Is that it now?

While France defends critical cultural elements and Macron's fight comes at a high cost, I feel obliged to add some personal experiences and thoughts unable to stomach one more slaughter at my beloved city of Nice.

Five years ago, I took the ferry to Morocco in order to tour the country on my bike for a couple of weeks. The ship was (obviously) flooded by Moroccans which resulted in cabins smelling like dodgy kitchens as they were cooking in them! But there's more and even worse: Lots of them were reading the Coran all day on the deck some of them out loud. Additionally, the "wellness center" of the ferry, which was one of the reasons my travel mates chose that ship, was turned into prayer room split in two separately for men and women. While touring the country I often found women slipping inside mosques, lying on the ground like cows. I could write a book about the rest of the culture shocks I had around but that's it for the moment.

The mistake we did over the years was that we didn't read between the lines of these cultural differences that we rushed to baptise "exotic details" showing off our adventures. What's the common ground you can share with such people when you seek for a more free life with transparent democracy and they are still struggling with their obscurantism? How can we hope for a more liberating future away from Mosques and Churches while they are religious way beyond the European average and some of them way beyond imagination?

I'm not here to say "ban them all", though even this extreme would be more constructive than the self destructive lousy immigration (non) policy of non leaders like Merkel and Tsipras. New people are needed to rejoice the saturated and spoiled European societies. However, I want Europe (or any other developed continent) to be attractive for constructive people and the latter should feel more than welcome. Not just attractive for every fucking body. I don't ignore the fact that some Germans for example had similar thoughts about Greeks decades ago, when they saw those villagers from rural Greece with breath full of garlic migrating as workers to the North. However, apart from the guilts of the Hitler era that could excuse tolerance, most importantly they had critical bits to share with them as they were coming from a democratic country with a good amount of religious compatibility. This was confirmed by how well Greeks blended in the German society. But what about the ones who don't? I recall an Austrian friend of mine, super well travelled on her bike around the globe and far from any extreme racist approach, telling me (10 years ago) that a significant amount of immigrants (from Turkey specifically) didn't learn German even though the state was offering German lessons for free.

So what do we do now? I hope Macron knows cause no one else does.

THE GHOST OF MUNICH

I don't know why I do this to myself, I mean bothering for things others don't or at least not as much as I do but here my translation of a spot on Greek article.

(Side note for my Turkish friends: I know that the regime you experience like any regime doesn't allow much space to breath. However, you should never forget that it leads you to no space to breath at all at the end of the road, if it hasn't already actually. If you have any doubts remember Hitler. Then you'll think twice about staying idle. Good luck.)

THE GHOST OF MUNICH

How did we go from this:

...to what we are today?

I mean, look at those eyes...have you ever seen a more innocent and good hearted face? Probably not and even if you did it was probably not an adult. I'd dare to say you may not remember when it was the last time you show such a soulful mature behaviour. As a commentator nicely said in that video "This kid raises his parents right".

So what happens and we become more like vicious calculators in the progress of time? It's probably a "Killing yourself to live" as Black Sabbath used to sing ages ago, years before their frontman Ozzy became one of the worst bastards in music business (led by his wive - the ultimate bitch), unintentionally offering himself (themselves) as a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The vast majority of the people break in the first hardships of life, even at times that can hardly be named "hardships". That's where part of them dies so the rest can continue without questioning life that much, or as much. Let's go back to Ozzy for this - what a great example of human fuckery he can be :). Once he said to his ex guitar player (the greatest of his ex alive by the way - Jake E Lee): "Now you play in my band, I fuck you. When you make your band you fuck them". That was when poor Jake commented on the fact that they black mailed him for his mistake to record with Ozzy without presigning a contract "Now either you sign the shitty one we offer you or we take your recordings and find another guitarist for the tour"...

I consider as "goal in life" (if there is one) to keep the child inside you alive while at the same time becoming as responsible and wise as possible - what's life's experience for otherwise? Because, as a wise Indian once said: "It's nice to be important but it is more important to be nice". This way you combine the best of both worlds (young and old) and get closer to what a complete personality is, hopefully managing to be one someday. Chances of meeting somebody with a goal like this? Nearly zero. Then why try this lonely path? Well, if you expect someone to convince you about it then just leave it...it's not for you. If it was you'd have been walking that path anyway.

Let me share you a story that fits to the above. This is me close to the age of that kid in the video above:

Happy as it gets at my parent's cottage. My name is Orestis. Comes from the ancient Hellenic Mythology. It's interesting to read the story of Orestis. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes ). My name is not so common and one of the very rare cases I met another one with the same name was while I worked at a kid's summer camp. The ONLY kid named Orestis in the whole camp was at my room! During one of the very last days of the season kids were exchanging dedications and such so there was a happy vibe in the air despite the end of their camp days. However, I see Orestis sitting alone and that scene really caught my eye. Instantly I starting walking towards him to ask him why.  We had a nice bond during the season as he was (probably) the brightest and most mature kid I've met there, something that I couldn't skip mentioning to his (very likeable) parents when I met them in order to congratulate them. As I ask him why he's not part of the whole thing he replied "I don't want to keep memories from the camp cause there was not much to like here anyway hence I don't want dedications in my book". It broke my heart but at the same time he totally nailed it since the camp was shitty indeed - I had conflicts about various issues with the greedy owners of that shit hole. Fast forward today, that kid came to my mind. I fought hard and paid a lot (more than money)  to keep that kid in the picture alive (or my baby soul as the master of drums Neil Peart said in his book "Ghost Rider" - R.I.P.), while all the people who I ever worked with had no other to mention as more trusty and efficient, only to feel today as lonely as that Orestis kid in that camp. The progress of mankind, being far from linear, makes the procedure of finding  people I can resonate with feel like a funnel. By default we humans are far from perfect and that's fine - we all have at least one SERIOUS flaw but this amazing revolutionary tool named Internet with all its wonders provides at the same time unfortunately a chance for any person lacking common sense to be proud of their flaw no matter how serious this is. And common sense becomes less and less common.

Well, maybe by now you know why I travel as much as I can. Besides...landscapes tend to disappoint much less than people do :)

Have a good life all.

If only our evolution was linear...

...it would be much better. Less exciting for history vampires but better.

So today there's a lot of focus on the bastard in Turkey and what he does to Agia Sofia temple but...can you comment on the ones who tolerate and even worse make business with the bastard? Like the wanna be head of Europe here? Obama was very clear symbolic wise in the way he closed his presidency years ago. He emphatically ignored the bastard, didn't pay a visit to Turkey at all, made it only up to Athens instead, paid tribute to the ancient Greek heritage and then visited Merkel as giving to her the kudos of a free world leader. The latter didn't deserve this at all as it shows long ago by dealing with the bastard on immigration and later with Libya (see previous link). Today (Macron being the only exception) there's no leader clearly against the ideas of the bastard. And I really doubt Germany will get one though I'd love that. Funny how an American with Kenyan DNA was (is) much more Europist than the aunt from East Germany who leads (?) the united one today. I defended the aunt during the hard financial crisis in Greece when everybody here wanted her several feet underground but not gonna accept to be lectured again by any of this corrupted leadership which has no vision for Europe and no European values. There's more important things for a country and a continent than selling submarines and manufacturing cars in the lowest cost possible. We spent too much effort and time in this continent to stop killing each other to tolerate any EU member making such deals under the table with the worst bastard the East Med ever faced. Disrespectful for the German tax payers, the Greeks, the majority of the Turkish people who don't endorse their bastard long ago - a full shame for the whole Europe.

However, despite the fucked up crowds who promote or tolerate leaderships like these, there's always the option to turn your head up to look at the stars in an effort to let your back stair at the deep shit. I have no stars to show you but here's the same blue sky the ancient Hellenes used to enjoy at the break of dawn, some marble ruins they generously offered to the next generations and...

the sounds of the writer:

What's the Russian propaganda looking for at Exarcheia?

An article by Katerina Oikonomakou that I translated in English:

"Exarcheia* is a community established through decades of fights. It is clear that the social movements will not surrender hands down to the state. They live and fight together. Activists, refugees and the whole neighbourhood promise to resist refinement of the area and continuous police repression."