Fight the power, and the Turks

It’s very difficult observing the train crash wreckage which is Greece at the moment. What pushed me over the edge was a main bulletin of MEGA news a couple of weeks ago which started with a 20 minute report on the opening by Marianna Vardinogiannis of a children’s cancer hospital in Athens. Apparently, the botoxified wife of one of Greece’s most prominent tycoons raised the money for the hospital herself and because her husband also happens to own MEGA TV, the station’s news felt obliged to run a sycophantic item portraying the inauguration – to which all of Greece’s elite turned out – as a major event in Greek life and Mrs Vardinoyiannis as a living saint and miracle worker healing the country’s stricken children.

The whole episode was an extraordinary demonstration of who has power in Greece and how they use it. Watching it aroused not only my disgust and incredulity, but made me realise just how backward Greece is. No other country in the advanced world would allow a private citizen, however rich, to use a major television station to promote the activities of his family. Clearly, Greece doesn’t need reform, it needs a revolution, to sweep away the Vardinoyiannis’ and the other mafia families that run Greece.

* Also, Greek and Turkish newspapers have been reporting the last few days that Greece and Turkey are close to agreeing a deal that would partition the Aegean 80-20 between the two countries. If Papandreou wants to go down this path, let him take it from me, a Cypriot, who knows the Turk better than he does, that you give a Turk an inch and the next thing he’ll want is a mile, i.e. you give the Turk 20 percent of the Aegean and it won’t be long before he’s asking for 30 percent, then 40 percent and, finally, all of it. If you think this is an exaggeration or nationalist paranoia, then I’m sorry, you’re an idiot.