ECOCLUB Blogs™

Unfortunately the non-violent, colorful, pluralistic, direct democratic 'indignados' ("aganaktismenoi") assembly protesting neoliberal IMF recipes in Athens' main Syntagma Sq., already in its 3rd week, has been attacked by the infamous riot police 'MAT' units on 15 June, following a large demonstration on a day of general strike. In a city already plagued by air pollution, the police, besides batons, insist on using carcinogenic tear gas (banned under various treaties) despite repeated promises by the government that it will be phased out. Still it took only an hour for the people to return to the square. Let us hope that the direct democratic experiment, in the city that gave birth to the concept, with popular assemblies being held every night in Athens and other major greek cities, will continue. The tear gas seems to have mostly affected the government, which nearly resigned later on the day, a reshuffle is expected today 16.6 and elections cannot be far. You may follow the historic events at Syntagma sq. at http://www.real-democracy.gr/en If you are thinking of visiting Athens, you have one more reason to do so! Don't listen to the mostly ignorant tourism news repeaters spreading fear, the city is safe and peaceful, but equally determined for change.

Hot summer ahead, and not just speaking about climate change...some days it seems that the world is spinning out of control. While the Mediterranean peoples are revolting in violent and non-violent ways, rightly demanding real democracy (although somewhat ironically on Facebook), the great powers-empires are extinguishing and imprisoning real and perceived foes from dissident Nobel laureates, to environmental activists, to IMF heads, and doing everything, as always, they can so that popular movements are manipulated and/ore discredited. Over here in post-Athens-what-a-waste-Olympics-2004-Greece, geographically and culturally situated somewhere between the 1st world and the rest world, we may be experiencing early signs of Germany in 1920 (rapidly rising unemployment, bankruptcy in slow motion, rise of the far right which exploits the ever growing tide of refugees from Asia and Africa, but also a vibrant art scene - as misery & art always go together) while our post-modern socialdemocratic government, wearing a neoliberal straitjacket and following IMF recipes which have devastated many countries,  instead of focusing on creating real, green jobs, is cutting hard-won worker-rights and pensions and desperately seekinf foreign buyers for anything of value, including holiday home and golf developers for public coastal and island land. Tourism is supposedly our 'heavy industry', or so are we constantly told by short-lived clueless...

  Opening the ITB Travel Trade event in Berlin today, UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai's speech indicated a slight progress (verbal at least) in the organisations positions, recognising the 'environmental imperative' and the need for a 'fairer' and 'more sustainable growth'. However, no relevant key proposals were put forward, and as expected, there were no criticisms against the business as usual approach of unreformed (beyond token CSR tricks) international tourism oligopolies, there was no differentiation between more appropriate tourism types, means of transport, management and ownership structures (such as community ownership) no mention of climate change and of the direct contribution of aviation to it, tax and pension evasion and the offshore nature of whole tourism sections. There was of course continuing admiration for ever higher tourism numbers, unsustainable mega-events, and the cliche about the contribution of Tourism to global 'employment', without any reference to stagnant working conditions and declining worker rights. The full speech can be found at: http://www2.unwto.org/sites/all/files/pdf/sg_itb_speech_2011_en.pdf

How would you like it if the government suddenly informed you that the rubbish of a 3 m. city would soon be deposited next to your house in a small town (Keratea of Attica), where you and your forefathers have been living off agriculture for the past hundreds of years, and – to add insult to injury – the precise spot contains important ancient ruins (citadel of Ovriocastro) also provoking the ire of archaeologists who together with the locals have filed an official protest with UNESCO (see http://issuu.com/antixyta/docs/keratea-unesco ) This is the case in Keratea, a formerly peaceful town, in a still surprisingly pristine, wine-growing and sheep-herding area, close to the new Athens international airport. Everyone from the mayor, to the priests, to the most disinterested, otherwise apolitical/conservative citizen is up in arms, and the unpopular government has sent in semi-military riot police to defend the sub-contractors bulldozers from being burned. A violent cat and mouse game involving police tear-gas attacks and beatings has been taking place day and night for the past two months with the scenes not very different from the uprising in North Africa. If an increasingly authoritarian government was not so dependent on (i.e. traditionally funded by)...

Hypatia, March 415 AD, famous Greek mathematician in Alexandria, Egypt, torn to pieces by an intolerant Christian mob. Hypatia 2011 AD, a refurbished 19th c neoclassical-style mansion temporary home to 267 north African hunger strikers in Athens, Greece, facing death and an indifferent and intolerant administration. Ancient Greece worshipped Xenios Zeus, the all-powerful god who was also the protector of all travelling strangers. Modern Greece worships the all-powerful god of Tourism, protector of travelling strangers, as long as they have a visa, cash and the ‘right’ passport. Instead of planning border walls to block the weakest link of the inevitable Globalization, the Greek government should do the decent and smart thing and fully legalise all migrant workers, some of which already have been working for 15 years building roads, olympic venues, picking up strawberries from greenhouses full of chemicals, taking care of the elderly and the very young, and last but not least doing menial jobs in Tourism, NOW. There can be no compromise on human rights. The hunger strikers, in their 33rd day without food now, are certainly not about to compromise either. Any delay can be fatal,  and this means big fires in a flammable city already very angry...

To all our southern neighbours, rising up for freedom and justice, with whom we share so much and the deep blue Mediterranean sea: the last poem by Yiorgos Seferis (Nobel 1963), written during another Spring 40 years ago, when Greece was under a military dictatorship, an optimistic poem stressing that the unjust sooner or later get what they deserve... "Epi Aspalathon" (On Thorny Brooms) Sounio was stunning on Announciation day it was Spring again few green leaves fallen around the rusted stones red clay and aspalathi flashing their big thorns and yellow flowers further away the old columns strings on a harp still resonating Serenity... What may have reminded me of that Ardieos? A word in Plato, I believe lost in the mind's canals the name of that yellow bush is still the same In the evening, I found the passage "they tied him hands and feet", it says "they threw him down and skinned him they dragged him away and tore him apart on the thorny aspalathi then took him away and threw him down the Tartaros (Abyss) like a rug"   Thus, in the Underworld, he paid for his crimes, Pamfylios Ardiaios, the wretched Tyrant. (my amateur translation, apologies)...

  <p> <img alt="" src="https://ecoclub.com/images/64/dolphins.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 5px;" />It is 72 years since shrude businessmen in Marine Studios dolphinarium in Florida discovered that dolphins could be taught to perform tricks, and four years since the UN Year of the Dolphin 2007, when scientific evidence surfaced that dolphins are human-like, self-aware, intelligent beings and &nbsp;<a href="http://www.indefenseofdolphins.com/">‘nonhuman persons’</a> . &nbsp;In the European Union alone, there are 34 dolphinaria, hosting 280 captive dolphins, whales and other cetaceans, many of whom were not born in captivity but are actually products of poaching and smuggling. &nbsp;There are another 26 dolphinaria in non-EU European countries and many more in the United States, Mexico and Japan.</p> <p> Thus, this week greek Green MEP Michail Tremopoulos raised a written question to the Commission of the European Parliament in Brussels, asking the European Commission to consider banning dolphinaria, facilities where dolphins and whales are kept in captivity and forced to ‘entertain’ spectators , in many cases tourists, by performing degrading and unnatural tricks and acrobatics. Tremopoulos based his question on Council Directive 1999/22/EC relating to the keeping of wild animals in zoos which requires that zoos accommodate “their animals under conditions which aim to satisfy the biological and conservation...

  Today we attended the long-awaited presentation of  a new study – proposal for a new Greek Tourism Development Model, prepared by the greek association of tourism enterprises, SETE, which represents the interests of  large tourism businesses. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, there was nothing new therein, apart from some truisms and neoliberal recipes for more golf, holiday homes, 5-star hotels and the removal of all ‘bureaucratic’ obstacles that scare (?) investors planning mega-resorts. Although the proposal contains some telling statistics indicating that greek tourism has already reached stagnation – for example excessive hotel construction during 2000-2009 which has resulted in a 400,000 bed surplus with the highest increase 154% in 4 and 5-star hotels --  it fails to interpret these very numbers, arguing for more expansion, and more luxury hotels. But what was particularly annoying and regressive was its critique of small-size (locally-owned) tourism businesses and of  alternative forms of tourism, which it considers as a mere add-ons to the Sun-sea-sand model ‘which should not be abandoned’. Other key features are its total lack of attention to (serious) hotel worker issues ,  an arrogance towards elected governments including the strange demand for a permanent secretary for tourism which will not change when there is a government...

opening the new year with two great videos: the award-winning, short film "Pet Shop" by new greek director Michael-Gabriel Zenelis, a subtle comment on the cruel, consumerist, competitive system but also hopeful in a way by showing that the alternatives are in front of us. The second video is one of the best by 'The Love Police' team, who humorously protest against the taking over of the commons by the corporates (using a famous London tourist attraction as an example), the loss of our privacy by security hysteria and what links the two processes. Non quia difficilia sunt non audemus, sed quia non audemus, difficilia sunt. "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Seneca  

Along with the mainstreaming of worries for Climate Change, there are sinister attempts through a revival of long-discredited malthusianism, to blame it on the many have-nots rather than the few haves, on overpopulation rather than on capitalism, on some of the symptoms rather than the causes. The 8-point platform of 'Deep Ecology', written by Arne Naess and George Sessions,  contains an arbitrary malthusian argument that is very hard to digest: "The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a *substantial decrease* of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life *requires* such a decrease." Most of the other 7 points are apolitical truisms ("Eco-La-La" a la Bookchin) talking about..."humans" in general. Arne Naess, the founder of Deep Ecology, was a very affluent dweller of a very affluent country, in fact the younger brother of the famous Norwegian shipping magnate Erling Dekke Naess. Indeed many radical philosophers and leaders (such as Engels and Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Castro, Che) were also offsprings of the bourgeoisie and of the aristocracy, however they went against the interests of their class, and suffered to various degrees for it. Naess, perhaps the youngest ever university philosophy professor at 27 y.o., went mountaineering and had time...