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Greece has great strengths, but much of this potential has been wasted. That’s because of a wider political system, but also because of a lack of an institutional framework. George Papandreou
We have made major reforms in Greece. When I took over after a landslide victory we had a mandate for change and I knew my major focus would be re-organizing the state. George Papandreou
Also forgotten was Turkey’s conquest of northern Cyprus, with thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees after an orgy of killing, torture, rape and pillage to extirpate the last remnants of Greek culture back to classical antiquity; George Bush praised Turkey for serving ‘as a protector of peace’ as it joined those who ‘stand up for civilized values around the world.’ Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
In Greece in the same years, hundreds and thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned or expelled in the course of a counterinsurgency operation, organized and directed by the United States, which restored traditional elites to power, including Nazi collaborators, and suppressed the peasant- and worker-based Communist-led forces that had fought the Nazis. ibid.
So the idea is that it was the American mission and its fascist clients who were the native element in Greece and the alien element in Greece that were the internal aggressors were the Greek peasants and workers who had in fact constituted the anti-Nazi resistance … The dedicated savagery in which they set out to liquidate the class enemy in Greece and it was a major affair: tens of thousands were permanently exiled, tens of thousands more were sent to prison islands where they were tortured or executed … The United States interfered blatantly in the political process; it eliminated or suppressed even moderate socialist anti-communists, it destroyed the labour unions … About a third of the Greek labour force left, emigrated in order to survive. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1985, ‘Lessons of Vietnam’
Greece has been, in many ways, a partially dysfunctional society. For example, the wealthy barely pay taxes ... to an extent, that’s true elsewhere, including the United States, but it’s been pretty extreme in Greece. Noam Chomsky
Greek mythology is full of strange alien-type creatures and beings with supernatural powers and advanced technology. In 1900 the wreck of an ancient ship was found off the coast of Crete near the Island of Antikythera. Divers found lumps of corroded bronze ... A complex and elegantly-made mechanism like the interior of an expensive hand-made clock. Chris Everard, Secret Space II
This is the story of one of the most extraordinary finds in history. This corroded bronze object is a machine that can look into the future. It was built two thousand years ago in ancient Greece. The Two Thousand Year Old Computer, BBC 2012
It’s known as the Antikythera Mechanism ... It could predict eclipses. ibid.
Who had invented this extraordinary machine? ... The designer of the mechanism came from Corinth. ibid.
What happened to the brilliant Greek technology that produced the world’s first computer? Why was it never developed? Why was it lost from the western world? ibid.
From the X-rays Professor Price reconstructed the machine now known as the Antikythera Mechanism. It was a wooden box with bronze plates. A handle moves inter-connected dials at the front and back. The innards of the mechanism are a complex mesh of cog-wheels and gears until now concealed in the heart of the fragments. It was designed, he believes, as a computer to show varying movements of the sun, moon and planets. Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World
The Elgin Marbles were a set of ancient Greek sculptures that had once adorned the Parthenon in Athens, and they were widely seen as the bedrock of Western art. Dr James Fox, A History of Art in Three Colours: White III, BBC 2012
Winckelmann had stumbled on a vast storeroom filled with ancient white statues and they came in all shapes and sizes. ibid.
Greece was overwhelmed in three weeks. The World at War 4/26: Alone, ITV 1973
In Greece the British army toppled the popular leftist national liberation front and restored the monarchy and right-wing dictatorship sparking a communist-led uprising. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IV: The Cold War 1945-50, Showtime 2012
Georgios Papadopoulos, Prime Minister of Greece 1967-1973: captain in a Nazi security battalion ... the first CIA agent to become the premier of a European country. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune
Greece would also go on a massive spending spree. Frontline: Money, Power and Wall Street IV, PBS 2012
Between 2001 and 2008 Greece’s debt had doubled. No-one it seemed wanted to ask any hard questions. ibid.
With the markets no longer willing to provide Greece cheap credit the country had to cut spending. People took to the streets in protest. ibid.
Nobody can say a word against Greece: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen. George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose! Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas, 1822
Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
They walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands. Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immoral, though no more! though fallen, great! ibid.
And thus they form a group that’s quite antique,
Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek. Lord Byron, Don Juan
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
When burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set! ibid.
The mountains look on Marathon –
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free. ibid.
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1820
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter. ibid.
For ever piping songs for ever new. ibid.
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. ibid.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green alter, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed,
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? ibid.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. ibid.
Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing! Alexander Pope, translation of The Iliad