EDITORIAL

It is an accepted, if quiet, fact in the foreign "news" industry that correspondents avoid painful or unpalatable details when it comes to reporting about governments which have already attracted positive remarks and are generally seen as "competent."

The current Greek government is an example of such a "competent" administration that garners mostly laudatory remarks from foreign correspondents, whose news stories are then beamed far and wide to reach not only average readers but also "policy-making consumers," "opinion makers," and other such stuffed shirts, who often possess make-or-break powers on others.

(In recent weeks, Greece has gone through spasm demonstrations against her government's futile, brutal, and destructive austerity measures.

On May 5, anarchist murderers set a bank in downtown Athens on fire, killing three employees, one of whom was pregnant.

The outrage took place in plain view of hundreds of demonstrators, who nevertheless did nothing to stop the gang of killers from carrying out their heinous job. There were even reports of some from among the crowd applauding the murders and verbally abusing the bank employees caught in the inferno.

When there are disputes on territorial details, solutions are provided by third parties charged with the task.

It is a national shame to buy weapons that we do not need over an imaginary danger that can be resolved politically.
Theodoros Pangalos
Deputy prime minister of Greece during the Erdogan visit to Athens, May 14-15, 2010

One of the oldest principles of negotiation is to never sit at the table when in want and weakness.

On May 5 a gang of hooded perpetrators used firebombs and a canister of petrol to set a bank in downtown Athens alight. In plain view of throngs of demonstrators rallying against the government's merciless budget cuts, the gang, comprising four or five individuals, first smashed the bank's front window with ax and sledgehammer and then tossed the can full of petrol inside. The hooded assassins followed up with several Molotov cocktails. None of the onlookers, although outnumbering the gang 100 to 1, attempted to stop the crime.

There is an almost eerie silence these days in Greece, only punctuated by sharp, angry demonstrations in the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki.

Greeks are numbed by the vicious austerity measures, and the apparent determination of their government to sink them and keep them in the worst economic plight since the end of World War II for an undetermined number of years, all of course in the name of "saving" the country.

This page is not prone to conspiracy theories. Neither is it inclined to entertain the usual wild accusations leveled against the current government of Greece that it is being "manipulated" by foreign powers. Such charges have been launched against almost every government that has seen the light of day in this country ever since the War of Independence against the Ottomans, so the issue has become trite and worn out.

Yet, there are signs that various "arrangements," not all necessarily in favor of this Nation, which could not have been initiated without the presence of our current head of government in place and the outbreak of the fiscal crisis, may be under way.