Learn Greek in two weeks. Ideal for a study abroad course or the international traveler.

A blog devoted to Linear A and Linear B, with some transliterations of Linear B texts.

A collection of old bouzoukia (early twentieth century).

A drug rehab program in Thessaloniki – through ice hockey.

Meet the Evzones (Greece’s Presidential Guard).

On Greece’s privatization drive.

The saffron cooperative in Krokos (near Kozani) is making some of the world’s finest red saffron.

Greece has reached its latest deal with the troika to release the next tranche of aid; the deal involves laying off 15,000 public sector workers by the end of next year. The vote should come this week.

Over 120,000 professionals have left Greece since 2010 and New York is getting a new influx of Greeks.

Greece – A Failed “Populist” Democracy?

Kostas Vaxevanis talks about the lack of a free and independent press in Greece.

Take a look at Into the Fire’s webpage here.

The BBC reports on widespread looting of Egyptian tombs and sites.

Greece’s major soccer clubs face insolvency, even AEK.

Athens has some swanky new wine bars around Syntagma.

Greece, Turkey, Cyprus + unresolved EEZ claims = no gas for anyone.

On Greece’s emerging tech startups, which show promise. They still face numerous hurdles though: excessive red tape, high taxation, lack of investors, and experienced business development personnel.

A documentary on Golden Dawn stirs controversy and an official response.

On Cyprus:

Cyprus has secured a bailout from the troika of lenders. Deposits under 100,000 will be secured, while those over that amount will be taxed at a rate to be determined in the coming weeks (perhaps as high as 40%). Laiki Bank will be dissolved, its good assets incorporated into a restructured Bank of Cyprus.

In Cyprus, the banking meltdown might lead to 5-10% GDP contraction, more than the troika estimated when it put together the bailout package. It’s possible, then, that the Bank of Cyprus could be insolvent within 12 months.

Cyprus has become the first EU country to impose capital controls, which are intended to prevent a vast outflow of euros from the country. See also the New Athenian.

The Cypriot reaction to the crisis: solidarity and self-reliance.

It does a nice job contextualizing the rise of Chrysi Avgi within broader currents of migration and economic decline. It notes that migrants come to Greece for a mixture of reasons, both economic and personal (e.g., their own personal safety), but that they do so primarily because the country is seen as the gateway to a prosperous, peaceful Europe. Unfortunately, as this story explains, the rest of Europe doesn’t want them, and they often end up, de facto, trapped in an economically-depressed Greece, where opportunities are non-existent or very limited. They also live in danger of arrest, incarceration in overcrowded detention centers, or beatings at the hands of Chrysi Avgi members and supporters. Perhaps one element of the story worth noting is the tacit alliance between the police and Chrysi Avgi; the former seem to allow the latter to operate with impunity, and as a result immigrants lack the ability to seek redress for the crimes committed against them.

But much of this is new–that is, Chrysi Avgi burst onto the political scene only recently, in 2012, and attacks on foreigners began to increase markedly only since 2010. Carlin does a nice job elucidating how declining living standards (lack of access to health care, food, etc.) and a lack of economic opportunity are integral to Golden Dawn’s rise. Golden Dawn presents an easy solution to a complex set of problems: the immigrants are to blame for Greece’s current situation, and Golden Dawn will rid the country of them (indeed, the party has referred to migrants as “subhuman” commonly).

Yet the story also notes that there are plenty of Greeks–a majority, in fact–who don’t agree at all with Golden Dawn’s platform, and would much prefer the party not exist. It also details networks of support that have emerged for migrants in Greece, including the Greek Forum of Refugees and the Greek Forum of Migrants. Yet alongside this, Carlin also notes that Doctors without Borders is, for the first time, considering extending its services to the native population because so many Greeks now lack access to basic healthcare services–powerful evidence that Greece is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.

And this is the crux of the matter: resources in Greece have dwindled, opportunity is almost nowhere to be found, and migrants keep pouring in by the thousands every year. Many Greeks also now think that the Germans and the EU are their political masters and feel that they lack control over their own domestic affairs. Historically, these conditions have proven to be fertile grounds for extremist political parties.

Other news on the rise of the far right in Greece and immigration:

On the growing Syrian refugee community in Greece.

NPR on Greek identity and the politics of identity.

On migration, detention, the broken Greek asylum system and one man’s life within this environment. In the last 12 months, Mohamed Lamhoud lived through a mass racist attack in Patras, was swept up during the Xenios Zeus raids and held in detention for 3 months in Corinth, took part in a hunger strike in the detention center, and finally managed to lodge an asylum application.

On the responses of Nea Demokratia and PASOK to Golden Dawn’s parliamentary presence and tactics.

Mark Mazower emphasized the need to take Golden Dawn more seriously as a threat to Greece’s political system and society. This incident is one reason why. Attacks like these are occurring regularly.

Golden Dawn has now established ties with neo-Nazis in Bavaria and made its presence felt in Queens, NYC.

See also this important story on police brutality, which details how tourists have been detained and beaten by the police in Athens. They were detained because of their skin color in the context of the “Xenios Zeus” operation.

On Golden Dawn’s global aspirations among the Greek diaspora.

More on helicopter prison escapes: even the Canadians are doing it now. The top five. And Greece’s most notorious, Alket Rizaj, failed in his latest attempt.

Underwater photos of the Antikythera shipwreck site.

Check out Kostis Kourelis’ posts on the architects of Corinth.

Pseudo-archaeology in the Holy Land.

A Der Spiegel interview with the new Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister, Ömer Çelik, over the ongoing spat between the Turkish government and German museums.

On Constantinople Greeks and their culinary culture in Faliro.

Several prominent politicians have been indicted and even convicted of corruption recently, including:

Akis Tsohatzopoulos, former defense minister and PASOK heavy weight.

And the former mayor of Thessaloniki and some of his associates.

Greece has been reclassified as an “emerging market.”

Layoffs in the public sector remain the third rail of greek politics and seem to have stalled the talks with the troika over the next loan disbursement.

Greece spends more as a percentage of GDP on its military than any other country in the EU, but military cuts there are still difficult to carry out.

Transparency International notes that the percentage of Greek households asked to pay bribes dropped for a fourth consecutive year. 70% of requests for bribes came from the public sector, with 45% of these from hospitals and tax and town planning offices at 13% each.

Sparta is getting a solar power plant, part of a broader surge in solar power in Greece.

Parliament voted 205 to 3 to allow the prosecution of Ilias Kassidiaris, a leading lawmaker for Golden Dawn, for assaulting two female leftist politicians during a live TV talk show.

There are big plans to revamp central Athens. They look great. I hope they work out.

Tourism, which counts for 1/5 of GDP, is rebounding.

Charts comparing Greece’s economic path since 2007 to the US’s during the initial years of the depression. Greece is worse off by comparison.

The Greek state remains hopelessly inept at collecting taxes.

Laughter yoga has arrived in Greece as a means to cope with the inescapable crisis. Yes, it’s real.

On the growing Syrian refugee community in Greece. Same story–arrests, detention centers, asylum denials, and beatings at the hands of Golden Dawn members and supporters.

And see The New Athenian for a thorough overview of the new citizenship law proposed by Nea Demokratia.

Cyprus is now enveloped in a crisis of its own, which is ongoing. The latest here.  And more here on Friday’s developments.

Jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan has called for a cease fire between the Turkish government and the PKK. There’s hope that this is a first step toward a comprehensive peace plan which meets the demands of Turkey’s sizable Kurdish minority (some 20% of the population) for full civil rights and a certain level of autonomy.

Context from the BBC. Many factors are involved, including upcoming elections, the Syrian civil war, and the growing economic ties between the autonomous Kurdish north in Iraq (now Turkey’s second largest trading partner after Germany) and Turkey.

But enough. Go and listen to this man’s wonderful music. Here’s one video to start–just hit play–and a longer playlist is below.

Full playlist here.

In the course of ongoing metro works in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, workers uncovered something extraordinary: the commercial heart of late antique Thessaloniki. More specifically, they found the city’s well preserved marble-paved decumanus alongside shops, workshops, buildings, and other public spaces. The majority of the remains date to the late antique period (4-6th centuries AD), though the BBC story (below) notes that Dark Age remains (6-9th centuries AD) have been found, too. Archaeologists in the city are calling it a “Byzantine Pompeii.” But there’s a problem: the ancient center sits directly below the modern city center (only some 6 meters), at the intersection of Venizelos and Egnatia Sts., where the central metro station is supposed to be installed.

There seem to be few good options moving forward. The city badly needs the metro, yet these remains should preserved. As of right now, the Central Archaeological Council has granted Attiko Metro SA permission to remove the remains and continue building the metro station.

For more, see this BBC story.

And for images of the remains, check out this video (h/t to Anthony Kaldellis):

Athens experienced torrential rains last week that caused flash floods. Here’s a photo blog of several men rescuing a women from the waters.

Trying to escape from prison? Try using a helicopter. It’s the method of choice in Greece.

Economic data: output is down 20% since 2008 and the economy will shrink by 4.5% in 2013. Somehow, this a clear sign of improvement, according to the governor of the Bank of Greece. But the WSJ notes that foreign investment is increasing for the first time in years.

Former mayor of Thessaloniki and two top associates were given life imprisonment for embezzlement.

Pharmaceuticals are running low in Greece. Some drugs are being withheld by pharmaceutical companies because of unpaid state debts, but many are in short supply because of “parallel trading,” which is driven by the low price of medicine in Greece (some 20% below EU averages according to this article).

Background on the recent presidential election in Cyprus and the economic crisis there, which is rooted in its banking sector (as Ireland, e.g.). The troika is prescribing the same policies for Cyprus as it has for other European countries, apparently because they’ve worked so well so far. Nikos Anastasiades won; he’s a member of DISY, the conservative party.

Proposed new uniforms, inspired by Ottoman-era styles, have placed Turkish Airlines at the center of Turkey’s culture wars.

Four of the albums are devoted entirely to rebetika; 3 of these are compilations of old 78s and so sung (almost) entirely in Greek. The fourth is by Yeni Türkü (Külhani Şarkılar, 1994), one of Turkey’s most popular groups in the 80s and 90s and is entirely in Turkish using translated lyrics. The remaining 4 offer a mixture of rebetika and other types of music. One, by Melihat Gülses, consists of some rebetika alongside traditional songs from Istanbul, which are sung in a mixture of Greek and Turkish; another, by Muammer Ketencoğlu (a well known accordion player and singer in Turkey), contains rebetika but also Greek folk songs of Anatolia, all of which are sung in Greek; the final two, both by Yeni Türkü, are more diverse still, but both contain a Turkish version of “Yedikule” (Pente Chronia Dikasmenos/I Foni tou Argile in Greek). So, they’re quite a mixed bag, and it’s worth noting that some musicians appear on several albums.

The liner notes and covers operate from different perspectives. The covers of the compilations depict the musicians themselves in old photos alongside some images of late Ottoman Smyrna and Istanbul; thus, they locate the music in an historical context. Their liners also promote a vision of a peaceful shared past, rooted in a variety of cultural traditions, music included. Gülses’ emphasizes her own biography and that she had performed concerts in Turkish and Greek in the past. On the whole, her album notes “blur distinctions” between rebetika and other forms of popular Ottoman music. Susam-Sarajeva contends that this allows the album to more fully serve its purpose as cultural mediator. The cover of her album (2000) displays an image of the singer’s face against a backdrop of cobbled streets and old Istanbul homes. But the CD itself contains the flags of Greece and Turkey—why? The album was, in fact, produced for a very specific setting: the first Greco-Turkish “Friendship and Cooperation Fair,” which focused on fostering economic ties between Greece and Turkey. Turkey’s most important business entity, the Koç Group, was a key player in this. The Group commissioned the album and distributed it freely at the fair. Thus, the bi-lingual album was intended to foster closer ties between the two countries from the start. (all of this is post-1999 earthquakes). G. Papandreou (recently Prime Minister of Greece) received a copy directly from Suna Koç. M. Ketencoglu’s liner notes are something of a diatribe against the vapid commercialized pop music entering Turkey from Greece and express his desire to present a better form of Greek music to the Turkish public. Yeni Türkü’s liners zero in on the population exchange and tend to understand rebetika as an amalgamation of the musical skills and traditions of the Asia Minor refugees and the mangas sub-culture in Greece itself. In their 1994 album, their only devoted entirely to rebetika, the band appears dressed in the attire of rebetes near the sea (the Aegean) and most of the insert art work does the same. One band member carries a baglama on the cover, but a Turkish one not a Greek one (the latter is a different instrument, much smaller), which alludes more directly to Turkish folk music than rebetika per se. The title means “Songs of the Külhani,” a reference to the old street toughs of Istanbul. Thus, the album stands as a recreation or reinterpretation of rebetika in a contemporary Turkish context, somewhat like Gülses’ and against the frozen-in-time compilations.

The song “Yedikule” is common to many of these albums, and it was one of the first songs translated into Turkish in the 90s (by Yeni Türkü). It was originally recorded in Greek by Evangelos Papazoglou and Stellakis Perpiniadis in 1935 and is one of the so-called hasiklidika in the rebetika. Yedikule (Γεντί Κουλέ) means Seven Towers, and it was an Ottoman prison. The song is about the suffering of a mangas in that place and explains that he turned to the narghile while he was confined. There is also a good deal of derision expressed toward the guards (and once outside the prison, the police), which is a common theme in rebetika music. But Susam-Sarajeva notes some subtle changes in the course of the song’s translation: in the Turkish version the mangas is imprisoned for smoking hashish, whereas in the Greek began doing so while in prison; in the Greek the guards are referred to as “bumpkins” (βλάχους = a Vlach/shepherd), while the Turkish version renders them “formidable” (yaman). Istanbul is directly referenced in the Turkish version, whereas it’s not in the Greek one.

It seems both Yeni Türkü and Susam-Sarajeva would locate this Yedikule prison in Istanbul. There was, indeed, a prison called this in the city in the Ottoman period—it’s the old Byzantine Golden Gate, the ceremonial entrance for the emperors, which was transformed into a treasury by Mehmet the Conqueror and then a state prison. But there was also a Yedikule prison in Thessaloniki, on the acropolis of the city. It operated as such into the 1980s and it’s a museum today (the Epta Pyrgio). It seems more likely that the composer of the song was referencing the Thessaloniki prison, since this would have been more relevant to his own social experience in 30s Greece (and numerous other rebetika songs reference it). Manges and musicians alike were imprisoned there, while the Yedikule prison in Istanbul seems to have been used mainly to hold high ranking prisoners (unruly pashas, ambassadors, etc.). And, as far I know, it didn’t function as a prison much into the 20^th century.

On the whole, Susam-Sarajeva aserts, rebetika in the albums is defined and closely associated with the population exchange and, in the main, characterized by the use of Greek. She notes that it’s telling that these collections chose not to use songs sung originally in Turkish, despite their existence. Why? Because that would have associated them too closely with the (Turkish) artists and made them too familiar to their Turkish audience. The ‘other’ culture was a necessary component, one tied to the broader purposes of the albums. And although each album works from a slightly different perspective, all use the music to advance an agenda of rapprochement, reflecting a desire to bring Greeks and Turks together through a greater understanding of shared cultural heritage, whether in a more official or anti-establishment intellectual capacity.

S. Susam-Sarajeva, “Rembetika Songs and their “Return” to Anatolia,” The Translator 12.2 2006, pp. 253-78.

Below are several versions of the song, Yedikule. Here are the Greek and Turkish lyrics and an English translation: yedikule.

Yeni Türkü (in Turkish):

Melihat Gülses (in Turkish and Greek; this one begins with a good taxim):

Orchestra Bailam (in Italian; note this version starts with a dialogue, which is taken directly from the Greek original):

Agathonas Iakovidis (in Greek; unfortunately, the original–from 1935–is not available on Youtube due to copyright restrictions in the US, but this version is very close to it, wo/ the dialogue):

Here’s a homemade Greek version, in which the group includes the introductory dialogue (which is meant to be somewhat humorous):

Greek entries in the Berlin film festival focus on the cultural, psychological, and interpersonal effects of the crisis.

On migration, detention, the broken Greek asylum system and one man’s life within this environment. In the last 12 months, Mohamed Lamhoud lived through a mass racist attack in Patras, was swept up during the Xenios Zeus raids and held in detention for 3 months in Corinth, took part in a hunger strike in the detention center, and finally managed to lodge an asylum application.

NPR reviews the media landscape in Greece. Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs, numerous publications have shut down, and the media now lack credibility. In the main, though (as this story notes), most newspapers are owned and operated by Greece’s oligarchs (construction moguls, financial elites, etc.), who maintain close relationships with the political class. As a result, critical journalism is rare–anything investigative, e.g.–and most publications offer little more than propaganda rather than analysis.  This has been done to date to secure state favors–construction contracts, preferential treatment, etc. But new online initiatives look to shake up this moribund framework and inject better journalism into Greece’s public dialogue. One example is The Press Project (in Greek), which seeks to offer analysis and social commentary from an independent perspective.

Wondering what’s Greece’s exiled monarchs are up to? Take a look.

Only 3.6 million out of 11 are working in Greece. Of these, some 1.6 are in the private sector (down from 2.5 in 2010), though only 600,000 of them now receive regular, full time pay. The rest have seen their hours cut, or get paid months late.

On the responses of Nea Demokratia and PASOK to Golden Dawn’s parliamentary presence and tactics.