Milwaukee Bucks no. 15 NBA draft pick Giannis Antetokounmpo
In an appearance on Greek television yesterday, Golden Dawn leader MP Nikos Mihaloliakos compared Milwaukee Bucks Greek 18 year old no. 15 NBA draft pick Giannis Antetokounmpo to a chimpanzee. When asked to comment on Antetokounmpo becoming an exemplar for Greeks abroad, he remarked: “in the zoo if you give a chimpanzee a banana and a flag he’ll be ‘Greek’ too”. Continue reading
Minas Papageorgiou
The content of this article is adapted from a facebook post by Sasha Chaitow. A Greek version is also available at Minas Papageorgiou’s blog here.
Sadly there is a curious but pernicious variety of ecclesiastic censorship that persists in Greece, which is one of the primary reasons for which, despite the wealth of material of interest to esoteric scholars, folklorists and religious studies scholars, there is little to no knowledge of this beyond Greek borders. My friend and colleague, investigative journalist Minas Papageorgiou recently published his new book with Εκδόσεις Δαιδάλεος (Daidaleos Publications), an independent publishing house that specializes in quality research publications on a variety of topics including philosophy, religion, folklore, history, psychology, and culture.
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Antonis Samaras (left) with Failos Kranidiotis (right)
What follows is a translation of an article in Greek written by lawyer Failos Kranidiotis, a long time close adviser to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that was published on June 9 to coincide with the Athens Gay Pride parade. To my knowledge, no one from the Samaras administration has made any statements in objection.
h/t @Vlattas_C
This is my op-ed that appears in the print edition of the April/May 2013 issue of Free Inquiry magazine.
Nowhere is the European crisis that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008—and especially the subsequent effort to combat it—felt more sharply than in Greece. The country is suffering an economic depression after five years of rapidly declining output with no end in sight as it fails to meet the demands of the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who are since a 2010 bailout its largest creditors. Greece is also one of the largest entry points for immigrants into the EU—many of them asylum seekers—with the result that an estimated 10 percent of the population are not citizens and are widely portrayed in the local media as dangerous criminals.
While the Corpus Christi and “Elder Pastitsios” pending blasphemy cases have grabbed most of the headlines, this is a case I was not aware of. Given the timing with Greek Orthodox Easter this weekend, this is a very timely and interesting case, which thankfully ended in an acquittal.
Διπλωματικό τηλεγράφημα της συλλογής Kissinger Cables από το Wikileaks δίνει σαφή εικόνα της χαμηλής εκτίμησης της Αμερικάνικης διπλωματικής αποστολής για τον Κωνσταντίνο Καραμανλή αλλά και για την Ελληνική κοινωνία γενικότερα. Το παρακάτω είναι μεταφρασμένο απόσπασμα από τηλεγράφημα της πρεσβείας στην Αθήνα με ημερομηνία 4 Οκτωβρίου 1974. Περιγράφει τις εντυπώσεις από τηλεοπτικό διάγγελμα του Καραμανλή την προηγούμενη μέρα:
Ο Καραμανλής φάνηκε να έχει χαλαρότητα και αυτοπεποίθηση όσο παρέδιδε την μαγνητοσκοπημένη του ομιλία με τον συνήθη αυστηρό και κάπως πατερναλιστικό τρόπο του. Στην εθνοτικά ομοιογενή και σφιχτά δομημένη Ελληνική κοινωνία, η προσέγγιση του φαίνεται να είναι καλή ψυχολόγηση και πιθανό να λάβει υποστήριξη.
Ολόκληρο το τηλεγράφημα στα Αγγλικά με επισήμανση στο αντίστοιχο απόσπασμα εδώ.
Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis has published a detailed account of an alleged criminal ring’s plans murder him. In addition, the ring was allegedly responsible for defamatory anonymous blog posts and blackmailing of journalists as well as a candidate for political office in the last elections, among a slew of illegal activities. His report is published in full in the April 18 issue of Vaxevanis’ magazine HOT DOC.
According to Vaxevanis, the criminal ring is composed of current and former members of the Greek National Intelligence Service (NIS), journalists, and some of their spouses. In the article, the members are almost all identified only by their initials and some redacted photos of members are also included. Funding for the team is provided by a banker who is also not named, and they were employing the services of a spy from neighboring fYROM. Vaxevanis alleges that the group is behind both a failed attempt on his life in September 2012 as well as a defamatory blog post on the site Fimotro in an apparent effort to discredit him. A similar defamatory post on the same site succeeded in causing the electoral defeat of Vasilis Hitos, a candidate in last year’s elections with the Independent Greeks political party. Journalist Tasos Telloglou was also threatened by the banker. Also uncovered was an apparent plot to falsely incriminate a former female bank manager by planting drugs in a restaurant she owned. The bank manager had been fired ostensibly for embezzlement but allegedly it is actually because she possesses damning evidence about the banker’s family’s activities. By orchestrating a very public arrest of her on charges of distributing drugs, her credibility as a witness was to be damaged in case her allegations against the bank came to light. *
The Athens Indymedia website previously located at https://athens.indymedia.org has been shut down by the Greek government according to tweets by ruling party MP Adonis Georgiadis, seen here congratulating minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias. Update 4/14/2013 It appears that the action was actually initiated by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)-where Athens Indymedia was being hosted. However, details are still unclear. See last two updates at the bottom of the post after the jump for more information.
Ακολουθεί η συνομιλία μου στις 27/3/2013 μέσω twitter με τον Διευθυντή του Γραφείου Τύπου του Πρωθυπουργού Αντώνη Σαμαρά Γιώργο Μουρούτη. Έχω προσθέσει και μετάφραση στα Αγγλικά. Αντίγραφο της συνομιλίας φιλοξενείται στο Storify.
What follows is my 3/27/2013 twitter conversation with Greek Prime Minister Samaras’s Press Secretary George Mouroutis. The original tweets are in Greek and I have translated the text to English. The conversation is also hosted on Storify.
Update 5/4/2013 Πρόσθεσα άλλα πέντε tweet που μου διέφυγαν. Είναι σημειωμένα με το σύμβολο ‘^’
Update 4/5/2013 I added five more tweets that I neglected to originally include. They are marked with the ‘^’ symbol.