While Bloomberg is still playing war games by introducing a new Drachma symbol on their trading screens and scaring financial dealers across the planet on Friday, the Guardian in the UK already provides a more realistic picture of the situation in Greece.

“…Greece is broke and close to being broken. It is a country where children are fainting in school because they are hungry, where 20,000 Athenians are scavenging through waste tips for food, and where the lifeblood of a modern economy – credit – is fast drying up.

It is a country where the fascists and the anarchists battle for control of the streets, where immigrants fear to go out at night and where a woman whispers “it’s like the Weimar republic” as a motorcycle cavalcade from the Golden Dawn party, devotees of Adolf Hitler, cruises past the parliament building. Graffiti says: “Foreigners get out of Greece. Greece is for the Greeks. I will vote for Golden Dawn to remove the filth from the country…”

When we spent some time last year in Greece to see first hand how bad things really are and to talk with the people, the Greek Nazis were already marching on the streets of Athens.

It were Greek students that 1974 finally brought an end to the Greek military junta, the dictatorship ruling the country with terror and torture. Just about 10 years ago – in 1999 – President Bill Clinton finally apologized on the behalf of the US government for supporting the military junta and their torturer.

Now Greek students are back on the streets again and most of them demonstrating peacefully for their rights and for reason. Many of them beaten half-death by para-military police that swarm over demonstrators in large numbers, exerting violence and uncontrolled force against those peaceful citizens.

When the Nazis were goose-stepping the streets of Athens last year almost none of those para-military police bullies could be seen, most likely because they were too afraid that – for a change – they would be beaten up.

Now a country protected by such “heroes” will most likely fall over in the first flurry – lets hope there are others left with courage and will to change things. The Greek people were always famous for that in the past.

Image based on cc Wikipedia

Great new video from Kilian Martin – love his style

More information at Kilian Martin’s web site and at mb!

Today’s quote is from William Gibson one of our favorite fiction writer.

Click on the image below for a larger version (original drawing)

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, simply surrounded by assholes.“

• image (CC BY 2.0) based on mihalorel at flickr
• Wikipedia on William Gibson

An animation created by illustrator and animator Ian Higginbotham for Random House to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Catch-22 – Joseph Heller’s epic novel.

Ian, who currently lives in NYC, has previously worked with companies like Random House, Titmouse, Blue Sky Studios, Kill Screen, Time Out and millions are greeted everyday by his drawings when opening the Vimeo homepage. His Catch-22 short won a gold medal in the “Moving Image” category of the 2011 Society of Illustrators competition.

More information at Ian’s web site and blog

And for those who might have forgotten: Yossarian lives!

Today’s Europe Day celebrations might turn out to be rather toned down particularly with the political development of the last days in Greece and France.

With the right wing Nazis getting a come-back in Athens and even more votes (around 20%) for far right wing parties in France after the success of those extremist parties in Hungary or Belgium, it demonstrates that some certainly never learn from history. Together with the disasters created to cover-up the crimes of Bankster and their friends / financial special interest groups better known as market liberals, it seems Europe is making huge steps away from becoming unified and results from decades before are being destroyed fast.

Europe’s anthem – Schiller’s ode to joy – set in music by Ludwig van Beethoven, describes an ideal society of equal people linked by friendship and brotherhood. While it became one of Schiller’s widest known poems (and also as the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony one of his most played musical setting) even Schiller himself later in his life had considered it as detached from reality.

Appropriately to the current situation in Europe and recent comments by Goldman Sachs we have chosen the version of the anthem performed by the Muppets.

The tune of the European anthem was also used from 1974 – 1980 as the anthem of Rhodesia – let’s hope Europe does not follows down the same path.

And one more – the Leningrad Cowboys.
and guess what they are singing about – Leningrad

… after 20 years they are still going strong with their very special way.