Sunday, April 25, 2010

Holland Festival 2010

The Old Vic (the director of which is Kevin Spacey) and Oscar winner director Sam Mendes will be present in the Holland Festival, with two plays by Shakespeare : "As you like it" and "The Tempest".

The Festival lasts from 1 to 23 June. www.hollandfestival.nl

Saturday, April 24, 2010

What are we?

"One of the last, and most horrific, public lynchings in America took place in October 1934, in the Florida Panhandle, where a crowd of as many as 5,000 gathered to watch what had been advertised hours earlier in the local press. Claude Neal was burned and castrated, had his genitals stuffed into his mouth, and was forced to tell his torturers that he enjoyed their taste. After he was finally dragged to his death behind a car, his mutilated corpse was urinated upon by the crowds, and then hung from the Marianna Courthouse."[1]

 In the summer of 2009 I visited the photography festival of Arles, in France. It is one of the biggest photography events in the world, with a huge number of happenings, exhibitions, seminars etc. I saw so many exhibitions that my eyes started hurting me and definitely my mind started becoming a bit insensitive to the visual stimuli. Then, one morning I entered one more exhibition area, hosting a series of photographs with the strange title "Without Sanctuary".

I entered the room bored and almost indifferent to whatever could be there. I immediately noticed that, contrary to all the other exhibitions that were contemporary, this one was about very old images, some of them in bad shape, yellowish and small in size. Like photos from a very old family album. Then I saw people hung from poles, burned bodies surrounded by curious spectators. The exhibition was a collection of photos about lynching of black people in USA, in the late 19th- early 20th century. I was taken by surprise...

Had I gone to an exhibition about the holocaust, I would know what to expect, I would be prepared. But there I was defenseless. In front of this raw, absurd, unjustified cruelty, this profound sadism, I got convinced that evil is so inherent in human nature, like never before.
I will never forget two things : one photo of the remains of a burned man, and in the back the handwritten comment (of the photographer? the owner of the photo?): "this is the barbeque we had last night".




Τhe second was the story of a mother watching her son being burned alive, and having to wait till the end of the "party", to get his remains in order bury them.
I left the exhibition with my stomach upside-down and with the question - WHAT ARE WE? - haunting my mind.

The photos of the exhibition can be found at: www.withoutsanctuary.org 

Armenian Genocide: 24 April , Day of Memory

From the New York Times, 18 August 1915:

"We now know with certainty from a reliable source that Armenians have been deported in a body from all the towns and villages in Cilicia to the desert regions south of Aleppo. The refugees will have to traverse on foot a distance, requiring marches of from one to two or even three months.
We learn besides that the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death, since they will find neither house, work, nor food in the desert. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.
Courts-martial operate everywhere without cessation. [...]
Hundreds of women and young girls and even children groan in prisons. Churches and convents have been pillaged, defiled and destroyed. The villages around Van and Bitlis have been pillaged and the inhabitants put to the sword.
At the beginning of this month the inhabitants of Karahissar were pitilessly massacred with the exception of a few children"

The full article can be found at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802E6D71E3EE033A2575BC1A96E9C946496D6CF


Some more from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide ):

"The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime, refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.

It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.

The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace.

The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
[...]
Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned. "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them." And also that, "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at the remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after."

Trabzon was the main city in Trabzon province; Oscar S. Heizer, the American consul at Trabzon, reports: "This plan did not suit Nail Bey.... Many of the children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard." The Italian consul of Trabzon in 1915, Giacomo Gorrini, writes: "I saw thousands of innocent women and children placed on boats which were capsized in the Black Sea." The Trabzon trials reported Armenians having been drowned in the Black Sea.

During the Trabzon trial series of the Martial court, from the sittings between March 26 and May 17, 1919, the Trabzons Health Services Inspector Dr. Ziya Fuad wrote in a report that Dr. Saib caused the death of children with the injection of morphine.

Dr. Ziya Fuad and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, submitted affidavits reporting cases in which two school buildings were used to organize children and send them to the mezzanine to kill them with toxic gas equipment.

Death Marches:
The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived. By August 1915, The New York Times repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."

Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill, and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves. Deprived of their belongings and marched into the desert, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished."

Unfortunately Nazis were not the only butchers this world has encountered, and Jews not the only victims of human atrocity. I will come back soon with another story of forgotten brutality...

Thursday, April 22, 2010

On Freedom...

I read again the words of Goethe, that I posted some days ago:

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

How painfully true!
For a long time, I am wondering, who has a better chance to achieve an inner balance (simply put: happiness); the unaware slave or the conscious one?
But the question is not valid, as it seems there is no choice: it is up to Awareness to find you and painfully embrace you, or to leave you forever in peace. Not vice versa!

I believe, the great poet, very wisely, avoids to refer to the "free man". As, such a thing, cannot ever exist...

What remains for us? Maybe to choose the form of our personal slavery? Maybe...

Monday, April 19, 2010

And something from Goethe

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Πατριωτισμός στη (Χώ)ρα των (Ν)εο-(Ε)λλήνων

Διαβάζω στο Βήμα της Κυριακής (18/4/2010):
“Δεκαετίες, αν όχι... αιώνες, θα απαιτηθούν για την- έστω μερική- απόσβεση του υπέρογκου δημοσίου χρέους, εφόσον συνεχιστεί η πενιχρή συγκομιδή του «Λογαριασμού Αλληλεγγύης» που άνοιξε στην Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος με πρωτοβουλία του Προέδρου της Βουλής κ. Φ. Πετσάλνικου και τέθηκε υπό την αιγίδα του Προέδρου της Δημοκρατίας κ. Κ. Παπούλια.

Ενθαρρυντική είναι η ροή που παρατηρείται με τις άλλοτε ανώνυμες και άλλοτε επώνυμες καταθέσεις «από τον απλό κόσμο» που, όπως λένε, επιδεικνύει «συγκινητική ανταπόκριση», καταθέτοντας 50, 100, 200 ή 500 ευρώ. Υπολογίζουν ότι κάθε εβδομάδα μπαίνουν στον λογαριασμό 22.000 ευρώ με ποσά που πολλές φορές προέρχονται ακόμη και από τους κουμπαράδες μικρών παιδιών.
Προ ημερών μάλιστα ο κ. Πετσάλνικος υποδέχθηκε συμβολικώς στην έδρα της Ολομέλειας του Σώματος δύο μικρούς μαθητές του Δημοτικού από την Πετρούπολη που διέθεσαν το ποσό των 10 ευρώ. «Φοβηθήκαμε με αυτά που ακούγαμε ότι η Ελλάδα θα έπρεπε να πουλήσει τα νησιά της και την Ακρόπολη και αποφασίσαμε να σπάσουμε τον κουμπαρά μας και να δώσουμε τα λεφτά» είπαν οι δύο λιλιπούτειοι δωρητές στον Πρόεδρο της Βουλής,

Oι μεγάλοι... κουμπαράδες ωστόσο φαίνεται ότι δύσκολα ανοίγουν, αφού σε αρκετές από τις συναντήσεις που είχε ως τώρα με φορείς, όπως ο ΣΕΒ, η Εκκλησία, οργανώσεις αποδήμων, καθώς και εκπροσώπους των χρυσοπληρωμένων αθλητών, ο Πρόεδρος της Βουλής εισέπραξε μόνον επαίνους για την πρωτοβουλία του, ενώ σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις όχι μόνο δεν υπήρξε χρηματική ανταπόκριση- τουλάχιστον ως τώρα-, αλλά, αντιθέτως, σε αρκετές περιπτώσεις έγινε αποδέκτης αιτημάτων για να μεσολαβήσει στην κυβέρνηση προκειμένου να αλλάξουν ρυθμίσεις του φορολογικού νομοσχεδίου. “

Όλα αυτά, την ώρα που ΑΚΙΝΗΤΑ ΣΕ ΛΟΝΔΙΝΟ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΙΣΙ ΑΓΟΡΑΖΟΥΝ ΠΛΟΥΣΙΟΙ ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ


Μυστήριες οι βουλές του Ανθρώπου... Θα περίμενε κανείς, ότι οι μεροκαματιάρηδες απηυδισμένοι από τα μεγάλα φαγοπότια που γίνονται ερήμην τους και στην υγεία τους (αφού αυτοί θα τα πληρώσουν), θα περιφρονούσαν μια τέτοια πρωτοβουλία. Και ότι αντίθετα, οι πλούσιοι και επιφανείς θα έσπευδαν να δείξουν την ευαισθησία και τον πατριωτισμό τους. Τι αφελής σκέψη! Το χρήμα ξέρει πολύ καλά που πάει και κάθεται: στις ασφαλείς τσέπες εκείνων που παθολογικά το λατρευουν ...

Brecht and Hitler

Η αθάνατη προειδοποίηση του Μπρεχτ για τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ: «Μη χαίρεστε με την ήττα του, άνθρωποι:γιατί μπορεί ο κόσμος να σηκώθηκε και να σταμάτησε τον μπάσταρδο, αλλά η σκύλα που τον γέννησε έχει πάλι κάψες».

Brecht on Hitler: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."

A final quote by Berthold Brecht from his play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Somethin from Rilke

NO ONE LIVES HIS LIFE

Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,

We come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or cloths hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead here,
to the repository of unlived things.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Robin Hood tax. A very interesting idea...

How it works:
The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on banks, hedge funds and other finance institutions that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad.
It can start as low as 0.005 per cent – and average 0.05 per cent . But when levied on the billions of pounds sloshing round the global finance system every day through transactions such as foreign exchange, derivatives trading and share deals, it can raise hundreds of billions of pounds every year.
And while international agreement is best, it can start right now, right here in the UK.
That can help stop cuts in crucial public services in the UK, and aid the fight against global poverty and climate change.

What is it?
We are calling for governments around the world to implement a tax on financial transactions – called the Robin Hood Tax.
It would tax the trade in financial assets such as stocks, bonds and foreign exchange, traded both physically and as derivatives (options, forwards, futures and swaps). It would cover both those bought and sold on Exchanges and those traded Over the Counter (OTC). While OTC trades are technically more difficult to capture, the long-term goal is for all financial transactions to be taxed.
Some of this needs international agreement, but some such as currency transactions can be taxed by individual countries. The UK already taxes share trades with a 0.5 per cent stamp duty. We say it should also tax sterling exchange at 0.005 per cent (5p for every £1,000 exchanged).

How much would it raise?

Up to $400 billion globally every year, with the rate of tax would vary from 0.5% on stocks to 0.005% on currency transactions. A tiny tax raises so much because of the sheer volume of transactions.
Why tax banks, hedge funds and financial institutions?
The financial sector has undergone runaway expansion in the last two decades. During that time, its activities have steadily become more divorced from the real economy of goods and services.
Globally it now turns over more than 60 times the size of world GDP every year. In the UK it has reached a staggering 446 times the size of our real economy. But risky trading practices played a major part in the financial crisis. (Schulmeister, 2009)
So it’s time for the people who caused this mess to pay to clean it up.

How will the money be spent?
The plan is for the US$400bn that could be generated by a global Robin Hood Tax to be split equally, with $200bn spent domestically and $200bn spent around the world.
Of the money spent globally, $100 billion would go towards international development and US$100 would support developing countries as they adapt to climate change.

For more info: http://robinhoodtax.org.uk

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Even nobel prize winners in economics give up with the greek mess...

A passage from the article "Learning from Greece", by the nobel prize winner columnist of NY Times, Paul Krugman:

The debt crisis in Greece is approaching the point of no return. As prospects for a rescue plan seem to be fading, largely thanks to German obduracy, nervous investors have driven interest rates on Greek government bonds sky-high, sharply raising the country’s borrowing costs. This will push Greece even deeper into debt, further undermining confidence. At this point it’s hard to see how the nation can escape from this death spiral into default.
It’s a terrible story, and clearly an object lesson for the rest of us. But an object lesson in what, exactly?
Yes, Greece is paying the price for past fiscal irresponsibility. Yet that’s by no means the whole story. The Greek tragedy also illustrates the extreme danger posed by a deflationary monetary policy. And that’s a lesson one hopes American policy makers will take to heart.
The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that it’s not just a matter of excessive debt. Greece’s public debt, at 113 percent of G.D.P., is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II, had federal debt equal to 122 percent of G.D.P. Yet investors were relaxed, and rightly so: Over the next decade the ratio of U.S. debt to G.D.P. was cut nearly in half, easing any concerns people might have had about our ability to pay what we owed. And debt as a percentage of G.D.P. continued to fall in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 33 percent in 1981.
So how did the U.S. government manage to pay off its wartime debt? Actually, it didn’t. At the end of 1946, the federal government owed $271 billion; by the end of 1956 that figure had risen slightly, to $274 billion. The ratio of debt to G.D.P. fell not because debt went down, but because G.D.P. went up, roughly doubling in dollar terms over the course of a decade. The rise in G.D.P. in dollar terms was almost equally the result of economic growth and inflation, with both real G.D.P. and the overall level of prices rising about 40 percent from 1946 to 1956.
Unfortunately, Greece can’t expect a similar performance. Why? Because of the euro.
Until recently, being a member of the euro zone seemed like a good thing for Greece, bringing with it cheap loans and large inflows of capital. But those capital inflows also led to inflation — and when the music stopped, Greece found itself with costs and prices way out of line with Europe’s big economies. Over time, Greek prices will have to come back down. And that means that unlike postwar America, which inflated away part of its debt, Greece will see its debt burden worsened by deflation.
That’s not all. Deflation is a painful process, which invariably takes a toll on growth and employment. So Greece won’t grow its way out of debt. On the contrary, it will have to deal with its debt in the face of an economy that’s stagnant at best.
So the only way Greece could tame its debt problem would be with savage spending cuts and tax increases, measures that would themselves worsen the unemployment rate. No wonder, then, that bond markets are losing confidence, and pushing the situation to the brink.
What can be done? The hope was that other European countries would strike a deal, guaranteeing Greek debt in return for a commitment to harsh fiscal austerity. That might have worked. But without German support, such a deal won’t happen.
Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing. But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system. Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks. There are no good answers here — actually, no non-terrible answers.

I read this somewhere, and I liked it

“Your Christ is Hebrew. Your car is Japanese. Your pizza is Italian. Your democracy Greek. Your coffee Brazilian. Your holidays Turkish. Your numbers Arabic. Your alphabet Latin. Only your neighbor is a foreigner."

Λίγα ακόμα για τον Καποδίστρια...

Αφού εγκαινίασα αυτό το blog με λόγια του Καποδίστρια, ας παραθέσω και μερικά στοιχεία γι'αυτόν (από το άρθρο του Μ. Πλωρίτη, Το Βημα, 10/11/1996):

Στα 24 του, ο Καποδίστριας μετέχει στην κυβέρνηση της Επτανησιακής Πολιτείας, στα 33 του διορίζεται στο Υπουργείο Εξωτερικών της Ρωσίας
... η σταδιοδρομία του Καποδίστρια ήταν (στο μεγαλύτερο μέρος της) διεθνής και περίλαμπρη: υπουργός Εξωτερικών της Ρωσίας στα 39 χρόνια του, εκπρόσωπός της σε «ιστορικά» διεθνή συνέδρια (Βιέννης 1814-5, Λάιμπαχ 1821), αντιτάχθηκε στον Μέττερνιχ και αποκλήθηκε «αρχιτέκτων της ευρωπαϊκής ειρήνης του αιώνος».
Ο Καποδίστριας κυβέρνησε 3 χρόνια και 8 μήνες. Παρέλάβε τη χώρα σε «άχλια κατάσταση»:
Οταν η Εθνοσυνέλευση της Τροιζήνας εξέλεξε τον Καποδίστρια κυβερνήτη (Απρίλιος 1827), η Επανάσταση χαροπάλευε ανάμεσα στα τουρκο-αιγυπτιακά στρατεύματα, τους εμφύλιους σπαραγμούς, την απόλυτη έλλειψη οικονομικών και άλλων μέσων. Ο ίδιος ο Καποδίστριας δίνει παραστατικά την εικόνα της χώρας: «Πόλεις, κώμαι, χωρία κατεστραμμένα, ερείπια, έρημα. Και μένει τούτο μόνον εις τον πολυπαθή τόπον, ο αρχαιότροπος των οικητόρων αυτού χαρακτήρ, και απόφασις αυτών, ομόψυχός τε και άτρεπτος, μηδέποτε να υποστώσι τον τουρκικόν ζυγόν, ουδ' άλλον ζυγόν ξένον οποιονδήποτε».
Ο Καποδίστριας προσπάθησε να μετατρέψει το μετεπαναστατικό χάος σε ευνομούμενο κράτος κι έβαλε τις βάσεις για την οργάνωση της οικονομίας, της διοίκησης, του στρατού, της παιδείας, της δημόσιας υγείας, της ναυτιλίας κλπ., αλλά και (με το ευρωπαϊκό κύρος του και την πλούσια πείρα του) για τη βελτίωση της διεθνούς θέσης της χώρας, που ήταν «κλωτσοσκούφι» των μεγάλων δυνάμεων του καιρού.

Σχετικα με τις πολιτικές μεθόδους του: Ανδρωμένος στην εποχή του «φωτισμένου δεσποτισμού» και αντιμέτωπος με την τραγική κατάσταση της καταματωμένης και κατασπαραγμένης χώρας, ο Καποδίστριας υιοθέτησε αυταρχική πολιτική μονοκρατορίας, ξαστοχώντας πως, για τους αγωνιστές του απελευθερωτικού αγώνα, «η συνταγματική ελευθερία ήτο σύμβολον εθνικής αναπτύξεως», κατά την φράση του Σπυρίδωνος Τρικούπη.
Η αυταρχία του Καποδίστρια συνάσπισε εναντίον του όχι μόνο τους ειλικρινείς φιλελεύθερους-«συνταγματικούς» αλλά και τους «φεουδάρχες, κοτζαμπάσηδες και πλιατσικολόγους» (κατά την ομολογία ακόμα και των επικριτών του), που θίγονταν από την πολιτεία του, τον αποκαλούσαν «τύραννο», «δικτάτορα», «ανθύπατο του τσάρου», κι έφτασαν ως τη φυσική εξόντωσή του.
Η δολοφονία του Καποδίστρια στα 55 του χρόνια (27.9.1831) όχι μόνο δεν «κατέλυσε την τυραννία», αλλά (όπως παραδέχονται και οι σφοδρότεροι πολέμιοί του) «από το αίμα του κυβερνήτου προήλθε νέα, πλέον επικίνδυνος και μακρά απολυταρχία» (η οθωνική βαυαροκρατία).
Ολόκληρο το άρθρο υπάρχει στη διεύθυνση: http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=114&artid=83627&dt=10/11/1996

Λογια του Καποδίστρια - Words of I . Kapodistrias

Μια φορα και έναν καιρό υπήρχαν ακόμα άνθρωποι ου σκέφτονταν κάπως έτσι:
"Ελπίζω ότι όσοι εξ υμών συμμετάσχουν εις την Κυβέρνησιν θέλουν γνωρίσει μεθ' εμού ότι εις τας παρούσας περιπτώσεις όσοι ευρίσκονται εις δημόσια υπουργήματα δεν είναι δυνατόν να λαμβάνουν μισθούς αναλόγως με τον βαθμό του υψηλού υπουργήματός των και με τας εκδουλεύσεις των, αλλά ότι οι μισθοί ούτοι πρέπει να αναλογούν ακριβώς με τα χρηματικά μέσα τα οποία έχει η Κυβέρνησις εις την εξουσίαν της.
Εφόσον τα ιδιαίτερα εισοδήματά μου αρκούν διά να ζήσω, αρνούμαι να εγγίσω μέχρι και του οβολού τα δημόσια χρήματα, ενώ ευρισκόμεθα εις το μέσον ερειπίων και ανθρώπων βυθισμένων εις εσχάτην πενίαν".

Once upon a time, there were people thinking like this:
" I wish to inform the members of the Government, that under the current circumstances those who offer their services for state matters, will not receive a compensation proportional to the high services they offer, but their salaries will be consistent with the financial means that are available to the Government. My private income is enough for me to make my living, therefore I deny to put my hands on a single penny from the public money, while we are surrounded by ruins and people in deep poverty."

I. Kapodistrias, the first governor of the modern Greek state.
Kapodistrias was assassinated in 1831. Maybe this why Greek politicians never dared to act, speak or think like this since then...