Haircut strategies: Germany 1932 – GREECE 2015

pitiable GREECE just come halfway back on its feet. Alexis Tsipras and his then Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis made by their uncompromising ...

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What Two Reporters Learned On The 'Refugee Trail' To Europe

_The WorldPost published "A Thousand Miles In Their Shoes," a multimedia project that_ chronicles the exhausting and often dangerous weeks-long journey from Turkey to Germany -- part of what has become the largest mass movement of people since World War II. Middle East correspondent Sophia Jones and Syrian-American journalist Hiba Dlewati discuss their experience traveling with refugees through seven countries. SOPHIA: It’s been about a month since we left Germany after traveling the length of the refugee trail from Turkey. How are you feeling? HIBA: I honestly wish I were still there. The route may be changing, but more people are bound to keep trying to make it to Europe as long as the root causes pushing them to leave are not changing. And all these people have stories. They are not just numbers. What first made you want to report on this story? S: Two years ago, I walked into a prison in Alexandria, Egypt, and interviewed a Syrian mother who had just tried to board a rickety fishing boat to Italy. It had sunk just offshore, leaving her to make an impossible choice: Which of her three young daughters does she try to save? Only one survived. That story truly haunted me. When the numbers of Syrians and other refugees and migrants trying to seek asylum in Europe grew exponentially over the years, I felt like I had an obligation to bear witness. When I heard you talking about how you wanted to travel the length of the refugee trail to Europe, I knew we had to do it, without a doubt.   What did you expect the trip would be like? Was it different than expected?   H: After spending a lot of time talking to friends who had done the trip before, I thought I knew what to expect: Nothing goes as planned. I was surprised, though, when Macedonia closed its border for a few nights and left thousands of people trapped in an area with no water, food or aid, and no answers as to when they could cross. People sleeping on the train tracks, little campfires everywhere, and so many children just left out there. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing was Europe and not a conflict zone. Is there a moment on the trip that stuck with you the most? S: There were so many memorable moments on the trip. But one, in particular, stands out -- when we interviewed that amazing Greek couple, Giorgos Tyrikos Ergas and Katerina Selacha, at their home in Kalloni.   Giorgos told me about his grandmother, who fled Greece in 1943 during World War II and made it to the Turkish city of Bodrum. Then she walked some 800 miles to Aleppo, where she lived with a Syrian family. Over 70 years later, he and his wife, Katerina, are devoting much of their lives to helping refugees because they are “repaying a debt.” Today, my family is safe in the U.S., but who knows what could happen in the future? If one day we’re refugees, I would hope people would open their hearts and homes to help us like Giorgos and Katerina. What about you? Was there one moment that stood out for you? H: Many. I think the moment that shook me up most was one night in Mytilene. After another long day spent in the camp in Karatepe and no news of their status, Taha and Abu Karim [two Syrian men from Homs] decided to go to the police station and ask about their papers. Earlier a policeman had told them to do this. After being hassled, yelled at and physically pushed away from the harbor, Taha asked me, “Are we always going to be humiliated?” Were you ever scared or nervous? S: That same night. I was honestly terrified when that screaming Greek plainclothes police officer came up to me in a crowd of refugees who were begging for their deportation papers and dragged me out by my arm. I was a little worried we’d be detained, but more concerned that the Syrian refugees we were with that night would be punished somehow. When the police officer asked if we knew Taha and Abu Karim, I could tell that they wanted to speak up and condemn the officer’s aggressiveness. But the Syrian men were terrified that their family would then be hurt in some way. I felt so guilty. I’m so glad they made it safely off the island and on to Germany in the end. What impact, if any, did you think you being Syrian, but also American, have on your interactions with the refugees we interviewed and traveled with along the route?   H: Mixed. I felt a mix of guilt and anger that this journey was so different for me because I was born with this simple piece of paper. I most likely still would have been on that trip had I not been American, just under very different circumstance. I think speaking the language, as well as having lived in Syria, made the interactions very positive, and made it easier to joke, understand frustrations and bond. I had to constantly remind myself that I had privilege and to not take light of the situation or take it personally if I was resented. However, everyone we traveled with made me feel appreciated, which was very humbling. I left Syria with my family three years ago, but being American, we went straight to the United States. I came back to the Middle East right after graduating mostly because I thought that if I wanted to write about the Middle East, it's best to actually be there. Also, Turkey has a large Syrian community. I was able to find something that felt a little bit like home, and it's the closest I can get to Syria for now. The day I was most worried about being Syrian and reporting on this story was the day we went back to the Greek-Macedonian border after Macedonia shut it down. I kept thinking, there are at least 4,000 people in desperate need of aid trapped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and I want to stop and ask them how they’re feeling. But the minute we showed up, they said to me, “We know you don’t have aid. It’s OK. Just come here and let us show you our stories.” I was so humbled. I do not know how I would have reacted if I were in their shoes. What is one thing the refugees with whom we traveled taught you? S: When we were taking the train from Hungary with Dlava and Azadeen, the Syrian couple from Kobani, there was this amazing moment right before we crossed into Germany. Dlava, holding her ultrasound of her unborn baby, looked over at Azadeen and whispered, “Love makes the life shine.” I was so in awe at their tenacity and their quiet, fierce love that got them through hell. When everything else is stripped away, all that’s left and all that matters, in my opinion, is love. Dlava showed me that. -- 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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This Man Saved A French Journalist In Syria. Now He Seeks Asylum In A Europe That Doesn’t Want Him.

MYTILENE, Greece -- On a cold February day in Syria nearly four years ago, Edith Bouvier lay strapped to a stretcher inside a water pipeline turned smuggling tunnel as death drew closer. “I thought we’d be killed,” Bouvier recalls over the phone. “We thought it was the last moment.” Little did she know, the man who would soon save her would flee for his own life years later, seeking asylum in a Europe hellbent on keeping thousands of Syrians and other refugees out.  Bouvier escaped with her life on Feb. 22, 2012, when Syrian regime forces bombed a makeshift media center in war-torn Homs. The attack killed acclaimed Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, leaving Bouvier alive but with a broken femur. Days later, Syrian activists and local Free Syrian Army rebels banded together to pull off the seemingly impossible. They would evacuate Bouvier, who needed emergency surgery, along with French photographer William Daniels, Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa and wounded British photographer Paul Conroy, who had all survived the Feb. 22 attack.  The plan was to leave the besieged Baba Amr district through the roughly five-foot-high tunnel from which they had entered. But as men crouched low and slowly carried the stretcher with Bouvier taped on top, sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed near the exit. The strangers tasked to save her weighed their odds of surviving and fled. One man handed the reporter his semiautomatic rifle before running back to Baba Amr.  There was no way Daniels, who refused to leave Bouvier's side, could drag the stretcher himself or carry her on his back. They were stuck. Then, a flicker of light. A headlight from the direction of Baba Amr. A young fighter had risked death and come back for them. The man was named Taha, according to his own account of the escape, an account backed up by Bouvier. The laborer, then in his 20s, had taken up arms months earlier in defense of his neighborhood when the regime violently cracked down on peaceful protests. In the midst of all-out war, Taha decided to go back for the foreigners who had been left for dead.  “I didn’t even look at his face -- I just jumped into his arms and he carried me," Bouvier remembers, still in awe at his bravery. "It’s hard to describe an anonymous guy who would carry you [to safety] without even asking your name." The WorldPost met Taha in Mytilene harbor on Greece's Lesbos island this August. He was stripped down to his undershirt, having been pulled out of the Aegean Sea by the Greek coast guard hours earlier after his boat took on water. "I've seen death more than a thousand times," he said then, still wet but seemingly unshaken. "We have stories bigger than the sea." Taha is one of hundreds of thousands of people who have braved land and sea to make it to Western Europe in the largest mass migration since World War II.  If it weren't for a family friend calling him a "hero," Taha never would have volunteered to tell his story.  "It was a duty that I had to carry out," he said with conviction. "I couldn't leave a wounded person behind." "After the doctor treated her," he continued, a smile spreading across his face, "he said 'Welcome back' and she made all of us cry." After helping to rescue Bouvier and Williams, who with the aid of dozens of Syrians would make it safely across the border to Lebanon on March 1, 2012, Taha continued fighting the Syrian regime. Soon, he said, he was not only wanted by the government, but also by the Islamic State, Jabhat al Nusra and other hardline fighters.  Fed up with all the different actors dipping their hands in Syria, in a war he said became the "revolution of the dollar," Taha fled across the border to Turkey in search of work and a way to support his family. While he found safety away from the bombs and the bounty on his head, Turkey barred him from legally working. He became nothing more than a "slave," Taha said, working hard jobs for barely any money. “I feel like I’m suffocating," Taha cried out. "I just want to live. We were made to live.” Taha, unable to sum up his feelings of loss and disappointment, deferred to the words of Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. “The sweetest homeland, one can’t stand living in such a homeland,” the poem reads. “One can’t stand dying in such a homeland. I’ve been sweating blood and paying the ultimate price to please the world.” Taha would make it to Germany several weeks later after traveling through seven countries. He's now in the lengthy process of applying for asylum, which could be made even more difficult due to his involvement in Syria's armed hostilities. Bouvier, safely back in France, becomes angry over the phone when talking about Europe's response to the refugee crisis. Germany, perhaps the European country hit hardest by the crisis, says it just can't cope with the number of refugees and migrants -- a number expected to rise to 1.5 million by the end of this year. Anti-immigrant protests and violence have erupted in parts of the country.  "I can’t believe that we’re considering them as the enemy," Bouvier bemoans. "We are blocking the entrance of our countries, but they have nothing. They deserve to be helped."  And of Taha, she says, after a long pause, as if collecting herself on the other end of the phone: "I would love to meet him again." _Taha’s last name and certain details regarding his identity have been withheld at his request, out of concern for his family’s safety and others still inside Syria. _ _Hiba Dlewati contributed reporting._ -- 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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Obama administration says China not manipulating currency

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration said Monday that China's currency remains undervalued in relation to the U.S. dollar but it did not cite the country for unfairly manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages. In a new Treasury Department report, the administration noted that China sent global markets plunging in August with a surprise devaluation of the yuan. Since then, China's currency, also known as the renminbi, has fallen 2.3 percent against the dollar. Treasury said it will be important going forward for China to allow its currency to again rise in value against the dollar when market forces dictate such a move. The report, which Treasury is required by law to submit to Congress twice a year, did not charge any country with unfair currency manipulation. Such a designation could ultimately lead to trade sanctions. Treasury's latest report stood in contrast to the previous report in April and several before that in which the administration said it believed that China's currency was "significantly undervalued." In the new report, the administration softened its language to say that China's currency "remains below its appropriate medium-term valuation." American manufacturing companies complain that China is still manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages and their supporters in Congress have pushed the administration to take a tougher stand. They are closely watching to see what type of guarantees the administration was able to negotiate in the recently completed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. In an interview before the report was released, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that there was still room for China's currency to appreciate once the country gets past some of its immediate economic problems. "Right now there is downward pressure on the (yuan), some of it as a result of the policies (China) made and the way they announced them over the summer," Lew said in an interview with CNBC. The report also said that South Korea's currency, the won, is undervalued, falling by 7.7 percent over the past year against the dollar. The report repeated a past recommendation that the South Korean government should limit its intervention in currency markets to periods when trading was disorderly. It said South Korea also needs to be more transparent in telling financial markets when it was intervening. The report said that global growth has been modest so far this year with activity in European countries that use the euro currency "highly uneven and too soft overall." It noted high unemployment in Spain and Greece and large current account trade surpluses in countries such as Germany. The report said countries with large current account surpluses should take strong action to boost investment and domestic demand. Treasury has not accused any country of unfairly manipulating its currency for trade advantages since the Clinton administration labeled China a currency manipulator in 1994. Such a designation would trigger a period of discussions to try to resolve differences and if those failed, the U.S. could try to win approval from the World Trade Organization to impose economic sanctions. Join the conversation about this story »

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Greece Changing TV Licensing

Greece's SRYRIZA-led coalition said it will overhaul the country's private TV licensing system as part of reforms it says will target corruption. The post Greece Changing TV Licensing appeared first on The National Herald.

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Mariyana and Ted Spyropoulos to be Honored by HBA

  NEW YORK – Mariyana Spyropoulos, a public servant with a passion for her Greek heritage, will be one of the honorees at the 65th annual Scholarship Ball of the Hellenic Bar Association of Illinois (HBA) that will be held on November 7 at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Chicago and where scholarships will be awarded […] The post Mariyana and Ted Spyropoulos to be Honored by HBA appeared first on The National Herald.

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Jews Accused by GREECE Member of Parliament of Worsening Financial Crisis

“We join the Central Board of Jewish Communities in GREECE in condemning these remarks, which allude to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jews ...

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