Category: Greece
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Who’s to blame for Euro crisis?
The Paris-based International Herald-Tribune carried a front-page banner headline the other day saying: “A hunt for culprits in Euro crisis.” The seasoned foreign correspondent Jack Ewing wrote from Frankfurt: “The debate about how to distribute the cost of preserving the euro zone often revolves around a fundamental question that is unspoken but implicit: Who caused…
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Crunch time approaches
Greece’s summer break is coming to a close, with its place in the Euro-zone still on a knife-edge. Those Greeks still with jobs are returning to work with a deep sense of insecurity. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras spent the whole of last week in shuttle diplomacy with European leaders pleading for more time to implement…
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Andros – the Sydney connection
The island where we’ve been staying has one of the most significant archaeological sites in Greece, and it turns out that the University of Sydney is playing a major role in its excavation. Settlement at Zagora on the west coast goes back to the late 10th century BC, the Iron Age. Since 1967 the university’s…
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Surrealism on Andros
How come the island of Andros in the Aegean Sea is host to some of Greece’s best exhibitions of modern art? The answer lies in both the island’s long cultural history and its maritime prowess. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) at Hora, the main town, is funded by the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation,…
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Greece’s long hot summer
It’s the peak of summer in Greece with temperatures each day up around 40 degrees and fire tenders are stationed on every roadway around the nation waiting to catch firebugs and idiots who throw lighted cigarettes from their cars. Because the countryside is tinder dry and fires devastate farmland, offenders are arrested on the spot…
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Human cost of bank austerity
The connection between the economic crisis and the increasing rate of suicide is worldwide. In April a 77-year-old retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas shot himself in front of the Greek parliament after shouting: “I have debts. I can’t stand this anymore. I don’t want to leave my debts to my children.” He said in a suicide…
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Julian Assange and citizens’ rights
ECUADOR has shown an example to the world by standing up to the US and Britain and granting Julian Assange asylum. The threat by the British government to invade its embassy in London and seize Assange is an outrage. It’s an unprecedented violation of the laws of diplomacy and an act of post-imperial bullying against…
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US medal count – blacks v Mormons
With only hours to go to the London Olympics closing ceremony, the United States is way out in front with a total of 46 gold, 29 silver and 29 bronze medals. I wonder how many were won by black Americans and how many by white Mormons? I doubt whether this will have any impact on…
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Democracy in Athens
For 800 years, beginning in the 6th century BC, the Athenian Agora at the north-west foot of the Acropolis served as the city’s public forum. It is universally considered the cradle of democracy, but it’s not particularly well signposted or promoted. And democracy in Greece today is beginning to look decidedly fragile. On our last…
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Epiphany at Epidaurus
The American writer Henry Miller visited Greece 73 summers ago on the eve of the Second World War. He fell in love with the northern Peloponnese and in particular with Epidaurus. At the great theatre, built among beautiful hills in the 4th century BC, he had an epiphany described in his book The Colossus of…