There isn’t really much point in replying to you, is there? You repeat the same bogus arguments ad nauseum, you ignore the points I have made (do you even bother to read what I have written?) and your manner is becoming increasingly unpleasant.

DD,

I apologise that my attempts to engage Cinzano in rational dialogue have resulted in him hurling yet more abuse in your direction.

there are plenty of places that people can go to online if they want to read about this issue, so why does DD need to cover it as well?

Because this blog purports to be a human rights blog “about Greece”? It has dealt with workers’ issues in the past e.g. the overtime issues for foreign workers – therefore, i don’t know why DD is totally ignoring the issue of Greek workers’ rights which are currently being decimated.

It’s like having a blog focussing on “environmental issues in America” and then totally ignoring the huge oil spill currently decimating the coastline of Louisiana. It’s absurd.

You don’t get more “about Greece” then the current crisis which is plastered all over the international media but not on DD’s blog, which is supposed to be “about Greece”.

This blog is clearly about DD stroking her own ego and all about a Brit going abroad and “educating the natives” – DD has consistently swerved the subjects which highlight the human rights issues of GREEKS and Southern Europeans – she focusses only on human rights when Greeks are the perpetrators of abuses.

She is completely self-obssessed to the point of being totally disingenuous when she says that this blog focusses on “human rights in Greece” because she ignores the rights of millions of people who live here.

An indication of this, is her total self-indulgence and snobbish arrogance when SHE TALKS ABOUT HER OWN EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS AND ASKS FOR A JOB IN THIS THREAD:
http://deviousdiva.com/2010/03...../#comments

DD:
“If anyone has any ideas, contacts or actual work offers, please let me know. I am looking for writing jobs specifically but will consider anything at all. The love of my life has 30 years of experience in the creative field (photography, graphic design, web design etc) but he is open to any opportunities too. Please email privately with any ideas.”

DD even suggests that she will leave the country if things get too tough:

“We might have to leave the country and go back to Britain….”

Well, the Greeks don’t really have a choice to leave a sinking ship BUT i’m sure they would appreciate it if a blog “about Greece” at least highlighted their plight.
Millions of Greeks will lose their jobs, homes and pensions through no fault of their own but sanctimonious Brits with human rights blogs “about greece” totally ignores the unprecedented decimation of their employment rights!

Once again, DD COMPLETELY IGNORES THE PROBLEMS AND ISSUES FACED BY THE PEOPLE WHICH SHE CALLS “FRIENDS”. She’s proved that Greece is definitely NOT HER COUNTRY and millions of Greeks are not worthy enough for her to address their issues on her blog. (But she will use her blog to ask for a job).

I’m wondering why you don’t share the same understanding for Greek workers’ as you showed for foreign workers when their rights were abused.

Cinzano, I think DD and I fully understand what is happening to workers’ rights here in Greece, because (unlike you) we actually live here and are subject to exactly the same austerity measures as the Greek people. We, our friends and our families are the ones who are going to be suffering through this crisis, not you, so kindly don’t accuse us of not understanding what the Greek people are going through.

I also think that there are plenty of places that people can go to online if they want to read about this issue, so why does DD need to cover it as well? If she wants to talk about it, then fine, but if she feels she has nothing to say, then that’s fine too as far as I’m concerned. At the end of the day, this is a human rights blog, and as I’ve said, I don’t think many people would view what Greece is going through as a human rights issue.

There is a clear difference between illegal discrimination against a minority and legal measures which, however painful they are, affect everyone.

Why do you and DD always seek to minimise and downplay a crisis which has hit the Greek people where the greek workers’ rights are being abused? I would have thought that human rights advocates such as yourselves would be extremely sensitive and understanding of the complete decimation of workers’ rights currently happening in Greece. I’m wondering why you don’t share the same understanding for Greek workers’ as you showed for foreign workers when their rights were abused.

“Furious Greeks have likened the three-year austerity programme and the attendant international monitoring of their public finances, to a foreign occupation.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/busi.....CMP=AFCYAH

Yet, this blog doesn’t even mention the single biggest decimation of Greek workers’ rights since the second world war.
Strange. Very strange.
I’d have thought that the Greek crisis would at least have been mentioned on this blog which purports to be “about Greece”. But then again, this blog has never highlighted the abuse of Greeks’ rights. It only caters for rights which are abused by Greeks.

I think we’ve already established that this blog is only concerned with human rights breaches which are caused by Greeks. This blog’s focus is not “human rights issues in Greece” but “the breaching of human rights by Greeks“.

No, I think we’ve established that you are determined to find fault with whatever DD does or does not write on this blog. You are misreading what she writes either deliberately or because you truly do not understand what she is talking about and I don’t think any unbiased reader of this blog would get the impression that DD is criticising Greeks as such.

If this blog was truly an exploration of human rights issues in Greece, surely both of the issues of Greek workers and Phillipino migrant workers would have been treated in the same way i.e there would criticism of the government’s current treatment of Greek workers as there was with Philipino workers in Greece.

There is a clear difference between illegal discrimination against a minority and legal measures which, however painful they are, affect everyone. Again, I have to ask whether you are pretending not to understand the difference or whether you are so caught up in your one-man crusade against DD that you seize on any ‘evidence’ to make your point, however insubstantial.

In your efforts to prove your point you also end up adopting startlingly contradictory position. Here you talk about

the most historic and monumental abuse of worker rights ever to have taken place in Greece

whereas a couple of posts back you were defending

Greek shipping magnates going abroad to register their ships

and criticizing

goverments who apply stringent taxes for shipping owners

.

So which are you? Friend of the workers or defender of the plutocracy? Or doesn’t it really matter as long as you can find a stick to beat DD with?

The focus of this blog seems quite particular and well defined and I think it would be stretching a point to say that the current financial crisis and its consequences constitute a human rights issue.

pj,
I think we’ve already established that this blog is only concerned with human rights breaches which are caused by Greeks. This blog’s focus is not “human rights issues in Greece” but “the breaching of human rights by Greeks“.

For example, there is currently a great deal of social unrest in Greece due to the austerity measures imposed on the Greek people. It’s all over the internnational news.
As i understand it, there is an issue of very deep anger and rage against the planned attacks on jobs, wages, conditions and pensions and tax rises in Greece. The austerity measures include a freeze on public sector pay and serious cuts in bonuses, lowering of pensions so that workers are forced to stay working longer. Journalists are describing the recent marches in Athens and Thessanoliki as “rivers of fury”.
Yet, DD does not mention this historic event in Greek workers’ rights on her blog.
On the other hand, there are threads on here which
criticise the Greek government’s breaching of Philipino migrant workers’ rights such as overtime etc..Please see this thread:
http://deviousdiva.com/2009/03/20/workers-rights/

Please explain this dichotomy. If this blog was truly an exploration of human rights issues in Greece, surely both of the issues of Greek workers and Phillipino migrant workers would have been treated in the same way i.e there would criticism of the government’s current treatment of Greek workers as there was with Philipino workers in Greece.

The truth is, this blog is not what it purports to be. It’s a blog which exists to highlight human rights abuses caused by Greeks, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but i think DD should clarify what her blog is really about and not pretend it’s a blog which deals with “human rights issues in Greece”. A blog which doesn’t even mention the historic and unprecedented decimation of Greek workers’ rights which has prompted violent protests and “rivers of fury” in Greece cannot pretend to be a blog about “human rights issues in Greece” when it neglects to address the most historic and monumental abuse of worker rights ever to have taken place in Greece.

Thanks for getting back to me on Owl City. I listened to a couple of songs but they really didn`t move my spirit as the cliche would be. I think I could churn out lyrics like the guys sings by the yard. I have to try listening to that Orthodox music you suggested again. My computer keeps on stopping in the middle of a lot of you tube clips and did that with that piece too about 4 times.

Today at work I learned something that really effected me. I had to take some Grade 7 kids to an assembly and they had a presentation on the eighth continent. I think I should share this with as many people as I can even though I am sure many people probably have known about it for years while I just heard about it today. I remember Earth day was spoken about on this blog and this sort of ties in with that.

The eighth continent, also known by several other names including the garbage patch, is a very large area with seven million tonnes of garbage in the Pacific ocean between California and Hawaii. It is garbage from everywhere on the planet and brought there by the ocean currents. It is an area expected to grow and grown and grow.

The plastic bags resemble jelly fish in the ocean and turtles eat them for that reason and die. The six pack rings around pop bottles choke birds and fish. Turtles also slip into them as babies and grow up with extremely distorted shells like a figure eight. Sea birds feed their young with things like markers and cigarette lighters and end up killing them. Some of the dissected birds were chock full of these smaller items of garbage. Plastic bags and strings also get wrapped around birds and render them immobile and thus unable to survive. Other garbage also traps some animals including large turtles. Plastic bottles injure very badly and have even been found stuck on the heads of large mammals like deer. All in all it was quite disturbing to watch all this. Even the boys pretending to be really macho and tough were visibly affected by the images. It certainly makes one think that one has to be much more responsible about reducing, reusing, and recycling. Even a single plastic bag we don`t pick up can end up destroying some poor, innocent animal that plays a vital role in the ecosystem to ensure our survival.

All our stuff has been trucked away but I am staying in this almost empty house to work a couple of weeks to ensure I have enough for student loan and cell phone payments, etc. for the few months I might be unemployed in BC. One thing I have to try to do is go to Niagara falls on the weekends. I`ve been here for six years but never went to see the falls and it seems like a crime to just leave without seeing one of the few beautiful things in this fairly ugly province (at least the big city area seems to be aside from Lake Ontario).

Anyway, have a good day.

Gurmit

Yeah I’ve heard some of Owl City’s stuff – not bad. Not terribly unique though, mostly synth/electro-pop stuff which is very trendy these days. It also happens to be a genre which is dominated by the french, they pretty much own this genre. After all France is the home of Air, Daft Punk, Justice, Cassius and Sebastien Tellier to name a few, these guys are the heavyweights.

There seems to be a huge musical divide between the US & Europe, with the US being mostly rock country and Europe having a strong bent towards electronica with the French leading the charge. These days more American artists are jumping on the electronica bandwagon because rock music has reached an evolutionary dead end, whereas electronic music doesn’t seem to offer any creative limitations at this point in time. There’s only one problem, the Americans are 30 years too late.

Why the French are so ahead of the game is because they accepted disco with open arms back in the day and they ran with it. They never lost love for the genre and inspired many to dabble with electronic instruments and spawn the talent & other sub-genres they have today. In the US, the success of disco was short lived mainly due to homophobia. Disco was popular amongst gay commuities but also latino & black heterosexuals in many cites like New York, Chicago but there soon was a backlash by rock loving whites. They started rioting and burning disco records as a form of protest and gradually the popularity of this form of music declined and was even ridiculed by the American mainstream…quite dumb if you ask me.

Honestly, no. I don’t find it strange at all. The focus of this blog seems quite particular and well defined and I think it would be stretching a point to say that the current financial crisis and its consequences constitute a human rights issue. If DD wants to discuss it, then fine, it’s her blog and she can do that, but there are lots of big issues here in Greece that she doesn’t cover, so why this one. Surely it is the value of a blog like this that it looks at issues that tend to get ignored by the old media.

(And by the by, if this blog really was as anti-Greek as you seem to think it is, wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity to lay into those ‘lazy tax-dodging Greeks’? In fact, it seems to me that DD goes out of her way not to generalise and criticise Greeks.)

It seems that this blog is more focussed on blaming human rights abuses on Greeks rather than addressing human rights issues for everyone in Greece. There’s a big difference.

all i see is articles about how “refugees are people too” which is ok but i would’ve thought that you’d be covering the human rights of the ordinary folk in Greece

Substitute “Britain” for “Greece” in this sentence (that’s a game you’re fond of playing, right?) and this sounds like a BNP supporter complaining about human rights activists who never pay any attention to the indigenous population!

I came to your blog to find out what was happening

Suuuuure you did! And not at all to pick holes in what DD has written. Because that would be sooo out of character for you.

Thanks for the laugh Cinzano!

I came to your blog to find out what was happening because your blog purports itself to be “a blog about Greece” but all i see is articles about how “refugees are people too” which is ok but i would’ve thought that you’d be covering the human rights of the ordinary folk in Greece which are being currently being p*ssed on by the Greek government and IMF.

But you don’t really care about breaches of Greeks’ human rights. Please don’t say that your blog is about “human rights issues in Greece”. This blog is about how Greeks breach others’ human rights and you can’t stop putting them down with your negative articles.

The thing is, we live here and this blog is about Greece.

DD, I’m wondering why there are no articles being posted about the human rights of the ordinary Greek people whose working rights and pensions will be slashed as part of the austerity measures imposed on them. It’s all over the intrernational news but apparently, this is not news for “a blog about Greece”.

Is this blog about human rights breaches in Greece or human rights breaches caused by Greeks?

Why do you seem to concentrate on issues which show the Greeks breaching others’ human rights but you do not deal with the issues when Greeks’ human rights are being abused?

Your refusal to tackle subjects such as Greek workers rights, especially at this time of social and economic upheaval, suggest that your motives for running such a blog are not because you want to address the human rights issues of everyone in Greece. It’s clear that your using this blog to stroke your ego while proclaiming how uncivilised the Greeks are and how badly they treat people of colour and immigrants.