The irreverence of birds

Good things are still happening. This is the end of a dismal year, with all sorts of further calamities presaged for the incoming one. But we should not dwell endlessly on the disasters -there will be plenty of opportunity for that. Rather it is fitting to celebrate a unique event, one which has been buried under the senseless sound and fury of the ongoing political and economic ructions.

The temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis has been finally re-erected on its original site and it is now once again shining in its unique splendor despite the ravages of so many centuries. Its latest disappearance dates from about a decade ago when it was completely dismantled in order to repair not only structural damages from the erosion of its foundations (it was tilting about five centimeters on its south side) but also the mistakes of previous restorations back in the thirties of the previous century. It has now been fitted with new architectural elements made of Pentelic marble that are clearly visible since they have not yet acquired a patina. Before this, its previous demolition dates from 1687 when the Ottomans tore down the classical temple still standing in its place, for the purpose of building a higher battlement on that vulnerable side of the Acropolis fortress. The Venetians of Morosini were besieging the Hill after having retaken the entire Peloponnese -the warrior Doge having been awarded for this feat the honorary appellation Peloponnesiacus by the Council of the Serenissima. It was during that siege that the Parthenon itself was hit by a shell that caused frightful damage to its south side. Now this jewel of Callicrates is once again projecting its stupendous beauty into the Attic sky, wonderfully counterbalancing the massive presence of the predominantly Doric Propylaia with its intricate Ionic grace. We might spoil this extraordinary story by noting that the erection of this temple is symbolically associated with the ambitions of Athens to exercise political control over Egypt during the peak of its imperial reach, but as I said in times like this it is well worth celebrating the positive dimensions of the historical process. We are heirs to supreme artistic glory long after the power schemes of politicians (even world-historical figures like Pericles) have irrevocably perished.

When I visited the Hill a couple of weeks ago the sky was cloudy with the sun occasionally breaking through. The temple glistened with well-deserved self-satisfaction. All kinds of dark prophesies circulating at the time of its disappearance, to the effect that it had been spirited away by faceless enemies to be sold to foreign museums, had been proven false.

As I was taking pictures a pigeon came in to land on the roof. I am sure it had no inkling of the sacredness of its intended perch. I hope it did not leave any permanent mess behind.

Notes from the underground

The Greek parliament ought to be an elevated place, but in recent years it has been striving hard to come level with the gutter. This is certainly true with respect to the basic political (as well as other) intelligence of the average member. As for elementary integrity, the issue should be better avoided. This is terrible news for the notion as well as the practice of democracy in this country, which in recent years has disintegrated into an unprincipled free-for-all for the satisfaction of private interest and/or sectarian ideological delusion at the expense of the commonweal. This as a rule involves the deliberate wrecking of public institutions, space and property in the name of sundry ideological obfuscations of bogus "social" coloring, such as nationalism, Stalinism or (quite often) an odious combination of the two.

This is a shattering disappointment for many of us, who a generation or so ago fought the colonels' regime with the vain (as it is clear now) hope that we might put a free and decent society in its place. We paid a terrible price for this delusion, not necessarily in terms of personal suffering -although in quite a few cases this was also involved. I am talking rather in terms of the misguided life goals that we set ourselves in the light of the betrayed ideals of those years, such as the determination to abandon prospects of academic and personal advancement abroad in order to participate in the effort, as we saw it, to build that society. It was all so utterly futile. When Papadopoulos died in prison a few years ago, I wrote in my personal journal that he should rest easy because the behavior of his ostensible enemies actually vindicated him ideologically. His silly doctrine of "Greco-Christian" messianism was soon after his overthrow triumphant, penetrating all components of the political spectrum. As for the spectacular venality of the "democratic" power holders, of all ideological persuasions and on all levels of government, it worked as a retrospective confirmation of his dismissal of the entire political class as corrupt. One of the saddest things in the past couple of years especially has been hearing ordinary people of impeccable democratic and leftist credentials openly express a longing for his dictatorship as a last ditch cure for the moral, social and economic breakdown that our pithecanthropic political and intellectual leaders have plunged us into.

These are of course counsels of desperation. And, all told, it is still the sullen and cowed mass of the people that offers the long-term hope that this problematic historical experiment called modern Greece will still emerge as a viable social and cultural concern after the present shipwreck. And the reason is simple. It is they, the anonymous masses, that silently bear the brunt of the present catastrophe. They are its only witnesses in a basic existential sense. And, to utilize a valuable insight of the great Hegel, it is through this "fear and labor" inflicted upon them by those that falsely claim to speak for them that they will find the inner strength to endure and to build a new life upon today's ruins. They have done it in the past, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the feat will be repeated. For there is true seriousness in their silence. They, and only they, have instinctively understood the depth and significance of the present disintegration, for it affects their existence immediately and painfully without the mediation of junk ideologies and political slogans. They know, for they have always known, that it is only through work, serious, concentrated work personal and social, that their society and nation will pull through. Work has reappeared as a value in the present despond. It had well nigh evaporated in the great debauch of the past generation, where getting something for nothing, blackmailing the community for personal gain, sucking the marrow out of the bones of the commonweal was the watchword of "democratic" advancement. In this sense there is a return to the essentials of, yes, Marxism (as well as of the classical social and political theory of modernity) -of a genuine Marxism, though, as opposed to the tattered and lying caricatures thereof with which the Greek people had been hoodwinked and oppressed. It is in this undertow that long-term hope may be detected -not foolishly I hope.

As opposed to this, there are no signs that, even in the midst of the terminal crisis we are going through, our rotten elites can offer even a morsel of inspiration to counteract the gloom. Instead, they are still engaged in their selfish games of jockeying for power, even as the whole edifice is crumbling around them. Their incorrigibility is the cause of the fact that among broad segments of the population, and especially the rudderless and fearful youth, the very democratic ideal, which they quite naturally identify with its vile usurpers, has been discredited. The feeling in the air is sometimes akin to the twilight of the Weimar republic. A kind of defensive fascism is rampant, blindly nihilistic and reflexively violent, no matter what the ideological pretensions it dons. This knee-jerk reactionary paroxysm, often taking the form of real flames devouring the center of Athens, can cause incalculable devastation. But, as I argued above, it is not preordained that it will prevail.

These sad thoughts (and only this kind seems to be possible nowadays) were occasioned by the antics of our self-admiring parliamentarians yesterday. The director of the IMF was in town and he agreed to appear before the economic affairs committee in order to answer questions about the rescue program etc. The antediluvian left boycotted the proceedings claiming that he had no right to be in the country (!!!!!) at all. The deputies present then proceeded to basically insult him. The attack was orchestrated by a prominent individual of the ruling party (!!!!), a person who was a chief contributor to the unspeakable kleptokratic mess from the consequences of which those foreign agencies currently reviled in the media and in parliament consented to save us, provided we decided to mend our ways. The sight of the very protagonists of the calamity that threatens our existence as a country abusing one of the agents of our possible salvation would be utterly laughable -if it weren't so tragic. The perversity of all this is so extreme that it ends up provoking a certain admiration. The political sense of our elected leaders is so abysmal for so many reasons that one's head just spins. To begin with, the IMF, for all its real and imaginary faults, is an official agency of the United Nations. Greece is a certified member of it, paying its dues regularly since WW2. Many prominent Greeks have been and are still among its ranks. So much for its "right" to be present in the country. All this is of course arcane science for our Neanderthal revolutionaries whose great vision for the country has all the hallmarks of North Korea. But one might think that a basic sense of self-preservation would deter at least the members of the ruling party that had to go a-begging to the IMF's door from their egregious rudeness. It so happens that at the present moment among our rescuers it is precisely the IMF that supports Greece's request for a prolongation of the period of repayment of the loans, in the face of opposition from Germany. Among all their accumulated misdeeds, it is this suicidal stupidity of our representatives which is so frightening. We are at God's mercy.......

Leaks and Reactions

As things stand right now, it seems to me that America is more likely to be hurt by her own reaction to the publication of the Wikileaks documents rather than by the documents themselves. When the Attorney General darkly intones that an investigation of a criminal nature is afoot targeting Assange for the unveiling of diplomatic secrets, not only is he on dubious legal ground, but -much worse- he is being stampeded by Palin and her ilk. This bodes ill for the administration and of course the world in the coming years.

If Assange broke US law with his leaks, then so did the NY Times. Assange did not steal the secrets himself, he just received the proceeds from an admittedly illegal act under US law (Manning is already in custody for the criminal side of this issue). He then acted as any other bona fide journalist would do and did, namely he decided that it was in the public interest to publish. He also deserves credit for waiting for the established news media to publish selected redacted documents, with information jeopardizing the safety of individuals excised, and then posting the same documents on his website. All these wild cries about putting a CIA hit squad on him etc. is just right wing extremism at its most odious. If this type of response prevails, then America will play into the hands of its worst enemies. Such hysteria would contradict and obscure America's glorious tradition of press freedom, which brought down a president after all back in the seventies. America ought to protest certainly; but in the name of the principle of diplomatic confidentiality which is of the essence in conducting international relations, a principle that all nations are interested in seeing upheld. For the rest, let the State Department put its own discombobulated house in order so that such a breach may not occur again.

That the Obama administration seems to be so easily cowed by the screeching and howling of the most reactionary right in a century is a symptom of a deep-going malaise. When Jimmy Carter in a misguided attempt to appear "tough" began his demagogic campaign against the presence of a "Russian brigade" on Cuba (a force that had been there since the early sixties and everyone knew about), this was a sure sign that his presidency had run out of steam and that he was throwing in the towel in the bout with Reagan. Could it be that Obama is mesmerized by the perverse charisma of that empty and stunted person, Palin, even though he says that he does not waste time thinking about her? Why are American liberals so complex-ridden in the face of that uncouth and hypocritical crowd of Tea Party Republicans, whose previous incarnation as the Bush neocons ran the American and the world economy to the ground and offered Iraq on a platter to Iran and Al Qaeda (forgetting for the moment the numerous human lives destroyed by that truly criminal enterprise)? And are the American people as a whole so uneducated and misinformed that they cannot perceive these facts? I believe that this is false. I believe that a serious political effort from the pulpit of the White House to broadcast the disaster that weirdo Republicanism has inflicted upon American society, and the texture of lies that is their present "policy", would easily overrun the defenses of that Neanderthal crowd. If Helmut Schmid can call the Budesbank and Angela Merkel a bunch of reactionaries, surely Obama can summon up some more fire from his political belly to underline the true cause of the American people's current economic suffering. In attacking the editorial and opinion pages of the NY Times as out of touch with ordinary people he is shooting himself in the foot. It just happens that Paul Krugman, for instance, is right on target precisely from an "ordinary people" perspective and Obama's advisors would do themselves a favor to heed some of his warnings.

With respect to the actual content of the published dispatches I do not think that America has anything to be ashamed of so far - with the exception of those stupid CIA instructions to America's UN diplomats to spy on their colleagues there. (Of course it is not to be doubted that their Russian and Chinese etc. counterparts returned the favor). As Neal Acherson cogently explained in the Guardian the other day, America's diplomats by and large emerge from Assange's disrobing as a crowd of sensible and well-meaning individuals, on the whole performing commendably the task allotted to them, namely to report the truth about local conditions and personalities and to manage the myriad crises thrown up in today's fragmented world with a view to maintaining peace and stability. Obama's handling of relations with Russia, what with the scrapping of Bush's missile shield in Poland so that Putin can be won over for sanctions against Iran, is a case in point.To be sure, this activity is conducted from a perspective of safeguarding America's predominant position internationally -but there is nothing new or astonishing in that. However, what does clearly emerge from the exchanges is the weakened imperial posture of the last superpower in the midst of numerous crosscurrents and shifts of power.

Whether one likes it or not, America's power is still the ultimate foundation of whatever coherence remains in the international system with reference to some residual legality and mutual recognition of legitimate interests. The way this power is wielded is, thus, of vital importance to all of us. And the classified cables clearly show that there is a world of difference between the Bush procedure of riding roughshod over the international landscape in the name of various half-baked ideologies of America's metaphysical mission and Obama's efforts to mediate in the name of a reasonable mutuality. That is why his possible overthrow by the crazed Palin crowd is such a nightmare.

Lastly a note of local interest. Among the Wikileaks documents there are about 1300 dispatches from the Athens embassy and the Thessalonica consulate. These have not yet been published. I desperately hope that nothing is contained in them that might fan the anti-American, anti-Western psychosis of the political and journalistic classes here. So far, the Wikileaks revelations have been greeted with the expected glee on account of the US embarrassment, as well as inane declarations, from certain numbskulls of the main opposition party no less, that Assange ought to be declared a "hero of humanity". Of course, if Greece had been the target of similar diplomatic exposure you would have seen a general hue and cry about an "imperialist attack" against the nations sacred rights. If, for instance, in the Greek dispatches there is as much as a veiled hint of a hint that Greece ought to compromise on Macedonia's name, you can safely expect an anti-American explosion, with ample invoking of the case of Purifoy and such instances from sixty years ago.

The fact that the Obama administration has been from the very start firmly on the side of Greece in its present travails, urging the Europeans to bail her out, declaring its willingness to contribute to this rescue through the IMF, opposing the bloody-minded deflationary and monetarist diktat of the Germans in the EU and generally following a neo-Keynesian economic course at home which if followed here would offer an escape for Europe from its present vicious spiral, has not registered on the defunct minds of our political and intellectuals leaders. Let's hope that Assange's, otherwise well-meaning, initiatives do not drag us deeper into this suicidal swamp.

The eyes of Myrtis

If war is a "violent instructor", as Thucydides claimed, then humanity has learned next to nothing over the centuries. Kant sounded more optimistic in assuming that unsocial man at some point gets fed up with the beastliness of the Hobbesian war of all against all and turns towards cooperative modes of existence. But this is a somewhat spurious optimism, for the consummation of the social enterprise in which the hard, physical ego accepts a bounded freedom within its communal destiny and violence on all levels is renounced, is put off until an ever receding terminus of our historical itinerary. Meanwhile we have to make do with the brutishness of empirical life and hope that legal violence in the hands of a constitutional government will mitigate the general unpleasantness. Trusting in violence from above to keep in check the violence from below is a very precarious balancing act, in which all sides can very easily go berserk and the whole thing can descend into the hell of a Corcyra-type στάσις.

Myrtis found out the hard way about how the schemes of well-meaning, and even great, individuals, such as Pericles for instance, can mutate into raging carnage in which the citizens and their families -who are after all the content and the purpose of the legal democratic regime- are expended on the altar of some grandiose ideal that transcends their humdrum littleness. For, after all, all the inspiring rhetoric of the Epitaphios cannot disguise the fact that the great leader is pronouncing his oratorical masterpiece before a pile of mute and dumb corpses, and that most of his audience who are supposed to be comforted by his lofty thoughts would soon enough join that heap of lifeless limbs. Nay, even he himself in the space of a few months would become part of it. Might that not amount to fair retribution, if viewed from some higher metaphysical standpoint? For there is no way getting around it: the supreme democratic leader of all times was in fact the chief advocate and driving force of the warlike conduct of his Polis. He knew fully well, and he expressed it ably, that the Ἀρχὴ is the higher, compelling necessity. It is the Empire that dictates the urgencies and tendencies of political planning. And, if the citizens of Athens want to lord it over the rest of the Hellenes, then they must commit themselves to military action. The Epitaphios can be read not so much as a hymn to democracy, as is the usual -and useful- interpretation, but as as a paean to war. For Pericles' point is that despite its promotion of culture and private freedom (the pursuit of happiness, maybe?), the greatest testimonial to democracy is its ability also to fight, as bravely and as tenaciously as any militarist autocracy. The democratic warrior is just as fearsome as any Spartan muscleman blindly plunging into battle.

In all this his assumption is that Empire is indeed naturally desired by all men -and all Athenians. Maybe most of his audience did indeed -foolishly- share his assumption. But certainly Myrtis, who may very well have been part of it, did not. The reason is not just that she was only ten years old. She was probably there to mourn her father or her brother, or a neighbor. So even if she had been an adult, how do you put aside as an adult the grief and the pain of a very personal loss in order to elevate yourself to the empyrean of world-historical reflection? This is what Pericles was exhorting them to do. Shed your tears by all means, he told them, but then again do not let private feeling erase from your mind the Idea of Athens, that stupendous experiment in the refashioning of the principles of human social life.

Well, yes and no. For when Athens, or any other state, extinguishes the real existence of tangible individuals for no other purpose than to exalt some notion of collective destiny however admirable, then if you find yourself at the receiving end of this deal it is well-nigh inhuman to justify this eradication of life by means of some abstraction. If your fields have been ravaged and your crops burned by Archidamos, you are asked to disregard a loss striking at the very fundaments of humanity, i.e. the duty to nourish life in fusion with (ὁμολογουμένως) the eternal rhythms of the earth. You are asked to betray your gods. What does the majestic shape of the Parthenon, gleaming in the sunshine and presiding as it were over these morbid proceedings, mean to you whose ontological significance is expunged in the midst of this pageant? Political authority trumps existential self-worth. The exigencies of raw power drain the world of its vital juices. The price you pay for being a citizen is the shedding of (part of) your human substance. This is an insoluble mystery. This was Antigone's dilemma, and we know how that situation turned out. It is much easier to be high-minded about Athens at a distance of two and a half millennia. We do, and ought to, admire it. But this admiration should not blunt a keen and sober historical understanding. When you look into the eyes of Myrtis it is a dark reality of struggle and agony, of highhandedness and deceit, of callous calculation and mercilessness, of naked jostling for material advantage that comes flooding back. And, mind you, Melos has not yet happened....Myrtis is Thucydides made real and present. Her eyes accuse the centuries.

But who is this Myrtis? Myrtis is the most moving and eloquent remnant of antiquity to have come down to us in recent memory.She is the ens realissimum of classical times, the reconstructed face of an eleven year old girl who died during the plague in Athens in the first year of the Peloponnesian war. The emotion laden flesh of a being senselessly cut down has come alive again. And through her faint smile we can again be reminded that the stuff of history is not marvelously chiseled prose deposited among the covers of books, but the woes and sufferings of forgotten creatures very like ourselves. Her bones were found mixed up with those of many others in a mass grave near Kerameikos as they were digging for the new subway in Athens. They took her skull, they studied it and through it they refashioned her young head, now staring at us again timid and somewhat startled, but still full with the latent vigor that was squashed before it could bloom into the works of love of a fully fledged life. That skull is the first item in the exhibition currently housed in the Archaeological Museum here, a noble and gentle thing in the depths of which which you can still intuit the stirrings of a tender spirit. I couldn't bring myself to photograph it: it would have been such a violation.

Myrtis is the witness. And her presence is a balm in the midst of the gloom and decay of our present time. She has lived on.

The oracles of Delphi

Greek education has been moribund for quite some time now -and everybody knows and acknowledges it. For the umpteenth time in the past generation the present government claims to be embarking on a "radical reform" of higher education in order to make it competitive on the international level. The project, if this is what it is, was announced during a rather pompous gathering in Delphi last weekend, in the presence of various foreign personalities that are to function as advisors for the intended overhaul. These are all distinguished individuals no doubt, and their hiring replicates a favorite tactic of the current ruling team especially with regard to the economy where a variety of experts has been engaged to contribute their lights about what is to be done -as if what needs to be done were not clearer than sunlight in the first place. At least they will not collect fees for their services.

I do not mean to doubt the good intentions of anyone, but I am afraid that the whole show is just another exercise in futility. The "radical" proposals aired in the Delphi meeting basically came down to a change in the structure of university administration, which is the least significant aspect of higher education malaise. If the government or anyone else were serious about introducing meaningful reforms, all they need to do is to peruse the organizational and educational policy handbook of any internationally recognized school of higher learning from anywhere in the civilized world. It would take them at most a couple of hours to note the basic guidelines and another day to draft a legislative decree for their application here. But this they are not going to do, for what passes for a university here is completely at odds with universally accepted principles and criteria of what learning means at this level.

Instead of going from the bottom up (as is the usual method in this totalitarian-minded society), they should have started at the bottom, namely with goes on -or rather with what does not go on- in the classrooms. They should have instituted the obligation of the students to be present in the classroom and follow the lectures, their obligation to pass a given course at the end of the semester or else repeat it or take another one in order to complete the credits required for a degree, their obligation to fulfill the evaluation requirements demanded by the teachers (i.e. research papers, midterm and final exams etc.) and finally their obligation to successfully complete a lower level course before proceeding to the higher level one. It is quite astonishing and indeed incomprehensible to any person (expert or not) coming from a genuine educational environment to realize that none of the above criteria and procedures are in place here. The students are not required to attend classes and in fact most of them do not, they never write a single paper in their four-year career, they appear only at the end of the semester in order to write an exam in which cheating is rampant and is in fact considered a student "right" (!), and they do not give a damn if they fail for they can go on taking this wretched "exam" again and again for ever until the teacher becomes tired and/or disgusted and gives them a passing grade just to rid himself of their presence. Failure successfully to complete a lower level course does not prevent them going on to take a higher level one, where the aforementioned conditions also apply. If one as much as mentions the mot maudit "requirements" s/he will immediately face the ridicule, hostility -and more- of the student "unions", whose most recent demand is that teachers should not assign research papers in their courses because this constitutes class discrimination against working students.

The said "unions" are the branches of the various political parties, those represented in parliament as well as those of the extremist left, all of them united under two basic demands, firstly that degrees should be given to all with practically no learning effort involved, and secondly that all those with such worthless degrees should upon graduation be given jobs by the state. Most recently in some schools and departments, as I hear and I find easy to believe, these "unions" have put forward the demand that they have a say in writing up the questions to be put in exams. As for cheating, as I have already mentioned, it is not only established and widespread practice, but also declared a "right" under the protection of these champions of the working class. In all universities the rectors are elected as a result of deals with these groupings, given the fact that students participate in the election of the administration under a formula of weighted votes according to which even if one student votes as opposed to hundreds of others this one vote still counts for 40 percent of the total. This is the local idea of democracy in education, the like of which one would have to go to the other side of the universe to discover. It is no wonder that the so-called universities are basically factories for the mass production of illiterates, who also believe that it is their inalienable right to be supported for life by the society at large without them contributing anything to it. Needless to say, these despicable practices and attitudes are presented under the guise of communism, socialism, anarchism and what have you. This is not to say that in the universities one does not find brilliant, conscientious and committed individuals, both teachers and students. But these do not in any way set the tone or determine the direction of these rotten structures. I could add other graphic details about the way worthless individuals climb to the top without any academic credentials or by means of political connections, outright plagiarism, blackmail etc. etc., details that would make anyone coming from a proper university abroad cringe. These things are even beginning to be written in the press as of late.

Hence, what is to be done if there is to be education at all in this place is quite plain. You don't need armies of well-meaning experts from abroad coming here to prescribe solutions. The solutions are obvious and simple, and they are never going to be implemented. For one thing the very same political men and women shedding tears nowadays about the state of our schools and promising to be their saviors are the very ones who brought them to this horrific state of decomposition -one just cannot forget that the present prime minister was himself a minister of education for a number of years. Besides, the young people that under the direction of this corrupt and ignorant political class grew to believe that the world owes them and that they owe nothing to the world are not going to allow even the slightest movement in the direction of true Paideia. They would be ready and willing to shut down and even burn down (it's happened many times before) their schools, rather than see any real change.

The oracles of Delphi have always been deceptive.

After the silence

The long silence is only partly due to summer laziness. The chief reason is that thinking and writing about the desolate state of this society wears you down emotionally and morally. You may excoriate the filth gushing forth from every institution and just about every person molded by that iron-clad public mentality, but you still cannot avoid being fouled by it. You try to keep clean by averting your gaze, by constructing an alternative universe where the essentials of humanity mocked and falsified in this place are still alive. But this is also a desperate subterfuge. The evil and the ugliness keeps pounding you from all sides, and in order to keep it out of doors you have to exert a mighty effort that also sucks up every ounce of your vitality.

With respect to the economy the disaster keeps dragging on. The political establishment is engaged in a suicidal race of business as usual, with mutual recriminations about entirely inessential issues when the boat is steadily sinking. The general stupidity of the government, combined with the dissolution of the civil service and the resolute resistance to any change of what is left of it, is pushing us further and further into the whole. The prime minister keeps absenting himself on extended trips abroad, apparently imagining that public relations alone and nebulous rhetoric about the "goals of the millennium" will massage foreign attitudes, and especially that of the markets, into the illusion that the country has turned the corner. But everybody knows otherwise. At the same time, his idea of managing the crisis at home is to keep reshuffling his government adding more and more useless individuals to its roster, breaking up the ministries and giving them funny, and Orwellian, names, so that nobody knows anymore who is responsible for what. The opposition is playing their usual irresponsible game of disagreeing with everything, and blaming the reforms imposed by the foreign supervisors for the dire condition of the country, whereas this foreign assistance and control is the only thing that prevented the bankruptcy back in May and the only thing that promises an eventual return to a semblance of health if its prescriptions are carried out. As for the antediluvian left, they are tearing themselves apart about who is to be the more efficient wrecker of what is left standing. There are only two faint rays of hope: first, that the people at large seem to have realized the gravity of the situation and the nature of the dilemma we are facing, namely that we either suffer a lot in the medium term or we die completely; and second, that at this point Europe is in fact the captive member in its relation to this incorrigibly reactionary and self-devouring country. If Greece founders, then Europe does as well. So, whether they like it or not they are forced to do everything to prevent that. This means that foreign economic tutelage -thank God- is certainly going to be extended beyond the current three-year period of the rescue plan, and that eventually the colossal debt is going to be restructured in some orderly way. As for me I plan to be out of here before that happens -and plenty of others are also thinking along the same lines. It is just so thankless to talk about this situation. The body politic and social is putrescent by now, and the rot has penetrated to the very core of the collective mind.

But, to change the subject (it is not a change really, but a discussion of the same collapse from a different perspective) it is interesting to discuss another aspect of this anxious summer. I want to refer to what passes for "culture" here, and especially the way in which a faulty and degenerate sense of identity lays hands upon the works of the ancient classics and completely mangles their meaning, their aesthetic integrity, their human significance. As usual in the past couple of decades, miserable collections of untalented and illiterate nonentities calling themselves actors and directors put up shows of Aristophanes in particular, as well as of the other classical tragedians, in which they arbitrarily change the text, inserting their own inane rantings in order to make them "contemporary", and perform "experimental" or avant-garde renditions that are the silliest and most insufferable concoctions pompous puerility can come up with. All this is clothed in foolish post-modern verbiage of "subverting" the canon etc. amounting to nothing more than the license they give themselves to insult, sully and destroy the mightiest monuments of the European spirit to which these ugly dwarfs and usurpers have no intellectual or emotional connection. Their notion of Aristophanic raillery and ridicule is to dress up in clownish costumes, paint their faces in screaming colors and perform hideous contortions, in order to cajole laughter by means of gutter vulgarity rather than the majesty of the poetic word. The same with respect to tragedy, where their understanding of pathos is to scream with hoarse and brutish voice, so that one can barely hear any words at all, splash themselves with red paint to simulate blood, and make "horrible" faces and gestures, in an apotheosis of disgusting kitsch. This disease has penetrated all the way up to the venerable National Theater, which is today but a collection of these idiotic mannequins pretending to be the flower of contemporary artistry. The National Theater, roughly up to the end of the sixties, had worked out a respected tradition of tragic sublimity, which -replete with academic rigidity as it undoubtedly was- still managed to evoke the existential mystery that pervades the ancient texts. This well-honed idiom harmonized with the splendid venues of Epidaurus, Dodona, Philippi etc., which in the summer used to come alive with something approaching the soul of that stupendous poetry. Today, these hallowed places also have been demeaned and insulted as stages for the pestilential arrogance of those buffoons. This protest is surely as ineffectual and self-wounding as that about the state of politics and the economy here -but it has to be registered nevertheless.

In today's Handelsblatt the remarkable essay by the newspaper's editor in chief, Gabor Steingart, must be read very carefully by all committed to the European idea in one way or another -and especially by those assembled tonight in Brussels in order to lay the foundation of a common governing mechanism. The essay convincingly shows that the federal Europe that some loathed and others pined for was actually inaugurated on May 10, under the alias of the financial support mechanism for those countries in the Eurozone that might in the future face the same debt travails as Greece. This, together with the effective financial takeover of Greece by Brussels, means nothing less than that the old "no bail out" pieties have been thrown overboard and that a new institutional framework of interdependence and mutuality, i.e. of functional political unity, has been embarked on. Otmar Issing, a staunch enemy of such a development, had predicted this eventuality back in February as he argued against any rescue of Greece. He was right in his predictions, wrong in his evaluations.

The Euro in and of itself, naked of all political significance, was just a financial phantom meant to be blown away by the gales of the market sooner or later. In order to save it, the collective will of the European governments was forced to extract the political dimension of this experiment, which some wanted to ignore, but which was uppermost in the minds of all those statesmen who since the fifties took all the crucial initiatives in the direction of a unified economic area.

The ultimate goal of European togetherness was primarily cultural, even philosophical, in conception and intent: an attempt to work against the historical legacy that wreaked havoc on the continent. This means that it was primarily continental in scope: the Brits had no essential place in it, even though they were and are indispensable as partners contributing, advising and influencing from a distance. This is a choice that they themselves have irrevocably made. It is a choice right for themselves, and they are entitled to it.

It is from this perspective that the case of Greece must be analyzed. The decision to include the country in the common market and the Euro area was never an economic one to begin with: neither by the Greek nor by the European leaders. The economic weakness of the country was well known to all, and despite the chicanery that everybody is pouncing on these days all responsible international authorities were fully cognizant of the real situation. This in no way absolves, of course, the Greek ruling classes of their criminal mishandling of the European bonanza that flowed in. But something like that was to be rationally expected. As Ken Rogoff has shown the country has been in a recurring state of financial default from its very inception in the 19th. century. And it was rather a pleasant surprise that a feeble attempt was made under Simitis between 1996 and 2000 to rein in the endemic corruption and waste -an attempt that soon fizzled out of course under the relentless onslaught of the forces of plunder and debauchery represented primarily by Simitis' own party.

Nay, Greece has always been an idea and just an idea in Europe's mind -and the present-day country called Greece owes its existence to the potency of that idea and the irresistible hold it exercised over Europe's collective consciousness. Had the political fate of the country been left to its inhabitants it would never have arisen in the nineteenth century or managed to stand on its own feet in the face of tough reality both in its immediate neighborhood and in the wider European theater. It would have gone under in 1898, reduced once again to an Ottoman province; and later in 1944 it would have been gobbled up as a mere amputated province in Stalin's Balkan Federation.

Its internal society has always been extremely weak and disparate, lacking any solid cultural or moral cohesion. Its varied contents have been constantly at war among themselves -a diagnosis, interestingly, that was only yesterday repeated in a report by the IMF delegation resident here. The various factions have always felt, and continue feel, an intense and consuming hatred primarily against their domestic opponents, on the altar of which they are blindly willing to sacrifice the common country and its collective interests. For, indeed, as far as they are concerned there is no common country, and in the place of the collective interest they place their particular selfish designs. This is a self-destructive political culture, once again splendidly evinced in the present turmoil, in which the ideological obsession of anti-westernism, under leftist or rightist guise, has been the vital motivation of the majority of political formations, including the ruling "socialist" party. That this immovable attachment threatens to cost the country's bankruptcy, i.e. people going without the basics of life, is of complete indifference to all these militant champions of the people.

Greece on the ground is, hence, nothing but geography: the eternal "isles of Greece" sung by Byron that are still today drenched with the glorious spirit of antiquity. It is this spirit that informs the collective soul of Europe, and it was for this spirit's sake that Europe undertook to effect the independence of Greece back in the 1820's. It was that same spirit that prompted and guided the decision to include Greece in the architecture of united Europe. Without Greece the idea of Europe is mutilated. Europe understood this quite well, even though it knew of the decisive discrepancy between this idea and the human and social reality that unfolded within the geographical confines it pointed to. In the same way the Philhellenes of the 19th c. were soon enough disabused of their romantic notions concerning the Greek insurgents as reincarnations of the heroes of antiquity. And if they persevered in the defense of Greece it was out of loyalty to the glowing concept of eternal Hellenism to which they were unwaveringly committed. As to the indigenous tribes they were either oblivious or outright hostile to these ideals, which they rightly perceived as possessions now of the western nations having died out in their geographical place of birth.

The same holds true today. Of the inhabitants of the country only a small minority has any truck or trade with the legacy of classical antiquity, with the very language itself being ground to dust under the feet of the marauding political cliques that have destroyed the country -first the educational system and then inevitably the economy. Among this minority,surely, are found individuals of the highest intellectual and moral quality, capable of shining to world-class achievement under any decent and just political system -and they frequently prove this when they escape from here. But it is these individuals precisely that are trampled underfoot by the ugly nonentities that control the levers of power domestically. So, these unfortunates just hide away in their undergrounds or attics, communicating secretly among themselves and just praying for the wolf-packs in control of public space to go away. Which they won't.

Hence, the concepts of Hellenism -and Latinity for that matter- are among the noblest attributes of the European identity, and the construction of a united Europe has been meant above all as a resurrection of a common civilization founded upon these universal pursuits. Greece, and Italy, as components of Europe were never meant as a money-spinning enterprise. It is quite gross to express it in these terms, but for Europe to affirm itself in its universality, i.e. as a latter day incarnation of the cultural prototypes of classical Greece and Rome, it would indeed have to pay through the nose. If alternatively you chose to integrate Europe on narrow criteria of economic efficiency and financial probity, then you would have to content yourself with a much truncated version thereof, which would forfeit the alluring aura of universality inspiring peoples far and wide to transcend their forlorn and miserable nationalism. The Germans, for one, know full well what it means to sacrifice narrow economic interest in favor of an overriding moral and political idea: they after all granted parity between the East and the West German Mark (a patent economic absurdity, for which they paid dearly in material terms) in order to secure the unification of their people. The same order of priorities applies, then, on a European plane. The Greeks are, of course, not the Germans' "blood brothers". But to express the problem in these terms would mean to drag it further down into the swamp of biology, into which presumably present day Germans would not want to be again sunk.

The integrity of the idea of Europe is comprised of the complementary, but also antithetical, components of a northern culture of austerity and a southern one of vital enjoyment -just ask Goethe about it. If it is rather expensive to achieve it, and the material burden falls inordinately upon the shoulders of the northern puritanical peoples, then this must be suffered and endured. The moral and political greatness of Germany up to now has been to boldly shoulder this. Besides, she has also done pretty well economically out of the arrangement.

We have now reached a threshold of decision and opportunity, i.e. the necessity to proceed to the next inevitable step of closer political union. As for the miscreant Greek elites they are going to be punished anyway -either by being forced to dismantle their evil system of mendacity and exploitation, thus empowering the decent minority to assert itself and truly help the people at large to a new dawn of just well-being; or by being thrown out of the European project altogether. But this is a mere side issue, and it was a huge mistake by Merkel to turn it into the main consideration in the present crisis. The essential challenge, as she herself has belatedly realized, is the further consolidation of European oneness, as a matter not merely of economic prosperity, but also of political peace and cultural progress. The true Europeans, in other words the true Greeks, in Greece will cheer on this epic endeavor from whatever place the harsh winds of history consign them to.

Sometimes silence is the only available stance in the face of an unbearable reality. Language is simply too poor to express the horror that we have lived through this month. The Swedish finance minister spoke some days ago about the "wolf-packs" of speculators trying to tear apart the weaker states of the EU. But we here came face to face with very real wolves with a human countenance who deliberately and in cold blood burned to death three innocent workers trapped in their building which these beasts torched. And all around this horrendous scene the "revolutionary" crowds of protesters cheered the crime, cursed the victims gasping for breath and fought to prevent the fire brigade to come near to put out the fire. That we would be living in such hell on earth today I could never have imagined even in my worst nightmares, despite the face that the depraved condition of this society was quite evident to me within a couple of years of my return.

Meanwhile the government is degenerating into a collection of clueless buffoons, constantly announcing new measures of restructuring that at this point are nothing but a bunch of words. At the same time the greater part of the government itself together with the middle echelons of the state administration are skilfully conspiring to nullify the few changes that have managed to percolate downwards, while the opposition parties are engaged in a destructive politics as usual guaranteed to keep the country under foreign economic tutelage indefinitely -if not actually to push it over the cliff of financial ruin from which it was saved in the last minute. No wonder, then, that no one abroad considers it slightly likely that the country will indeed manage to dig itself out of its self-inflicted disaster.

A glimmer of hope might be left if things had stabilized on the European plane. But even from that planet the news are hugely discouraging. The stubborn self-righteousness of the Germans which initially managed to turn the relatively minor Greek debacle into a full-blown European and then world crisis has in the past couple of days mutated into a panicky sort of maladroitness -unless it be a deliberate strategy to scuttle the Euro so that Germany might once again revert to its splendid Kantian and Prussian aloneness. One is assailed by crazy thoughts like that in the current darkness. In one of my early posts back in February I wrote that the situation could be saved provided that the chief actors did not all of them together manage to screw up completely in all fields at the same time. At this point it seems that they have achieved precisely that exceedingly rare feat.

So, it got to the point where the president of Germany himself, a former director of the IMF no less, had to intervene in order to rein in the thoughtlessness of Merkel in the Greek affair. Devastating commentaries in the press had preceded him, excoriating the chancellor's constant dithering and disruption which ratcheted up uncertainty in the financial markets and thus left the field wide open to speculators to trash Greece beyond any reasonable extent and also to commence the next phase of their onslaught, this time against Portugal and Spain.

Koehler's words at the Munich economic forum today were scathing. In the past few weeks politics in Europe capitulated before the financial markets which have nothing to do with the real economy but are driven by credit and a psychology of reckless gambling. The "sinner" countries must of course radically reform their public finances, but in this climate of speculative frenzy even if they completely kill their economies they stand no chance of emerging from the hole they dug themselves in. It is imperative that they be helped to help themselves. And the greatest help they could have been given from the very first minute was a firm and unequivocal commitment that the Eurozone stood behind them.

Merkel studiously avoided such a declaration, fixated as she has been on the damned Nordrhein-Westfallen election and the antics of her coalition partners rather than on the stability of the European project. The present writer for one, among many others, has been trying hard to give her the benefit of the doubt throughout the period of her irritating deviousness and her false triumphs as "Madame Non" back in March. But it finally reached the point that her obstinacy, presented under the Kantian guise that the sinners must pay the penalty for their infraction of the moral code of sound fiscal behavior, was threatening to bring the whole house down, the sinners and the righteous entangled in each other's arms as the roof fell in. Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus indeed.

The relentless Greek-bashing of the past few days got too much even for those, like me, who have no affection whatsoever for the bunch of thieves and nincompoops who run this country. For the thing is that this vicious, incorrigible, mendacious, double-dealing, benighted ruling class has already thrown in the towel and surrendered the running of the economy (as they ought to, for the benefit of their people) to the international authorities. Whatever measures Merkel wants them to adopt they will indeed, under duress, assent to.

The huge question, surely, is whether they will be carried out. But, given strict international control the chances are that they will be. Still this cannot be ascertained within the space of a few days. Hence, it cannot be a precondition for releasing the aid. The rescue is needed immediately in order to put out the fire that has been spreading under our very eyes in the past forty eight hours. The rest will be systematically and pitilessly achieved over the coming months -pitilessly, that is, with respect to those ravenous cliques that ran the kleptocracy up to now and are presently screaming the loudest against "the foreigners", according to the well-tested recipe of autistic nationalism that has such a grip on the public mind here. For one, including the international representatives, must show pity to the rest of us, who for the past three decades have borne the brunt of our worthless politicians' crimes and are again called upon to foot the bill for the shambles they made of this country.

There will be strikes and demonstrations, of course. But there are signs that an underlying acceptance of the need for drastic overhaul is also penetrating popular mentality. The silly side of the prime minister, feeling obliged to kowtow to the ranting and raving squads of a degenerate leftism in order to pay lip service to his father's wretched "socialism", will also obstruct the course that he himself, either through choice or clumsiness, had to set in motion.

But when all is said and done, the Greek fiscal mess would have remained a relatively minor disturbance at the fringes of Europe, had not Merkel's posturings and her capitulation to her populist press stoked it into a full blown world crisis. Let us hope that she has at last seen the error of her ways -not least because of the severe scolding she suffered at Koehler's hands.

Today could be, under conditions, a historic turning point for Greece. The country is entering a three year period, at least, of international economic control, which if implemented properly could put the place right again after a whole generation of criminal folly by the political parties (including the hegemonic left) and the trade union bosses here.

But the project, which was courageously triggered by the prime minister today, is unfortunately between the hammer and the anvil.

The hammer is external, and it has to do with the continuing narrow-mindedness of the Germans. Just a few minutes after her telephone discussion with Papandreou following the latter's announcement that he was activating the European rescue mechanism she was once again pouring cold water on expectations that the aid was going to be expedited swiftly. This has been her usual behavior ever since the Greek crisis burst the banks of a petty squabble among local politicians eager to go on exploiting the EU and their own people for private gain. She has been dragged kicking and screaming to vaguely worded agreements in international forums, only to begin a spoiling action (basically taking back what she had signed on to) the moment she arrived back home. In all this she sometimes seemed more sensitive to the screaming headlines of the tabloids rather than the state of health of the European project, and hence to the best interest of Germany herself. This has been repeatedly pointed out in thoughtful commentaries in the serious German press -including one yesterday in the flagship of economic conservatism, namely Financial Times Deutschland. And even today she is still giving the impression that what is uppermost in her mind is the May 9th local election and the rantings of her disappointing coalition partner, Mr. Westerwelle. Her finance minister himself has been trying to change course in the past few days as Greece was being pushed over the cliff by what, yesterday in particular, was clearly brutal speculator assault. But he too was sidelined by the obstinate hardliners in his own government. Let us hope that these are the last spasms of a protracted campaign of prevarication and double-speak which has exacerbated the Greek crisis to an extent that could have been prevented.

As for the anvil referred to above, this is the reaction of Greek public opinion inflamed by the civil service unions in particular in an orchestrated campaign of ideological mendacity led by the abominable electronic media. These are the prime beneficiaries of the rotten regime of the past thirty years, and they are still tireless in their lethal work of undermining any effort to impose basic decency and justice to the anomic jumble of filthy private interest at the expense of the common good which they unleashed under the name of "socialism". As bankruptcy was looming they were doing their best to actually bring it about, by targeting the only agents which under the circumstances could be relied on to help us avoid it, namely the IMF-EU team. In this they were abetted by the miserable nullities making up the main opposition party. Their hysterical screams pierced the common people's minds furthering a panic which, yesterday, threatened to turn into a run on the banks. (We barely slept last night). To cater to their warped ideological agendas they were eager to see the little people bite the dust all the while claiming that were defending them. Such is the viciousness of opinion makers here. But here are signs that they no longer exercise the absolute clout that they once did. Their beastly yelling actually forced the prime minister's hand, who might have been disposed (wrongly) to wait until early May, partly to accommodate Merkel it seems, for the declaration that he made this morning against the beautiful backdrop of Kastellorizo (Castelrosso) in the Aegean.

Today we are in a different world -or so it is to be hoped. Relief was palpable, but there are many hurdles on the way. The measures that have been passed in Parliament would have been unthinkable only a few months ago, and the people seem to understand the necessity for them -even additional ones. The IMF-EU overlordship must make sure that they are carried out against the all-too-real opposition of entrenched interests in the state apparatus and the political establishment, first and foremost in the prime minister's own party. But he has staked his very political existence on bringing about this reform, so he cannot turn back. It will hurt terribly, and especially people who are not totally to blame for the catastrophe. But this is the only chance for the country. And if he leads the reformist effort boldly his many prevarications and outright silly mistakes of the past few months will be forgotten.

A country, whose internal system is like the kleptocratic "socialism" we have been enjoying here for decades, has no standing as a nation. It has no honor, and hence can command no respect on the international scene. It is rather more than a failed state, something akin to a fake state, i.e. a state in words and on paper where you can bet your life that behind pompous words about legality and the common good there hide the most sordid actions of private greed at the expense of the commonweal.

A real state is a set of functioning and respected institutions underpinned by a widely diffused moral code, i.e. an internalized social consciousness bent upon checking the functioning of the institutions from the outside, as it were, and preventing them from straying from their concept.

This does not mean that corruption and manipulation of institutions by private interest are absent -far from it. But it does mean that the means for fighting these distortions are internal to the system and are activated more or less effectively when the violations of legal and constitutional propriety assume critical dimensions at any rate. This is, of course, an ongoing struggle with no final and permanent endpoint. But in free and civilized nations this type of rough balance in favor of the public good over private greed is maintained over time and citizens and office holders are constantly vigilant that it should be so.

In this country we have lived through a situation where nothing of the above applies. Prevailing over the collective interest, living at the expense of society, using force and power to bend the law and the institution to serve the selfish designs of minority cliques is the rule. And, what is much more distressing, is that this type of behavior enjoys widespread popular approbation. Certainly the losers in this dogfight complain loudly, yet in their heart of hearts they wish they were in the place of the winners. So in fact they are not on the side of justice, but rather of injustice since their secret wish is that they should occupy the throne of the exploiters and tyrants, rather than ending exploitation. Their stance is one of pure "resentment" in Nietzsche's sense, i.e. they hate the powerful oppressor only because they do not dispose of his power to oppress.

On a funny aside, what we have experienced in this country for the past generation is the actuality of philosophy's worst concepts and insights.

Be that as it may, Greece's behavior inside Europe faithfully mirrored its internal diseased condition. There were ad nauseam declarations of fanatical even commitment to the ideals and institutions of united Europe (united even unto the very completion of a federal union!) coupled however with equally fanatical resistance against the practical enforcement of the obligations flowing from belonging to the EU, either on the economic or the institutional, let alone the cultural level.

A couple of weeks ago a court found in favor of a notorious anti-Semite and Nazi, ruling that his racist rantings were "historical research" and did not constitute incitement to racial hatred. The Greek Jewish witnesses for the prosecution in the case were abused and browbeaten in the courtroom. Antisemitism is a staple of popular television with nobody batting an eyelid. A few months ago the burning of a historical Synagogue in Crete did not stir any notable social reaction -and was rather welcomed with silent popular approbation. These are only a few emblematic examples illustrating the radical divergence of this society from the civilized European norm, whose economic consequences we have been dramatically experiencing recently.

It was in this context that the sickest possible version of nationalism developed since the early nineties, instigated by the present leader of the main opposition party. The "patriotic" party, in ideological control of all political formations from the extreme terrorist left to the extreme right, stoked all kinds of phobias in the masses and imposed upon the government a ridiculous level of military expenditure, in the context of which the most vile thievery of the public purse took place. This insane policy, which again enjoyed wide public support, contributed drastically to the ruining of public finances.

Thus the actions of these "patriots", fiercely promoted by the so called "press" whose chiefs were also in the pay of defense contractors and other businessmen profiting from this rotten merry-go-round, have led Greece to its present predicament of ceding effective sovereignty to Brussels and the IMF. They are also the ones who are presently most vocal against the involvement of the IMF in the rescue of the Greek economy, again on mendacious grounds of national pride and "anti-imperialist" commitment. What is in fact bugging them is that under an IMF-Brussels regime their days of criminal license and impunity are over.

Of course, all the rest of us who had no involvement in their odious deeds will also pay the bill for the destruction of this society that they caused. In any case, since the system here cannot cleanse itself by its own means and free volition, external tutelage is the only alternative. And in the long run, even the very long run, it may bring about a better life for our children -since our own has been effectively and terminally ruined under the reign of this "progressive", "social" and "national" mafia.

So, with every "solution" the problem keeps getting worse and worse. After Feb. 11, March 25 and April 11 we were each time misled to believe that the worst was over and we could now, at least for the time being, turn our thoughts to more substantial and humanly rewarding things. We have been cruelly disabused of these foolish notions.

The solution is impossible because the underlying problem is insoluble. The way the economy was managed, as the private fief of certain gangster cliques covering their filthy arses under the banner of "socialism", is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that, you have a public mentality shaped under the most distorted versions of "leftism", i.e. a whole society brought up to think that the meaning of existence is to live at the expense of others and of the community as a whole. This stinking egotism, this manic attachment to private gain, from the least individual all the way up to companies, institutions, political parties etc., was enshrined as the chief motive for social action from the early eighties on, with the unavoidable consequence of destroying the very preconditions for human togetherness and social endeavor. This ingrained inner disposition will take a very long time to change in the slightest -and as far as I am concerned it is way past mending. This is what the country's international environment senses clearly, and that is why it keeps withholding any trust, and even the slightest esteem that one owns to nominally fellow human beings.

This sick concoction of beastly greediness mixed together with militant "revolutionary" declarations has been found out for what it is, namely a mockery of all that is essential to the very concept of humanity. These are painful thoughts to think, let alone to utter publicly. They point to an impending calamity of apocalyptic proportions -which I pray never comes. But they impose themselves. They invade the mind as one watches this miserable bunch of idiotic nonentities calling themselves our leaders, the very ones to whom we owe the present moral and material implosion, going about their usual business, bickering, uttering platitudes, lying through their teeth and generally blaming everyone but themselves for the current shame.

Yesterday even the prime minister himself, who in some respects rises above the laughable herd of his associates and opponents, felt that he had to pay obeisance in parliament to the leader of a miniscule "leftist" party consisting of a collection of silly splinter groups that represent the dregs of stalinism, totalitarian "direct action", romanticized terrorism etc., i.e. everything which the European left (even in its radical expressions) has long jettisoned. He basically apologized for trying to reform things, and his excuse was that he did not really want to, but his hand was forced by the evil forces attacking the country. When sane people, here but most of all abroad, listen to these bathetic, puke-inducing convolutions, is it any wonder that they throw their arms up in the air and wish to see the place consigned to the inner circles of hell?

The whole public establishment here (with a few individual exceptions here and there) are dead set upon saving the dead system at all cost, and hence want to use the half-hearted European solutions as a cover for going back to their customary malfeasance. But the whole world knows this by now, and that is why (woe to us) the whole world is about to let us go down the cliff that we have chosen for ourselves.

The juncture was opportune for spending this year's Easter at Mystra. To begin with the Latin and Greek Easter coincided this year (for the first time since 2004), this being an apt reminder of the unity that ought to exist among those professing to be Christians. It is indeed high time that the pettiness of obscure medieval dogmatism that led to the separation of the two halves of the universal church be superseded, in order for that essential oneness to be restituted.

That togetherness was not of course without internal frictions, mutual antipathies and brutalities such as the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople in 1182 and the equally cruel retaliation of the Crusaders in 1204. This is the way of the world. But it is fair to say that over and above such secular divergences the honest and sincere minds on both sides still clung to that vision of an all inclusive universality which should be a guiding light today more then ever.

The con-celebration has been all the more poignant given the unspeakable scandal presently ravaging the western church. The revelations concerning the pervasive child abuse by western priests the world over amount to a great human tragedy and a brutal travesty of Christian faith. It is a tragedy first and foremost for the helpless victims of the heinous assault which may have lasted for many generations, if not centuries. Their tormentors must expiate for their crimes before ecclesiastical but also civilian criminal courts. This is elementary and must have precedence over any other consideration.

But this is also a tragedy for the Roman Catholic church itself, an institution which -for all its historical perversions and deformations- has also functioned, in the person of its best representatives, as a repository for moral and aesthetic values essential to European civilization. It is thus outrageous that its present leadership has not found the moral courage to face up to the enormity of the situation and by sacrificing itself and its trappings of power to atone for the despicable deeds done under its umbrella and, it seems, under its very protection. Pope Ratzinger may have been, as cardinal, the vaunted "Rottweiler of faith" (more accurately of Roman dogma), but his response to the present crisis has been exceedingly meek, to the extent of actually lending credence to the worst of the swirling suspicions. He has, unexpectedly, been a very inconsequential Pope anyway, given the "iron" reputation that preceded him. But this was an opportunity to show any mettle he may have had. His half-apologies and legalistic excuses, however, have managed to bring out once again the worst aspects of the authoritarian institution which is the Roman ecclesiastical monarchy, in a way that even managed to outline the procedural affinities that this closed and dogmatic system of government has with all other forms of totalitarianism. For it is indeed a universal and trans-historical reflex of despotic systems to blame sinister conspiracies of traitors trying to malign the god-appointed rulers rather than own up to their own egregious misconduct.

The sight of a physically and morally weakened Pope hiding behind lame protestations of ignorance with regard to behaviors that he was personally responsible for rooting out is indeed pathetic. Even if he had not known (which cannot be granted on the facts), he ought to have known. Either way he can no longer lead his institution, and the best service he could render it under the present circumstances would be to take all the blame on himself and resign even while protesting his personal innocence. That would be a true imitatio Christi, and not the specious analogies he made in his Good Friday sermon about "going against worldly opinion". Worldly opinion in this case is that the sexual and other physical torture of helpless children is a ghastly crime, and worldly opinion happens to be true.

For the rest Cardinal Sodano's highly irregular intervention before last Sunday's Ubi et Orbi simply reinforces the impression that the Roman hierarchy are either in a state of denial or in cover-up mode Nixon-style. The worst blunder, of course, in this misguided circling of the wagons was Father Cantalamessa's infuriating claim that the world reaction to the scandal is akin to anti-Semitism. The good father does indeed sing his mass well, but its content unfortunately is one that will not wash with any thinking person, whether believer or atheist. That Cardinal Brady, the Primate of Ireland, is still mulling his position and refusing to relieve us of his presence is another situation that makes the blood boil. Only the Archbishop of Dublin so far has managed to find the right words. This unsavory tumult, incidentally, brings to mind the sexual scandals that rocked the church of Greece a few years ago. But in that case at least the homosexuality which is still rampant among its ranks involves consenting adults. It may violate their pretended moral canons, but it is not a criminal matter, just one of sin. The Roman situation, on the contrary, is criminality pure and simple.

Noting these facts is not tinged with the slightest malice against the institution of the Catholic Church, its clergy or, God forbid, its members and believers. It is rather a cry of despair that they currently lack the moral leadership that they and their cultural contribution deserve -by one who believes moreover that if Greek Christendom had managed to preserve its living ties with its Latin sister the fate of the Greek people as a free and leading component of a pan-European Renaissance would have been infinitely happier.

And this brings us back to Mystra, for that astonishingly beautiful citadel in its brilliant spring attire is the enduring symbol of that double-sourced and double-woven unity of the European spirit.

This aspect of it has, unfortunately, been smothered to death by the platitudes, distortions, silences and outright falsifications of "national" education in the modern Greek state. But no matter. It still breathes a serene and confident universality that transcends temporal borders and hatreds, touching every historically cultivated mind with its sweet synthesis of forms and notions culled from the wide reaches of pan-Christian endeavor.

It was, as is well known, founded by the Franks, and the Latin apse is still the dominant architectural motif on its secular buildings. Later it was ceded to the Constantinopolitans, and eventually under the dominance of its Palaiologue despots it flourished as a focal point of resurgent Hellenism in thought and feeling. Its chief philosophical personage, Plethon, transplanted authentic Platonism to Medici Florence thus igniting one of the most significant episodes of humanist culture. Plethon in old age abandoned Orthodoxy altogether in an effort to revive the classical Hellenic Pantheon. Meanwhile, the imperial policy of the Palaiologues was decidedly and consciously henotic (unionist), i.e. premised the survival of the Greek speaking half of the Roman Empire upon the reaffirmation of the ancient ties with Latin Christianity. And in this they had the support of the flower of Constantinopolitan intelligentsia, secular as well as ecclesiastical.

That this policy did not in the least imply renouncing the distinct Hellenic cultural identity of Byzantium is splendidly in evidence in Mystra, whose astonishing church frescoes although imbued with a naturalistic freshness of western provenance still manage to express in sublime form the mysticism and majesty of Byzantine religious feeling. The exhilarating vitality of Palaiologian art, right on the eve of the Ottoman disaster, is not only a supremely tragic sight, but more importantly a heartening affirmation of the heights of creativity that the human spirit can attain under conditions of cultural osmosis and mutuality.

One hopes that yesterday's compromise solution to the Greek conundrum will calm things down a bit, so that the real work of domestic restructuring, both in the economy and much more importantly in the collective mind here, may begin in earnest.
For it is obvious that this is not the end of things, but rather the beginning of a very tortuous and painful beginning.

There was a general sigh of relief that Europe finally decided to spell out in concrete terms how a Greek insolvency will be avoided. But I am afraid that the motivation for this was not at all innocent. The great danger lurking in the rescue now hypothetically achieved is that the local criminal elites that wrecked the ship of state to begin with will interpret the new situation as simply a license to continue with their nefarious activities.

Stringent measures have been indeed adopted and signed into law, but laws in Greece are usually not worth the paper they are written on. Some people, notably the prime minister and his finance minister, may sincerely intend to carry out a thorough overhaul of public finances and the wider economic system, but unfortunately they do not dispose of an efficient apparatus to put into effect the necessary surgical operation.

The civil service at all levels is so thoroughly rotten that they can very easily sabotage any or all of the decisions taken at the highest level. The greater part of the government itself is dead set against the measures adopted under pressure from the EU. They may pay lip service to the need for a drastic change of course with respect to the hydrocephaly of the public sector, but under their breath they pray for the opposite.

There have been in recent days some very disturbing signs of this attitude, notably outrageous decisions concerning defense outlays to the tune of 1.5 billion euros (!!!) even in the midst of the budget meltdown. The vile scoundrels of the so called "press" have been raising a mighty fuss about the activities of the Turkish navy in the Aegean at the same time as they have been stoking their sick propaganda war against Germany.

It is impossible to see how the operations of the ministry of defense comply with general economic policy at this critical juncture, unless one -in conspiracy theory mode- assumes that the purchase of German submarines and frigates for the above-mentioned stupendous sum was nothing short of a bribe to our mighty ally to unlock their consent to a financial bail out even under their stringent terms. In addition, the heightened tensions in the Aegean may also have their causes in internal Turkish politics and the current tug of war between the generals and the Islamist governnment. In this mighty tangle it is very difficult to find straight, or even tolerably convoluted, causal associations.

But, to narrow our scope to yesterday's events in Brussels, the sad fact one may bank on is that the personnel in charge of the Greek state will do their utmost to frustrate any change in how this rickety and oppressive contraption operates. This apparatus is so putrescent in all respects (in terms of administrative and even basic mental competence, not to speak of elementary moral disposition) that one can be sure that they will fight tooth and nail to preserve their anti-social privileges, all the while brandishing the standard of "anti-imperialism" as is their time hallowed wont.

The mildly encouraging difference now is that they have been found out on the wider European plane, and that as a consequence Europe may not any longer tolerate their devouring of European funds to build their palatial residences (of excruciatingly bad taste) and to buy their Porsches. But even on that score one cannot be overly optimistic, for the flabby Eurocrats of the Barroso type were clearly aware of the orgy of thievery going on for decades and chose to turn a blind eye.

These objective circumstances alone are enough to justify Germany's intransigent opposition to a concessionary line of credit to salvage the abominable Greek elites from their own foulness, as well as their insistence upon involving the IMF in a rescue of last resort under the most stringent possible controls. Merkel is right that this outcome, if assessed coolly and rationally, is the best for Greece itself first of all, and secondly for Europe and Germany. It is to be devoutly wished that it douses speculation so that the country does not have to pay punitive interest rates in the open markets, as a precondition for getting along with the extremely difficult task of internal restructuring. The prime minister has hailed it in this spirit. One can only hope that he comes back home after his hectic travels of the past few months in order to do battle not against the "evil" Germans, but against the degenerate apparatchiks in his own government, party and in the wider state administration who are plotting his demise -as well as that of the country.

The key point is this: the nation is an ideological and political construction, but it is not a construction ex nihilo. It was not conjured out of thin air and then foisted through manipulation and violence upon gullible and/or recalcitrant masses, for these types of artificial structures stand no chance to function historically for any significant duration. And God knows that for the past two centuries the nation-state, first as an idea and then as a reality on the ground, has actually served as the basic framework for world civilization -for better or worse.

As PMK notes, the reason why this construct proved so long lasting and functional was that it was anchored in underlying historical actualities, providing novel interpretations and justifications for experiential facts uniting significant populations around common practices, beliefs and symbols. Primary among these were language and to a certain extent religion. Without these vehicles of communication and shared feelings that national idea would not have inculcated itself in the popular mind. This inculcation undoubtedly came from above, on the initiative of literary elites later aligned with newfangled political authority. But they found a ground to cultivate.

This project bore remarkable fruit, revolutionized the institutional makeup and concomitantly the collective consciousness of European societies to begin with, subsequently extending overseas, and provided ever since the obligatory frame of reference for all attempts either to conserve or to further refashion in a more or less radical sense the standing institutions of society. In the words of John Dunn, himself not at all a blind champion of nationalism, as heirs today to the aforementioned systemic transformations "we are all nationalists". This, I repeat, does not imply some abject subjection to whatever version of the national concept is dominant at a given time a place. It, rather, underlines the inevitably national jumping off point of our various political discourses.

This is still true despite the fact that as of late the absoluteness of national sovereignty has been breached and mitigated through the emergence of a universalist discourse of rights transcending the closed framework of local national power. This is a hugely welcome development, but one which has not yet solidified into some functional supra-national authority whose jurisdiction is impartially and globally enforced. But even if we assume the eventual evolution in that direction it is not possible to visualize an end-state where the national dimension of life has become extinct in favor of a homogeneous and unitary world-culture in which particular identities no longer exist. We will not all some day, as it were, speak Esperanto. This is neither possible nor desirable. We all will and should speak a universal lingua franca (this being English under present conditions) at the same time as we continue to stand under the obligation to cultivate to ever greater literary depth and refinement our particular native and historical tongues (a truth sadly lost in today's Greece).

Even the chief utopian of world oneness, the noble Kant, never enunciated as a postulate of reason the suppression of unique national character, but only the erection of a world federation in which the continuing vibrancy of distinct cultural identities is dialectically subsumed under universal ethical rules. That is why the chief project today of transcending national separatism and antagonism, i.e. the European Union, has also enshrined the principle of subsidiarity, namely the active cultivation of minority cultures and languages, as the necessary counterpart to the drive for political integration.

In the light of this, the present struggle in Greece surrounding the immigration law is not in truth a confrontation between nationalism tout court and some kind of vague universalism that has allegedly shed all national traits. If this is how the main participants see it, then the only thing we can say is "a plague on both your houses". It should be perceived instead as an attempt to define and affirm alternative, even antagonistic, versions of the national idea: one, roughly, committed to antiquated notions of national exclusiveness and shot through with racialist prejudices vs. an opposed understanding of the national community as togetherness around a core of procedural concepts of justice and rights permitting the free cultivation of a stimulating variety of ethical and cultural orientations.

Liberal openness to a variety of metaphysical and ethical outlooks vs. totalitarian rejection of all cultural stances diverging from an official "orthodox" standard enforced by illiberal law: this is is the true choice. And the liberal political model, if realized, does deserve our patriotic devotion, enthusiasm and respect without this in the least implying hostility to other national ideals or racist denigration of the ethnic and cultural identity of those minority groups housed under our own.

Hence not all reference to the nation and its ideals is suspect as code for xenophobic racism, as the anti-national party in the debate assumes and declares. It all hangs on what concept of the nation one attaches his or her allegiance to. And this is a matter for concrete and detailed theoretical understanding of the varieties of the national concept together with its historical mutations and vicissitudes.

Throughout the nineteenth century the demand for the liberation of the various captive nations from their imperial prisons was seen as simply another way of putting the demand for the liberation of humankind as such. For J.S. Mill, the prime liberal thinker of the period, national self-determination was on a par with individual autonomy and self-definition within the individual state. This was not as obvious as it sounded, as Lord Acton pointed out. The nation is a collectivity, and the passion for freedom that drives its struggle to overthrow an imperial yoke easily mutates into a zeal to subject its various human ingredients to one canonic, and hence "sacred", system of beliefs once that struggle is brought to a successful conclusion. In fact the very blood shed to secure national independence seems to justify the subsequent totalitarian drive for absolute ethical and cultural uniformity in its own midst.

Acton demanded that one should be alive to this inevitable degeneration of the national cause to begin with and not succumb to the sirens of a fake freedom. But this is easier said from the lofty perch of the synoptic and necessarily retrospective view of the disengaged historian, rather than done in the heat of immediate action and choice. Mill's more existential approach to the predicament of living actors seems better to capture the urgency of that concrete dilemma, and in that sense better represents the liberal impulse firing the national revolutions of the early 19th century, with the Greek one a prime case in point.

That particular national insurrection was imbued with a democratic spirit of justice and equality derived from the great example of the French Revolution. This French root was especially fortunate because it brought into play the determining legacy of ancient Greece, whose invocation endowed with axiomatic legitimacy the modern Greek quest for freedom in the eyes of educated Europeans and especially the anti-establishment portion of the restless intelligentsia of the period. This becomes clear once one delves in the writings of the ideological leaders of the Greek revolution, in whose mind the nation is just the Rousseauian community of self-governing citizens, the historical re-emergence and reinstatement in other words of the classical Hellenic demos.

The Greek revolution was certainly more than that. It was also real events on the ground such as the abominable massacres of Tripolitza and Vrachori, as well as the vicious civil wars among the Greek revolutionaries themselves. These cannot be swept under the carpet in any true historical understanding of the event, just like the French terror cannot be evaded in the assessment of the French case. But one chooses the elements that ought to be emphasized and validated as opposed to those that ought to be condemned without reservations of the "my country right or wrong" type. It was in the face of the same dilemma that the French in 1989 decided to highlight the universal declaration of human rights as the focal point of their bicentenary. In this there lay a choice of which national paradigm to honor and to promote and which to reject.

There is, hence, nothing untoward in celebrating even today that ideological dimension of the revolt of 1821, and there is nothing more historically blind and culturally obtuse than confounding the classicist admiration for the democratic experiment of classical Hellas with unreconstructed conservatism and a barren cult of our "glorious ancestors". That the classicist strain degenerated eventually into such a deadening imitation of ancient Greek prototypes no longer studied properly or even understood at all makes it all the more imperative to return to the productive and progressive mentality of truly universal spirits such as Koraes, who advised a creative and critical methexis with the political thought of the ancients as the theoretic foundation of modern Greek freedom.

The recovery of the democratic and progressive element of the national movement of the nineteenth century would effectively serve the goal of promoting today an open and truly European nation recognizing and honoring its own internal diversity. There is no more effective antidote to the inhuman vision of the closed racial community despising its neighbors and its own self. Instead of this the soi-disant "progressives" of the anti-national party systematically brandish a blanket condemnation of all reference to a national tradition as equivalent with fascism, and reject as a corollary any study of classical Greek thought and language as intellectual oppression.

In this of course they betray their utter ignorance, besides proffering a precious gift to the extreme right who come forward as the defenders of Hellenism in the only way they know, i.e. in the form of a sick and hollow rhetoric of the "chosen race". The sad thing is that it was precisely this "progressive" ignorance that ruled and governed the sphere of education and culture during the last generation, with the inevitable Herostratean result of the death and decay of both. And PMK is absolutely right in condemning this unfortunately irreversible vandalism.

I will sum up the discussion with the following thought: in any free country the act of burning the flag cannot be criminalized. But the act in itself is not commendable. It is an unconscionable and despicable act of symbolic violence, which is usually a visual announcement that the perpetrator is quite willing to proceed to physical violence as well, as the shock troops of our local "anti nationalists" have repeatedly demonstrated. For this reason alone it ought to be morally and politically condemned.

The flag, furthermore, is a multivalent sign: it has all sorts of meanings to all sorts of people. It condenses an infinitely complicated historical experience with good and bad sides. Destroying it is no proof that the perpetrator is self-evidently good. He may just as well be a pure beast. For better or worse the national flag, just as the crosses or the stars of David or the crescents on various religious buildings, enjoys the love and allegiance of the great majority of the people -for all sorts of reasons. One may consider this allegiance as misguided etc., but this -even if true- does not proffer a right to attack, efface or expunge some other person's expression of the meaning of their own lives.

One may argue against these commitments, try to get people to change their minds about them. But this is the limit of his legitimate actions. To proceed to the "cleansing" of the public space from the images that go against his or her own belief of what is right and proper is just intolerable fascist violence, an egomania of omnipotence and omniscience, a tyrannical deed whatever the ideological cap it may wear. The kernel of the current Greek tragedy is not its economic dimension. It is rather the fact that the aforementioned fascism has imposed itself as an accepted form of "revolutionary" political action.

The law granting Greek citizenship to a significant number of foreign immigrants and their children was recently passed and this is a very positive thing. As was to be expected the project stirred up a lot of discussion marked as usual by intense ideological partis pris. In itself this is not something to be lamented, except that it ought to be accompanied by a second order of discourse steeped in judicious discrimination and deep historical awareness. But, it was precisely this latter tier that was lacking. The debate quickly gelled into two opposed extremes, one permeated by xenophobic bigotry and antediluvian nationalism, the other by a dogmatic aversion to the idea of the nation in itself and all historical and cultural experiences associated with it. True to a tradition that goes back to degenerate Byzantinism and its penchant for comprehending all issues in theological terms, the field was taken over by two rival mujaheddin brigades with simplistic world views.

In the midst of this an article by P.M. Kitromilides, the foremost historian of modern Greek ideas, stirred controversy, precisely in its attempt to approach the subject in a reasoned and cool-headed way. PMK has for a generation now been the chief critic of the fake verities of local nationalist cant. He has been instrumental in introducing the theoretical problematic of E. Kedourie and B. Anderson in the analysis of the modern Greek national consciousness, in itself a radical interpretive reorientation that shook the foundations of the hitherto dominant paradigm of the "eternal nation".

But his recent intervention drew fire precisely from those that had misunderstood him as the theoretical exponent of their own blanket anti-national agenda -a misinterpretation based on the political expediencies they were serving and their failure to delve in his work and its sources. He was now accused of fudging, or even betraying, his previous views by pursuing an unspoken opposition to the proposed law. This is clearly unfair, for the effective integration of the immigrant population is unequivocally declared in the article to be an urgent and desirable task. But apart from this, he continues, the issue must not be handled in a haphazard fashion under the pressure of current party-political exigencies. The proper cultural and educational framework must be set up in order to accommodate the newly enfranchised groups with the aim of assuring both the cultural self-expression of the immigrants as well as the shaping of a coherent collective consciousness around certain core values and historical references.

This is indeed a plea for a pluralistic public space, and not at all a demand for the homogenization of the public mind in a way that expunges cultural and ethnic difference. It is simply a matter of erecting barriers against the deleterious slippery slope of "identity politics", i.e. against the fashionable "post modernist" agenda that quite deliberately aims at breaking up the social whole into a multitude of incompatible, and even mutually hostile, world and life perspectives, each with absolute beliefs and ethical stances contemptuous of all others. Such a development would most certainly constitute a threat to institutional liberty and social civility, because it would brutally undermine the core requirement for mutual recognition and respect even in the presence of radically diverging interpretations of existence which is the precondition for a free order of life.

An immigrant community coming to live in the midst of a long established historical nation does certainly have the right to demand that the cultural majority recognize its distinct personality and grant it the political freedom to exercise its unique mode of existence (cultivate its language, religion, customs etc.). But the reverse is also of the essence: the minority community that properly enjoys the aforesaid rights and freedoms also owes to the preponderant national group sincere recognition and respect of the latter's self-definition and self-understanding.

The requirement for coexistence under freedom can only be that the late comers find their own distinct place within the historical culture that preceded them in the geographical area in question as well as within the institutional framework there erected through the long historical labor of the dominant community.

It is indeed a very perverse notion of equality that demands the deletion of pre-existent historical experiences and the commencement from point zero of a radically new enterprise of nation building. It would also be another notch up in the scale of perversity to demand a right for the minority immigrant community to hate and/or destroy the culture and the history of the host nation. If there is indeed such hatred, why did they bother to move to the new destination in the first place? It is precisely this unnatural and inhuman demand which incites the xenophobic racism of the extreme right.

All this does not mean that the dominant culture is somehow sacrosanct. It is not. It is subject to historical change, and the accommodation within the frame of its national life and thought of the distinct identity of the minority communities is a huge transformation in itself, especially as regards such an insular collective consciousness as the modern Greek one. Progressive re-ordering of the national system is indeed the order of the day -and the new law is proof that it is indeed taking place.

But this in no way implies either the erasure of the traditions and historical memories of the dominant group (laden with myths and prejudices though they be) or the maintenance of some "pure" and absolutely self-referential identity on the part of the minority communities (replete with female genital mutilations and other oppressions of the female sex for instance). This would be to understand the problem of human coexistence as a zero-sum game in the form of the vaunted "clash of civilizations", and it is particularly disheartening to see the left adopting this kind of language and mode of thinking disguised under "anti-imperialist" claptrap. This is not a vision of acceptance of the Other as the pieties of postmodernism would have it. It is a war cry for the Other's destruction on the pretext of the real or alleged injustices suffered by the various minorities claiming for themselves this absurd and murderous "right to destroy".