Σάββατο 21 Οκτωβρίου 2017

Religious fanatics protest Pessoa’s “The Hour of the Devil” in Thessaloniki

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A group of some fifty people gathered outside the Aristoteleion Theater in downtown Thessaloniki on Wednesday evening in an effort to hinder the performance of play “The Hour of the Devil” by Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa. The religious fanatics and nationalists claimed the play is a “blasphemy” against Orthodoxy.
Holding Greek flags, banners reading “Orthodoxy or Death”, icons and even a wooden Jesus on the Cross, the fanatics claimed they were members of an organization using the name “Sacred Band” with reference to military troops in Ancient Greece and during the independence struggle against the Ottoman Empire.

They chanted slogans in favor of Orthodoxy and the Greek nation, sang the National Anthem and religious hymns. One of their main slogans was “Masons, get out of Greece.”
 “It is satanism a woman told me,” one of the protesters told reporters. Protesters claimed the play was showing Virgin Marycoupling the devil.
It was interesting to see among the protesters the self-proclaimed “Father” Kleomenis who called the play “blasphemy.” (Blogger's Note: Kleomenis is an Old Calendarist priest or Genuine Orthodox Christian priest. The official Church of Greece which is New Calendarist, announced that he isn't a member of them, but that's obvious.)

Kleomenis gained publicity a couple of months ago when he vandalized the Holocaust Memorial in Larissa. The Greek Church distanced from him saying he was not a priest, the prosecutor filed charges against the hate-preacher.

At some point they tried to approach the theater building. They were pushed back by police forces deployed outside the theater.

Well-known actor and protagonist Giorgos Hraniotis told local media “it is more than funny to see people protesting the play by Fernando Pessoa, it has nothing to do with satanism or similar practices.” He described the protest as “practices from the Middle Ages.”

“It is the first time I hear Pessoa was a blasphemist,” the play director said.

Members of the theater group said they have been receiving threats.

According to media, the para-religious, nationalist “Sacred Band” had attacked the Gay Pride in Thessaloniki earlier this year. Local media speak also of “nationalists organizations” and some call them “Christian-Talibans”.

Protesters did not reach their goal, the performance started as scheduled.

Nationalists website wrote about the play that it is “art in the service of the industry of darkness.”

The group plans to launch another protest today.

It is not the first time para-religious and nationalists groups protest outside theaters when they mind the plays insult the “sacred Greek ethics.”

Παρασκευή 20 Οκτωβρίου 2017

Why did he do the exact opposite?

The prime minister who cultivated the mentality, that salaries are a human right and shouldn't be connected with productivity, ability, talent and knowledge. The prime minister who employed supernumerary public servants. The prime minister who funded 'problematic enterprises'. The prime minister, who lent money, never checked if they were invested and never asked them back. This prime minister had written an article telling following:

If Capitalism Can't, Can Socialism?

Andreas Papandreou has been Prime Minister of Greece since October, 1981. He is also the former Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the following comments, excerpted from a longer discussion held in Athens with NPQ Publisher Stanley Sheinbaum and Editor Nathan Gardels, Papandreou offers some surprising observations on the virtues of capitalism and the limits of socialism.

Capitalism's Contradiction Is Socialism's

As a socialist, I am very familiar with the classical Marxist view that capitalism develops social structures, such as the private ownership of production, which hold back the advance of technology and productivity and necessitate social revolution. For Marx, this was the key contradiction of capitalism and the basis of the argument that socialism was historically inevitable. But quite the opposite seems to be true. The capitalist system shows impressive dynamism and changes the perceptions long held by Marxists about the waning future of capitalism.
Capitalism, far more than socialism, has produced new inventions from microelectronics to superconductors that are improving productivity in leaps and bounds. Paradoxically, Marx's prediction is more relevant to the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc than to the capitalist West. Centralized planning, strict party control and bureaucracy have in fact held back technological change.
Now, the Eastern bloc is going through changes that approach the dimensions of a revolution. Gorbachev is undoubtedly a long-awaited reformer. He is a very impressive personality with the huge task of decentralizing the Soviet economy and introducing the market as much as possible. His reforms are a recognition that there are aspects of the capitalist structure which can be ignored only at a cost.
One of these aspects, which I am prepared to accept myself, is that the consumer side of die economy is best organized by some kind of market mechanism. A price system can clearly allocate goods more effectively to the consumer than any kind of planning. Yet, I still believe that the downsides of capitalism, such as unemployment, are best tempered by planning on the capital accumulation and investment side of the economy.
So, I would have to give a new interpretation to capitalism's problems than Marx did. Capitalism is in a deep crisis not because it is blocked from development, but because of the self-destruction caused by its dynamism. On a global scale, capitalism has to be held responsible for the more nefarious ills of human existence. Inequality in the distribution of income is growing. Technological change is causing the worst kind of inequality - the permanent unemployment of millions of workers. Even in the rich countries, a large proportion of citizens live at the margin of society. Inequality has also grown between the advanced nations and the Third World countries.
The dangerous and unplanned exploitation by free enterprise of this self-contained ecosystem we call the planet Earth has produced pollution that is not only dangerous to human life, but to all forms of life. It is exhausting what this planet has to offer for humanity's long-run survival.
The buildup of weapons, in particular nuclear weapons between the superpowers, is not the result of just a bad president or secretary general but part and parcel of the system. Elaborating on this point, I think Gorbachev realizes the problem from his side. His peace initiative is part and parcel of the internal reforms. He knows he cannot improve the Soviet standard of living without the reduction of spending on nuclear arms and the military in general. It is not only a question of Gorbachev being a man of peace. Believe me, Gorbachev is a man of peace. But for him, arms reductions are also a matter of dire necessity for the socialist system.
Technological revolutions go hand in hand with periods of crisis. While I don't think the problems I've noted will be solved in the near future, capitalism's perennial crises tend to resolve themselves and move on. My emphasis in the course of things is primarily on the dangers of survival. Environmentalism, peace and citizen participation in all processes of managing the crises are the values which

socialists share. That is our role. In Greece, we place key emphasis on empowering our citizens through a structure of decentralized planning.
Redundant Keynes

When John Maynard Keynes developed the theory of "effective demand" in 1936, he provided the solution to the problems of unemployment and underconsumption within national boundaries. If consumer purchasing power was stimulated either by tax cuts or government priming the pump, that would get industry going again to supply the surge in consumer demand, and thus increase employment.
But the new international division of labor has changed all that If we stimulate consumer purchasing power here in Greece, we create jobs in Italy and Germany. Since we are members of the European Common Market and can't protect ourselves, our consumers buy Italian shoes of the best German cars, and cause a balance of payments problem for Greece. Today a Keynesian would run Greece into bankruptcy within a couple of years!
The United States has the same problem. For whatever reason, the product basket of American goods is not as appealing to the American consumer as the basket produced by Japan. Despite the steep devaluation of the dollar, the US trade deficit has not budged. Perception is very important. In Greece, we don't even think of buying an American radio or tape recorder. We look elsewhere, usually to Japan.
To keep up today, a country would have to produce goods that not only have a domestic market, but an international market. Without minimal global economic coordination Keynesian stimulation is like banging your head against the waft.
Europe as a whole recognizes this problem and realizes it must pull together to form an effective competitive unit, particularly in the new high-value added technologies. But everyone delivers well-documented speeches. Then decisions cannot be taken or strategies realized because the EEC, Mrs. Thatcher in particular, is not prepared to make the necessary investments.
Despite the general agreement to have a united European market by 1992, the EEC is headed for big trouble. Europe cannot be a global economic challenger unless it decides to invest what is required. The resources at its disposal, particularly the Value-Added Tax levels, are not anywhere near sufficient to meet the goal of being a united world class competitor. If we do not have a significant transfer of resources and technology from the north to the poorer south of Europe, then we shall not

have a convergence but a divergence in the European standard of living. This contains explosive dangers for the future. We may end up just creating one great unified market for Japanese goods.
Profits and Productivity

Among socialists, the notion of the welfare state has undergone some changes as we confront the realities of implementation.
We Greek socialists won our first election in October 1981. A friend in the business community came to me six months later and said, "We are facing a problem. Now that you have won, our employees are not interested in maintaining internal discipline in production."
If Greece wants a welfare state with health care, education and secure pensions, we must, at the same time, keep in mind the struggle for rising productivity. If we are to survive in this new international division of labor and production in which national competitiveness has become so fierce, we have no alternative. Unless this attitude is adopted by the working and middle classes, the consequences can be quite severe.
This does not mean we have an anti-labor attitude. But it does mean that without a very positive commitment of the labor force to improving productivity, we lose the battle.
As a mixed economy, Greece also needs more investment capital. We have experienced a "capital strike" from investors for over thirteen years. This was true even during the time of the colonels who gave investors everything they wanted. The reasons are varied; for example, Greek firms are traditionally highly debt-leveraged with equity levels of only 20%. We need to change that and we, a socialist government, are proposing the creation of a stock market.
Greece also has an overgrown public sector. Those who work in the public sector are the privileged workers of Greece. The dream of the average Greek is to be a salaried employee of the government. They have the highest salaries, pensions, medical care and good vacations.
We socialists didn't create this situation, the dictatorship of the colonels did. When we came to power, 90% of all services, from the airlines to banking and electricity, were government owned. Now we have approximately double the personnel required to produce the necessary government services.
Our situation is just like America's. You are stifling private enterprise because the public sector is overgrown. In Greece, our financial resources for investment are squeezed by the budget deficits of the public sector. It may take 10 or 15 years, but our difficult task as socialists is to get this sector under control and increase its productivity.
We are also paying more attention to the concerns of foreign businessmen as we try to attract foreign investment. Businessmen, of course, make many complaints against socialism. But, as a result of our experience since 1981, there are two complaints that I believe.
First, it is important for business to have the right to hire and fire workers. Businessmen say if they don't have this right, workers are not concerned about performing and productivity goes down as a result. This complaint obviously conflicts with the socialist notion of secure employment and is a delicate matter of policy. But I also must accept that there is something to the businessmen's concern.
Businessmen also complain that reinvested profits be tax free. I must give credence to this argument because our other policies have failed to produce new investors. We have been offering up to a 50% subsidy for foreign businessmen to establish operations in Greece. But we've had very few takers. A well known German financier told me bluntly, "We're not interested in subsidies. We are interested in profits."
The issue is profit, and it is an 'issue of the Greek economy's survival. Workers understand that. If Greece can't attract the foreign investment to finance our participation 'in the technological revolution, we are basically condemned to being a tourist country. Our young people will emigrate and we will have an old population here tending hotels.
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Κυριακή 15 Οκτωβρίου 2017

Ásatrú, the Old Norse pagan religion is the fastest growing religion in Iceland


The old Nose paganism is doing great in Iceland. According to figures from Statistics Iceland 3,583 people belonged to Ásatrúarfélagið, the pagan association, on January 1. The membership has grown by 244% since 2007, making paganism the fastest growing religion in Iceland over the past decade.
Pagans making a comeback after a millennium
The figures show that the share of Pagans in Iceland now tops 1% of the population for the first time for nearly a millennium. In the year 1000 Christianity was adopted as the national religion of Iceland by the Viking age commonwealth parliament, Althingi at Þingvellir. While it was still permissible to observe the old religion in private, the old pagan ways quickly receded in the face of Christianity. Now, 1000 years later the old Norse paganism Ásatrú is making a comeback.
Read more: Heathens against hate: Exclusive interview with the high priest of the Icelandic Pagan Association
On January 1 Ásatrúarfélagið had 3,583 members, up from 1,040 members one decade ago. At the same time as pagans have seen their numbers swell, the State Lutheran Church has seen its membership decline from 252,411 to 236,481, a drop of 6.3%. In 2007 82% of Icelanders belonged to the State Lutheran Church, but only 69.9% on January 1 2017.
While most of those who have left the State Lutheran Church have either joined other Christian churches or registered as not belonging to any particular religious denomination, Ásatrú has been growing rapidly. This despite the fact that the pagan association engages in no proselytizing or recruiting of new members.
No missionary work
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, the high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, told the local newspaper Morgunblaðið that he believes the reason is simply that more and more people are learning about what the association does and seeing their ceremonies.
"We hold more ceremonies each year, and I think more people are seeing first hand what it is that we do, and people like it. We don't engage in any kind of missionary work, but we do encourage people to come and join us if they are interested." Hilmar adds that all of their feasts are open to the general public.
Construction of new temple begins this spring
Ásatrúarfélagið has been working on a new temple in the southern slope of Öskjuhlíðin hill just outside downtown Reykjavík for two years, or since March 2015 when a ceremony was held to consecrate the ground where the temple will rise. Last year a ceremony was held to thank Mother Nature for the timber for the temple.
The actual construction work on the first stage of the temple a 400 square meter (4,300 sq ft) dome which will house 250 people, is scheduled to begin later this year. The temple is expected to be opened to the public in March 2018.

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