I feel a nostalgic sadness now that the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) has closed – however, it is not the tragedy some people pretend. We Greeks are the best drama queens in the world! Yet, practically and ethically speaking, what matters is whether it made profit or loss. I assume that if it made profit, as some people say referring to the exclusive broadcasting of major sport events, or if there was an alternative to its closure, the Prime Minister would not have done such a thing. Because right now Antonis Samaras and his administration are being caught in turbulence (which he actually expected) endangering what the large majority of the Greeks achieved with blood and tears during the last year – endangering, again, the survival of the country. 

The people who question once again what the sacrifices of the majority achieved during all the bloodied years are first and foremost its employees – all of them appointed thanks to a “major political contact” to put it bluntly. Which means a group of scandalously privileged public servants (permanent or seasonal – when it came to “stars”). The people who rebel against the closure of the ERT are the same people who accused the state of interfering in its affairs, the same people who aimed at entering the safety of its – tragically large – bosom. I also have the suspicion that they are the same people who fight for… the right not to pay the part of the Public Power Corporation (DEI) bill that goes to ERT or the right to use the public transportation system without paying for a ticket. They are the same people who target anyone who doesn’t cry or publicly express his anger for the economic situation as “rich” and, automatically, “guilty”.

These people hate what they never gained or inherited – wealth – instead of the actual guilty ones (the corrupt or cowardly and incompetent politicians and – to a lesser degree – some tycoons who systematically adopt a business policy destructive to the country, damaging to the society they are addressed to and unfair to their employess). They are advocates of the “ideal”: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine; we are family! 

You walk at night on Amsterdam Avenue in New York. From “deep” Harlem to the centre of the city, a straight line links the poor to the middle class. Somewhere in between the rich can also be found.

At ten o’clock at night, from Monday till Sunday including holidays, most of the shops are open. In any one of them, no matter how crowded it is – most of them usually are – the employees treat you as if Jesus Christ appeared in front of them.

Here, at the centre of the world, as the city is considered to be, beats fast, like a clock, a big heart that gives life to everything: capiatalism and national pride (to a degree we would call “chauvinism”). The products and services money offers are the most beautiful thing in the world. There is something for every soul: from material products to free and fast access to the Internet, to technological achievements that were unthinkable five years ago. You can achieve great things in this city – you can reach beyond the sky, you can learn ways of life that – if you wish and come from a class that offers opportunities – can help you evolve to another dimension, deeper and higher, of human life. And you can also collapse, vanish, be the object of such “natural” exploitation that the word brutality seems inadequate. It all depends on where you stand. Along the food chain, we are all considered disposable meat of a large productive..........

Nonsense and xenomania: two of the main elements that have destroyed Greece and are making it difficult for the country to move forward. Take for example the new pursuit of Evangelos Venizelos-Fotis Kouvelis company: the anti-racism bill. 

Greece is not suffering from a lack of laws, but from a plethora of bad laws – in other words, laws that have passed in order to serve “photographic” interests and party and/or vote-chasing needs. It is also suffering from non-implementation and selective or occasional implementation of the laws. 

It’s utter nonsense when Evangelos Venizelos says “the anti-racism bill is Greece’s international obligation”, because, according to universal Law, from antiquity until today, the first and foremost obligation of all the countries in the world is to guarantee their citizens’ life, freedom, honour and property. If we take a look at the other countries (I’m talking about the other European countries and the USA), there has been an abundance of examples lately of obligations and laws been forgotten in the face of “urgent circumstances” – isn’t that what the initial decision not to guarantee the guaranteed deposits in Cyprus is all about?! The decision to impose a “haircut on deposits” turned from an unheard-of and illegal situation… into an E.U. regulation to be imposed “whenever the need arises”.

Let’s get things straight. You can’t pass an anti-racism bill when the tension is on its zenith – justifiably so, since the government is not in a position to solve the dramatic problem of immigration right now. How can it be otherwise? When a country is on the brink of default, facing thousands of threats and dangers (from the extreme views of several powerful conservative German officials to the increasingly bolder behaviour of a neighbouring superpower – Turkey), it’s virtually impossible to solve its social....... 

A lot of noise is being generated about the Prime Minister’s imminent trip to China. Meetings convened, counsellors summoned, endless articles of striking profoundness, and such passionate hope and anticipation that even a cynic would be moved. 

Or so we Greeks hope. Like the British, Italians and French have hoped before, and the Germans before anyone else. Yet with invariably the same outcome each time: in the end there is neither no emotion nor ‘movement’ in any area other than that of straightforward interest, meaning the Chinese get exactly and exclusively what they want from each, without making any longterm commitments. They do business deals, sure; they just don’t do relationships. They take what they want that moment then move on. This after all is the core of capitalism after you take away all the touchfeely rhetoric about “building communal and national bonds”, “fostering bonds of every nature” and “investing in the future of the country”. The influence of this currently dominant mentality has become strikingly apparent even in daily life and interpersonal relationships.

Besides, returning to geopolitics, even we Europeans don’t care about each others’ countries, why should the Chinese? They shouldn’t, they don’t. Even so we persist in acting like we believe that there is something more there, the potential of emotion, like a seedling that may be fertilized by common interest and purpose. 

It becomes apparent therefore, that one, when in search and dire need of development, support, hope, and that elusive and so vital possibility of being loved, should take it from where it may be forthcoming. In Greece’s case this partner is Israel--a neighboring small country, powerful yet vulnerable like no other, threatened by every kind of extremism, as well as by extreme and misplaced progressiveness, and also probably the only country in the Eurasian region that has not attempted to invade or otherwise possess, loot, destroy Greece! That both countries share a common sea-basin recently discovered to be chock-full of natural gas (Greece, Cyprus, Israel) and oil (Greece) is an added bonus. As is the fact that despite the new Obama administration’s strenuous efforts to have Israel reconcile with Turkey, neither Greece nor Israel trust or feel we have any common ground or shared emotional bond and traditions with Turkey and its worldly yet profoundly islamic Erdogan governance. It is no laughing matter in this era of our paucity and defense-spending cuts to have Israeli fighter planes chase away Turkish ones invading our airspace. And it is also no small matter for the PM of Greece who has ineffectively been trying to wrangle an invitation to the US for many months now, to now be coming as a “star” to DC, the heart of the US establishment, to be honored on the 1st of June as central speaker of the Jewish American Committee’s annual congress. Our friends are those who stick up for us when we are weakest and they have nothing to gain.

One would have thought that even Golden Dawn could see this. Even so they recently published an article illustrated by a vulgar and hateful comic strip accusing PM Samaras of “sucking up” to American Jews and Israel because of his imminent visit to the AJC’s congress.

I suppose that when hatred and its constant (re)generation is a purpose, everything and anything can be distorted, and national interest can go to hell (and it does, as a direct result). Therefore, were the Greek PM to address a select group of German industrialists and mover-shakers in an effort to sway them in favor of Greece, or Swiss bankers seeking investment opportunities, the PM would be accused of engaging with the invading aggressors (Nazis or even way back, Crusaders!) or those entities that played speculative games on Greece’s fate, often betting against its survival. And in the strictly historical sense, his accusers would be right--even though to conduct foreign policy along such lies would be nothing short of utopian, isolationist and plain silly. Yet what exactly does Golden Dawn and its supporters have to say about Israel, Jewishness, and Jewish-Americans? That they have been hounded................

Here in the USA, we are preparing to counter an attack and declare state of war any moment now. The security agencies keep repeating it, but few people are listening to it – and even fewer people believe it. I’m talking about the North Korean boisterous threats against strategic american targets around the world and the USA. Everyone hopes and believes that they are just… some mad dictator’s nonsense, but no one can guarantee that his madness is harmless and that he doesn’t have the capabilities he claims to have. Facing the imminent military attack from North Korea on the one hand and the daily cyber-bombardment from China on the other, there’s no time to deal with Israel, which in turn fears that Iran might attack with nuclear weapons or that Bashar al-Assad might use chemical weapons. 

The entire world is also heading towards a dramatic change. Look at the turbulent chain of events in the Arab world following the Arab Spring. Look at the… chaos inside the European Union, escalating to a hurricane and reaching its zenith following the unprecedented attack against Cyprus. Right now, based on the estimates of the American credit rating agencies and financial institutions, as well as the rumours circulating in reliable European circles (as presented by the new Economist), more than half of the countries in Europe are facing the danger of a… haircut on deposits or some other unprecedented measure, which could overturn all the things we considered safe and secure – not to say essential – until now. Among these countries, apart from Italy and Luxemburg, are Latvia and Iceland, whereas the scaremongers are insinuating that not even Germany or Great Britain is safe!

It’s a crazy and highly insecure situation where fluidity seems to be the only rule. Whether it will lead us to a more stable reality – surely much more difficult than the previous one – or to the absolute fluidity, insecurity, recession, poverty, danger and fear, no one really knows. What we do know is that the myth of liberal globalization in economy, transfer and knowledge, is over. Yet, the vision of freedom and creation, in every aspect of these two notions, is more powerful than ever in the USA, whereas, in the EU, it was crushed, along with the dream of a union of citizens belonging to a peaceful and promising superpower.

I’ll make myself clear: Here in the USA, our everyday life is focused on the ups and downs of the stock exchange market and the advancement of the country on a business, technological, scientific, artistic and cultural level. There are also some positive political developments:  right now, almost all states have institutionalized gay marriage, gun ownership is being controlled, a national health care system is being developed for the first time in history, colossal financial institutions are being investigated for practices similar to the ones that led to the collapse of the Lehman Brothers and the country is being run by an African American who states that his work is led and defined by his… personal life. I’m referring to the new interview Barack and Michelle Obama have given to the latest issue of “Vogue” magazine, featuring a very charming First Lady on its cover. The American President explains that his family and all the things he desired or apprehended through his family have always been his benchmark. “My father abandoned me and my stepfather died when I was a child” he says. “My mother was a brave and adventurous woman, but she paid a heavy price. With such a burden on my shoulders, how can I not care about health and social care?” He also points out that in his family “there are people of different races, nationalities, religions and sex orientations. How can I not fight for equal rights and opportunities? It would be like sabotaging my own people.” The examples are endless. It is estimated that the number of people coming here as immigrants is rising rapidly with every passing month – many of them are Europeans, as well as middle and upper class Indians and Chinese.

In Europe, the economic storm brought about political and legal arbitrariness. Government bonds, national banks shares and deposits are lost, a Eurocrat or a politician can decide whenever it pleases him to impose a “tax on the rich”, a new tax on real estate, a poll tax, a seemingly exceptional tax or even confiscation in the name of “national need” and the demands of the Troika. The situation reminds me of the trailer of the new sci-fi thriller-adventure “Oblivion”, starring Tom Cruise. The Earth has been destroyed...................

The story of Cyprus was an endless thriller we watched like an undeletable movie: distanced from Greece, but not enough to protect it from the new cypriot tragedy, and the precarious safety distance from euro exit and outright chaos that the present government in Greece has managed to keep, until now.
Words don’t suffice to describe what happened to Cyprus these days. The--news--brutality of “civilized” Europe surpasses belief, once more. Even though it didn’t really surprise the people “obsessed” with History and Psychiatry: despotism, dissension, hypocrisy and blind greed were the constituent elements of the European Continent throughout its history: from the Crusades, the Holy Inquisition, the feudal lords, the kings, the Colonialism, the Napoleonic Wars – not excluding the wars between Denmark and Sweden – the First and, of course, the Second World War. Human nature, or at least some humans’ nature, easily succumbs to darkness when it gets out of hand.
It is said that people get the government they deserve – but that is not often true. Paying for their own mistakes as well, the Cypriots, without any other choice than the one-way road of the euro, are forced to make the overwhelming effort to heal their own wounds and to purge their own political system at the same time.
The need to make the guilty pay for their crimes seems more dramatic when it comes to state officials, such as the central banker, who allowed billions of euros to flee from british banks mainly on the exact same days when all the other banks were closed and all the people’s accounts were blocked – and then, decimated.
On the other hand, there are some “oddities”: the Supreme Court of Cyprus issued a temporary decree and halted the decision to wipe out all Bank of Cyprus shares until April 5. By securing an injunction, the Archbishop of Cyprus is actually blocking the agreement with the Troika, possibly creating new delays. Unfortunately, such attempts to turn the clock back can only worsen things, once more for the weak…
Here in the USA, the news about the Cyprus bail-out (with or without inverted commas) was met with relief but also concern about the future of Cyprus. The feeling of concern soon gave its place to analyses of how it will affect the USA (the EU loss of credibility when it comes to the fundamentals of the financial system will obviously make a number of European and foreign large depositors turn to the USA).
However, in every American official’s statement, in every newspaper article, in the debate in Wall Street and the State Department, two elements were clear: sympathy towards suffering anew Cyprus and straightforwardness. They all came to the same conclusion: the Europeans decided to tear down Cyprus in order to grab, like pirates, its offshore banking business, billions of euros worth. While the future of Cyprus inside the euro was at stake, bankers from Germany, Latvia and Andorra swarmed the island, flirting with the ones their politicians called “the russian mob” equating middle-class Russian businessmen with (minor) oligarchs, in an unprecedented epic of hypocrisy. On the other hand, the Russians – according to american analyses – did not save Cyprus, despite the conspiracy theories about naval bases and natural gas reserves, because simply… playing their hand this way would not profit them enough to balance the damage potentially inflicted by the disruption of their relationships with the EU.
The Americans, despite the traditional distrust between USA and Russia, are far more open to the new era, led by their determination not to become the afterthought of History, as Europe is rapidly turning out to be. The issue of Cyprus and Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s statements marked the beginning of a new era when everything is fluid (from the EU commitments and laws to bank deposits, or even real estate) and clearly showed that Europe has reached a crescendo of hypocrisy, pettiness, vengefulness – wherever it can – and cowardice – fatefully, first for its weaker members and, as a consequence, for the European Union itself and its stronger members.
Here in the USA, people watched the television interview of the 17-year-old who sold the iPhone app Summly he developed to Yahoo for 30 million dollars. It is a news aggregator app which turns all the important news of the day into summaries-titles based on an algorithm he developed. He talked with....................  

The Troika is planning to offer less money to Cyprus as a bailout package. In particular, the goal of the Troika is to reduce the bailout package to 10 billion euros from the 17 billion euros that was expected. The Troika is not interested in the dangers the country is going to face following another “too little, too late” decision or the stability of the entire European Union. Besides, others are paying: the European taxpayers. 

In Greece, the Troika is using similar ploys. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is balancing between a rock (the Troika and the always imminent default) and a hard place (the unionists, the doings of the government partners, the schemes of the party members, the new wave of terrorism).

Here in America, on the other hand, only large-scale “cyber attacks” that could endanger the economy and disorganize the public services are the number one threat to the USA and they are a greater concern than any terrorist attacks and/or the financial crisis! That is what the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, stated the other day. The next big thing here is the fierce reaction caused by the ruling of a first-degree local court to invalidate the ban on sugary drinks!

Indeed! Despite its contradictions, America has once again become what it used to be years ago: a beacon of light and hope for the entire world – that is what the Europeans are reduced to by the parasites of the European Union who live and prosper in their Brussels caliphate.

The new trend in America nowadays is expressed by the new commercial products that enter our lives: smart goggles, tablets, phones and shoes that think and observe instead of us and for us, record our own experiences, talk to us, explain to us, reassure us and answer to all our questions immediately and effectively – and more and more reliably.

The newborn babies of the modern era will grow up in a world where all these achievements will be considered a matter of fact and normal part of life. How can you get used to all this stuff from birth.......... 

The New York Stock Exchange is skyrocketing and Dow Jones breaking a new record each day. Google is the new Apple and Facebook seems to have definitely missed the train to becoming more than a marketing tool and social network, while its CFO appears increasingly consumed in what looks to be a  push for a new career in politics, achieved through using Facebook’s impact sprinkled with “self-help”, if not slightly complacent and chilly, feminism, to her own benefit. 

Everything here moves so fast that if and when you manage to take a breath and reflect on the things that happened and changes rendered in the past few months, you are taken aback. It sometimes becomes emotionally and mentally difficult to process all this rapid, ongoing change. 

For all of us, apparently. Reports of new developments, new tech stuff, rapid daily developments are peppered by news showcasing this: the girl who swallowed a tapeworm in order to be able to eat without getting fat apparently inspired a whole trend of young girls, desperate to do anything in order to be considered attractive. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, marked her return to work from maternity leave with the announcement that the working from home option (it has been advertised as the perfect solution for working mothers for the last twenty years) is no longer on the table for Yahoo employees. The reason being blithely simple: the people working from home...just didn’t! Which in turn irritated all their fellow-workers since they had to work more in order to cover for the slackers--although they never complained to the company about the situation in order to avoid being seen as “ratting on” their colleagues. A tangled, consuming web causing friction and exasperation--not the best work climate. Because human nature, in its main weaknesses and strengths, appears to remain the only constant in an assiduously accelerating world. And in a way, this is a relief.

But life gallops away at an unrelenting pace, requiring we too move forward, change, evolve personally and collectively.

The new trend here is shareholder activism: acts of minority shareholders – who actually have a say here, in contrast to what occurs in Greece – forcing, sometimes unfairly and thoughtlessly, sometimes less so, the management or the ownership of companies (mammoths like Dell and Apple) to bear in mind their own views and interests.

It is impossible not to compare this situation to the unfairness visited upon the small shareholders of banks in Greece, who not only collectively ARE their biggest investors and shareholders, but got absolutely no say in their debt haircut-recapitalization. Thanks to a government decree all these ‘little people’ got left out in the cold, robbed blind of their savings, all in the name of a lousy pseudo-communist pretext. All the media (apart from “Proto Thema” and a few others, principally papers) propagated this theory--for reasons of their mogul owners--thereby paving the way for the most fraudulent and opportunist elements of greek politics and society, while also creating one more destructive myth in people’s minds. 

Here, on the other hand, before the stock exchange ascent and the subsequent general euphoria started monopolizing the news, one of the hottest stories was the public outcry against drones. The story with its various different aspects was brought out by newspapers and then taken over by Internet and television, becoming a headline story. But headline stories last only for so long before disappearing. That is when the nation’s storytellers take over to ensure that people do not forget what is important. To my surprise, not more than two weeks later after the drone story had run its course, I stumbled upon two different popular series that had turned it into a story-line on TV, in an effort to engage the attention and concern of the viewers, cultivating emotion. For in democratic countries, despite their problems, it is always the people who demand – and eventually motivate – a political change.

What TV is doing today in the US with many of its shows and series is  shape the world we inhabit in much the same way as politics, but more subtly--and effectively. This role the media is expected to live up to probably goes a long way in explaining why all the traditional news media around the world are experiencing crisis: people have lost confidence in them because they no longer relate to them.  

In Greece, for a few years now, people have experienced every last political development more vividly and profoundly than events in their own lives – this  feeling of inconsequentiality regular citizens experience is brought on by TV, blogs, most websites and newspapers. These media are wholeheartedly  devoted to which minor or major politico bickered  with whom, the ongoing soap-drama of Pasok’s internal affairs, the ambitions of aspiring politicians, the existential Facebook musings of Syriza members on whether anarchy can coexist with a comfortable seat in Parliament or at least the public sector, and whether a member of the minor party in the government coalition is undermining the party’s elect for public TV’s management--still a lucrative business in otherwise bankrupt Greece. The daily lives of people and the events that impact them are deliberately ignored, remembered only in a demagogic way when the need arises to refer to the ‘underclass’ in favor of one politician, and against another.

In the US, the media limelight people’s lives: through this prism--and in the.............. 

The air is cold but the city gives off the aura of a night that took its turn from a sunlit, crystal day.
You cross the busy streets, full of passers-by that grow scarcer and scarcer as the day ends and the cold intensifies. Uptown, high-class neighbourhoods without shiny skyscrapers, so many “neighborhoods”. Downtown, the new neighborhoods of the successful youth and the avant-garde. Midtown, you can’t see the sky because of the enormous buildings that create the illusion of day. The other parts of the city are dark – it’s where the people who haven’t made it – yet – live. Still, they fight as long as they remain alive, resilient fighters to their last breath. You can’t see the people who didn’t make it and gave up or broke down: either they are gone or you have to look really carefully in the dark to see them sleeping in front of churches, wrapped in newspapers, rags, scarves, old clothes. They don’t beg – it is forbidden; so is loitering. They ask for nothing more than to make it through one more night.
Inside the house some time later, you listen to the most important news of the week – the partial ban/control on guns, the new revolutionary robotic Google-glasses of Google you already covet, and their rejunevating impact on Google’s stock price. The rest of the world seems too far.
The only reality in the news is the reality of this city and this country. Europe is reduced to a derisive mention of the horsemeat scandal and a tongue-in-cheek mention of the British royal family and the pregnant Kate Middleton. Late one day, in late fringe actually, when there are fewer ads, a financial reporter is allowed the time, while celebrating the stock market rise, to wish for “lack of news from Greece and Italy”. Still, she doesn’t have the time to end her phrase – a senior reporter interrupts her and says haughtily: “In any case, Europe is not that important to us anymore. Let’s talk about Latin America and China…”
This is the reality in this country: life inside a bubble, as we Europeans – and all the people who live outside the bubble – would say. It can be clearly seen in the way the New Yorkers treat the British: they allow them access to the establishment under strict conditions – the British must be a bit weird, a bit attractive and heartbreakingly eager to become Americans, their accent being......  

Before a couple of days American friends drew my attention to an article published in the New York Times entitled “Resolve the Greece crisis”. Reading this piece written by a US think-tank fellow and a Greek fellow of a Greek think tank I was taken aback by the fact that the writers summarily ignored, essentially dismissing as ineffective, each and every political party, schema or coalition that has been in government during these years of crisis.

My initial surprise that the authors of this article presumably deem as insignificant all the effort that has gone into averting fiscal bankruptcy, Euro-exit, and the chaos this would have entailed, was countered by my amazement in realizing that the article championed the leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, as the country’s only possible “savior”--even if under certain conditions.

The oped continues in didactic tone, accusing Greeks of “perpetual cynicism and lack of meritocracy”, and naming the Greek public as “not innocent victims but willing, if small-scale, participants in a corrupt system” that led the country to its current predicament. Ok. Not untrue--even this generalization does not apply for about half of the Greek public. However what is not OK is the supercilious condemnation of Greeks as a people whose “anger is focused outside the country, at Germany in particular, or disgracefully, on the most vulnerable people — poor immigrants — who have benefited least from the country’s corrupt system. Either way, the misdirected anger only distracts Greece from much-needed introspection. And even when there has been reflection, such as the momentary pause in the spring and summer of 2010, Greece has been plagued by the paralysis of collective responsibility: “So maybe I didn’t pay my taxes, but who did?”

In my opinion what is disgraceful is the tragically complicated immigration issue Athens is currently dealing with reduced to mere xenophobia and racism, while there is no mention of the fact that most crimes in Greece are committed by immigrant gangs, and the rest by anarchist-terrorist organizations, and that the few Greeks targeting non-Greeks are members of Golden Dawn--a neo-fascist party, passionately rejected by mainstream society. As to Greek anger towards Germany--not exactly an “innocent” either in this imbroglio--have the article’s writers leafed at all through the German media during the past three to four years where Greece-bashing was the staple obsession?

To sum it up: for the writers of this oped Greece’s real problem is neither criminality, the hordes of illegal immigrants entering the country daily, and the deepening depression and poverty of the overwhelming majority of Greeks today, nor the endogenous problems of the EU and the financial and political consequences of a long reluctance for political, banking and fiscal union. Oh no. The problem is that Greeks are stubbornly refusing to dwell on their sins, taking responsibility for them, and atoning for them (a punitively Catholic approach to finance!) in order to then build the country anew on a creative, uncorrupt basis, with fresh perspective. How the cash for this development will be found is evidently a superfluous matter for the authors of this acerbic article. 

Whatever. When all this occurs--the article’s writers conclude--“with support from civil society and the Orthodox Church, momentum toward national renewal could reach a tipping point, where the rewards of complying with rules will outweigh flouting them. In short, Greeks do not have to “become Germans.”” Leaving aside the tragically dated reference to the role of the Orthodox Church in Greek society (none-- the very idea is surrealist!), it would be tempting to appraise the writers of how a couple of days ago the German Education Minister stayed in power despite being found guilty of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation. Take that for perpetual cynicism, and lack of meritocracy!   

Whatever the case, here in the States there is no hypocrisy or conscious oversight of reality, and personal involvement when it comes to the collective or individual pursuit of evolution, progress, security, prosperity, happiness. Yet there is another kind of neurosis (in Freud’s terminology, the product of a flight from an unsatisfactory reality was given the--ironically--Greek name "neurosis") rampant here: the status ‘laws’ of who actually gets to participate in this pursuit as top-dog. American society is indeed very friendly and open-hearted. If however, as a foreign national, you try to enter the professional and social................ 

 Alexis Tsipras’, the SYRIZA leader, visiting Berlin to meet with German finance-czar, the minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was undoubtedly--at least to his party’s mind--the big event experienced by mankind worldwide last week.

This event overshadowed the tragic fate of the European and American hostages (employees of an oil company) captured by Islamists in Algeria, as well as the in so many ways shocking confession of legendary cyclist Lance Armstrong to Oprah Winfrey that he has used performance enhancing drugs to win most of the races he has competed in and triumphed during the last twenty years. The Berlin meeting even overshadowed the duel played out in the Greek Parliament between Syriza deputy “D.A.” Zoi Konstantopoulou, and Pasok deputy and ex-minister Evi-Christophilopoulou during the House vote that approved an inquest into the questionable role of ex-Finance Minister (during the George Papandreou premiership) Giorgos Papakonstantinou in the scandalous melodrama of the suppression of the Lagarde disc (containing the names of 1,000 Greek citizens for whom there exist indications of major tax-evasion). 

Everything dims in comparison to Tsipras’ meeting with Schaeuble--at least in the eyes of Tsipras himself, a man who wanted to become Prime Minister so much that he and his party SYRIZA became convinced after elections last May that this was only a matter of a few weeks. From their grandiose announcements and pr after the Berlin visit, one would assume that Syriza and Tsipras took Berlin by storm, eradicating Greece's debt burden by forcing the Germans to happily keep on paying for the consequences of three decades of pilfering of public coffers, fraud, and profligacy the Greek political system and a large part of the Greek people indulged in.

In reality of course Schaeuble and the Germans made minced meat of Tsipras, and then proceeded to throw him out into the cold-hence the awkward, fearful, always vacuous statements Alexi made in a snow-storm, outside the Branderburg Gate while shivering in a jacket appropriate only for Cuba.

So Tsipras made a touristy visit to Germany on public funds--and that will presumably be the way he will visit the States next week--maybe to have the opportunity to join millions of Japanese tourists in cheering Obama’s second Presidential inauguration outside the Capitol, and then travel to Manhattan to shop spring season turtlenecks and new hair styling products.

In Greece time’s passing is anticipated and marked by events on the political agenda. In contrast in America, the next big thing is always around the corner, and is either a federal holiday or a major.................. 

Μπλουμ ο Σύριζα στις δημοσκοπήσεις: τα στοιχεία που κυκλοφόρησαν Πέμπτη βράδυ αποκάλυψαν την αλήθεια που ένιωθε ως αίσθηση τον τελευταίο καιρό μία ολοένα αυξανόμενη πλειοψηφία Ελλήνων. Η ΝΔ είναι σταθερά πρώτο κόμμα στις προτιμήσεις των ψηφοφόρων, και προκειμένου να παραμείνει στην εξουσία η παρούσα κυβέρνηση (με "σταρ" τους Σαμαρά- Στουρνάρα) ο μέσος Έλληνας καρδιοχτυπά λαχταρώντας την πολιτική μακροημέρευση του Βενιζέλου και του Κουβέλη.
Η πτώση αυτή του Σύριζα και ταυτόσημη άνοδος της ΝΔ οφείλονται σε δύο αλληλεπηρεαζόμενους παράγοντες. Πρώτον, την αναξιοπιστία και τέλεια αμηχανία και αμετροέπεια του Σύριζα απέναντι σε κοινωνικά και οικονομικά προβλήματα ασφυκτικά και σύνθετα¨ και δεύτερον, την σοβαρότητα και αποτελεσματικότητα που επιδεικνύει τους τελευταίους μήνες η κυβέρνηση Σαμαρά: μαζεύονται κάπως τα οικονομικά μας, ο Δένδιας έχει πετύχει έναν συνδυασμό σοβαρής αστυνόμευσης και μετριοπάθειας, εγκράτειας και ανθρωπιάς εκ μέρους των αστυνομικών οργάνων (απόδειξη η συνεισφορά τους σε φιλανθρωπικές πρωτοβουλίες του Δήμου Αθηναίων όπως το συσσίτιο της Πρωτοχρονιάς), ξεκινούν οι διαρθρωτικές αλλαγές και ιδιωτικοποιήσεις, πήραμε το δάνειο από την ΕΕ, και πλέον έκλεισε οριστικά η επικίνδυνη συζήτηση περί εξόδου της Ελλάδας από την ευρωζώνη. Και που το πας ότι έχουν εξαφανιστεί οι υπουργοί από προσώπου γης και καναλιών--τεράστια επιτυχία!
Βλέποντας λοιπόν ότι στα εσωτερικά δεν τα καταφέρνουν, και με τις δηλώσεις τους απλώς πυροδοτούν καταστάσεις έκνομες και απαράδεκτες (καταλήψεις δημοσίων κτιρίων, δολοφονικές επιθέσεις εναντίον δημοσιογράφων και λοιπών δημοσίως διαφωνούντων) και συναντούν την χλεύη του κόσμου, πονηρώς σκεπτόμενοι οι "εγκέφαλοι" του Σύριζα τα μαζεύουν και ξεκινούν περιοδείες.
O Tσίπρας λοιπόν αρχίζει νέο κύκλο επισκέψεων και διεθνών ταξιδιών. Αύριο συναντιέται με τον Γερμανό υπουργό οικονομικών Βόλγκανγκ............... 

Το νέο έτος για την Ελλάδα μπήκε δυναμικά σαν θρίλερ οικονομικό-πολιτικό και αστυνομικό μαζί: Λίστα Λαγκάρντ, πίσω έχει η αχλάδα την ουρά. Και γύριζε η μπίλια, γύριζε επί μήνες στη ρουλέτα της ενοχής, ακούστηκαν ονόματα πολλά και κάποτε θεωρούμενα κραταιά και "βαριά", κι έκατσε τελικά σε ένα από αυτά--του πιο πρόσφατα διατελέσαντος υπουργού οικονομικών, Γιώργου Παπακωνσταντίνου, πρώην γενικού γραμματέα ΠΑΣΟΚ, πρώην δεξιού χεριού του ΓΑΠ, πρώην "τσάρου" της ελληνικής οικονομίας, ες αεί καλού οικογενειάρχη--σπίτια της μαμάς του, και ελληνο-καταγγελτικές δηλώσεις της Ολλανδής συζύγου του απασχόλησαν την επικαιρότητα καθ' όλη τη διάρκεια της θητείας του, ενώ τώρα απ' ότι φαίνεται, θυσιάζεται ως άλλη Ιφιγένεια, για την εξαδέλφη του...
Και πώς ήρθαν τα πράγματα και έχουν--επιτέλους--πάρει αμπάριζα οι δικαστές, και βρίσκεται η χώρα σε κατάσταση να πρέπει να κατασκευάσει νέα ειδική πτέρυγα στον Κορυδαλλό προκειμένου να στεγάσει τους αυξανόμενους αριθμούς των πολιτικών και μεγαλοσχημόνων! Γιατί και το άλλο--το πραγματικά ιλαροτραγικό: που όλοι οι Έλληνες που δεν ψηφίζουμε Σύριζα, ΚΚΕ, Χρυσή Αυγή, προσευχόμασταν να μην αποδειχθεί ενοχή του Βενιζέλου πουθενά, γιατί θα σήμαινε αποπομπή του και πτώση της κυβερνητικής συμμαχίας...εκλογές... και χάος, βέβαια... Προσέξτε: όλοι τον έχουμε ικανό για οτιδήποτε τον Μπένι, όλοι τον θεωρούμε...τουλάχιστον αχαρακτήριστο, κι εντούτοις όλοι τρέμαμε να μην συμβεί καμία στραβή και αποδειχθεί οτιδήποτε, και...το χάσουμε το κορμί! Είναι τελικά άτιμο πράγμα η ζωή--κι όλο ειρωνικό χιούμορ! Ποτέ μην πεις....................

 
It felt more like black Christmas for millions of people in the USA due to an outage of Netflix, the video streaming site which is based on the cloud computing services of the Amazon colossus. These people – as well as the community of users of social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. – didn’t have an alternative because there was a simultaneous outage of Prime, the live streaming service of Amazon.
It wasn’t the first time that the “Cloud” has caused problems. There were occasional outages in the past, causing problems to the networks of Reddit, Foursquare, Heroku, Pinterest, Instagram and the millions of their users who have learned to lead their lives around and inside these social networks.
There are so many people living alone and turning these networks, media and services into their basic source of life and socialization. People of all ages – most in their "productive age" – they often experience this symbiotic and quasi-totalitarian relationship with the… nebulous world of the Cloud while being part of families, marriages and professional, religious or social communities.  
However, their real life is inside the Cloud. Books they want to read, movies, television series and documentaries they choose from a wide variety, music they listen to in order to relax, to work, to fall in love, videos and photos they post, check-ins at places they visit, everything… Clothes and products they buy, ideas, thoughts and desires they search, express, materialize. Their communication with the “outside” world also takes place inside the Cloud – e-mails, chats, live video conferences, groups of friends (such as Google’s Hangouts). That’s why all the “colossi” are readjusting to the Cloud: Google, Apple, Amazon, even Microsoft.
Maybe that’s why the Cloud couldn’t handle such a large part of the experience of being a human and the possibilities it offers (the technical explanation for the long outage of the Cloud was its overload due to an unexpectedly large number of people asking for power and storage space for services that have become structural elements of life).
One could  romanticize another, more transcendent explanation for the Cloud’s blackout. Potently powered with and consisting of human feeling, pain, joy, agony, secrets, longings, desires, contacts, thoughts, lives, dreams, the Cloud may have become more human; it may have acquired, anthropomorphically speaking, human qualities – just like people who suffer from a blackout when their “inside” is full or when they are shaken mentally or physically. These blackouts never last long and people recover rather fast. They last long enough to remind us that we are humans and that the thing called “life” we experience is not a trivial or easily controllable matter.
At the same time, another Cloud, malignant and black, coal-black, grips Athens in its claws and turns it into a gas chamber. It’s the smog from fireplaces and wood stoves that makes breathing hard the minute you get out. It can be clearly seen in a photo posted on more and more Facebook profiles, followed by a note by a user named Yiannis Larios, who obviously first posted the photo: “The disgrace of Athens. Today’s photo, taken just a few minutes ago. The unplanned and mandarin-inspired stupid increase in heating oil yields only ¼ of expected tax revenues and turns Athens into a gas chamber.”
This is happening in a country which tries bravely and fiercely – even the Germans acknowledge it – to recover from default; a country that was paying fines worth millions of euros to the EU until very recently because its industries had not complied with the strict rules of “environmental responsibility” set by Brussels.
The irony – and hypocrisy – of the European Union cannot pass unnoticed. Of course, these two things are irrelevant in the minds of Eurocrats – if the............................

Hope
 
The country is suffering from a gaping wound.  Trying to recover from it appears to be succeeding, but you know that the tragedy in Connecticut will be imprinted in people’s consciences for many generations to come – just like Watergate, Kennedy’s assassination, the war in Iraq. Yet, all these crimes belong to the past. Right now, the present is what really counts.
That’s why, in Connecticut, the children how survived the tragedy have been relocated to a new school furnished just like the old one “to induce them to feel comfortable and safe again”. Organizations lend therapy dogs to the families who lost their kids, whereas the police, lacking any other evidence, are examining the culprit’s DNA fruitlessly seeking some reason to understand why he did what he actually did. You do not have the heart to tell them that usually the more inconceivably atrocious the crime, the more it has no sense or underlying reason--physical, genetic, psychological. That is the true nature of horror, of the darkness.
In the meantime, the news is full of new incidents: new crimes, new suspects under investigation, a mother who took her baby in her arms, shut herself in the bedroom and turned on the gas… A fatal road accident – a tank truck causing a pile-up and enveloping the highway in a ball of flames.  
The country is moving forward toward the Christmas and New Year’s holiday season with determination and its necessary share of frivolity, towards an almost hysterical form of family happiness and general revelry.
TV is putting on its best clothes for the upcoming celebration: The progressive NBC is hosting the Miss Universe pageant, whereas journalist Katie Couric, who, after a career in anchoring, is (inexplicably!) paid 40 million dollars per year to host a “female” daily afternoon show, is presenting the “national obsessions” of 2012. Among them, a reality show featuring the life of a grotesque and vulgar rural family, focusing on a fat 6-year-old exhibitionist girl named Honey Boo Boo (even President Obama claimed – jokingly– that he had Honey’s support during the presidential election campaign!) A silly song by a Korean with more than a billion hits on the Internet, the grimace – similar to Julia Alexandratou’s – of a member of the gymnastics national team when she heard that she came second, the “earworms” (songs that stick to mind) of the year.
Hurricane Sandy is over. The scandal of the Director of thenCIA David Petraeus’ resignation is over – all the unfaithful male and female protagonists were exposed and publicly humiliated before returning to the relentlessly forgiving arms of spouses and families. And life goes on. The elections are over – thankfully! – with the right outcome. If you mention Romney today, most people barely remember him. Life goes on at a fast pace.
From all corners of the world – from “nearby” Puerto Rico to Taiwan, North Korea, England and from Italy to Israel and Morocco – people who have come here have a dream: “to make it”. To make what? To survive, to prosper, to make a family and provide for their family what they couldn’t have. Even the grief ravaged parents of the children killed in Connecticut croon at the thought that now their children "will never grow into their potential: marry and create lovely families, giving back to the community."
The principles underlying this social imperative--obviously evolved to an all-consuming existential status here in the US--are a sibilant whisper underlying the heart of the cold wind sweeping the city. The pace is intoxicating. Intoxicating and comforting at the same time: you can close your eyes and blindingly follow the “guidelines”, hoping that you will be rewarded for your prudence and that a manic murderer or deadly storm will not cut you down in your path.
Everything can be overcome super-fast here, but nothing is ever forgotten – they become part of the collective conscience and memory. All people join forces and do whatever they can, in every possible level, in order to heal the gaping wounds and eliminate their causes.
The people who were hit by hurricane Sandy still remain under the care and protection of the country, the state and the city (which is what counts here) and enjoy the voluntary help of their fellow citizens.
President Obama and the entire political establishment are unwaveringly and consentingly moving towards a partial ban on gun possession (a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons that can threaten dozens of lives with a single pull of the trigger, unlike pistols). The gun advocates (the arms industry and all involved or benefiting from it, and a handful of gun-toting Tea Party supporters with an intellect low enough to warrant concern that they might do harm to themselves and others) disagree vehemently, alleging that "a man with a gun can only be stopped by another man with a gun". By demanding for armed security men to guard schools they are effectively trying to make more money out of this tragedy, by creating more business for the arms industry! But the general consensus is that they will, thankfully, lose this battle. The American people want a partial ban, this is the feeling in the air. At the same time, the private sector has already manufactured bulletproof school bags and iPhone apps that connect kids to the local police department and provide the kind of care an electronic guardian can provide.
This city, New York, is blessed when it comes to its governors and mayors – people here always try to choose the right one, but they don’t have to choose between Scylla and Charybdis, unlike what the citizens of Athens have been doing for a lifetime. In the 80’s, Rudy Giuliani made New York a safer place (much safer than Athens), governor of New Jersey Chris Christie became a hero in many people's eyes during hurricane Sandy, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the richest Americans, is employing everything he has (on a public pressure, as well as personal financial level) in order to fight the gun manufacturers and change the law regarding gun possession.  
After a rather hard day, I try to think in the positive “American way"..........

The benefit concert for hurricane Sandy victims featuring the “great old” rock stars moves everyone. It takes place simultaneously with a series of concerts these same “legends” are giving all over America. Which legends? The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, etc.
The Rolling Stones tour especially is sold out. Their star shines as bright as ever – although they are in their 70s. Their tour is called “50 and counting”. People go mad. With nostalgia. The generation that made them what they are brings its children and grandchildren to the concerts.
The journalists also go mad – with the success of the stars. They keep asking them during interviews: “For how long?” The band doesn’t answer. “It must be your last tour, right?” the journalists keep asking, trying with bloodcurdling hunger to elicit an answer from the Rolling Stones.
They keep provoking Keith Richards by saying that he is still able to go on tour because he leads a cleaner life now. “Maybe. I don’t know. Although it’s only been two years since I cut the sh*t” he answers disarmingly, “but not for the sake of a clean bill of health or longevity. I’m just tired of addictions. I’m tired of the wild way of life. I realized I’ve done everything. I’ve gone to extremes. When you’ve done everything and still remain alive, what else is there in order to lead an interesting life? Change. For me it meant quitting everything. The only thing I’ve never done before!”
“No, I’m not nostalgic and I don’t like to think about our success. I’m tired of people talking to me with nostalgia and asking me for how long. Give me a break! I’m just waiting patiently till the end of the tour in order to get back to Europe, relax and start taking one day at a time. Without a schedule. With the freedom that marked my entire life.”
Freedom, however, is a thing that can only be achieved with great difficulty here too. The obstacles are not institutional and political like in Europe, but reside mainly in private and social life. Freedom is a transient invisible often imperceptible aura surrounding only living legends like Mick Jagger. When encountered in less vaunted individuals it is met with great skepticism and wariness.
You learn here that “reality is what it is.” I know it only too well: the acknowledgement of reality is always the first step towards facing it. But it seems to me that there are a number of things here that are considered divine law – they are never questioned and they can never change, theoretically speaking. Very theoretically. Until… they change. Every man or woman has uttered Heraclitus’ quote at some point in their lives: change is the only constant in life. Change that often comes predictably for everyone else but always unpredictably for the people it concerns.  
In this country that has been motivated by change since its birth, change change has always been faced with fear and aversion. In any case, the country just erases the idea from its mind and keeps going as always…
There are always people – regardless of place and time – who can see the storm coming. Jon Stewart, the famous political satirist, keeps mentioning that the debt is a problem that needs to be solved before it explodes with dire consequences. Even the carefully bland enough to command universal approval, David Letterman, rings the alarm from time to time.
The other day he made fun of Apple’s sudden announcement (trying to appease the markets following the plunge of its stock?) that, starting from next year, some of its.....

On one avenue, everything is decorated with menorahs (the Jewish candles lit every Friday night and on holidays) since Hanukkah is already here: 8-16 December this year. Next to the menorahs, Christmas decorations, lights and balls. And a Christmas tree complete with manger ready to appear as soon as Hannukah is over and the second holiday is about to come.
Another avenue, more “globalized” and commercialized than the others is chock-full of flashy holiday decorations of the dominant religion – capitalism: the gold panther of Cartier, the giant star of Tiffany’s, the angel of Christian Dior, etc. Everything is big and shiny. That’s the motto of this city and this country: “Think big”, “Dream big”, “Want more”, “Shopping more at a discount”, “The bigger, the better”. Every day, we are passively fed a continuous barrage of such messages through ads, television, education, even self-improvement and self-help dvds and books. This is the message the “wow factor” seeks to deliver. You breathe this message in like an imperative merely by walking on the street. However, there’s a secret: this factor (“bigger, longer, faster, more”) must be the driving force of your life, but covertly and/or self-deprecatingly. That’s why everyone here abhors and sneers at Donald Trump – the ultimate representative of this mentality – who lives and swears by this principle.
Everything seems bigger, higher, stronger, shinier than you are. Enthralled by the lights of the streets, the skyscrapers, the city, you soon feel dizzy then sick. Walking through a city of ten million people and another ten million tourists just before the Christmas holidays, you feel you’re nothing.
Along with the sense of loss, there also comes a kind of freedom and escape as you struggle to walk amidst the relentless masses of determinedly jubilant people. The tidal wave of so many “wowed” millions is a bit scary in its power.
You try to take a breath of fresh air crossing over into the avenue behind this one. That’s where all the banks are. There are no Christmas decorations here. The huge neon emblems of the houses of money suffice. No beautiful illusions and shimmering colors of improbable promises here. Only steel and glass structures housing ATMs, and underground cellars from which hordes of overworked Korean immigrants pour. You have to be careful not to fall into one of them. You have to look down and ahead, not up or around. Outside these banks there are no stars.
You return to the well-lit avenue of hollow dreams. Where did all these Japanese come from? They take endless pictures of the big apple in front of the Apple store. That’s when you remember New York used to be called “The Big Apple”. Right now, the only apple everyone here – and all around the............

Friday is Black Friday – the day of “sales and offers” following Thanksgiving Day. Starting Thursday midnight and lasting thought to Sunday night. Monday is Cyber Monday – after three days of intense mass shopping, one more day--online this time. On Tuesday, we learn that the turnover of the last four days amounts to nearly five billion dollars. It is also the opening day of the holiday (Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s Day) season. The big tree in Rockefeller Centre is lit up. The weather seems to comply. Another storm hits the city, enveloping us in a rather cute and certainly not destructive cloud of snow.
On Wednesday, the sun comes out and the cold is milder. Everyone talks about the lottery jackpot and the amazing amount of half a billion dollars the winner will take after three consecutive draws without one.
On Thursday, we wake up to find out that the city has been miraculously decorated overnight with Christmas trees and festive lights. The weather is even milder and the talk is now centered on the harmful effects of gambling (lottery). Several people argue in favour of banning gambling when it comes to the weaker members of the working and middle classes because it essentially it constitutes an indirect tax on them. Barack Obama starts intensive meetings and debate to avoid the fiscal cliff, meeting, amongst others, the CEOs of the biggest financial institutions in the country (Goldman Sachs), as well as Mitt Romney. In both cases, both sides agree that they strongly disagree.
On Friday, the temperature rises and there is a feel of spring in the air. The "fiscal cliff” threat if the new federal budget does not pass until the end of the year continues despite the overall lack of interest from the public who are convinced a compromise will be reached eventually. They just hope Obama isn't the one doing most of the compromising... The battle is fought around the increased taxes of the people who earn more than 250.000 dollars per year. The Republicans don’t want the rich to pay any taxes because, as they say, they won’t have an incentive to create new businesses and new jobs. The CEO of Goldman Sachs put it more diplomatically: “The issue is not whether the government imposes more taxes to the rich in comparison to the poor, but whether it can find a way to create more rich people.” Just like Harry Potter.
Europe does not exist here – only as a fleeting reference in financial news shows. There is only America--and the "others", amongst which the Middle East whenever it ignites. 
Television is indeed an integral part of this reality. The majority of journalists and.........

Ryan is the doorman of a chic apartment building in the Upper East. Throughout the day, out of the building the most privileged dogs in the world come and go with their masters or their dog walkers. Well past 60, a tear rolls down his cheek when he admits that while feeling grateful he is an American (Irish-American, he elucidates) and particularly grateful for Barack Obama's re-election, he is not in the mood to celebrate because he lost his mother a month ago. “But what else can I do? I have to… I have to… My mother would be delighted – she and my father suffered greatly in order to come here and bring us up as Americans…”
Olga, a luscious 50-year-old blonde, works as a hairdresser on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and a part-time secretary in a Chinese import-export company based on Long Island the other days. She misses her home country Russia, which she left in her 20s, already married to a fellow countryman and Jew as well. Would she ever return? “How could I?” she asks me as if she never expected the question. “I belong here”. She warmly greets a man in his early 50s with dark hair and deep blue eyes who asks for a haircut – “Dan has been my favourite client for 20 years now” she says excitedly. “He came from Iran. His wife came from a place even further away, England.”
Olga’s weird sense of geography surprises me less than the fact that she seems not in the least affected by the fact that the gentleman comes from a nation and a religion that target the notion of the national state all people of Jewish faith like Olga emotionally belong to. When I tactfully tell her so, she laughs. “But here is America!” she says. “We are all the same. We have left our differences back home, in the distant countries we love…”
Angie – all first-generation Chinese women who come in contact with the public are called Angie, Nancy or Sam, for simplicity’s sake obviously – resembling a beautiful little bird with her shiny black hair and sparkling innocent eyes, tells me that she studied architectural design back in her home country and that she came here “to learn more because it is the centre of the world.” However, she didn’t find a job in her field, apart from unpaid apprenticeships. She is currently working as a hairdresser’s assistant in order to make ends meet, whereas her mother, who lives in China, sends her pension in yuans-turned-into-dollars in order to pay her daughter’s rent. Wouldn’t it be better if she returned to her home country? “I don’t want to go back as a failure” she says misty-eyed. “I have to achieve something first.” If she succeeds, why go back then? She laughs awkwardly and rather hopefully. “Yeah, why? When you succeed here, you walk on clouds…” Dreams fill her eyes, a smile plays on her lips, her hands still immersed in lather.
For a moment it seems ironic that the rising superpower holding a large amount of the American debt and shapes the destinies of the American people cannot hold its own people. Maybe that’s partly why America was and still is the symbol of the desire and the struggle of hundreds of millions of people to become part of it.
Leo, a blue-eyed blond from a traditional Protestant family of Chicago, has been living here for 20 years, but his Moroccan wife....................

The first thing you have to learn is the language. The language that you know better than your homeland's is different here and is constantly and rapidly changing. Not at the speed colloquial language changes in european countries, but with the velocity of a speeding car going somewhere undefined, just like life here. This atmosphere directly affects written language too, directly – and there is plenty of writing going on here. On mobile phones and tablets, everyone is writing. Honest to God, Americans  must fast be turning imto the most literate people on earth, even if it isn’t always top quality writing or its elaborate precision and perfection lacks soul.
The second thing you have to learn is that rules are rigid – especially the ones concerning privacy. If you break them, you’re done. Therefore, you either don’t break them or you become too good at breaking them to be caught.
The third principle is to learn how to overcome all difficulties moving forward. There is no other choice. Three blocks away, at a church belonging to one of the hundreds of christian sects here, a support group for people who lost a child meets every Wednesday at 7pm. Every Thursday evening, at the conservative synagogue, there is a meeting of people who have recently lost their spouses. “Ensure the continuation of your life no matter what” an attractive elderly lady shasays in a life insurance advertisement. And for every disaster – apart from financial – therapy is offered here whether in the form of a therapist, a support group, community services, the appropriate literature. “How to overcome what happened and move forward” is the message. It is out of the question to want to live out of the box, beyond these rules of rigid emotional and mental propriety. If you dare say you don’t want to get over something deemed "not good/healthy/fair" for you, even if you mean it and it is your choice, the choice of a mature sane person, still you will end up all alone--if not in a mental institution!
So you comply. Because it's "their way or the highway", indeed. Yet the more you want to comply with these rules in order to fit in and to be accepted, the more you empathetically understand these violent outbursts, these impressive self-immolations of General David Petraeus and many more before him.
In truth, at first, it is not difficult to learn to live under these limitations in a world you want to adapt to. Things here are so clear-cut they become simple: there are good guys – the Democrats – and bad guys – the Republicans – who are bad in such a grand guignol way that they promote the secession of several states they control (Texas, Tennessee, Florida) from the rest of the United States. If you hold any public office and you flirt – let alone do anything more than that – with another woman, not only will you be held.........

While America was celebrating Barack Obama’s re-election, Greece was being engulfed – again – in the flames of protest, international uncertainty and political instability, being on the razor’s edge between life and death. In Brussels, the symbolic capital of Europe, the majority of the employees in the european institutions was on strike against the spending cuts in the EU, as demanded by the member-states, and the attacks they have to face due to their privileged salary regime.
However, at the place where I am right now, the only thing that matters is the city. The news is limited to what happens here exclusively – despite the fact that we are all interdependent, one nation depending on another and all nations depending, first and foremost, on Greece!
“There’s mayhem in Greece” you say, seemingly indifferently and informatively. Yet, deep down inside, you care. From the moment you heard the news about the recent riots, the new measures, the expulsions from the political parties, the state budget for 2013, the IMF which is still squabbling with the Europeans, the money which isn’t coming and Greece which is dying of suffocation, like a man buried alive under the ground.
“Again?” you ask. Again. That’s what it seems to me as well. Again? Why do we have to face everything “again”? Agony, conflict, political chaos, the tug-of-war between the great powers we depend on? Again. From the beginning. Hanging by a thread. Again.
You get on the wrong underground train and end up following a complex route, rather unsafe and tiring – or so it seems – in order to get out of the labyrinth. A nice stranger guides you. When you get out, you breathe and sigh with relief. “If I had got off at the previous station, who knows where I would be right now!” you say. “At the same place” he answers, “but you would have had to buy a new ticket!” You stare at him speechless. “You would have had to pay again” he explains as if you don’t understand, “and we don’t do the same things ‘again’.” You attempt to say something but you stop. You know what the next question will be: “Where are you from? Do you accept ‘again’ there?” and when you answer, the response is matter-of-fact: “That’s the reason why! You have defaulted!” What can you say? It is true. A person in need or a person who has made a terrible mistake does things again and again for as long as it takes…
“You have to show who you are again. You have to remake yourself, to reinvent yourself and your life. Again. You have to. It’s a whole different planet here” says a geneticist who has recently moved to this city. “When you leave this city and return to your country, you are nothing. Until you become something again – if you can manage. But our countries are so small and so narrow that they constrain you. Isn’t that so?” Although he knows perfectly well that he is right, his question is not a rhetorical one. It hides something else: “It’s enough, isn’t it…?” Yes, you answer to him and to yourself. “Yes, yes” you keep saying in order to convince and remind yourself.
You start making tomato salads with lots of parsley and oregano. At the supermarket, you see feta cheese (which you never ate) and you get excited. While walking, you hear the sound of bouzouki, just like other people hearing voices. At night, watching the news from home and seeing protesters, molotov cocktails or even Poul Thomsen and Yannis Stournaras, you are so moved that you feel like crying.........