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Welcome, 77 artists, 40 different points of Attica welcomes you by singing Erotokritos an epic romance written at 1713 by Vitsentzos Kornaros

Thursday, December 3, 2015

With Schengen under threat, Greece accepts EU help

BRUSSELS/IDOMENI (Reuters) - Greece asked for European help on Thursday to secure its borders and care for crowds of migrants, defusing threats from EU allies to bar ...


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Greece’s Sane Party Is Losing the Plot

Greece’s Sane Party Is Losing the Plot New Democracy should be forging a pro-reform coalition. Instead it’s bogged down by infighting.


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Greece Agrees to More EU Help With Migrants

Greece appeared to succumb to pressure from other governments as it agreed to accept more European Union help to control migrant flows.


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GREECE man admits to sexual assault of young girl

A GREECE man this week admitted he sexually abused a young girl in his home over a 2 ½-year span, starting in 2003. Partway through a jury trial in ...


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North Vancouver volunteer returns from helping refugees in Lesbos, GREECE

A North Vancouver woman says her two-week experience helping refugees on the beaches of Lesbos, GREECE was both humbling and inspiring.


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Frontex Announces Agreement with Greece to Expand Activity on FYROM Border

The EU border agency Frontex announced on Thursday an agreement with Greek authorities to expand its activities on the land border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Frontex will be assisting with the registration of third country nationals that illegally entered the country as refugees and would-be economic migrants heading for northern


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Greek Films Excel at International Film Festivals

Greek cinema has a long and rich history, even now with financial crisis that is plaguing the country, the film industry in Greece is dominating the domestic market, and has experienced international success on several occasions. In spite of small budgets for unique Greek films such as Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth” and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “Attenberg”, films


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Greece admits migration delays but EU not blameless: minister

Under pressure from European partners to better manage a huge influx of migrants, Greece on Thursday admitted delays in its response but said EU promises had also not been carried out in full.


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John Kerry says peace deal in Cyprus 'within reach'

The US Secretary of State has said opposing sides of the divided country are close to reaching an agreement. The island's Greek and Turkish communities have been in opposition with each other for over four decades.


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National Bank of GREECE (NBG): Is There Any Hope?

GREECE and its banking system have survived the worst of times. The country was on the brink of being left out of the euro as the banking system ...


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Frontex to Send More Guards to GREECE'S Border with Macedonia

The EU border agency Frontex said on Thursday that it will deploy additional guards at GREECE'S border with Macedonia where migrants have been ...


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Slack border control in Greece could trigger Schengen suspension

The cornerstone of EU cooperation can be suspended as EU member states will discuss reintroduction of border controls within Schengen in a meeting tomorrow, Friday, December 4. The reason is that Greece has not been able to control its external border where hundreds of thousands of migrants have crossed this year. The EU interior ministers […]


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Holy Trinity GREEK Orthodox Church in Holyoke bazaar to feature pastries, crafts, raffle

Vendors will provide GREEK pastries, hand-crafted items and "unique treasures," said a press release provided by event coordinator Sharon ...


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GREEK capital brought to a standstill as workers strike against austerity

Protesters marched through the streets of Athens on Thursday as over two-and-a-half-million workers took part in a general strike that has brought ...


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Jordan Spieth hit a hole-in-one to start golf's most exclusive tournament

Jordan Spieth got off to a fast start at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament in the Bahamas on Thursday, acing the second hole and nearly slam dunking the 187-yard Par 3.  Hosted by Tiger Woods, the Hero World Challenge is an exclusive tournament featuring only 18 of the top-ranked golfers in the world. Spieth won the tournament last year and this year wasted little time attacking the Albany Championship course. Here's the hole-in-one: > Jordan Spieth has aced half the holes he's played today. #QuickHits > https://t.co/0khB0LugGV — PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 3, 2015 On Wednesday, Spieth told PGA.com that he thinks he can play even better in 2016 than he did in 2015, when he won two majors. From PGAtour.com (via The Comeback): “I can certainly improve in spots of my game,” Spieth said Wednesday from the Hero World Challenge. “I believe I can get better certainly in different specific parts of my game and I can grow mentally as a player as well. I don’t know if it will lead into the same kind of accolades that this year brought forth, but I can certainly finish next season feeling like I’m a better player than I was in 2015, and if that’s the case, wins will fall my way.” His hole-on-one on Thursday certainly bodes well for the upcoming season. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Greece provides a heavenly backdrop for a top-notch BASE jumping adventure


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Kerry meets Anastasiades and Akinci on political solution

Nicosia, December 3, 2015/Independent Balkan News Agency By Kyriacos Kyriacou US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived this afternoon at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia where he is received by President of the Republic of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades. The main issue on the agenda is the Cyprus problem and the ongoing negotiations between the Greek […]


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Violence breaks out as thousands of migrants are stuck ...

IDOMENI, Greece (AP) — Greek riot police struggled to maintain order Thursday after chaotic clashes between asylum-seekers at the country's border with Macedonia ...


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Blackmail works: EU’s humanitarian aid & Frontex will come to Greece to create a buffer zone for Refugees

This nasty EU blackmail of alleged “Schengen suspension” bear fruits. Greece bowed to the pressure and  A) has activated the EU’s  Civil Protection Mechanism praised by Brussels as “humanitarian aid for refugees” and B) agreed that Frontex will be deployed at its northern borders to FYROM. Both actions were announced today […]


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Migrants refuse to leave after death on Greek-Macedonia ...

Abdul points to the lifeless body of a fellow Moroccan who electrocuted himself to death on Thursday by grabbing high-voltage train cables on the Greek border with ...


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GREEK banks could get ECB cash before bailout review

The ECB shut GREEK lenders out of its liquidity operations in February after a radical leftist government won power vowing to tear up a previous bailout ...


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HFSF sees GREEK bank chip rebound in 2017

GREEK bank shares are likely to rebound strongly in 2017 after years of declines as the economy gets back on its feet and confidence returns, the head ...


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Four Missing Immigrants in the Aegean Sea

Greek rescuers were seeking four missing immigrants after a small boat with seven people on board sank off the eastern Aegean island of Farmakonissi. The Greek coast guard stated that until now three survivors have been pulled out of the sea alive after the accident. Greece is at the forefront of Europe’s immigration crisis, with


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Attacks and Molotov Cocktails in the Center of Athens

Shortly before 13:00 pm around 30 masked men attacked police officers with stones damaging shop windows in the center of Athens during demonstrations by the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GCWG)  and the Civil Servants Supreme Administrative Council (CSSAC). Reportedly, rioters threw rocks at the police outside the Ministry of Labour and set fire on a garbage


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Greece Records Third Highest Tax Ratio Increase in OECD

Greece recorded the third highest tax ratio increase among OECD countries in the 2013-2014 period, with an 1.5% increase, following Denmark (3.3%) and Iceland (2.8%), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Thursday. In its annual Revenue Statistics publication, the Paris-based organization said that the tax burden in Greece increased from 31.2% to 35.9%


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Kerry says peace in reach as hopes for Cyprus deal rise

Both are committed to a deal, as are Greece and Turkey. [...] newly discovered gas deposits in the Mediterranean could mean a windfall for both if the two sides reunify. Among the thorniest issues remaining include the division of powers between the federal government and the two states, what to do about private property lost by individuals on each side and how to share the country's economic wealth — including its offshore oil and gas resources. Reporting progress last week, the U.N. envoy to Cyprus, Espen Barthe Eide, said leaders were confident they could resolve all outstanding issues. Peace could help stabilize the eastern Mediterranean, a region that includes unstable Lebanon, Syria and Egypt and the persistent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After attending a basketball game between teams of teenagers from each part of Cyprus, Kerry lauded Anastasiades and Akinci for working really hard for peace and making the tough and creative compromises that this moment demands. The top American diplomat said a lasting settlement would bring foreign investment and economic growth to a place hit hard by financial instability.


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Local girl aids refugees arriving in GREECE

Pagosa Springs local Bethany Burnett is currently serving in Lesbos, GREECE, bringing hope to refugees arriving off the Aegean Sea. Burnett (far left) ...


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Frontex to help guard GREECE-FYROM border

Other EU states had been piling pressure on GREECE to accept help for registering and documenting migrants trying to head north across the Balkans ...


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Forget Syria: a weak GREECE endangers us all

There is nothing waiting for people who leave school in GREECE today. It does not matter how much young Greeks might be able to give to their nation, ...


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IMF says could decide GREECE aid in January

The International Monetary Fund could decide in January whether it will put money in an aid program for GREECE that until now has been financed ...


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MSF, Greenpeace launch migrant rescue operation off GREECE

Marietta Provopolu, head of MSF's GREECE division, said that "our activities in the Aegean are only a temporary solution to mitigate the suffering and ...


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Migrant dies on Greek-Macedonian border as GREECE seeks to end standoff

IDOMENI, GREECE, Dec 3 (Reuters) - A Moroccan was electrocuted to death on the Greek-Macedonian border on Thursday in the second straight day ...


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Syria: Mission Possible?

Imagine this new TV series coming to HBO in 2016. The planet faces an unprecedented peril. The international community brings together a team of experts, each one with a different specialty: the scientist, the general, the computer geek, the engineer, the spook. It’s their job to avert catastrophe. In the pilot episode, we see each member of the team prepare for the new assignment. They inform their families that they have to go away for an unspecified period of time. No, they can’t tell anyone about their mission. “Yes, yes, I know that baby Gerald has the flu,” the general tells her husband. “But believe me, this is very important. I wouldn’t ask you to make this sacrifice if it weren’t for a very good reason.” We watch as the team members travel from all corners of the world to the rendezvous point in an undistinguished office building in a large European city. Security guards find their names on a special list and escort them to the fifth floor. There, they receive their information packets. A distinguished older woman, perhaps played by Helen Mirren, presents the problem. There are mathematical formulae on the whiteboard. There are photographs of impending doom: millions dead, cities destroyed, small countries wiped off the map. After a few suitable close-ups of very concerned faces, the crack team gets down to business. They hold a meeting. In the second episode, the meeting continues. It carries over to the third episode. And the fourth episode. In fact, the crack team meets for the entire first season. They take a break. And they start up again in the second season by meeting…in a different country! In the third season, a sensible, moderately attractive environmentalist joins the team. And the meeting goes on. In the fourth season… You’re right. No one in the TV industry would ever greenlight such a series. Hours and hours of meetings? TV is supposed to be escapism, and if there’s one thing that everyone in the world wants to escape from, it’s a meeting. This is nothing new. The entertainment industry, going all the way back to Homer, has emphasized “fast and furious” answers to difficult problems. Did the Greeks engage the Trojans in months and months of patient negotiations to get back the beautiful Helen? No, they made a cursory attempt at diplomacy in The Iliad before beginning the war that ultimately destroys Troy. Can you think of any staff meetings in Shakespeare? Dante? To take a more recent example, Tom Cruise and his colleagues at the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) don’t spend a lot of time drawing up agendas and crafting talking points. Instead, they defeat rogue spies in the fifth installment of Mission Impossible by using cool weapons, engaging in incredible chases, and performing superhuman feats of derring-do. Congressional hearings, established standards and practices, even the laws of nature are but ill fitting restraints to be shrugged off. Donald Trump — and, truly, the Donald belongs more to the world of entertainment than the world of politics — rarely talks about meetings, despite his obvious penchant for making deals. Rather, he emphasizes the dramatic act: build a huge wall on the border with Mexico, resume waterboarding of terrorism suspects, bomb “the shit” out of the Islamic State. Indeed, it would be hard to find any of the Republican candidates proposing patient solutions to challenging problems. Instead, there’s Marco Rubio’s Cold War reset with Russia, Ted Cruz’s enthusiastic embrace of everything that Israel does, and the competition among the Republican aspirants to be the one who rips up the nuclear deal with Iran the soonest on taking office. Just as no one is going to watch a TV show about an endless meeting, few people are going to vote for a presidential candidate who doesn’t sound decisive and action-oriented. And yet, most of the world’s problems do not lend themselves to dramatic, game-changing solutions. Ending wars, addressing poverty, reining in the arms trade: These challenges require lots of meetings, endless squabbles over the meaning of terms, and frustrating setbacks because of miscommunication. I doubt very much if anyone is planning a Netflix mini-series about the negotiations to freeze Iran’s nuclear program. I haven’t come across a graphic novel about the Dayton Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. And journalists are scrambling this week to figure out ways of making the actual discussions in Paris about climate change interesting to their readers. It’s no secret really. The world of wonks is boring. But if we’re ever going to pull ourselves out of our current predicament of spreading conflict, rising temperatures, and economic crisis, we’ll need a lot less bravado and a lot more of what the Germans call sitzfleisch — the ability to sit and sit and sit some more until the job gets done. Nowhere is that capacity for patient negotiations more needed at the moment than with the Syria crisis. QUIETING RIOTS In my last World Beat column, I compared the situation in and around Syria to a riot in progress. Instead of trying to bomb the riot out of existence or selectively take out the suspected perpetrators, I suggested that it would be better to figure out how to quiet the riot and address the issues that gave rise to the disorder in the first place. Several readers quite sensibly asked for a bit more detail about my sketchy proposal. To begin with, the negotiators who have held two meetings so far in Vienna to address the Syria crisis must push hard to implement their timeline for a political solution. By January 1, the Syrian government and the opposition are supposed to meet to convene for formal negotiations. A ceasefire should be in place by mid-May. Free elections under a new constitution are then to be held by May 2017. For this to happen, the United States and its allies have to be flexible about the role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (what I’ve called the “Schrodinger solution”). To bring in as many Syrian actors as possible among those willing to craft a political solution, negotiations should favor a big-tent approach to stabilize the country and assemble a coalition against the Islamic State. All of this will require an endless series of meetings, many of which will be boring and not in the least bit newsworthy. In fact, the less news generated by such meetings the better. Journalists thrive on conflict, and these meetings will require an enormous number of mind-numbing stutter steps toward consensus. The country that stays out of the headlines is a happy country. The same can be said about diplomatic negotiations (until, of course, they produce an agreement). Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers should take a hard look at the conditions that have generated both civil unrest in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State. Here, too, there are no easy fixes. The United States continues to side with a variety of actors in the region that perpetuate injustice. Indeed, the list of U.S. allies is so varied that Washington manages to offend just about everyone. The United States supports Sunni extremists (Saudi Arabia), a corrupt Shi’ite leader (Iraq), a “moderate” militarist in Egypt, a wide range of paramilitaries (Syria), a right-wing lunatic (Israel), and a motley crew of malefactors big and small. In some places, Washington supported pro-democracy demonstrators (Tunisia) and in other places effectively supported their suppression (Bahrain). Washington is officially supporting economic development in the region at the same time that it’s sending billions of dollars of armaments to a variety of human-rights-abusing governments and supporting the kind of petropolitics that inevitably produces economic polarization. Does Washington contradict itself? Well, U.S. policy toward the Middle East is large. It contains multitudes. It’s not surprising, then, that many people in Iraq, for example, believe that the United States is supporting the Islamic State rather than trying to annihilate it. Given this compromised relationship with the Middle East, some commentators have recommended that the United States just sever all ties — pull out all troops, stop all arms sales, and hang our putative friends in Tel Aviv and Riyadh out to dry. However attractive such an option might be, it’s not exactly on the agenda of any major political force in the United States. But perhaps, even as it remains engaged in the Middle East, the United States could alter its relationship so as to benefit the many rather than the few. It could begin by withholding all military and economic assistance to its allies — Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt — until they show signs of compromise toward their internal “enemies” (respectively: Palestinians, Shiites and human rights protestors, and the Muslim Brotherhood). For too long, the United States has sided with the powerful and not the powerless in the Middle East. The roots of conflict in the region are injustice, and the United States has so often been part of the problem, not the solution. Of course, this would have been a grand policy before September 11. It would have been a fitting approach before the invasion of Iraq. Now the world must deal with the disintegration of Syria, the outpouring of refugees, and the rise of the nefarious Islamic State. Still, it may not be too late to adopt a justice approach to the Middle East. Stabilizing Syria is only one part of the solution. Dealing with the Islamic State is the other. I don’t personally believe that the Islamic State is interested in diplomatic negotiations, political solutions, or engagement of any kind with those it considers heretics (which includes a whole lot of Muslims as well). But I also don’t think that the United States (or Russia for that matter) should be leading the military effort against the Islamic State. The Islamic State wants a crusade. We must not play their game. What Washington can do, however, is ensure that the Islamic State ceases to be a useful stalking horse for states in the region that want to give Iran a black eye by toppling its ally in Damascus. That means, primarily, getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to recognize the threat the Islamic State poses — not so much to Europe or the United States, but to the Muslim world. It must also use the Vienna talks to ensure that no one — not Turkish middlemen, not the Assad regime — keeps the Islamic State in business by buying its oil. Instead of continually interceding in the war taking place within Islam — inconsistently, incoherently — the United States has to step back and help build a new Muslim consensus against the Islamic State and extremism more generally. SAY GOODBYE TO QUICK FIXES The challenge facing climate negotiators in Paris this week is so large — and so bleak — that many observers have embraced the equivalent of the Hail Mary pass. They are hoping that some new technological innovation will come along to provide enormous amounts of carbon-free energy or absorb all the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Otherwise, it just doesn’t seem likely that humanity will get its collective act together to prevent global temperatures from exceeding that infamous two degrees centigrade rise. There are similar hopes for quick fixes to the Syrian crisis. Some analysts believe in the magic of aerial bombardment (even though bombs have never really eliminated determined foes in the past like the Vietcong). Others believe that Assad will have a sudden change of mind and take an indefinite holiday with his family in Crimea (even though he has shown a grim determination to remain besieged in Damascus). Or perhaps the Islamic State will collapse under the pressure of its own extremism (even though extremism has its own peculiar stability). Sometimes the Hail Mary pass works. But I wouldn’t want to bet on such luck, not when it comes to the fate of the earth or the future of Syria. It’s not a very sexy option, but I put my faith in sitting down and talking. And talking. And talking. I don’t expect Mission Possible to attract a lot of money at the box office. But the least entertaining option, when it comes to foreign policy, is often the best option. _Crossposted with Foreign Policy In Focus_ -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


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Alighting on Shore with a Wave of Emotion

Trained as a journalist, I was always told to stand a little apart from the story, not to get too wrapped up in the moment. But, what I witnessed last week, along with Refugees International advocate Mark Yarnell, consultant Renata Rendon and Board vice chair Elizabeth Galvin on the Greek island of Lesvos was truly overwhelming. And I was not the only one. Mark who has been with RI for four years said: "I have never encountered a scene like the one we saw on the north coast of Lesvos. That was truly mind blowing and it was important to see it for ourselves." The Mercy Corps protection officer who took us to the coastal town of Skala Sykamias for the arrival of "boats" from Turkey asked me to feel her pounding heart: "It always happens like this. I cannot help it." At once, the scene was beautiful, poignant and tragic. The boats arrive -- mostly overladen, deflating rafts -- creeping their way to the shore. When the weather is good, you can spy them half a mile away, a vision of orange on the blue sea. As the raft approaches, volunteers on the shore will start waving bright flags to guide the boats to a safe landing, and the Greek coast guard or civilian boats will ride alongside to prevent any last minute tragedy -- someone falling overboard or the boat completely deflating. There are about 40 to 50 individuals on each of these rickety boats. Men, women, infants pressed shoulder to shoulder, each one wearing a life jacket. This day the color was orange, but near the shoreline there were piles of discarded hues, thrown off upon landing safely. As soon as the boat touches land, volunteers wade out into the water, forming a human chain, carrying babies, pregnant women and the disabled to shore. They are greeted with a wave of emotion, having survived this leg of their journey. So far in 2015, there have been about 730,000 arrivals to Greece by sea. Around 430,000 of those have landed on Lesvos, because of its proximity to the Turkish coast. In fact, Skala is only about six miles off of Turkey, but the journey can take 45 minutes to four hours, often in the dark of night with treacherous seas. Hundreds have died on this trek and many families have been separated on the journey, with stories of smugglers pushing some family members into one boat and others into another. They come with nothing but what they can carry, often having suitcases with their precious belongings yanked from their hands at the last moment so that more people can be shoved on to the rafts. When we arrived on Lesvos on Sunday, November 22, there was an eerie lull in the flow of refugees and migrants. Nobody could explain it. According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, 135,000 had arrived on the island's shores in October or about 4,500 each day -- a record high. In the first two weeks of November the number slowed to about 3,300 daily. And now, almost none were coming. There were several theories. The weather could be a factor -- a fierce wind was blowing in the wrong direction, but that had happened before. Another thought was that the Turkish government was finally cracking down on smugglers, because the European Union (the EU) was putting pressure on it to do so. (Actually, that is now happening. Just yesterday, the Turkish coast guard arrested around 1,300 refugees and migrants and three smugglers near Ayvacik, the place in Turkey from which the crowded boats launch for Lesvos. This probably resulted from an agreement between Turkey and the EU, signed on Sunday, November 29, wherein Turkey will try to halt the flow in exchange for $3 billion in aid for 2.2 million Syrians already in Turkey.) The third possible reason for the lull was quite simple: the supply of inflatable rafts had dried up. After all, between 8000 and 10,000 have found their way to Lesvos alone this year. Few of these boats ever make a return trip and now, slashed and deflated, are littering the Greek coast. But by mid-week last week, refugees and migrants were again coming to shore by the thousands and we hear that the numbers are continuing today. Smugglers on the Turkish side often charge upwards of 900 Euros ($954) for adults and 400 ($424) Euros for children. The Syrian couple we met had paid $2800 for their five young children and themselves and made it in two hours. They had fled Damascus weeks ago, spent a full month in Istanbul making connections and awaiting word. Like most of those we met, they are not intending to stay in Greece. Their destination is Germany. With winter coming on, it is difficult to know if this is an impossible dream or not. Sitting outside the relief site where they will receive free bus tickets to Mytilene, the capital, and then be able to buy ferry tickets to Piraeus on the Greek mainland, this Syrian family was relishing one small victory. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote about the presidential contest: "We all need to be stirred. We need to know and believe the breakthrough is possible, the fight against the odds will end in victory, something good is just around the corner." In fact, this sentiment applies across our lives. For those standing on the shores of Lesvos as these boats arrived one after the other -- Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis crammed shoulder to shoulder -- it was stirring. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


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GREEK plane carrying deported migrants turned away by Pakistan

Pakistan on Thursday turned back a GREEK chartered plane carrying alleged illegal immigrants amid a diplomatic standoff between the two countries ...


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Home GREEK news GREEK Min.of Migration: “In 5 Days GREEK – FYROM Border Issue Will...

mouzalas The situation in Idomeni-Greece is going from bad to worse. The GREEK economy is beset by the blocking of the railway line and the closure ...


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Greece: death at the border leads to violence

The deaths of migrants at sea are all too common. But a man from Morocco has become the first person to die at the land border between Greece and…


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Hungary challenges EU migrant quotas

Hungary files a court challenge against an EU plan to distribute refugees among member states, while one man dies amid clashes on Greece-Macedonia border.


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EU's Frontex agency to help guard Greece-Macedonia border

Other EU states had been piling pressure on Greece to accept help for registering and documenting migrants trying to head north across the Balkans towards Germany and ...


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20.000 protesters against social bill

Athens, December 03, 2015/ Independent Balkan News Agency By Olga Mavrou A general strike and a rally against the unpopular social bill (for cuts in the pensions but also for the considerable change in the age of the retirement) that will be discussed in the parliament later  in December  took place today in Greece.  At […]


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Internet sales on the rise

Athens, December 03, 2015/ Independent Balkan News Agency By Olga Mavrou Research done by the Economic University of Athens (specifically, by the department of electronic trade) shows that e-trade is maturing in Greece. According to the researchers a basic –but not the only-  reason for the rise on e-trade  has been the measure of  “capital […]


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Clashes as thousands of migrants are stuck outside ...

IDOMENI, Greece — Greek riot police struggled to restore order Thursday after chaotic clashes between asylum-seekers at the country's border with Macedonia, where ...


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Pakistan sends deported migrants back to GREECE

Thirty-one migrants made a round trip from GREECE to Pakistan on Thursday after the government in Islamabad said the EU had illegally deported them ...


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New Study Shows Some GREEK Temples Were Oriented to the Moon or Stars, Rather than the Sun

But a new study shows that a few of the GREEK temples near the ancient Sicilian city of Agrigento are aligned to the stars, the moon and the layout of ...


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Refugee electrocuted touching railway cables as protests break out on GREEK-Macedonian border

A refugee has been electrocuted to death at the GREEK-Macedonian border during the second day of clashes between police and refugees in the area.


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IMF to Start to Mull New GREEK Loan Program as Soon as January

Rice said any potential further money would probably be disbursed under a new loan program to be negotiated with the GREEK government. Euro-area ...


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22-Year-Old Moroccan Immigrant Dead at Greek-FYROM Border

A 22-year-old Moroccan man lost his life this morning after suffering electric shock from the border fence in Idomeni, Greece. After praying for the young man, immigrants covered him with a black cloth and delivered his body to medical bearers in a makeshift stretcher. Following the tragic event, the immigrants proceeded to the crossing point


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Greece Must Legislate 2nd Package of Prior Actions by December 11

The Greek government has a December 11 deadline to legislate the second package of prior actions in order to receive a tranche of 1 billion euros in financial aid, a European Union official said. The December 7 Eurogroup will discuss the progress of the Greek program, among other issues. Under condition of anonymity, a EU


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GREECE asks for deployment of EU civil protection mechanism

The Greek Ministry for Immigration Policy on Thursday asked the EU to deploy its Civil Protection Mechanism to help deal with the ongoing refugee ...


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Below the line

ADAM SMITH argued in “The Wealth of Nations” that, whereas the ancient Greeks and Romans lived comfortably without linen shirts, in 18th-century Europe “a creditable day-labourer” would be ashamed to appear in public without one. That would denote a “disgraceful degree of poverty”, he wrote. The passage is often used to justify the view that poverty is relative. So Smith might be alarmed at what the Conservative government is doing to the definition of child poverty in Britain. The Welfare Reform and Work Bill is likely to be passed early in the new year. It is part of an ongoing attempt to bring down the welfare bill (working-age benefits amounted to £94 billion, or $141 billion, in 2014-15) and reform the system so that work is the best way out of poverty. The focus has been on the bill’s proposal to limit benefit payments for children and to cap the amount that any one family can claim. But it also proposes to change the way child poverty is measured: instead of monitoring income, as now, a series of other measures, such as education and employment, would be used. The government describes these as measures of “life chances”....


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Refugee Dies On Macedonian Border After Days Of Clashes With Police

A migrant was electrocuted to death at the Greek-Macedonian border on Thursday during a second successive day of clashes between police and migrants stranded for weeks on the Greek side. The man, believed to be Moroccan, was among some 1,500 people, mostly from Pakistan, Iran and Morocco, stuck near the northern Greek border town of Idomeni, demanding to cross into neighboring non-EU Macedonia and then on to northern Europe. His badly burnt body was lying next to railway lines, a Reuters witness said. Earlier, Macedonian police fired tear gas at protesting migrants who pelted them with stones. Overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of people streaming into Europe this year, Balkan states began blocking passage last month to all but Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, who are regarded as refugees because they are fleeing conflict. Macedonia has erected a metal fence to keep others out. Violence broke out on Saturday after another man, also believed to be Moroccan, was badly burned when he climbed on top of a train wagon and was electrocuted. Several hundred migrants blocked the crossing for refugees in protest late on Wednesday, shouting: "If we don't cross, no one does!" While deaths at sea are common, Thursday's death was the first casualty at the Greek-Macedonian land border. More than 3,000 people have drowned trying to reach Europe on packed, flimsy boats this year. Many more bodies are never recovered. The Greek government says it is trying to persuade the those stuck at the border in squalid camps and in near-freezing temperatures, to come to Athens and apply for asylum in Greece, saying there was accommodation available for them. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


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