StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece weeknights @ 6 pm Athens time. The following post is a loose transcript of the 23 August 2012 broadcast.

By greydogg and snake arbusto, 99GetSmart

- Samaras meets Juncker – Greek PM Antonis Samaras and Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the Eurogroup and of Luxembourg, gave a press conference on Thursday after their meeting. Samaras proudly welcomed Juncker, whom he called his ‘personal friend’ and a ‘true friend of Greece’.

Samaras, who is personally untouched by the economic crisis, urged the Greek people to take courage and stoically accept more painful austerity measures. He wore his best ‘sympathetic’ face for the occasion as he ruled out the possibility of a two-year extension and a new ‘‘haircut’’ on Greek debt.

Juncker, referring to rumors of a Greek exit from the euros stated firmly that he was opposed to such a scenario. He said it would not only be bad for Greece, but for the Eurozone as a whole. “It’s your last chance,” Juncker warned. He concluded his statements by saying, “The ball is in Greece’s court.” As if the Troika were not calling all the shots.

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- On Thursday, the Corinth Anti-Racist Initiative held a rally to denounce the ‘literally overnight’ conversion of Camp Corinth into a concentration camp where 400 immigrants are currently imprisoned.

Riot police from the Peloponnese and Attica have formed a line at the gate of the camp. Demonstrators have assembled at the site, protesting against the immigrant detention settlement.

The Anti-Racist Initiative made the following statement:

“We denounce the racist “Xenios Zeus” program that began today in our city and we want to make ourselves clear:

NO PRISON CAMP ANYWHERE. EVER. We refuse to relive the horrors of fascism. It is convenient for the racists to eat each other and blame each. We say NO! to social cannibalism. FIGHT POVERTY, NOT THE DESTITUTE!” 

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- In Greece, the school year will begin with a nationwide teachers’ strike. On September 12 all Greek teachers are called to action.

Komninos Mantas, president of the country’s primary teachers’ union (DOE) described the reason for the strike:

“Schools should have what is necessary to enable them to operate. There is a serious problem at the moment with the costs of schools which cannot be covered, as schools owe huge amounts. Several schools will even start the school year without electricity.”

Somehow, the Troika remains willfully blind to the catastrophe they are orchestrating in Greece.

A June TES UK article entitled Teaching in a climate of despair paints a bleak picture of the devastating effects the economic crisis has had on Greek schools, children, and their teachers. From nurseries to universities, no one is spared:

How would you feel if your salary had already been halved in the past two years and was continuing to drop every time you opened your pay packet?

Could you work in a country where protesting primary teachers are chased and beaten by the police and many pupils no longer see any point in studying?

A place where some teachers struggle to afford to feed their own children, and all have endured massive cuts in their pensions and free health care. Somewhere where pupils have fainted in class from hunger and schools have shut for days at a time because no one can afford the heating.

Could you teach in a school where textbooks arrive months late, if at all, and you have to bring in your own paper? How would you react if the national education budget had been slashed, more than 1,000 schools closed and teacher numbers were being deliberately run down – with 30,000, or nearly one in five, posts being cut? Could you handle teaching in a country where youth unemployment was nearly 50 per cent and hope was rapidly running out?

This is not some fictional nightmare, a disaster in the developing world, nor a grim vision from history. This is Greece in 2012. […]

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- Piraeus pharmacists held a 24-hour strike on Thursday to protest the failure of the National Health Service to allocate an operational budget. Pharmacists’ wages have been dramatically cut and supplies are dwindling, with no money to keep necessary medicines in stock.

On Saturday, a general meeting of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association (PFS) will convene to assess the emerging catastrophe. Many are bracing for a nationwide suspension of credit to EOPYY, the National Organization for Healthcare Provision, beginning on Saturday, September 1, due to the fund’s debts.

edathimerini.com reports:

Pharmacies in 14 prefectures of Greece are refusing to provide medicines on credit to customers insured with the National Organization for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY) due to the fund’s debts.

EOPYY owes 117 million euros for prescriptions in May and another 145 million for drugs provided in June.

Pharmacists from Thessaloniki, Imathia, Pieria, Halkidiki and Kilkis joined the boycott on Thursday, saying that they will be forced to close if EOPYY fails to settle its bills.

Customers in these areas will have to pay for the drugs themselves until the matter is settled.

The Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association is due to meet on August 25 to decide whether to take nationwide action.

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- Greek PM Antonis Samaras was interviewed by the French daily Le Monde in an article entitled, “Greece is ready to sell its uninhabited islands.”

In the interview, “real estate broker” Samaras specifically says:

“On condition that it doesn’t pose a national security problem, some of the isles could be used commercially,” Samaras was quoted by the newspaper. “It would not be a case of getting rid of the isles, but of transforming unused terrain into capital that can generate revenue, for a fair price.”

Contradictions from government sources have emerged. They claim the reference to the islets in Samaras’s interview are uninhabited islands and will NOT be sold.

Who to believe? The liar or the thief?

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- The wildfires on the island of Chios are raging for a sixth consecutive day, mainly in the center of the island. The fire, which erupted at dawn on Saturday, has caused a huge ecological disaster, having already burned thousands of acres of pine and mastic forests.

RELATED POST: “The Future is Present” by Yiannis Makridakis: http://99getsmart.com/?p=4600

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StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece on weeknights at 6pm Athens time @ http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr

StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece weeknights @ 6 pm Athens time. The following post is a loose transcript of the 10 August 2012 broadcast.

By greydogg and snake arbusto, 99GetSmart

- In a recent Guardian UK article, Greek unionists claim it will be ‘the hottest fall yet’ for Greece. The mass media outside Greece predict that the people’s movement will appear on the streets in huge numbers after the new austerity measures are implemented by the coalition government-of-the-regime. According to the Guardian, public servants, who will suffer most of the cuts, will join the mass demonstrations on the streets this fall. As reported yesterday, 40,000 public-sector workers are scheduled to join the growing ranks of the unemployed.

It will be very difficult for the coalition government to survive under the weight of the new austerity measures. The Greek people have not forgotten recent campaign promises. Candidates pledged that they would renegotiate the terms of the Memorandum with the Troika and that there would be no more cuts or lay-offs.

From the Guardian:

“[…] Word is spreading of an incendiary autumn with labour groups, backed by the radical left main opposition Syriza party, warning of protests in September. The prospect of mass lay-offs in the state sector and a spate of planned privatisations are setting the scene for the ‘hottest fall yet,’ unionists said.

‘Mass demonstrations are being prepared by both public- and private-sector unions,’ said Ilias Iliopoulos, General Secretary of ADEDY, the union of civil servants. ‘As long as the [governing] parties don’t respect their pre-election pledges of no more cuts and no more firings they will face the wrath of the people,’ he said.

With the country enduring a record fifth straight year of recession and unemployment hitting an unprecedented 23.1%, Greeks, he said, could ‘take no more’”. […]

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- The spirit that is penetrating the whole of Greek society is the anticipation of what is ahead of them. Presently, the Greek capital is semi-empty. Athenians who are financially able leave the sweltering city for a few day to spend time in the villages to visit friends and relatives and to rest in the mountains or by the sea.

Whether they remain in the city or travel to the villages, what is upfront and foremost in the hearts and minds of the Greek people is what will happen at the beginning of September. And they are looking forward.

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- The Greek radio station REVOLT reported today that anarchist Soteris Siftkas was placed in solitary confinement after his refusal to be placed in restraints on his return to the prison from a local hospital where he was undergoing an examination.

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- On his live broadcast of 10 August 2012, Giorgos Kosmopoulos of StopCartel made this statement regarding the status of undocumented immigrants in Greece: “They are NOT ‘illegal’. They are people who do not have the right documentation for their presence in Greece. The whole … the absolute responsibility for this lack of the right documentation lies with the Greek State.”

Mr. Kosmopoulos reports that rioting police have been deployed to the central railway station in Athens, in full combat gear. Dozens of rioting police formed a wall on the platform as they waited for the arrival of trains. They detain and arrested anyone with dark skin or anyone who speaks Greek with a foreign accent.

As 99GetSmart reported yesterday, more than 7,500 people whose documentation is not in order have been detained in Athens since last Thursday.

The dictatorship in Greece is alive and well. Rioting police have replaced the Nazi brown shirts, but the tactics are the same. As a matter of fact, 50% of the rioting police force voted for the notorious neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, who won 6.92% of the vote in the June election

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- Through the controlled media, the government-of-the-regime bombards the Greek people with the same daily propaganda. The goal is to give the appearance that the government-of-the-regime are Very Important People making Very Serious Decisions. The truth is that they are nothing but Troika-owned clerks, a status they accepted when they willingly acted as traitors to their country for their own personal financial gain.

It has been widely reported that the immediate target of the government-of-the-regime are the 40,000 public workers who are about to be listed on the “labor reserve,” which means they will be placed in the preliminary stage – resulting in a 60% salary cut – before being permanently dismissed from their jobs a year from now.

The Greek Minister of Justice publicly questioned the Constitutional legality of the so-called ‘labor reserve’ process as well as issues concerning austerity measures, but a well-trained TV journalist ‘reframed’ those issues by ‘informing’ people that the government-of-the-regime continues to work feverishly to crunch the numbers to make the ‘necessary’ cuts.

It’s all theater. We all know the final decisions have already been made by the Troika, who are returning to Athens on 20 August  – 1 September.

People are terrorized daily with reports of drastic new austerity measures which include cuts to social services across the board. Drastic cuts in pensions, including those above 700€, which will be cut up to 40%, which are coming on top of dramatic cuts only two years ago.

Giorgos Kosmopoulos of StopCartel TV had this to say about the present conditions in Greece, “Every day things deteriorate in Greece. Every day we are terrorized by revelations of new dramatic austerity measures against the Greek population.”

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- UPDATE: StopCartel has been hacked! Again!

Giorgos Kosmopoulos made a short video statement explaining the recent electronic attacks on StopCartel. The video starts in Greek and changes to English at 3:09.

LINK @  http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr/video?clipId=flv_81a9ee78-166f-4547-b760-34fdc9fd0f30

As 99GetSmart reported yesterday:

The Greek version of StopCartel’s blog was hacked yesterday morning. But thanks to StopCartel’s excellent tech team, it is up and running again. Many thanks to the tech team!

In the course of the repairs, the tech team discovered a spying program embedded in one of StopCartel’s computers. As soon as it was discovered, the stealth spyware was removed.

StopCartel believes this was the criminal work of the Greek ‘intelligence’ agency and that this event was an attempt at preventing the free circulation of political ideas in Greece.

StopCartel called the Department of Electronic Crime Prevention and requested an immediate investigation of the hacking and malicious spyware installation. Despite the fact that it is part of the Greek Intelligence Agency, StopCartel expects the Department of Electronic Crime Prevention to fulfill its duties – to prevent and investigate electronic crime.

If the Department fails to proceed with an investigation within 24 hours, StopCartel plans to file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of Athens against the Greek intelligence agency and request a full investigation.

StopCartel announced that its voice will not be silenced and that they will continue the work of informing the people inside and outside of Greece.

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- The Thessaloniki International Fair will be held at the beginning of September. The festival is an annual tradition in Greece and it is customary for the Greek PM to officially open the fair. It is also his duty to address guests with a formal statement in the evening to kick off events. The following day, the traditional program for the PM includes a press conference with local and international media.

It has been announced that this year the PM will go to Thessaloniki to officially open the fair, but plans to reject the decades-old traditions that have been in place since 1950, after the civil war. He will not deliver a formal statement, nor will he give a press conference. Many interpret this to mean that this government is dead.

In Thessaloniki, huge demonstrations are being planned for 8 September 2012 in response to this new affront, as well as the new cuts and austerity measures.

StopCartel TV will broadcast LIVE from the demonstrations in Thessaloniki on 8 September @  http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr

StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece weeknights @ 6 pm Athens time. The following post is a loose transcript of the 9 August 2012 broadcast.

By greydogg and snakearbusto, 99GetSmart

- The Greek version of StopCartel’s blog was hacked yesterday morning. But thanks to StopCartel’s excellent tech team, it is up and running again. Many thanks to the tech team!

In the course of the repairs, the tech team discovered a spying program embedded in one of StopCartel’s computers. As soon as it was discovered, the stealth spyware was removed.

StopCartel believes this was the criminal work of the Greek ‘intelligence’ agency and that this event was an attempt at preventing the free circulation of political ideas in Greece.

StopCartel called the Department of Electronic Crime Prevention and requested an immediate investigation of the hacking and malicious spyware installation. Despite the fact that it is part of the Greek Intelligence Agency, StopCartel expects the Department of Electronic Crime Prevention to fulfill its duties – to prevent and investigate electronic crime.

If the Department fails to proceed with an investigation within 24 hours, StopCartel plans to file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of Athens against the Greek intelligence agency and request a full investigation.

StopCartel announced that its voice will not be silenced and that they will continue the work of informing the people inside and outside of Greece.

SOLIDARITY with StopCartel!

StopCartel blogs:

Greek version @ stopcartel.info/

English version @ stopcartel.net/

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- A year ago, the unemployment rate in Greece was high, at 16.8%. Today, it was reported that unemployment in Greece currently stands at 23.1% from 22.6% a month ago, and nothing seems to be able to stem the tide.

According to the official data, which represent only a portion of the unemployment rate in Greece, there are 1,147,372 unemployed. But the real number is over 1.7 million.

Within the last month, 34,141 more people lost their jobs.

The statistics are grim. The unemployment rate is higher for women at age 26.8 than for men at 20.3. For people between the age of 15-24, the unemployment rate is a staggering 54.9%. Employment prospects are not much better, at 31.6%, for those between the ages of 25-34.

34-44 year olds are experiencing unemployment numbers at 19.4% while the rate for those between 45-54 years old stands at 17%.

These high unemployment numbers illustrate the dire conditions that have plunged Greece into the current humanitarian crisis that ravages the country.

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- Today, Reuters reported an item the Greek media ‘neglected’ to report – the news that 40,000 public servants are about to be listed on the “labor reserve,” which means they will be placed in the preliminary stage – meaning a 60% salary cut – before being permanently dismissed from their jobs a year from now.

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- Nikos Manesis, a private citizen and the owner of the Hellenic Halyvourgias Steel Mill, is intensifying his orgy of terrorism against the steelworkers. Today he sent notice to the President of the Steelworkers’ Union, Giorgos Sifonios, accusing him of several trumped-up charges.

The trend in Greece is unfavorable to workers as several factory owners are following suit by serving workers with a threatening summons, in an act of economic terrorism.

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- The President of the Athens Medical Council was on TV talking about a social outpatient program organized by priests of the Greek Orthodox Church. UNBELIEVABLY, he is in favor of  a ‘STATE CHURCH’ in Greece.

The doctors of the social outpatient clinic have reported that within 6 months, they have examined over 4,000 uninsured people.

The social clinic offers the first level of medical assistance, but in instances where medication is required, the patient must fill the prescription at a state pharmacy.

If a patient needs hospitalization, they are referred to hospitals that will accept the uninsured. In many instances, people who suffer from serious illnesses such as cancer were not able to be hospitalized. And, in Greece 2012, unemployed pregnant women with no insurance will not be able to give birth in a hospital unless they pay for it.

On this issue, the Minister of Health is as clear as he is callous – people who are uninsured must pay for their own health care. The problem is that health insurance is tied to employment in Greece. What is obvious to everyone except the Greek Minister of Health is that the unemployed who are not insured have no money to pay for health care. The catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Greece rages on all levels of society.

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- The former Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, appeared on German TV and made statements regarding Greece and the EURO zone.

From  EUReferendum:

On the day that Juncker said that a Greek exit from the euro would be “manageable,” the grand old man, Helmut Schmidt, appeared on a German TV program, cigarette in hand, to tell the world that letting Greece join the euro in the first place was “a mistake.”

[…]

Nevertheless, while manageable, Greece’s leaving is “not desirable” says Juncker, and he rules out the exit, “at least until the end of the autumn – and after that, too.” That could be never, of course – except that this man openly admits that “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

But how do we know when Juncker is lying?

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- The wildfires in Greece are as out of control as the political situation.

In central Greece, huge fires continue to rage out of control. For several hours, 20k of the main highway in the Peloponnese was closed due to unsafe conditions.

In Arcadia, authorities arrested a 45-year-old man suspected of starting one of the huge fires by carelessly disposing of a lit cigarette in the dry forest.

Wildfires are being reported on the island of Kefalonia in western Greece, in Corinth, 90 km from Athens, and in Kos, in the eastern region of the island. Currently, there are an estimated 45 wildfires all around the country.

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-  In reaction to the recent raids on immigrants in Greece, Amnesty International is sounding the alarm on the Greek police.

Amnesty International stated that Greek authorities have no right to handle people in the streets as if they were criminals based on the color of their skin. Their demands include that Greek authorities must terminate its attack on ‘irregular’ immigrants and are calling on the government to allow people to be granted asylum in Greece.

More than 7,500 people without legal papers have been detained in Athens since last Thursday.

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- The recent clashes in Ierissos in northern Greece persist. According to SYRIZA MP rioting police / armed forces are using rubber bullets against the local citizens who wish to exercise their right to protest the establishment of a gold mine by a Canadian company. Nearly all the trees in a nearby forest are to be cut down for the project.

For more information: 

THE IERISSOS RESISTANCE: Private citizen George Bobolas dispatched local riot police to act as his private army against Ierissos residents in northern Greece – VIDEOS @ http://99getsmart.com/?p=2883

This is not the first time the Greek riot police were dispatched as a private army against Greek citizens, by a private citizen. BOBOLAS IS A REPEAT OFFENDER!:

THE KERATEA RESISTANCE @ http://99getsmart.com/?p=2359

THE HISTORY OF GOLD MINES AND GREEK RESISTANCE - FULL DOCUMENTARY FILM:  http://99getsmart.com/?p=2969

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StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece on weeknights at 6pm Athens time @ http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr