Come the Revolution – Alex Mitchell
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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…
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Among the gum trees of Greece
Driving north from Athens to the secluded beach and headland at Sounion the other night, Oz-born journalist Brian “Digger” Williams drew our attention to the avenues of giant eucalyptus trees along the way. They look like the “ghost gum” variety we have in Australia except that the trunks are not long and slender, they are…
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Where Theseus sailed
One of the first Greek myths to made a deep impression on me as a child was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus, son of King Aegeus, left Athens to defeat the Cretan monster and secure the supremacy of his home state. He succeeded with the help of Ariadne, princess of Crete, who…
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Ex-Defence Minister threatens to tell all
As noted in previous despatches, Greece’s vast over-spending on arms was one of the compelling reasons for its debt crisis as well as the corrosive spread of corruption among the political classes. We have been receiving a daily diet of reports on the impending trial of former Defence Minister Akis Tsochalzopoulos, a senior member of…
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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…
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Connecting with the past
There are moments when you suddenly connect with an aspect of history you’d never grasped before. Athens this weekend has given us one such moment after another. The Acropolis is such a familiar image that we think we know it. To see it in reality, with the painstaking restoration of the Parthenon proceeding and the…
Got any book recommendations?