From where I sit: The €50 billion flap

From where I sit - an incredibly infrequent set of observations on various affairs from Athens, Greece.

 

            I-R-P-C - The Iron Rule of Press Conferences: you will hear far more yawns than gasps. 

       So when a room full of Greek journalists went into a simultaneous conniption at last Friday’s EU-IMF-ECB, i.e. Troika, press conference it was a good sign that something had gone horribly wrong.

    The O₂ suckage in-question was induced by European Union representative Servaas DeRoose’s announcement that the Greek government plans to privatize some €50 billion in state-run enterprises and property over the next few years, €15 billion this year, mainly from the sale of state property.

            “Excuse me, Mr. DeRoose,” one Greek journalist asked, apparently disbelieving the translation coming through her headset. “Did you say 5-0 or 1-5 … billion?”

            “The first one was 5-0, the second one was 1-5,” DeRoose replied.

DeRoose’s smirk did not seem so much arrogant as it was excruciatingly uncomfortable. This presser was about to take an ugly turn and with it, perhaps, damage the cordial relations that had existed thus far, at least at an elite level, between the Greek government and its international lifeline. Relations between the Troika and the Greek public, on the other hand, are about as good as, say, those between Hosni Mubarak and Tahrir Square. 

You see how that worked out.

Suspended Indefinitely

On Friday November 5, 2010 someone hacked into my gmail and facebook accounts. It took the whole weekend to get things straightened out with gmail and I'm still waiting on facebook.

During this time I was cut off from the blog entirely.

I've been debating winding Jungle Vision down for awhile now. Since my freelance work has picked up, I haven't had as much time to write, and often I don't want to cut off my own copy by posting my material online. Several of the outlets I work for don't put my work online so I also hadn't had a lot of opportunities to re-post links.

Still, it's important to have a platform to display my work, although perhaps without the jungle associations, which no one except my closest friends understood. And even they were usually confused.

So Jungle Vision is heading toward greener pastures.

And I'm heading to various offices to try to prevent my total identity theft...

Greek-American politicians coming down to the wire

Election 2010 could be a watershed or a wipe-out year for Greek-American politicians.

Hellenic membership in Congress currently skews Democratic with five Democrats to two Republicans. All but one Greek-American legislator – Sen. Olympia Snowe – are up for re-election. Four of those Democrats were elected during their party’s resurgence 2006-2008 and usually these incumbents would seem anchored in their districts. But commentators have been predicting one of the most anti-incumbent, or anti-Democrat, election years in decades. So the same Greek-American Democrats who helped their party sweep into Congress could be swept right out. Meanwhile, Greek-American Republican challengers are looking to capitalize on that mood in their own districts.

If the incumbents hang on and the challengers exploit the current climate, Greek-American representation in Congress could crack double-digits for the first time. Then again, it is theoretically possible that the incumbents could fall and the newcomers fail to impress, leaving just Snowe in office. This swing makes Election 2010 perhaps one of the most important in Greek-American political history.

The Aghios Pantelaimonas Residence Association Up Close

Not exactly the scariest right-winger
I've ever seen...because she's not one.

The Aghios Pantelaimonas Residence Association does not strike you as a band of right-wing nationalists. They don’t even seem comfortable leading a protest.

If anything this middle-aged bunch looks more like Oprah’s Book Club.

(And you can decide which group is more militant.)

Monday night, the Association held a “secret” demonstration – or as secret as you can make a demonstration – to keep away the right-wing group (read: Chrysi Avgi) that had attached itself to the association’s protests against the deterioration of the old city center, largely pinned on migrants. A group of about 20-30 men and women, only two of which looked younger than 35, marched through the neighborhood from an Everest café on Patission Avenue with white picket signs and planned to stomp all the way to the Greek Parliament, about 5 kilometers away. (After about an hour of zig-zagging through “Ag. P” they decided to take a trolley.)

The group tried to make it clear who and what they are against: mafia, Dublin II, government indifference and, most notably, fascists.