Dr Joseph Fitsanakis
(Department of History and Political Science, King College, USA and Senior Editor at intelNews.org.)

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

Note: Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis has written this original article specifically for RIEAS. 

The WikiLeaks cablegate revelations appear to be subsiding in the new year, and so is the public debate about their meaning and consequences. And yet, as calmer moods prevail, now is the appropriate time to probe the WikiLeaks phenomenon. To do so constructively, it is necessary to move beyond a mere political assessment of WikiLeaks. The question of whether the website, its founder, and its hundreds of volunteers, are criminals, heroes, terrorists, or dissidents, cannot even begin to be answered until WikiLeaks is understood, first and foremost. By ‘understood’, I don’t mean empathize. I mean comprehending WikiLeaks as an ideological paradigm, a technological vehicle reflective of the personal philosophies of its members, but also representative of a much wider sociotechnical trend.

Nikolas Stylianou
(RIEAS Research Associate – Security Analyst
)

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

On the 17th of December 2010, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr. Markos Kyprianou, and the Minister of National Infrastructures of Israel, Mr. Uzi Landau, signed the Agreement on the Delimitation of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Cyprus and Israel. The creation of the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone was the product of initiatives belonging to the former President of Cyprus, Mr. Tassos Papadopoulos. Despite intense Turkish reactions, the decision of the Cypriot EEZ was immediately accepted by the European Union and the United States. The afore-mentioned agreement between the two states is of high strategic importance for various reasons that will be discussed in the current article and show that a similar agreement between the Republic of Cyprus and Greece is of critical importance in regards to the protection of Greek and Cypriot national and economic interests.

Greece, if you haven’t noticed, is bankrupt.

Stone cold bankrupt.

Its government has stopped payments domestically, leaving thousands of suppliers and contractors stranded. It has stopped refunding VAT to those entitled to refunds, including major companies. It cannot rejoin the “markets” in any form or shape. It cannot borrow, even at extortionist rates from “private investors.” It cannot feed and warm itself without borrowed outside cash to buy food and oil. It cannot pay salaries and pensions without loans from its “partners.” And it generates fearfully less and less in terms of “domestic product” as its economy continues to implode under unprecedented taxation and the effective transfer of the public sector’s crippling waste and still gargantuan appetite for cash to what has been left of a private economy.

A few days ago, Athens hosted the renowned Dr. Doom -- Prof. Nouriel Roubini of New York University, the Prophet of Crises -- who arrived to have a talk with local economic actors on the impact of the debt crisis on Greece and Europe in general.

Roubini has a very clear and brutally honest opinion regarding Greece’s immediate predicament; in answering a question about what’s to become of this country, he recently said :“If you don’t want to call it default or bankruptcy, call it a restructuring under pressure, but it’s going to happen [you will be bankrupt].”

Dr. Shlomo Shpiro
(Deputy Head of the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has been closely cooperating with Greek academics for almost two decades)


The Hellenic Airforce is in action over the skies of Israel for the first time in its history, helping fight the flames of Israel’s worse-ever natural disaster. Greek firemen are battling the blazes alongside their Israeli counterparts. Thousands of Israelis, stranded in their homes, are standing on rooftops cheering as Greek fire-fighting aircraft swoop over the flames one by one, discharging great amounts of water over the gigantic flames which threaten to engulf Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

Dear Dominique:

We read with great interest what you stated live on France Inter Radio right after the second round of our elections in early November 2010. We quote:

“What interests me is not that the left won, it is that the government in place with an IMF program, was understood by public opinion and that public opinion is behind the government. This has never happened in the past. It has never happened that, despite a program as tough as the Greeks have had to support, that the population has understood that it is necessary and in the end a majority gave its support to the government in place” [emphasis ours].

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