to help more refugees, such as through the European Union, could be managed more effectively. Attempts to respond to the refugee crisis in the EU demonstrate that lack of political will is one of the major barriers to a substantial response. Finding a clear way of evaluating and valuing each country’s contribution to refugee support, beyond simply the number of arrivals, may overcome that. _Michael Collyer receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for a project 'Optimising Refugee Resettlement in the UK' (ref ES/K006304/1). _
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Chinese Man Sets Up Illegal Wedding Business in Santorini
A Chinese national set up an illegal “wedding business” in Fira on Santorini island, Greece. The man who had a French passport had rented two hotel rooms and had turned them into a studio for wedding preparation. In the rooms police found 38 wedding gowns and 60 different kinds of make-up. The investigation revealed that
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Greek MEP Sakorafa Joins List of Lawmakers Abandoning SYRIZA
European Parliament Member Sofia Sakorafa is the lastest SYRIZA member to leave the party after former prime minister Alexis Tsipras signed Greece’s third bailout memorandum. Sakorafa is the second SYRIZA MEP who abandons the party, after Nikos Chountis, who has already joined the offshoot Popular Unity led by Panagiotis Lafazanis. Sakorafa has close ties with
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Greece’s Unemployment Rate Rises over Employment in August
The negative performance of the Greek job market continued this past month, as there were 441 more job losses than job openings in Greece during the month of August, according to ERGANI, an online private sector job registry that is a part of the Greek Labor Ministry. August in Greece is typically a positive period for the
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FYROM Considering Building Fence at the Border with Greece
FYROM could soon be erecting a fence at its southern border with Greece to curb rising immigration to the country. FYROM Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki told Hungarian weekly Figyelo that his country is considering the “physical defence” option for the border, which could include a fence, soldiers or both. The country has become a stepping stone for thousands of migrants and
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com |
Why Jordan Is Key to Ending the Syria Crisis
LONDON -- The refugee crisis that dominates Europe's TVs and newspapers is the product of the horrendous civil war that still rages in Syria. Why will we not focus our attention on this? The reality in Syria is that the war creates the refugees. Do more to stop this war is my plea. While we focus on our own necessary response to refugees in Hungarian or Austrian railway stations, the humanitarian situation worsens in and around Syria. Refugee camps are struggling to cope. This civil war has to be stopped. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted meetings on Aug. 25 with King Abdullah of Jordan in Moscow and is also talking to Saudi Arabia. The Security Council in New York should be making a contingency plan for what happens when Assad suddenly leaves Damascus to move to his Alawite coastal stronghold on the Mediterranean. The U.S. is worried Russia is already putting in sophisticated military equipment to help hold this coastal area of Syria, which has a natural mountain defense barrier. Meanwhile, Putin is resolved to keep his Russian naval base at Tartus, which Russia has had since 1971. > Do more to stop this war is my plea. The coastal area of Syria may hold the key to ending the war. The people there are getting angry. They are already overwhelmed with refugees from elsewhere in Syria, and their young men are being killed on the battlefield. Village after village is mourning martyrs. Why should they go on dying for Damascus? I believe that Damascus, the capital of Syria, could fall within months. I do not want to be alarmist, but we should prepare for the worst. According to a reliable source in the area I have known for many years, the Islamic State is already in its suburbs at Hajar al-Aswad, about 2.5 miles from the center, and is well-placed but waiting. It is in the outskirts of Homs, too, Syria's third-largest city. ISIS is focusing for the moment on controlling four key elements in the Syrian economy: cotton, wheat, gas and oil. Its priorities are economic strength, consolidating the caliphate and sophisticated publicity. But sooner rather than later Damascus will fall and ISIS will then move into the chaos. It is imperative -- for Russia and Iran as well as America and Europe -- that Damascus is saved. The question is how. PEACEKEEPING MISSION What is desperately needed is a regional mandate under chapter VIII of the UN charter to maintain international peace and stabilize the conflict in and around Damascus: a mandate to administer and defend this multi-faith capital city and provide for a transition over a couple of years to restore a stable state and prepare for democratic, internationally supervised elections. Such a mandate for Damascus cannot be physically or politically run by the UN or NATO, nor by Russia, which supports Assad. It can only come from one country in the region -- Jordan -- with a credible military and administrative capacity that could be supported and backed by regional countries. A mandate with the full international authority of the UN Security Council has a reasonable chance of being successful. The mandate must provide for and recognize the need for the simultaneous withdrawal of President Assad and his forces to Latakia as Jordan moves into Damascus. Also recognize that Jordan can call on full regional assistance in and around Damascus down to its own border. Also recognize that Jordan must be able to call on military assistance from all five permanent members of the Security Council, whose forces can fly in immediately to defend Jordan's own borders, but with no authority to enter Syria. > Such a mandate for Damascus cannot be physically or politically run > by the UN or NATO, nor by Russia, which supports Assad. It can only > come from one country in the region -- Jordan. The cynics will say it is impossible. Jordanians will have great and understandable reservations over becoming embroiled. But who else? King Abdullah has the personal qualities of courage and honor to conduct this dangerous peace mission and to maintain the long-term integrity of Syria. What of Turkey, the other key regional player? Not since Turkey became a NATO member has there been a more important moment for a specific EU initiative to bolster Turkey. An election is due in November of this year, and President Erdoğan's AKP may well once again be deprived of an absolute majority. It would be a tragedy for Turkey, a NATO country and for many years an associate member of the EU, to slip away from both Europe and NATO in 2015 or 2016. Yet this could easily happen. TURKEY CAN HELP -- IF EUROPE HELPS TURKEY Realistically, Turkey has to do more to help Syria, but it is facing real problems with its hitherto strong economy. To commit more resources to help Syria it needs EU help with its economy. It does not want to become part of an ever-more integrated eurozone in the EU. That would be to forego its joint destiny of being a Middle Eastern as well as a European country. As long as EU membership carries with it as one of its four freedoms the free movement of people and labor, that will continue to be the unspoken reason for member states stalling Turkey's admission to EU membership. I believe had we in NATO followed Erdoğan's advice and given clear support in 2011 through training on weapons to the moderate Syrian military opposition, it is possible that the long, tragic, horrendous civil war in that country could have been avoided and Assad removed. That refusal was the crucial error. The House of Commons in August 2013 was right to reject U.S. retaliation against Assad for using chemical weapons without a Security Council resolution, particularly since immediately afterwards the U.S. Congress backed off and the weapons were removed under UN auspices supported by Russia. Had we in NATO foll > n clear support in 2011 to the moderate Syrian military opposition, > it is possible that the long, tragic, horrendous civil war could > have been avoided and Assad removed. > > On July 20, a bomb killed over 30 people outside a ural center in a Turkish town, Suruç, on the border with Syria. This terrible incident was followed a few days later by an agreement between Erdoğan and Obama that U.S. planes and drones could fly from İncirlik airfield against ISIS targets in Syria and included a provision for a protected refugee zone inside Syria. It is this protected zone that is the best way to slow today's large refugee movement through Turkey, Greece and up to Germany. Turkey should be offered membership in the European Economic Area with full voting rights, along with the existing three non-EU members of the EEA -- Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Other countries in Europe should be eligible later, like Turkey but without free movement of persons and labor. This would also be linked to any non-eurozone and non-Schengen country not having to offer free movement of people and labor to any incoming EU member state at a future date. Freedom of movement is necessary for an integrated eurozone. It is not necessary for an effective single market in the EEA. Turkey, within such an EEA and as a NATO member, would contribute greatly to improving relations between the Middle East and Europe and to checking, containing and ending the destructive role of ISIS. _Earlier on The WorldPost:_ -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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4 Greek Alternatives To National Bank Of Greece
For many U.S. based investors, National Bank of Greece (NYSE:NBG) is the only Greek investment to consider. But with NBG likely to face challenges as the ...
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Tourism saves the day for the GREEK economy
The Association of GREEK Tourism Enterprises said on Thursday that Greece reached 26 million visitors this year, bringing in € 14,5 bn. For the period ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT neurope.eu |
Restaurant Week, Bethesda Art Walk, Parks Half-Marathon + GREEK Festival: Montgomery ...
The 55th Annual GREEK Festival takes place at the St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Silver Spring from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; The InterAct Story ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT patch.com |
After The GREEK Crisis, Euro Elites Dream Of A Unified Euro State
“Tsipras and his government are leading the GREEK people on a path of bitter abandonment and hopelessness,” Germany's Economy Minister Sigmar ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.valuewalk.com |
This Syrian Family Brought Their Kitten All The Way To GREECE On A Boat
One Syrian Migrant arriving in Lesbos, GREECE, introduced volunteers to his kitten, “Zaytouna,” who he transported all the way across the ocean in a ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.buzzfeed.com |
S&P affirms GREECE at CCC+, stable outlook
S&P warned that snap elections in GREECE will likely delay next disbursement of ESM funds. The agency also expects Greek economy will contract 3% ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.fxstreet.com |
Damascus to Berlin; a Syrian family's escape to new life
BERLIN (AP) — Reem Habashieh and her family say they made it through 16 days of hell in their flight from Syria, and are still amazed they all arrived in Germany alive. They ask why they didn't die like thousands of others like them: killed by bombs in their native Damascus; drowned by the rough waves of the Mediterranean; or suffocated in overcrowded trucks speeding them through Europe. "Sometimes I wake up and I feel like, thank God, I'm alive," says 19-year-old Habashieh. "I'm lucky, I'm a blessed person." Habashieh, her mother and three younger siblings arrived in Berlin a week ago, five of the 37,000 who have flooded into Germany this month. Now they're embarking on another unknown journey, trying to start a new life in a country full of strange people, cold rain, unfamiliar smells and voices they don't understand. Fear still fills Habashieh's big green-brown eyes when she recounts their epic trek across Europe last month. "We had to hide between the trees, run through sunflower and cornfields and walk all night," Habashieh says, tucking in a loose tail of her gray woolen hijab. "There were scary animals, people were mean, we had to sleep under the sky — it was very dangerous." But excitement and youthful curiosity shine through as she describes her family's arrival in Berlin — how she led her family on buses, subways and commuter trains through the capital, and organized essential first steps like registering to apply for asylum. Raghad, Reem's 11-year-old sister, a skinny girl with long brown hair and a big cheeky smile, got so tired along the way that Mohammed, her burly 17-year-old brother, sometimes had to carry her for hours. Yaman, a lanky 15-year-old, dragged his feet on his own. He doesn't talk much, seemingly still processing the experiences of the past weeks. Khawla Kareem, their 44-year-old mother, says she's still exhausted from the odyssey, but that her maternal urge to bring her four children to safety filled her with the power she needed. Her husband died three years ago; being left alone to care for the children amid a brutal civil war led her to the difficult decision of leaving everything behind and fleeing Syria. It was also three years ago that the war hit home, as the front line between President Bashar Assad's Syrian army and the rebel Free Syrian Army came to the Damascus street they lived on — and they were literally caught in the crossfire. "They kept fighting, bombs were falling, our house burned once, we rebuilt it," Reem Habashieh, who studied economics at the university of Damascus, recounts in fluent English. "We were just saying that we are strong and that we can keep it on in Syria — but we can't anymore." She remembers how life during the war simply stopped for them. "Somehow you're just sitting there, you don't know anything about tomorrow, you don't know if you are going to be alive." So earlier this year Khawla Kareem, an elementary school teacher, scraped together 12,000 euros ($13,400), selling the family car, and bought plane tickets to Bodrum on the Mediterranean Coast in Turkey. She paid traffickers to take them across the sea in a small rubber boat to the Greek island of Samos. Moments before they boarded, the smugglers told them to leave behind all of their belongings on the beach — laptops, clothes and precious objects carrying memories of their past life. They took a ferry from Samos to Athens, then worked their way through Macedonia and Serbia into Hungary, where the mother hired another human smuggler. He spirited them across borders on his minibus with dark tinted windows and north to Berlin, dropping them off on the outskirts of the city last week. Germany has said it expects some 800,000 migrants this year, and the government has said refugees from wars like Syria's can count on having their asylum requests fast-tracked. Others, like migrants from Serbia, Kosovo or Romania, will likely be returned to their home countries, which Germany considers secure. Challenges abound even for those, like the Hasbashiehs, who get to stay. For five days, they have been standing in line, squeezed together with hundreds of other refugees outside the central registration point for asylum seekers in the German capital. In the queue is a cross section of those who have shared their plight in recent weeks: young mothers hugging sick babies; a Syrian army defector wondering whether he should tell the truth about his military past; lonely, unattended teenage boys whose eyes are still filled with the terror they've been through. They crowd under the maple trees on the city office's dusty compound, pushing and shoving in one big line that slowly snakes its way into the gray high-rise building. Some are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, others from Eritrea and Sudan and still others from Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo and elsewhere. All came for a better life in Germany. Their most important belonging right now is their "magic number" which will allow them to enter the building and finally register to file their application — when it's eventually called. The Habashiehs have been holding on to a small blue ticket numbered T00140 for five days, watching in vain so far for it to flash up on the black screen. Some in line say they've been waiting two or three weeks for the overwhelmed German officials to finally attend to them. Meanwhile, city and community officials have been working overtime and on weekends, and pensioners have come out of retirement to help process all the newly arrived migrants. Residents also have come out in droves as the scene repeats itself around the country, bringing those in line food and drinks, donating toys and clothes and sometimes offering rooms in their private homes. After the adrenaline-charged escape from Syria and nearly 4,000-kilometer journey, the slow bureaucracy now seems to take forever for the Habashiehs. They have been lucky to get a room of their own in a former army barracks in Berlin's western Spandau neighborhood, where they were put up with 1,600 other new arrivals. Had they arrived just a few days later, they would have had to make do with cots under unheated white tents. Until their asylum application is officially submitted, it's hard to think ahead, not knowing whether they will stay in Berlin or be relocated elsewhere in Germany. "We want to start our new lives, Raghad and Yaman want to go back to school, I really want to learn the new language," Reem Habashieh says a little impatiently. She dreams of becoming a student at one of Berlin's universities; her brother Mohammed wants to study information technology, then leave to work in one of the Arab gulf states. Only their mother is a bit more cautious. She is relieved she managed to bring her family to Germany, saying it's "a welcoming and helpful country for refugees and they respect the hijab and Islam here." But she pauses for a moment and then says quietly, "my heart will always be in Damascus." ___ Follow Kirsten Grieshaber on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kugrieshaber Join the conversation about this story »
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