maybe not so sold-out, but not working hard either

I have been exercising my theories about
how everybody who "works" in the Greek
parliament being sold out.

Firstly, nobody has even made an ant-sized
step towards reining in the regal-size plunder,
in the former palace.

Their pay is amongst the highest in the EU.
They get a pension after 4 years. and it
starts after the 4 years, not at 65.
You see, the thinking is that politicians
are so hated, they must be taken care
 of in perpetuity. Poor guys.
I say "live by the impaler, die by the impaler"

I'm fairly sure that nobody in there is
giving back their pay to the society at large.
Not even the Nationalists at Golden Dawn.

I've been thinking that the Free Hellenes party
is probably better able to fight, but they're
not doing enough.
I wonder whether they can get their heads
around just how violently the framework
of daily life has shifted.

Recently, I heard from foreign sources
(I'll get them later) that said that the
next Troika-made law will give away
everything else, down to the kitchen sink.
So, I waited to see which party would
be going beyond the Trained Monkey
show on the TV news, where they
get their 15 seconds of fame, bad-mouthing
the Internal Troika, who have no morals
anyway. Why waste your time with them?
Their laws are going to pass.
 Comparing them to the Nazi puppet
governments is just another hole in the water.

A true Nationalist party would be on every
street corner telling everyone that the
government was giving away everything
else. The news story below says the
Free Hellenes party was raising hell,
BUTT in the parliament. FAIL

Checkitout: Newsit.gr

..Το "έλα να δεις" στην Βουλή! Αγριος καβγάς Καμμένου - Μαρκογιαννάκη - Μίλησε για κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου

- "Ούτε η κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου δεν είχε υπογράψει τέτοια επονείδιστα κείμενα!" είπε ο Πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων

- Καβγάς και Καμμένου - Ψυχάρη με σκληρές κουβέντες

- Για την επίθεση στα γραφεία της Νεας Δημοκρατίας  είπε: "Οι πυροβολισμοί που έριξαν το βράδυ οι παρακρατικοί στα γραφεία της ΝΔ είναι συνήθης πρακτική"

Την καταγγελία ότι, με το συζητούμενο νομοσχέδιο, «η κυβέρνηση υπογράφει την εκχώρηση της εθνικής κυριαρχίας και βάζει το τελευταίο καρφί στο φέρετρο της Ελλάδας» διατύπωσε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων Πάνος Καμμένος, μιλώντας στη Βουλή.

Όπως είπε ο κ. Καμμένος, με εντολή της τρόικας «επιχειρείται να νομιμοποιηθεί το παράνομο και αντισυνταγματικό Μνημόνιο 1, Μνημόνιο 2 και Μνημόνιο 3».

Ταυτόχρονα όμως, ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων έσπευσε να προειδοποιήσει τους δανειστές πως ό,τι «και αν ψηφιστεί σήμερα δεν ισχύει, είναι άκυρο και δεν δεσμεύεται ο ελληνικός λαός να πληρωθούν οι πιστωτές, εισπράττοντας τα τοκογλυφικά επιτόκια που φόρτωσαν στις πλάτες του». Για εμάς, αυτές οι διατάξεις δεν υπήρξαν ποτέ, γιατί είναι αντισυνταγματικές και το Σύνταγμα δεν καταλύεται, είπε ο κ. Καμμένος.

Αναφερόμενος στις επιθέσεις των τελευταίων ημερών, είπε πως «είναι ξεκάθαρο πλέον, ότι κάποιοι επέλεξαν να είναι άλλου είδους τα πρωτοσέλιδα».

Οι πυροβολισμοί που έριξαν το βράδυ οι παρακρατικοί στα γραφεία της ΝΔ είναι συνήθης πρακτική, είπε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων, σημειώνοντας ότι, πριν από λίγα χρόνια, πυροβολήθηκε ο Παύλος Μπακογιάννης, παραμονές της συζήτησης συγκρότησης εξεταστικής επιτροπής για το σκάνδαλο Κοσκωτά και ότι, πριν από λίγα χρόνια, πυροβολήθηκε στα πόδια ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ Λευτέρης Παπαδημητρίου, παραμονές συζήτησης της υπόθεσης της ΑΓΕΤ Ηρακλής.

«Σήμερα, λίγες ημέρες πριν τη συζήτηση της πρότασης για την παραπομπή του Γιώργου Παπανδρέου, του Γιώργου Παπακωνσταντίνου, του Ευάγγελου Βενιζέλου και του Λουκά Παπαδήμου, έχουμε κλιμάκωση της βίας που ξεκίνησε από τα γκαζάκια, προχώρησε στις μολότωφ στο σπίτι που μένει ένα τρίχρονο παιδί και έγινε Καλάσνικοφ. Ελπίζω να μην έχουμε άλλα, ως την Πέμπτη…» είπε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων και πρόσθεσε ότι όλες οι πολιτικές δυνάμεις, σήμερα, θα έπρεπε να συζητάνε την εκχώρηση της εθνικής κυριαρχίας.

Η αναφορά στην «Κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου»

Η φράση του κ. Καμμένου πως «ούτε η κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου δεν έχει υπογράψει τέτοια επονείδιστα κείμενα, όπως αυτό που ψηφίζεται σήμερα στη Βουλή» ξεσήκωσε αντιδράσεις στα έδρανα της κυβερνητικής πλειοψηφίας.

Ιδιαίτερα, η στιγμή που ο κ. Καμμένος δεν δίστασε να απευθυνθεί στους βουλευτές, προειδοποιώντας τους ότι θα έχουν προσωπική ευθύνη επειδή, ψηφίζοντας, θα ανοίξουν δρόμο για την παράδοση της δημόσιας και ιδιωτικής περιουσίας του Ελληνικού Δημοσίου, έως και τον ορυκτό πλούτο, κλιμάκωσε τις αντιδράσεις.

Τη διαγραφή από τα πρακτικά της αναφοράς του κ. Καμμένου στην κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου, ζήτησε ο αντιπρόεδρος της Βουλής, Χρήστος Μαρκογιαννάκης. «Η φράση σας αυτή είναι δεινή ύβρις και για την κυβέρνηση και για τους βουλευτές που την στηρίζουν. Παρακαλώ να δεχθείτε να διαγραφεί» είπε ο κ. Μαρκογιαννάκης.

«Δεν παίρνω πίσω τίποτε από όσα είπα. Δεν μπορείτε να αφαιρέσετε φράση, από τα πρακτικά, προέδρου κόμματος, χωρίς τη συναίνεσή μου! Αίσχος! Ποιος είστε;» ακούστηκε να λέει ο κ. Καμμένος, λέγοντας ότι πρέπει να αποδοθεί μομφή προς το Προεδρείο.

«Δίνω, λοιπόν, εγώ εντολή να διαγραφεί η φράση» επέμεινε, όμως, ο κ. Μαρκογιαννάκης.

Επεισόδιο με βουλευτή

Ανάμεσα στους αντιδρώντες ήταν και ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ Ανδρέας Ψυχάρης, όταν άκουσε τον κ. Καμμένο να τον κατηγορεί: «Κύριε Ψυχάρη συνεχίζετε να παίρνετε στις επιχειρήσεις σας χορηγίες από τον ΟΠΑΠ, αλλά την ίδια ώρα, κάποιοι άλλοι πεινάνε! Οι φυλλάδες σας προσπαθούν να μας κατατάξουν στην ακροδεξιά. Πάψτε να εξυπηρετείτε άλλα συμφέροντα. Είστε μέλος του κοινοβουλίου!»

«Αναφέρθηκε ο κ. Καμμένος σε επιχειρήσεις που έχω και στις επιχορηγήσεις που λαμβάνουν. Τον ενημερώνω ότι ουδέποτε είχα επαγγελματική εμπλοκή με τον ΔΟΛ. Ήμουνα 20 χρόνια διπλωμάτης» είπε ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ, σημειώνοντας ότι δεν θα μπορούσε να περιμένει άλλη συμπεριφορά από κάποιον που λέει ότι ψεκάζουν τον ελληνικό λαό, που ποτέ δεν είχε επάγγελμα και που πρόσβαλε τον Πρόεδρο της Δημοκρατίας.

 

next stop, Civil War Land

We know that the EU is using Greece to manipulate the Euro's
value downward. It's using the crisis as a chance to run
Greece directly from Brussels.

So, the mainstream media is like - listening to a lawyer
present to you an impossibly squeaky clean story about
how his client is holy, and then shouting everything
verbatim into a bull-horn. No thinking in between
steps one and two.

Unfortunately, the Net media are also guilty of trying to
get famous one way or another, such as pronouncing
something profound about Greece descending into hell

Supposedly Greece is ready for civil war, according to
the Testosterone Pit, who is a German stockbroker and
all around news guy. I always have salt handy for his
pronouncements.
When it comes to the one below, I'll comment later.

Check his stuff: Testosterone pit

The Price Of “Collective Trauma”: Greece At The Brink of Civil War

Saturday, December 15, 2012 at 7:39PM

“I’m wondering how much this society can endure before it explodes,” said Georg Pieper, a German psychotherapist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorders following catastrophes, large accidents (including the deadliest train wreck ever in Germany), acts of violence, freed hostages.... But now he was talking about Greece. [as if it's possible for a German to understand Greeks- Costick 67]

He’d spent several days in Athens to give continuing education courses in trauma therapy for psychologist, psychiatrists, and doctors—for free, this being a country in crisis. He was accompanied by Melanie Mühl, an editor at the daily paper Frankfurter Allgemeine. And in her report, she decries how “news consumers” in Germany were fed the crisis in Greece.

It was “no more than a distant threat somewhere on the horizon,” defined by barely understood terms, such as bank bailout, haircut, billion-euro holes, mismanagement, Troika, debt buyback.... “Instead of understanding the global context, we see a serious-faced Angela Merkel getting out of dark limos in Berlin, Brussels or elsewhere, on the way to the next summit where the bailout of Greece, and thus of Europe, is to be moved forward another step” [also read... The Curse Of The “Irreversible” Euro].

But what is really happening in Greece is silenced to death in the media. Pieper calls this phenomenon a “giant feat of repression.”

And so they report their findings that cannot be dressed up in the by now normal euro bailout jargon and acronyms. There were pregnant women rushing from hospital to hospital, begging to be admitted to give birth. They had no health insurance and no money, and no one wanted to help them. People who used to be middle class were picking through discarded fruit and vegetables off the street as the stands from a farmers’ market were being taken down.

[I have seen that dreary activity even in Paris; if Mühl spent some time looking, she could see it in Germany as well. It’s not just in Greece where people, demolished by joblessness or falling real wages, are deploying desperate measures to put food on the table. And the largest consumer products companies are already reacting to it: The “Pauperization of Europe”.]

Heartbreaking, the plight of the Greeks. There was an old man who’d worked over 40 years, but now his pension had been cut in half, and he couldn’t afford his heart medication any longer. To check into the hospital, he had to bring his own sheets and food. Since the cleaning staff had been let go, doctors and nurses, who hadn’t been paid in months, were cleaning the toilets themselves. The hospital was running short on basic medical supplies, such as latex gloves and catheters. And the suicide rate doubled over the last three years—two-thirds of them, men.

“Collective trauma” is how Pieper described the society whose bottom had been pulled out from under it. “Men are particularly hard hit by the crisis,” Pieper said, as their pay had been decimated, or their jobs eliminated. They’re seething with anger at the utterly corrupt system and a kleptocratic government that have done so much damage to the country; and they’re furious at the international bailout politics whose money only benefits big banks, not the people.

These men take their anger to their families, and their sons take that anger to the street. Hence the growing number of violent gangs that attack minorities. The will to survive in humans is enormous, Pieper points out, and so humans are able to overcome even incredibly difficult situations. To do that, they need a functioning society with real structures and safety nets. But in Greece, society has been hollowed out for years to the point where it is collapsing.

“In such a dramatic situation as can be observed in Greece, the human being becomes a sort of predator, only seeing himself and his own survival,” Pieper said. “Sheer necessity pushes him into irrationality, and in the worst case, this irrationality transcends into criminality.” At that stage in society, he said, “solidarity is replaced by selfishness.” [again, not true. If they were Germans, they'd be eating each other- Costick67]

And so he wondered, “how much this society can endure before it explodes.” Greece is on the brink of civil war, he went on, and it seems only a question of time before the collective desperation of the people erupts into violence and spreads across the country. A ricocheting indictment of the euro bailout policies.

As the Eurozone flails about to keep its chin above the debt crisis that is drowning Greece and other periphery countries, and as the EU struggles to duct-tape itself together with more governance by unelected transnational eurocrats, Sweden is having second thoughts: never before has there been such hostility toward the euro. Read....  Sweden’s Euro Hostility Hits A Record.

say it proudly "Greece is a colony of the EU"

I wonder how many years it will take for the word
"colony" to be used to describe the situation for
Greece, as it slides into the abyss, from which the
only escape is through armed warfare.

Anyway , for now, check the interesting concepts
from PJ Media. Never heard of it before, and they've
got piss poor editing of spelling, but I hope their
ideas have been properly sourced.

Read 'em:  PJ Media

The Greek Crisis: Yes, It’s That Bad

Greece today is a broken country, unable to break out of the vicious circle of EU over-dependency.

By Diran Majarian

November 30, 2012 - 12:00 am

Greece is now a virtual EU colony, waiting from bailout to bailout, each preceded by months of negotiations, more harsh austerity measures, riots, and an increasingly fractured political system.

The latest installment has been delayed by a growing rift between the IMF and their EU partners in Greece’s guardian, called the Troika. The IMF has looked at the ever-deepening EU recession and Greece’s inability to pay back debts given its own declining economy. It now wants to scale down future loans.

The IMF is hardly being radical. Its incredibly modest goal is that by the year 2020, Greece will only hold public sector loans amounting to 120 percent of its gross domestic product. That’s double the international norm. Yet even this basic goal probably won’t hold. In Europe, politics systematically trumps sound economic policy, and the ideology of a single currency zone precludes any rational discussion.

Germany, however, has elections coming up, and the government is not relishing having to tell taxpayers why their money is being spent on loans to Greece that will never be repaid. So there is now talk of an amazing compromise in which each EU state will decide how much it can give Greece without facing domestic political costs. This gives a good view of the EU method in such matters: the issue isn’t really dealt with, the crisis is kicked down the road, and the political elite declares victory.

The 44 billion euro loan Greece is expecting would just cover immediate obligations at best. For example, Greece has been staving off default by issuing short-term treasury bills that it dumps onto its commercial banks.  It isn’t surprising that this practice has brought on the insolvency of the banking system, whose capital was wiped out last spring in the last debt restructuring. So much of the new money will be used to refund the banks, which will then be put under the control of the Troika. Hence, Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times called Greece the first formal EU colony.

In this cycle that solves nothing, bailout loans prevent Greece from defaulting on its foreign debt. As might be suspected, this is a Ponzi scheme that inevitably will eventually collapse. Greece is loaned money to pay back old loans and the interest mounts.

Successive Greek governments (always the same policies and mostly the same people) are terrified that they won’t receive the next bailout loan installment and thus won’t be able to pay state employees or debts, not to mention foreign creditors. No one takes into account the effect of this mess on the Greek economy or the Greek people in bringing deepening recession and declining living standards.

Naturally, the Greeks then miss most of the targets set as supposed conditions to get the loans, sometimes due to bad administration, but more often due to simple economics. Deepening recession means declining tax revenues — as incomes drop and businesses go bankrupt — and rising public expenditure due to mass unemployment and impoverishment of the population.

On paper, Greece seems to be making progress as its balance of payments turns positive. But that’s only because the depression is reducing imports. As for things that would make a difference — like opening closed professions and more labor flexibility — these reforms could take a decade to show results and there is a great deal of resistance to making any substantive changes.

The popular myth, of course, is that tax revenues are never on target because of rampant tax evasion. One of Greece’s distinct features is a very large percentage of the labor force being self-employed. Most businesses are small and family-owned. This social category forms the backbone of the Greek middle class. In the U.S. and Western Europe, the percentage of self-employed is below 10%, while in Greece it is a whopping 30%.

According to IRS statistics, self-employed people are prone to heavy tax evasion from systematic understatement of income.  That factor would explain most of the tax revenue shortfall. The EU authorities would like to eliminate the large number of small businesses, which they see as inefficient.

Accordingly, the Greek government in this latest torture cycle to get the next bailout loan tranche has decided to remove tax exemptions from self-employed people and tax them at 35%/ 65% marginal rates according to purported income based on various arbitrary factors like where they reside and what car they drive.

This is symptomatic of where things are going in Greece in terms of highly aggressive taxation.  Last year, the Greek government assessed a real estate tax that was linked to electrical bills. This caused severe liquidity problems with the Greek Public Power Corporation since people could not pay both the tax bill and electric bill. The present Greek government is cutting power to these people and threatening to put their property on auction. Likewise last year, the government aggressively raised income taxes across the board on businesses and private income. The result: many businesses faced substantial tax bills without the income to pay, forcing them into bankruptcy. All this is causing immense social upheaval and fragmentation of the political system.

The May elections resulted in a sharp decline of the two major traditional parties. The socialists (PASOK) fell from 40 percent in October 2009 to only 12 percent. The conservative party (New Democracy) dropped to below 20%. The main winners were the Euro-Communist (SYRIZA) and the far right Golden Dawn party, which is nostalgic for the years of rule by the military junta when Greece was a thriving emerging market economy with rapidly rising per capital income levels.

Both parties attracted droves of Greek youth, but SYRIZA had the edge because many former PASOK members sought refuge there. There was no majority in the May elections; but under threats and with media support, the Greek political elite concocted out of the subsequent June elections — to the great joy of Brussels — the current ND-PASOK coalition with basically the same  unpopular pro-austerity program and many of the same people as the previous government.

Greece is a small, very dependent country. The political elite are conditioned to think like a client state latching on to a patron with deep pockets to resolve their problems. Greek politicians think of state-centered, top-down economic strategies funded by EU loans and state-sponsored deals with private and public investors. Traditionally, the  Greek public sector has been the employer of last resort.

An example of this mentality is the popular concept that Greece could resolve its economic problems by getting a loan from Russia on favorable terms in exchange for giving Moscow a naval base.

Another key element to understand Greece is the rapidly aging and shrinking population.  The 2011 census results were horrible. The economic crisis is leading to increasing emigration by younger Greeks fueled by 50 percent youth unemployment. These people have no interest in being burdened by big debts at home and want to seek their luck abroad.

Ultimately, the major decisions concerning Greece’s future will not likely be made by Greeks, but rather by EU policymakers and the politicians of other countries.  They will decide whether Greece will be allowed to stay in the euro currency zone.

Greece today is a broken country, unable to break out of the vicious circle of EU over-dependency. The political elite have no problem sacrificing a whole generation of their young in this process; but for the Greek people on the whole, the purported utopia of European prospects is turning into a bitter, ugly nightmare.

Get out of slavery card

Demetri Kofinas of RT's Current Account show
said that we have returned to the slavery model
of capitalism as existed in ancient Greece.

If you didn't have the money to pay back debts,
you became a slave. That's what is happening
to Greece now.

The other model was the Amagi, Jubilee model
which said, every so often, debts had to be
forgiven, or else the situation would degenerate
in many ways.
Perhaps there is a fine balance between running
a society that needs workers to do the grunt
work, therefore, you grudgingly have to give
them enough respect by not enslaving them.
They will be your soldiers after all. You wanna
be without soldiers? See if you can do it.

Now that the oligarchs can make money on
the stock market by exporting jobs, and by
sucking money from governments through
graft and fraud, then they actually don't need
us and our bodies.

This is why we're all slowly going to be enslaved.
Pre-Industrial economic theory, that's what
bankers and economist have brought to us, in
their wisdom.

Greece, however might be a case of enslavement
now to cream off the future oil riches. We all
know this is going on behind the scenes.

read 'em:

..Reuters: Έσοδα 600 δις για την Ελλάδα από το φυσικό αέριο

Από newsbomb.gr | newsbomb.gr – 1 ώρα 4 λεπτά πριν..

Κρατικά έσοδα 600 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων εκτιμά μία νέα επιστημονική μελέτη ότι μπορεί να αποφέρει στην Ελλάδα το φυσικό αέριο που βρίσκεται στο υπέδαφός της, σύμφωνα με δημοσίευμα του Reuters.

Η μελέτη των κ. Αντώνη Φώσκολου, Ηλία Κονοφάγου και Νίκου Λυγερού, η οποία σύμφωνα με το πρακτορείο, έχει ήδη παρουσιαστεί στον πρωθυπουργό από τον περασμένο Ιούνιο, εκτιμά στα 3,5 τρισεκ. κυβικά μέτρα τα αποθέματα φυσικού αερίου στην περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης.

Οι επιστήμονες υπολογίζουν ότι τα αποθέματα αυτά μπορούν να αποφέρουν στην Ελλάδα κρατικά έσοδα 599 δισεκ. δολαρίων σε 25 χρόνια.

 «Θεωρούμε ότι αυτή είναι μία πολύ συντηρητική εκτίμηση», δήλωσε στο Ρόιτερς ο κ. Κονοφάγος, η εταιρία του οποίου Flow Energy στην Αθήνα συμβουλεύει άτυπα την κυβέρνηση για την ενεργειακή στρατηγική.

Η μελέτη αναφέρει ότι η γεωλογική ομοιότητα με το πλούσιο σε αέριο κοίτασμα Λεβιάθαν, όπου εντοπίσθηκαν οι πρόσφατες ανακαλύψεις της Κύπρου και του Ισραήλ, υποδηλώνει ότι και τα αποθέματα στη θαλάσσια περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης μπορεί να έχουν αντίστοιχα χαρακτηριστικά.

Επιπλέον, η μελέτη εκτιμά ότι τα αποθέματα της περιοχής αυτής αρκούν για να καλύψουν τη ζήτηση φυσικού αερίου από την Ευρώπη για έξι χρόνια και αντιστοιχούν σε 1,5 δισεκ. βαρέλια πετρελαίου.

 Ο κ. Φώσκολος, ομότιμος καθηγητής στο Πολυτεχνείο της Κρήτης και το Καναδικό Ινστιτούτο Γεωλογίας (Canadian Geological Survey) ανέφερε ότι οι υποθαλάσσιες εκπομπές μεθανίου και η παρουσία κοιτασμάτων υγρού αερίου στο βυθό υποδηλώνουν την ύπαρξη μεγάλων αποθεμάτων.

 Σύμφωνα με πηγές του υπουργείου Περιβάλλοντος, Ενέργειας και Κλιματικής Αλλαγής, το υπουργείο έχει ξεκινήσει μια συστηματική διαδικασία για έρευνα, αποτίμηση και εντοπισμό του δυναμικού της χώρας σε υδρογονάνθρακες, με την ανάθεση σεισμικών ερευνών σε ευρεία θαλάσσια περιοχή.

 Όπως είναι γνωστό οι σεισμικές έρευνες στη θαλάσσια περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης και στο Ιόνιο πέλαγος ανατέθηκαν πρόσφατα στη Νορβηγική εταιρία Petroleum Geo Services (PGS). Οι έρευνες αναμένεται να ξεκινήσουν στα τέλη Οκτωβρίου, ενώ θα ακολουθήσουν η επεξεργασία των δεδομένων που θα προκύψουν από αυτές και η προκήρυξη διαγωνισμού για την παραχώρηση περιοχών (των λεγόμενων «οικοπέδων») για ερευνητικές γεωτρήσεις.

 Εκτιμήσεις της προηγούμενης πολιτικής ηγεσίας του ΥΠΕΚΑ ανέφεραν ότι «είναι ρεαλιστικός ο στόχος σε βάθος 15-20 ετών να καλύπτουμε από εγχώριες πηγές Υδρογονανθράκων το 30% των αναγκών της χώρας, με άλλα λόγια να αντικαταστήσουμε το 30% των σχεδόν 12 δισεκ. ευρώ που δαπανούμε για εισαγωγές πετρελαιοειδών κάθε χρόνο, με ελληνικούς Υδρογονάνθρακες».

 Οι ίδιες εκτιμήσεις ανέφεραν ότι τα κοιτάσματα στις περιοχές Πατραϊκός κόλπος, Κατάκολο και Ιωάννινα, που έχουν προκηρυχθεί για έρευνες, υπερβαίνουν τα 250 εκατ. βαρέλια ισοδύναμου πετρελαίου, κάτι που σημαίνει ότι τα έσοδα του Δημοσίου από την εκμετάλλευσή τους θα φθάσουν στα 10 δισεκ. ευρώ σε βάθος 20-30 ετών.

No folly, here. Folli Follie doing well

Government is stupid and Troika is homicidal, but
some Greeks are still getting the job done.
I was always proud of Greek companies that
did the value-added thing, and perhaps paid
 a bit of tax.

Here's the story of Folli Follie, and it's

Gone East, young man

Fatsa book, page 1

Creators of democracy lose their baby.

Troika here. Do you have any ficken qvestions?
Hello?

Greeks of the Crisis 3: Markopoulos

This is Harry Markopoulos, who kept feeding the FSA
the inside info on Madoff, and they kept ignoring him.

from KWN:

Madoff Whistleblower Tells KWN Banks Stealing From Pensions

In a King World News exclusive interview, the man who brought down Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme informed KWN, “Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric.  Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts.  It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”

step off the roulette wheel, Gus

I had heard a story about a poor Greek sailor who went
to the US and became a restaurant franchise owner, and
when that wasn't enough, a casino owner, in a very short
time.
He was Gus Boulis, and he had about 10 floating casinos
anchored in Florida, and this floating "flouting" of the
Florida gaming laws was getting him in trouble.
However, that was small potatoes next to the mafia
trouble that he was about to get.

As it turns out, he was offered a deal he couldn't
refuse, because this gang had mafia connections
and government connections; Washington.
So, just when Gus was about to get out,
the big boys dragged him back in, and killed him.

Now, if you watch this video you'll see that a guy
named Abramoff  was in political circles and also
helping Indians with their gambling, to try
to help them pay lower taxes. But I guess the
gambling business was too enticing and he was
branching out. And that's how his work crossed
paths with Gus.


let's cut to the video:
Anyway, most Greeks know better than to do anything with
mafia people. Their opinion is not ever, "poor guy", it's like
"he should have taken his money and gone home to his family".

checkitout: washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043001147.html
Untangling a Lobbyist's Stake in a Casino Fleet
By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 1, 2005
It was a gangland-style hit straight out of "Goodfellas." A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang's driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver's chest. The dead man was Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, a volatile 51-year-old self-made millionaire, a Greek immigrant who had started as a dishwasher in Canada and ended up in Florida, where he built an empire of restaurants, hotels and cruise ships used for offshore casino gambling. Boulis's slaying, still unsolved four years later, reverberated all the way to Washington. Months earlier he had sold his fleet of casino ships to a partnership that included Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. Abramoff is best known as a target of a federal investigation in Washington into the tens of millions in fees he and a partner collected from casino-owning Indian tribes. But the wreckage from his brief and tumultuous time as owner of the gambling fleet threatens to overtake his Washington legal troubles.
Not long after Abramoff and his partners bought SunCruz Casinos in September 2000, the venture ran aground after a fistfight between two of the owners, allegations of mob influence, dueling lawsuits and, finally, Boulis's death on Feb. 6, 2001. Now, Abramoff is the target of a federal investigation into whether the casino ship deal involved bank fraud. According to court records, the SunCruz purchase hinged on a fake wire transfer for $23 million intended to persuade lenders to provide financing to Abramoff's group. Although the outlines of the tale have become part of South Florida lore, what has not been disclosed are the full details of the alleged fraud at the heart of the transaction and the extent of Abramoff's role -- including his use of contacts with Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and members of their staffs as he worked to land the deal. The SunCruz story combines the South Florida of novelist Carl Hiaasen with the Washington of influence-peddling K Street: Thousands of pages of bankruptcy and other court records, along with dozens of interviews in Florida and Washington, reveal secret deals; a forged document; double-crossing partners; and socializing with government officials on a private jet, at the U.S. Open golf tournament at Pebble Beach, at a Monday night football game in a private box at FedEx Field, and at an exclusive party on Inauguration Day in Washington. Gus Boulis never really wanted to sell SunCruz. He bought his first cruise boat in 1994 and swiftly added 10 more, building an enormously profitable business that took in as much as $30 million in yearly profits. Boulis, a larger-than-life character, had always been a scrapper and something of a business genius. As a teenager, he jumped ship from a Greek freighter in Canada, where he made his first fortune with Mr. Submarine sandwich shops. After retiring to the Florida Keys, at the age of 30, he built another fortune with the popular Miami Subs chain. Then he launched SunCruz, known as a "cruise to nowhere" casino business. His midsize cruise ships left on day trips from nine ports around Florida, taking tourists, high-rollers and elderly players into international waters, beyond the reach of the state's anti-gambling laws. Based outside Fort Lauderdale, the business was the bane of Florida officials, who thought Boulis flouted the law, and SunCruz's port city neighbors, who complained that drunken gamblers were urinating on their lawns. For years, Boulis beat back efforts by federal and state lawyers determined to shut him down. In 1999, federal prosecutors charged Boulis with violating the Shipping Act by purchasing his vessels without being a U.S. citizen. Boulis agreed to pay a $1 million fine and sell his cruise line. The government gave him 36 months to do it and agreed to keep the settlement secret so Boulis would not lose money in a fire sale. To sell his business, Boulis turned to his lawyers in the D.C. office of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP. Art Dimopoulos, a maritime lawyer, looked for buyers. Jack Abramoff, one of Dimopoulos's partners at Preston Gates, said he could find one. ....[more at wapo]

THE GREEKS OF THE Crisis, part 2. Kiriakou

Although this fellow wasn't part of the financial crisis, he is fighting

the same oligarchs.

There's a former CIA agent who was not happy
with waterboarding, that formerly secret
practice used for getting unreliable information
from illegally-kept "terrorist" prisoners.

Well, that will cost him 5 years in jail.


 

check 'em: Liberty blitzkrieg

Have You Heard of John Kiriakou?

Posted on July 5, 2012        

As someone who considers himself reasonably informed of the machinations of the criminal oligarchy running the United States of America these days, I am consistently surprised by how uninformed I still am in many ways.  The case of ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou and the government’s witch hunt over his case is a perfect example.

One of the most disturbing yet encouraging things happening in America (and the world) today is the emergence of sophisticated and courageous whistleblowers and the subsequent attempts of the oligarchy to attack them and ruin their lives.  Over a year ago, I wrote a piece about the soon to emerge whistleblowing theme titled The Whistleblower Trend has Begun: Next up Backstabbing.

The sad little criminals in power are understandably terrified of this trend and are using their old playbook methods to go after them, but they do not understand the hopelessness of these tactics.  Social media, the internet and technology in general just make it too easy to leak stuff and expose criminality to hundreds of millions and soon to be billions of people in minutes.  This trend cannot be stopped and is why TPTB and their minions will be swept away into the dustbin of history.

The propaganda line that really gets my blood boiling is when minions in the media and the whores in Washington D.C. use the line “national security” as a reason to crack down on freedom of speech.  This is obviously a ploy to play on the emotions and ignorance of the sheeple population that doesn’t understand “national security” simply means the security of the 0.01% oligarchy to remain in power and rob and pillage the rest of humanity.

Anyway, please take the time to read the story in the Huffington Post of John Kiriakou and support him and other whistleblowers like Thomas Drake (ex-NSA) in any way you can.

Key quotes:

John Kiriakou is a 14-year CIA veteran who, until his indictment, was best known for publicly rejecting the Bush administration’s Orwellian doublespeak about “enhanced interrogation.” In a 2007 ABC News interview, Kiriakou became the first person directly involved in the handling of terror suspects to call waterboarding at the CIA’s hands what it was — torture.

Fitzgerald’s use of the Espionage Act is in keeping with the Department of Justice’s crackdown on leaks to reporters. And the Obama administration has now used the Espionage Act six times to prosecute disclosures to journalists — more than all previous presidential administrations combined.

Adler, who writes about the expansion of executive power, said that in both the Libby and Kiriakou cases, Fitzgerald fell short of his obligation to prosecute abuses of power. “It’s bizarre to me that those who were involved in waterboarding have been granted immunity, and now Kiriakou’s going to be prosecuted for leaking information that exposed illegal actions,” Adler said.

“Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated — not in one case or a thousand or a million,” he wrote. “If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. … There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security.”

Kirakou’s supporters, including many open-government advocates, said he’s being punished for his whistleblowing. The CIA — through Fitzgerald and the Department of Justice — is trying to chill critical speech, they said.

Full article here.