Συμβόλαιο συμβίωσης μόνο για κάποιους; Οχι ευχαριστώ. / A domestic partnership that discriminates? No thanks.

Here’s a campaign against a proposed bill in Greece that institutes a domestic partnership contract but reserves it for heterosexual couples only. I fully acknowledge it’s truth and wholeheartedly support it - as it says civil rights for all!

Beresheet 2.0

A year ago Abravanel was born; to mark the occasion I thought of re-publishing my very first post. I’m also posting the stats of my most popular articles, (click to enlarge), which seem to favorite the how to insult a greek and how I learned what malakas means. Something not totally unexpected since I rank no1 in Google to the query “what malakas means” and find myself just in the 2nd page of the results for “malakas”. Not the accomplishments I wished for but alas… :-P

At least I find myself in page 12 when asking for “greek jews” though Plevris does a lot better than I do, again alas…

Anyway I’m not going to be overly sentimental about it but I’d like to say that this had been so far a great trip and believe me I’m just beginning to warm up! Thanks to everyone who has taken a minute to read any of the things I published, comment or send me an email. Know that I’m always open to suggestions - ξανά ευχαριστώ και καλή συνέχεια σε όλους μας!

Υγ. Σκεφτομαι να έχω περισσότερα ποστ στα ελληνικά, τι πιστεύετε;

PS. I’m thinking of having more posts in greek, what do you think about it?

Blog Freedom threatened in Greece

Greek Government in it’s infinite wisdom still doesn’t get how the Internet actually works and gives me the opportunity to differ somewhat from the usual stuff I write about.

Recently a greek political blog by a known journalist was accused of being used as a means to blackmail known politicians and entrepreneurs. I have no idea on the veridicity of the accusations but given the rotten nature of the press system in Greece I have no reason to doubt, (or believe them). The Greek Government though, alarmed by the growing popularity of blogs, decided to take a stance against the whole phenomenon and has drawn the blueprint for a new law governing the functioning of the blogs.

Roughly it says that all informative blogs should loose their anonymity and post the name of their owner; plus other stuff like facilitating the police to track down bloggers etc. Anyway here’s a Press Release, (in greek), which I sign and expresses my personal views on the matter via yorgos.

Another interesting post on the subject with a better summary by j95.

Agit Prop

     Agit Prop/агит проп («αγκίτ προπ») derives from the word “agitazia” and “propaganda”; with the first aiming to instigate the heart and the soul of the receiving audience, while propaganda is the political argumentation which addresses his mind.

It’s also the name of a very good -greek language- blog whose authors have a keen interest on the jews of their hometown, Thessaloniki/Salonika. Among their various articles I’ve singled out those of greek jewish interest, (the first three being truly exceptional), although by no means fail to read some of their other stuff, especially if you’re concerned about Human Rights or advocate Open Source software/OS like myself!

• Tombstones Everywhere, dealing with the destroyed jewish cemetery : http://www.agitprop.gr/article/54/tombstones
• Françoise Atlan and sephardic music: http://www.agitprop.gr/article/100/francoise-atlan
• 7 reasons for not being an anti-zionist : http://www.agitprop.gr/article/23/7-logoi
• Holocaust Memory : http://www.agitprop.gr/article/120/shoah-memorial-day-07
• Salonique, ville du silence, on a documentary about the lost community of Thessaloniki, (I’m preparing a small post on this one): http://www.agitprop.gr/article/98/salonique-ville-du-silence
• Holocaust Archives: http://www.agitprop.gr/article/73/shoah-archives-disclosure

I’ve added the site to my Blogroll and warmly salute the authors - ενας πραγματικά εξαιρετικός ιστότοπος. :-)

Jews and the Twin Towers by tuki8eblom

I would be ungrateful if I didn’t admit that through this site I’ve had the chance to be wonderfully surprised by many people who seem to have the sheer recklessness to go against the mainstream views here in Greece. One of these people is touki8eblom, affectionately known as touki.

On this particular occasion the article that grasped my attention was a small but well documented essay on the widely spread myth that jews, (or Mossad, the israeli Secret Service), were responsible for 9/11. The rumor has it that 2-3-4-5.000 jews working in the World Trade Center were “alerted” and failed to show up that day for work; ergo jews knew about it or even organised it.

Bigotry in Greece and World, a survey

In Jaywalker’s blog I happened to run on a post he did on a university study on bigotry; the post was so interesting that I decided to steal his find and post about it also here - no hard feelings I hope. :)

Vani K Borooah from the University of Ulster and John Mangan from the University of Queensland were the key authors in this rather interesting study. The study included 23 countries from the so called Western World; practically Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The key question was:

“Would you like to have a person from this group as your neighbour?”

The 5 groups were: of a different race, muslims, jews, immigrants or foreign workers and homosexuals. The study didn’t only concentrate on this question but went on to analyse how bigotry was distributed between groups, how it related to the country in question, to political beliefs, unhapiness and other indices.

The results were unsettling both for the Western World and Greece. Copying the findings of the study:

The highest proportion of bigoted persons (bigotry count ratio) was in Northern Ireland and Greece - where, respectively, 44 and 43 percent of respondents did not want persons from at least one of the five groups as their neighbours – and the lowest proportion of bigoted persons was in Sweden (13 percent), Iceland (18 percent), Canada (22 percent), and Denmark (22 percent).

The value of the bigotry gap ratio – the mean, percentage amount by which the bigotry scores of all the persons was above the bigotry line (z=1) – was also highest for Greece (51 percent) and Northern Ireland (50 percent): not only did these countries have a high proportion of bigoted persons, bigots in these countries were, on average, more bigoted than in countries.

Greece scored second worse for people from a different race, universally worse for muslims, second worse for jews (with Spain being surprisingly first), 4th worse for immigrants and 4th worse for homosexuals. The troubling fact was that, while countries usually had some groups that they disliked in particular, Greece scored high in bigotry in all 5 groups; practicaly sharing a first place with Northern Ireland if we take into account all indices. Practically almost 1 out of 2 people in Greece would not like as a neighbour, at least, one of the aforementioned groups, (43.2% to be exact). Also the greek population of bigots is the most bigotted one on the whole western world.

Even after controlling for personal characteristics, the likelihood of a person being bigoted depended on the country in which he/she lived. With Northern Ireland as the residual country, and after controlling for personal characteristics, persons who lived in Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the USA were less likely to be bigoted (and strongly bigoted) – and persons who lived in Greece were more likely to be bigoted (and strongly bigoted) – than those living in Northern Ireland. The country effect for the other countries was not significantly different from zero.

What I didn’t expect for Greece was such a high degree of homophobia, equally high with the very catholic Italy and Ireland. I didn’t also expect such a high percentage for muslims but I imagine that the equation muslim=turk still works against muslim acceptance. At least immigrants were the most accepted from all groups, though still the rate of rejection was extremely high. As far as jews are concerned there weren’t any surprises with Greece being twice as judeophobic, as the media of the Western World. Interestingly enough, this was also the group were Greece differed more from the western media, scoring 97% more.

To tell the truth I feel that real percentages must be higher. The question was fairly straight-forward and at least some people must have dodged answering in a negative way against some groups, as not to appear racist. I doubt that this is the case in Greece as people still do not actually think that racist behaviors are socially unacceptable - I’m trying this moment to back this sensation with some tangible data.

Anyway still quite disturbing and as far as jewish presence is concerned verifies what we’ve been saying insofar. I’m even more troubled if I think that the paper didn’t included Roma; I tremble when I think what the percentages would be in that case. :(

Again thanks to Jaywalker for finding about this interesting survey.

Disgusting

DeviousDiva’s blog on Human Rights issues is fairly well known. Apparently it was doing such a good job that ignoble individuals which claim to be nationalistic greeks have searched the internet and found her real name. They posted it on a site of theirs, coupled with DD photos and names of people related to her. They urged to spread the word on this “scoundrel”, as they called her.

If someone doubts how twisted is the mind of these people, he has an answer now. I feel pity for these people and they should know that they’re the utter disgrace of Greece - shame for them and those who tolerate them.

My utmost solidarity to DeviousDiva who has been an inspiration to me and shown me that there are causes worth fighting for!