So when the government decides to take out a loan with the IMF, and the deal is signed and done, that's when the unions (damn them) tell their members to go on strike. So they close all the public services and the schools, and the journalists stage a news blackout in the whole country, so that the citizens have to rely on the foreign press to hear what's happening in their own damn country. And everyone goes for a long walk in the centre of Athens staging a peaceful uneventful demonstration. But in amongst the strollers with their banners telling the IMF to go home, there are fucking hoons who have nothing better to do and don't even know what the demonstration is about. They just want to let off their firecrackers, which they do, in a building that houses a bank. And no one know what the fuck is going on (unless they live down the road or something like that). And then three bank employees in their 30s die in the ensuing fire, and that's when the keepers of the news decide to break people's news fasts and tell them what's happening in their own country - because if they don't hear it in the emotional sympathetic voice of their own lyrical language, then they'll just have to take the word of the foreign press that this is what's happening in their own country, and they don't need to hear it over next morning's breakfast while they're watching the news as they drink their coffee, do they?
When Greek journalists go on strike, they deny the right of the ordinary Greek citizens to find about what's going on in their own country. If it weren't for those three deaths in the bank fire during the protests, they'd still be on strike - what made them change their minds and start reporting the news after all? The severity of the case or the shame of starving Greek citizens the right to know what is happening in their country from their own people, and forcing them to turn to the foreign press???
From now on, the fifth of May in Greece will be associated with the blatant irresponsibility of that handful who don't want to grow up and simply continue to refuse to stop abusing a system that could work if only they let it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100505/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_greece_financial_crisis_84
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8662117.stm
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2010/05/05/magnay.protests.in.greece.cnn.html
Visiting Greece this summer? Have a good holiday then.
Zambolis apartments
For your holidays in Chania
A famous couple "journalist" live down the road from my pappou in Athens. They don't have private bodyguards but police officers paid by the gov't. I don't see tatiana or niko complaining about the free bees.
ReplyDeletenow we know what the greek police do, and why they haven't got time to enforce the no-smoking and no-cell-phone-while-driving bans which I see being broken all the time everywhere - they are too busy providing personal private bodyguard services
ReplyDeleteGreek politicians: raise taxes on dilapidated houses. There are plenty everywhere! Step1 to ending the economic crisis! (I think)
ReplyDeleteIf these very same journalists would stop being the prophets of doom, inundating us with countless pages of pessimism in every newspaper and hours of despair on every TV channel then perhaps we could all take a deep breath, buckle down and get on with living. Yes we have problems, but as the saying goes "it's no good crying over spilt milk", so lets start dealing with them with a bit of optimism and backbone. All the protesting and finger pointing isn't going to get the money back or make the slightest difference to the situation but if we all stood together and started working as a nation we might eventually amount to something.
ReplyDeleteLove your site btw
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Maria your comment is from an anglosaxon perspective. You say "to stop abusing a system that could work if only they let it" Have you not realised all these years that there is no system? That we haven't put up a system yet and that the process of doing so is hard and painful? If people wouldn't protest taking the risk of being sacked we would have a living standard similar to our Balkan neighbours.
ReplyDeleteif i ever admitted to myself that there is no system in my country, than i would not be able to live in it; i want to believe that there is a system, and it can be improved.
ReplyDeleteprobably you are right mariza - i have an anglo-saxon outlook; i lived in an anglo-saxon system long enough to know that it worked, and i would like to see it working where i live, because now, in all truth, i have come to the conclusion that i have no other country to go to - i live in greece, as a greek, and i feel lost in my own country
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16055623
ReplyDeletei thought this article summed up the situation very well
Totally agree with you Maria and maybe, just maybe this crisis will change things for the better and get things working properly at last. I too was born and raised in an Anglo-Saxon system (South Africa) and now live in Greece.Maybe I'm just a born optimist but I really think they can do it if they try!
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