Category: Eurozone
-
History is both alive and dead
In just four days in Athens we’ve visited the Benaki Museum, the magnificent ruins and museum at Delphi, climbed to the Acropolis and inspected the Parthenon, and been to the Acropolis Museum and the breathtaking National Archaeological Museum in central Athens. In the days ahead we have a schedule of further trips and tours to…
-
Exploring Athens
We’ve flown from the olive lands of Kalamata to Athens, home to five million of Greece’s 12 million people. We’re staying just off Syntagma Square, where all the capital’s big demonstrations take place. Central Athens is a surprise. It’s full of green spaces – we’re right opposite the National Botanic Gardens – and round the…
-
The Digger gives us a welcome to Athens
What a welcome to Athens. At the airport one of the Oz veterans of journalism, Brian “Digger” Williams, is there to greet us and drives us to our hotel which is a few hundred metres from the Parliament, the Presidential Palace and the venue for all the big political rallies. It is the first time…
-
Farewell Messenia
We head for Athens tomorrow (Wednesday) after four weeks in the southern Peloponnese. It has been a superb introduction to Greece for me. We’ve explored the marine caves where a Neolithic civilisation flourished 7,000 years ago. We’ve entered the once opulent palace of Nestor, built more than 3,000 years ago, and the tombs where its…
-
Rule by troika
When no single party won an outright majority at the May 6 general election, Greece held a second election on June 17. The stock, bond and money markets were ecstatic when the right-wing New Democracy topped the poll and immediately formed a three-party coalition with Pasok, the social democratic party, and the Democratic Left party.…
-
Sweden stalks Julian Assange
As the Australian Government – in the form of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and Foreign Minister Bob Carr – is cooperating in the extradition of Australian citizen Julian Assange to Sweden, I thought it was time to put the spotlight on the plucky Scandinavian kingdom. Most Australians regard Sweden as a shining…
-
Into the wilds
We’ve been in the Deep Mani, the southernmost part of the Peloponnese, discovering stories of warrior women and relics of the one of the oldest known civilisations in all of Greece. Our way led over winding mountain coastal roads into the wildest, most barren landscape we’ve yet seen. Clinging to folds in the stony hills…
-
Unholy alliance against bail-out
The Greek bail-out negotiations are so tortuous that they require a knowledge of quantum physics to track their progress. The next “crunch date” is July 24 when the so-called “troika” representing the Euro-banks, the IMF and the European Commission return with their final report on what the Greek people must sacrifice to satisfy the German,…
-
Greece’s wartime history: a reflection
Hitler’s German army invaded Greece in Operation Marita on April 6, 1941. Using overwhelming ground and air forces, including 10 armoured, mechanised and mountain divisions and the SS Adolf Hitler Bodyguard, the campaign was to avenge the humiliating defeat inflicted on Mussolini’s army. The German army blitzed its way to victory in three weeks with…
-
Severe case of foot in mouth
Greeks are in disbelief at the way they are being blamed for the crisis by right-wing European politicians. German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged them in the recent elections to vote for parties that would enforce the European Union’s proposed austerity measures. Last week British Prime Minister David Cameron courted the Little England vote by saying…