Greece is the guest of honour at this year’s Winter Wonders/Plaisirs d ‘hiver 2011 held in Brussels, where the culture of the Peloponnese District was presented.
Brussels’ Winter Wonders is the third major Christmas market organized in Europe and the festivities take place at the Grand-Place in Brussels and around the Bourse, the Place Sainte-Catherine and the Marché aux Poissons.
The event is being organized for the 10th year in a row and aims a target-group of 2.5 million people, 20% of which are potential tourists, who will have the unique opportunity of wandering around Brussels in a most celebrating atmosphere.
The Peloponnese District in collaboration with Association of Peloponnese in Belgium and the Greek Chef’s club organized a food presentation with recipes from Peloponnese as well as they delivered a tourism and travel guide to all the attendees concerning the culture and tourism in Peloponnese.
The promotion of the culture of the Peloponnese district was completed with the presentation of a variety of wines from Peloponnese.
Sources within main opposition party New Democracy asserted on Thursday that ND leader Antonis Samaras will not support any change to the agreements concerning the transitional government’s mission and role, including suggestions that the next elections be postponed, a position he took during his meeting on Friday with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. The party is also likely to oppose proposals for a political party leaders’ council to discuss these issues.
“The things agreed between the political party leaders are obvious and do not change. We do not understand the point of such a meeting,” ND sources told in response to leaks from PASOK that the role and mission of the transitional government needs clarification.
The main opposition also insists that the next elections must take place as close to February 19 as possible, as already decided, depending on the progress of negotiations for the PSI. (source: ana-mpa)
Makis Voridis, a LAOS Minister in the Greek coalition government
ATHENS – The building tension in Greece’s shaky coalition government boiled over in a Cabinet meeting, when PASOK Socialist Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos tangled with far Right-Wing LAOS Infrastructure Minister Makis Voridis over proposed changes in laws over the statute of limitations and divorce. Interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos also has ministers from the conservative New Democracy in his tripartite government, and politicians from that party have also experienced tensions and friction with other members of the government.
Media reports said that Venizelos, who has a reputation as a bombastic speaker, took umbrage when Voridis disagreed with an idea to let divorces be settled out of court. Voridis jumped in and said LAOS vehemently disputed the idea, leading Venizelos to say, “People who are shouting have to understand they are wrong, making a mistake.”
Voridis immediately fired back. “This is not a PASOK government. It’s a government of three partners and this is something you should take into consideration.” An irritated Venizelos snapped back: “Be careful how you speak,” and Voridis came right back at him, declaring “I’ll talk any way I want,” adding to the growing tension in the room and leading the mild-mannered Papademos to intervene. “We’re here so that all sides can be heard,” he said, putting an end to what media reports called a “cock fight” between the feuding ministers.
The anxiety has been amping up as Papademos is trying to keep New Democracy from opposing his plans to reduce auxiliary pensions that are critical for the elderly. New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said his party wouldn’t support the cuts; although he has previously taken this stance, stating that he wouldn’t go along with more austerity measures to keep international loans coming, his position has been unsteady.
The situation has deteriorated to the point that Greek President Karolas Papoulias has chimed in and offered to help Papademos get his ministers to focus on getting a second bailout, this one for $175 billion, from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank, after a first rescue package of $152 billion in loans has failed to stem the country’s slide toward economic oblivion. Papademos is trying to right Greece ahead of elections that were set for Feb. 19, but now seem certain to be delayed as his administration is far behind schedule in completing its work.
Papademos is set to meet with his government’s leaders on Dec. 23, a critical meeting that will be observed by the Troika. Following the collapse of talks on plans to cut auxiliary pensions earlier this week, and with mounting speculation about early elections threatening to hamper the progress of reforms demanded by the country’s international creditors, Papademos aims to establish a common position with the leaders of his tripartite coalition. The newspaper Kathimerini reported that Papoulias told Papademos he was worried about the absence of political consensus at such a critical time for Greece but was reassured by the Premier, who said the problems would be ironed out.
Even the date of the elections is being contested, with LAOS leader George Karatzaferis frequently changing his mind over his stance, while Venizelos said early elections are out of the question because the government is trying to negotiate a write down of 50 percent of much of its debt with investors. He said the talks are going well but the creditors, who said they are facing 65 percent losses, dispute it.
Greek guards say scores of archaeological sites and museums across the country will be shut down over weekends, starting on Christmas, as they strike to protest the lack of extra weekend pay.
The guards’ association released a statement Thursday declaring guards have not been paid extra for working weekend shifts over the last two months.
It says workers will keep the weekend strike going until the ministries of culture and finance solve the problem. Greece’s crisis has permeated the economy, and the country has only been kept solvent through international bailouts since May 2010. (source: AP)
ATHENS – The economic crisis is taking a big bite out of Greece’s media, with the unpaid staff of the country’s second-biggest selling newspaper Eleftherotypia launching indefinite 48-hour rolling strikes after news broke that the paper may file for bankruptcy, while unpaid employees at Alter TV have been occupying the station for weeks, keeping it off the air. A statement from protest organizers at Eleftherotypia issued a statement claiming that, “The newspaper which plays a leading role in challenging the country’s political and financial establishment, has left its workers unpaid since August,” decrying the irony. “Eleftherotypia has survived since August, thanks to the dedication of its employees who continued to work conscientiously and produce the newspaper, valuing the relationship with readers.” Striking workers stopped updating the newspaper’s website early on Dec. 22.
The country’s news media has been severely affected by the country’s financial crisis, with a decline in advertising, readership and loan availability from banks leading to closures and steep salary cuts. Unpaid workers at private Alter television have kept programs off the air since Dec. 2, while news programs on public television and radio have been disrupted for weeks by strikes and stoppages.
Founded in 1975, Eleftherotypia sells more papers than any other newspaper in the country apart from Athens daily Ta Nea. The problems at Eleftherotypia were a long time coming. In October, the paper’s workers met after being informed that management had failed to secure an 8-milion euro ($14.3 million) loan. The debt-ridden newspaper, in print since 1975, had been in talks with lenders over the last few months to secure funding to keep the publication in print.. Breaking the trend of Greek press, Eleftherotypia was originally owned by its journalists. It was eventually taken over by the Tegopoulos brothers, and is now published by businessman Thanasis Tegopoulos, retaining its traditional socialist domestic and international stance.
Eleftherotypia editors often adopt a social-democratic stance on a number of issues, but more radical viewpoints are also frequently represented in the paper, and the paper is often supportive of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) party, although it has also criticized the party during its time in office.
In April 1977, the terrorist group 17 November (17N) sent a manifesto to Eleftherotypia because it said the newspaper respected Leftists even while occasionally criticizing them. After that, the paper became the group’s media of choice as it carried out years of terrorism. The newspaper became known for its policy of publishing the proclamations of such groups without criticism. Until 2002 it abstained from condemning terrorist attacks, including assassinations. In 2005, the Court of Appeals in Athens found the company owning the newspaper, the editor, and two workers guilty of slandering the Public Prosecutor of the trial of the 17 November group, District Attorney Christos Lambrou. Earlier this year, Prosecutor Grigoris Peponis, who deals in financial investigations, began a probe into whether members of any banks were guilty of breach of faith by financing the television station knowing it was insolvent.
Cyprus Attorney-General Petros Clerides said he will lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court against the Assize Court’s majority ruling to acquit five defendants over a fatal air crash in 2005, in which 121 people died.
The Court ruled yesterday by a majority (two to one) that there was not sufficient evidence linking the defendants to the air crash, and as such, they bear no responsibility for the crash.
“I have read the ruling of the majority as well as that the minority and I have received the views of the prosecutors who handled the case, and we have unanimously concluded that an appeal against the majority ruling is justified,” Clerides said, noting that the existence of a dissenting opinion justifies his view than an appeal should be lodged.
He added that the appeal will be lodged within the next 14 days, stating that the arguments to be presented to the Supreme Court will be exactly the same as those presented to the Assize Court.
The Attorney-General defended the work of the prosecutors, reiterating that the case was difficult.
“The Law Office, the Police and the State in general have exhausted all means at their disposal so that the Court could reach a conviction,” he said. (source: cna)
The deep economic crisis Greece faces as the recession enters its fourth year, as well as the new fuel taxes introduced by the government, have caused a sharp increase in the price of heating fuel.
The arrival of winter, coupled with record prices for fuel and the fact that household budgets have decreased, has forced tens of thousands of families across Greece to turn off their central heating.
As a result, the old wood-burning stoves and fireplaces have seen a revival, creating a lucrative market for legal importers and salesmen of firewood, but even more so for illegal loggers who collect and sell their product without a permit.
These illegal practices are causing serious damage to Greece’s forests. Deforestation has become a real problem – particularly since the start of December – due to illegal logging, the forest service of the Ministry for the Environment reports. The official figures suggest that thousands of hectares of forest have already suffered severe damage.
The most devastated woodlands include those in Pilio, Xanthi, Kavala and the Calcidica region, and Foloi in the prefecture of Ileia and Aghios Christoforos, near Agrinio. Several forest rangers who were on patrol in the forests of Strofilia, in Acaia, have reported to police that they were attacked by a group of illegal woodcutters when they tried to arrest them. ”The police recently arrested five teams of illegal loggers in a single operation,” said Costas Voliotis.
Voliotis lives in Pelion, in the central part of Greece, an area with extended forests. Damage to forests is also a serious problem in the natural reserve of Kotychi-Strofylia in the western Peloponnese.
Its lagoon and forest are protected under the 1971 Convention of Ramsar del 1971, but there are many reports of illegal clearing of trees.
The forest authorities admit that the problem is too widespread for them to control and that they lack sufficient staff to patrol all of Greece’s forests, particularly on the weekends when most illegal logging takes place. In November alone, according to figures released by the forest service, 30% of forests were lost due to the activities of illegal loggers. Fortunately, the environmentalist group WWF Hellas has been active for some time trying to defend the country’s woodlands.
The group has announced that it completed its reforestation programme in 11 areas in the Peloponnese that had burned down in the devastating fires that raged in the summer of 2007, killing 67 people. The programme has a budget of 2.47 million euros and was completed thanks to financial support from non-governmental organisations and the assistance of more than 100 private organizations, such as universities and groups of volunteers. (source: ANSA)
The Greek-German singer Vicky Leandros gave an interview on Berlin Tagesspiegel Daily, speaking about Greece and her short career as a politician in Greece in the past.
Although the interview focused on Vicky Leandros’ performances in Germany, she also talked about the days when she was Deputy Mayor of Pireas in Greece.
Vicky Leandros has realized since 2004 that the Greek economy is troubled. She recalls how employees used to arrive at work at 10:00 and leave by 13:00. Then, her family asked her to resign in order to avoid accusations that she was involved in financial scandals in Greece.
Moreover, the singer emphasized her belief that not all Greeks are frauds or corrupt, and that she understands the Greek way of thinking.
In addition, Leandros talked about the statement of Josef Schlarmann, who proposed that Greece should sell some of its islands. Leandros regarded this statement as nonsense, and believes that if we want to preserve the unification of Europe, we should avoid such advice.
Vicky Leandros also talked about protests at Syntagma square in Athens and the conflicts between protesters and police authorities, remarking that all these events are being misinterpreted in Germany.
“They often say that Greeks don’t want reforms. This is not true because the majority of Greeks did not know the bad economic situation of Greece. The common salary in Greece is 800 euros. It is more than expected to protest now that their salaries face a 20%-30% decline. Parents give their children to SOS children villages because they cannot feed them anymore. This is happening in Greece for the first time”, Leandros concluded.
An unpublished novel by Dido Sotiriou titled “The Children of Spartacus” has been released and is available in bookstores. The unknown novel was presented by Nikos Beloyannis, son of the senior Nikos Beloyannis and Elli Pappa, and Eri Stavropoulou, a professor of Philology at the University of Athens who edited the book, and took place among Sotiriou’s friends and other journalists.
The fragmentary novel titled “The Children of Spartacus” was discovered among 600 manuscripts found at Dido Sotiriou’s home, and in her safe deposit box at the National Bank of Greece in Syntagma Square.
“For the initial story of the book (The Children of Spartacus), Dido Sotiriou was inspired when she would visit her sister Elli Pappa in prison, during the late 50’s and the beginning of the next decade”. Listening to the stories of women from Thrace, who were held as political prisoners, she elaborated on her heroes and incidents she experienced because of her work, explained Nikos Beloyannis.
She started working on the novel in 1963 after her “Bloodstained Lands” novel, writing during the dictatorship period. She rented a safe deposit box at the National Bank of Greece and every time she would conclude two chapters, she would carry them from her home in Vassilika Istiaias and take them to Athens by bus, in order to hide them at the safe deposit box.
After her novel “We are Being Demolished” was published, she began to study “The Children of Spartacus” again, in 1990.
However, due to other commitments and her health condition, she did not manage to complete her work.
Eri Stavropoulou, worried at first about the completion of the book, mentioned that no one added a single word, as she would gradually discover herself that the novel was almost complete without any gaps for the readers.
The novel is set in Thrace during the first two decades of the 20th century, and in Athens during the first post-civil war era, mainly dealing with the syndication and resistance activities of its heroes, who were inspired by the rebellion of Spartacus, the Thracian slaves and ideals of the Left, at a time when the country was experiencing dramatic moments.
For several months a stream of mostly young men and women, fresh off the plane from Greece, has been knocking at the doors of a large building on Lonsdale Street in the heart of Melbourne. The 1940s block houses the headquarters of Australia’s biggest Greek community. In scenes reminiscent of the great gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, the men and women have travelled to the other side of the world in search of a better life. Unlike Greeks of old, however, these new émigrésare noticeably accomplished, with hard-earned degrees won in some of the toughest fields.
“They’re all university graduates, engineers, architects, mechanics, teachers, bankers who will do anything for work,” says Bill Papastergiades, the community’s lawyer president. “It’s desperate stuff. We’re all aghast. Often they’ll just turn up with a bag. Their stories are heartbreaking and on every plane there are more,” he told the Guardian in a telephone interview. “A lot come here and are literally lost. We’ve taken to putting them in houses, five or six of them at a time, here in the centre.”
The exodus is just one part of the human drama being played out in Greece where Europe’s debt crisis began. Since June, Melbourne community leaders say they have been deluged with thousands of letters, emails and telephone calls from Greeks desperate to migrate to a country that, safeguarded from global market turbulence, is now seen as the land of unparalleled opportunity.
This year alone, 2,500 Greek citizens have moved to Australia although officials in Athens say another 40,000 have also “expressed interest” in initiating the arduous process to settle there. An 800-seat Australian government “skills expo” held in the Greek capital in October attracted some 13,000 applicants.
With Greece braced for a fifth year of recession, unemployment at a record 18% – and an unprecedented 42.5% of the nation’s youth out of work — the brain drain is only expected to grow. The Australian economy, by contrast, is predicted to grow 4% in 2012.
“Often people say they just don’t want their children to grow up there,” said Papastergiades. “The other day I had a phone call from a Greek plumber who said he hadn’t worked for eight months, had three kids to feed and was so desperate he had considered killing himself. The same day I received a letter from a professor at Athens University who also said he was wanted to migrate with his entire family here.”
Tessie Spilioti is among those who have already relocated to Australia. A talented curator and artist, her gallery in the once bustling historic centre of Athens bore testimony to the boom times that followed the 2004 Olympics. But by late 2008, as recession set in, she found herself bearing witness to the decline and fall of a city gripped increasingly by strikes, protests and riots.
By the time the 45-year-old decided to move to Melbourne last summer, art had become a luxury that few could afford, with galleries even holding yoga classes to make ends meets.
“There’s nowhere in the world like Greece and I miss it and my friends every single day,” said Spilioti who grew up in Australia before settling in Athens 27 years ago. “But Australia is a positive country. It’s the land of plenty, there is a feeling of abundance and of opportunity,” she enthused. “That’s totally missing in Greece. Instead people are panic-stricken, the vibe is bad, the psychology is bad and there’s a feeling of almost being under siege. I never thought I’d leave but with the stress of day-to-day survival I knew it was going to be very difficult to evolve.”
Two generations are expected to be lost as a result of Greece’s great economic crisis. The new diaspora, say experts, will almost certainly comprise younger Greeks who are well-educated and multilingual but are no longer able to survive in a country whose economy is in freefall, partly because of the biting austerity measures Greece has been forced to apply in exchange for aid.
A recent study by Thessaloniki University showed the vast majority of Greeks now opting to look for work abroad with the younger generation heading for countries as diverse as Russia, China and Iran.
Of those surveyed most hadn’t even attempted to find work at home because they saw no future in an economy that is expected to endure stringent belt-tightening for at least the next decade.
In Australia the influx has dismayed other Greeks forced by poverty and war to emigrate in the 1950s and 60s.
For years, the diaspora has been looked down on with successive governments in Athens refusing even to give voting rights to ethnic Greeks abroad, even in places like Melbourne whose prosperous Greek community is more than 300,000-strong. Seeing their homeland’s talented youth now arriving en masse – with most prepared to do the most menial jobs to get by – has been a rude awakening.
“There’s a lot of shattered dreams,’ says Litsa Georgiou, 48, who moved to Sydney with her toddler daughter and Athenian husband last year. The community is in shock.”
“Many had hoped to move back to Greece … instead you hear stories every day of someone who has taken that 22-hour flight to move here. It’s terrible to think that it is going to take 10 years before Greece even begins to recover.”
The allure of Australia
Australia is a popular destination for Greeks because of its substantial Hellenic population. Melbourne claims to be the largest Greek city in the world outside of Greece. They came mostly in the 1950s and 60s, leaving behind the hardships of postwar Europe. But in the 1970s many returned to Greece after the junta fell and it is estimated there are about 100,000 Greek Australians living in Greece now.
As well as the large Greek community, the Australian economy is also a draw card. Unemployment is just 5% and growth is predicted by the OECD to be 4% in 2012.
But visa standards for entry into Australia are stringent.
Only 134 visas were granted to Greeks in the year to June 2011, with all but 15 granted on family grounds. In the same year, 102 student visas were granted, an increase of 56% on the previous year.
Certain professions are favoured by the Australian government, including health workers and engineers. Applications for skilled visas can take months to complete and are no guarantee of work once you arrive, unless you have been sponsored by an employer. (Source: Guardian)
Greece is the guest of honour at this year’s Winter Wonders/Plaisirs d ‘hiver 2011 held in Brussels, where the culture of the Peloponnese District was presented.
