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LONDON — This island off the course of northwest Europe is turning out to be an excellent viewing platform for three blockbuster shows this summer: Queen Elizabeth’s 60th anniversary Jubilee, the London Olympics and the implosion of Europe. The group of countries using the euro as a joint currency is “a burning building with no exits,” says Britain’s foreign minister William Hague. The Europeans with flames lapping around their ankles are the Greeks, but the whole continent is about to feel the burn. Yoking most of Europe together with a single currency has proved as unstable as Napoleon or Hitler...

When Patrick Greene learned that a county five hours north of his San Antonio home had placed a nativity on the courthouse square, he vowed to file suit if they did it again, the Malakoff News reported. An atheist, Greene did not believe the religious symbol of Christmas had any place on government property. Then, as quickly as he blew into Henderson County, he withdrew. He would not lead a rally, he told reporters there, because he believed he suffered from a detached retina and was going blind. He had to leave his job as a taxi driver, he elaborated,...

This, no doubt, has been posted before, but for those who haven't seen it here it is again.Odds are it wasn't discussed in your high school history class, unless you're older than dirt.

HOW MUCH WILL PEOPLE TAKE BEFORE THEY RISE UP? This is an excerpt that brings some good reasons to stop and think about what we are going to face in our next election - It is taken from a longer original article in the Knoxville Tennessee Sentinel I can't find.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Historic cinemas, cafes and shops went up in flames in central Athens on Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the public rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal. As parliament prepared to vote on a new 130 billion euro bailout to save Greece from a messy bankruptcy, a Reuters photographer saw the buildings engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky. The air over Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought running battles with youths...

Rhamnous and Sounion became especially important in the late 5th century BC, when the Spartans followed the advice of the traitorous Athenian Alcibiades and seized the strategic hill of Dekeleia, north of Athens, in 412BC. Having thus cut off the city's major food supply, the Spartans forced the Athenians to seek alternative routes for their vital shipments of Evia grain and other foodstuffs. Rhamnous' twin harbours replaced the more northerly port of Oropos and served as a naval base from which Athenian warships could safeguard the newly crucial shipping lanes that extended around Cape Sounion to Piraeus... Visible at Rhamnous...

ATHENS, Texas, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- A crowd of more than 5,000 people gathered in Athens, Texas, in support of a nativity scene on display at the Henderson County Courthouse. "We are seeing unfold before our very eyes, the beginning of persecution of Christianity in our nation," First Baptist Church Malakoff Pastor Nathan Lorick said at the rally Saturday. "It seems it is no longer acceptable to express and exhibit the doctrines of our faith in the nation that was founded upon those same doctrines. That is why thousands are here today." The rally came after Freedom From Religion Foundation...

The California-as-Greece meme picked up steam this week when Oakland turned into the poor man’s Athens – clashes with police, protesters shutting down the city’s port (one of Oakland’s few remaining economic engines) and calls for a general strike. And there is a genuine danger for California, which has come upon some very hard times. The state is utterly broke and likely past its ability to increase revenue through tax increases. Wealthy individuals and businesses are fleeing the state for spots in Texas and across the West. New taxes would only worsen the trend. California Democrats were able to resist...

The Battle for CivilizationThe Battle of Marathon, 2,500 years ago last week, isn't just ancient history. Before dawn on Sept. 12, 490 b.c., 10,000 mostly Athenian hoplites formed for an assault on the Persian force assembled before them on the Marathon Plain, nearly 25 miles from Athens. At the sound of a single trumpet, the advance began. Eight men deep on the flanks and four deep in the center, the phalanx of bristling spear points and blazing shields began its slow, inexorable march toward the enemy. Picking up the pace, first to a fast walk and then to a trot,...

The Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, and all the other marathon races held worldwide trace their origin to this battle in ancient Greece and the well-known story of a messenger who ran about 26 miles from the battlefield back to Athens and died when he arrived. The ancient calendars and uncertain records have made it difficult to date these events precisely. But the ancient sources describe the lunar phase near the time of the battle, and we can calculate when the Battle of Marathon occurred using these astronomical clues.

Nervously – he was always nervous, these days – Greco approached the doorman at mob headquarters in Brussels. He hoped the old man wouldn’t recognize him. A year earlier, when Greco asked for his first loan from the biggest sharks in Europe (Madame Angela and Slick Nicky), the doorman at mob headquarters had tried his best to advise Greco against it. “There’s a secret backer in their big deals, these days,” the doorman had warned him. “You really don’t want to do this, young man.” But Greco went and did it anyway. He went into mob headquarters, played the part...

In the last three months, we've been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob — with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already angry public. The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes once described how screaming politicians — posing as men of the people — would sway Athenian citizens by offering them all sort of perks and goodies that the government had no idea how to pay for. The historian Thucydides offers even more frightening accounts of bloodthirsty voters after they were aroused by demagogues ("leaders or drivers of the people"). One day in a bloodthirsty rage, voters demanded...

The GIs came home to find that a political machine had taken over their Tennessee county. What they did about it astounded the nation. In McMinn County, Tennessee, in the early 1940s, the question was not if you farmed, but where you farmed. Athens, the county seat, lay between Knoxville and Chattanooga along U.S. Highway 11, which wound its way through eastern Tennessee. This was the meeting place for farmers from all the surrounding communities. Traveling along narrow roads planted with signs urging them to “See Rock City” and “Get Right with God,” they would gather on Saturdays beneath the...

Over the centuries, there have appeared two great conceptions of freedom. The first vision, which one can call “epic freedom,” is freedom as Hegel or Marx understood it, the freedom of messianists and of revolutionaries. The meaning of freedom, on this view, is the progressive emancipation of man: step by step, battle by battle, mankind is supposed to break with its alienations and become the creator and absolute master of its fate. Epic freedom is the assumption of a cosmic mastery, more and more aware of itself. Crises become mere historical stages on the way to the final achievement of...

Dozens of far-right activists and local residents threw eggs and taunted hundreds of Muslim immigrants as they gathered to pray in a central square for Eid al-Adha surrounded by a protective cordon of riot police. Greece, which has become the main immigrant gateway to the European Union, has a growing Muslim community and tensions between locals and incomers have run high in some Athens areas such as Attiki square, the scene of Tuesday's incident.

ATHENS, Greece – Deadly riots over harsh new austerity measures engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, killing three bank workers as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of nationwide strikes to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) bailout package of loans to keep it from defaulting. The three bank workers — a man and two women — died after...

Masked youths stoned police outside Greece's parliament today in protest at cutbacks proposed to try to end the country's debt crisis. Riot police responded with tear gas and baton charges as more than 7,000 demonstrators gathered in the centre of Athens. They arrested six demonstrators, while onlookers said two officers were badly beaten. Protesters attacked the leader of Greece's biggest trade union and chased guards away from the country's tomb of the unknown soldier. Youths also fought with police inside the Council of State and tried to break into the labour ministry. Inside parliament, politicians were debating the €4.8 billion...

Greek fuel supplies run dry as strike over harsh austerity measures bites Published Date: 20 February 2010 By MARGARET NEIGHBOUR PETROL stations ran dry in Greece yesterday as a customs strike over government austerity measures began to bite. Customs staff initially walked out for three days on Tuesday over salary freezes and cuts in bonuses. But their union announced on Thursday three 48-hour rolling strikes that will keep customs offices shut until next Wednesday, when all workers are being asked to join a general strike. The customs walkout has hampered imports and exports, but the supply of fuel has been...

DALLAS (AP) - A sheriff's dispatcher says fires have struck two more rural east Texas churches, just hours after investigators announced that a blaze last week marked the eighth arson against a house of worship in the state this year. A Smith County sheriff's dispatcher says fire struck a Baptist church near Tyler Monday night. Another hit a church about 3 miles away. The fires come the same day the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced a blaze that happened last week was the seventh east Texas church fire of 2010 to be deliberately set.

SNIPPET: "A bomb has exploded outside the Athens stock exchange, slightly injuring a female passer-by and damaging the building, police say. The bomb - which set fire to several cars - was hidden in a stolen van. Another bomb went off outside a government building in Thessaloniki, causing minor damage and no injuries. The blasts may be the work of a Greek extremists' group, Revolutionary Struggle, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens. Earlier this year the group claimed responsibility for two bombs aimed at the American Citibank group. Flying glass A warning of the Athens explosion was telephoned to...

The object was spotted by the pilot of Olympic Airways flight 266 from Athens, and the sighting was corroborated by staff at Athens Airport and a nearby Greek air force base. Pilots of two other passenger jets also reported seeing the body.The eyewitnesses described it as looking like a large star, although it was moving erratically and constantly changing shape.Two fighter jets were sent to investigate the sighting over the Greek capital in November 2007 but the object shot up into the sky and vanished before they could get a clear view.

04/13/2009 SNIPPET: "A home-made fire-bomb exploded at 3:25 a.m. at the KAPA Marines showcase, and the ensuing fire quickly spread throughout the two land plots where the company's pleasure craft are on display, totally destroying or causing extensive damage to more than 20 boats." SNIPPET: "Police bomb disposal experts are investigating the site, and have so far come up with two propane canisters."

March 20, 2009 SNIPPET: ""Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" -- Muhammad" SNIPPET: "An Iranian Muslim extremists group identifying themselves as “Hezbollah” sent a letter to three Iranian pastors with a Muslim background threatening them to return to Islam or else risk being murdered. The radical group calls itself “The Hezbollah Party, Army of the World’s Imam” and accused the pastors of being spies for foreign powers, according to Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN). The extremists demanded the Iranian pastors denounce their faith in Christ and return to Islam. In the letter delivered to the Iranian pastors on...

ATHENS, Greece (Dec. 9) - Masked youths and looters marauded through Greek cities for a fourth night Tuesday, in an explosion of rage triggered by the police shooting of a teenager that has unleashed the most violent riots in a quarter century.

Wednesday January 7, 2009 Greek Bishop Sues Homosexualist Group for Defamation By Hilary White   ATHENS, January 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Greek Orthodox bishop has launched a defamation lawsuit against a group of homosexualist activists, reports the homosexual news source Pink News. The bishop is reportedly asking for 1 million Euros in defamation after the group issued a press statement denouncing him. The suit is launched against the Greek homosexualist organization, Synthesis, and activist Leo Kalovyrnas, who denounced the bishop after the latter made comments on the sinfulness of the homosexual lifestyle in a Greek newspaper.   His...

"Pay close attention to Greece; at a time of world-wide economic upheaval, it might eerily presage disturbances elsewhere in 2009" ___ reece has been torn apart by the worst riots in decades, now entering their third week. Bands of self-declared anarchist youths have rampaged through the streets of Athens and other major cities causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, setting off a spiral of unrest in which the nation’s unions, among other groups, have taken part. Both shops and hotel lobbies have been ransacked, and hospitals, airports, and transport have been brought to a standstill. What sparked...

How low will they go?? As low as laser blinding Greek Police: "A riot policeman is aimed at with a laser light pointer during riots outside the Athens Polytechnic. Small bands of Greek rioters hurling firebombs attacked an environment ministry building, shops and banks in Athens on Saturday during an eighth day of protests following the killing of a teenager by police." And that's not all: "A warning from Serb intelligence about the mobilization of an extremist Islamic organization in Greece has put the Greek authorities on high alert. Several days ago, Serb intelligence briefed a Serb parliamentary Committee that...

The rioting began in Athens late on Saturday soon after the shooting in the central Exarchia district, where youths threw petrol bombs at police, burnt dozens of cars and smashed shop windows. It quickly spread to Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki and other towns in northern Greece. Cities on the holiday islands of Crete and Corfu also saw protests at the shooting, which prompted Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos to offer his resignation. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose fragile government has been rocked by a series of scandals, rejected it, a ministry spokeswoman said.

An Albany man who came to town for a conference was arrested on a felony charge and jailed for 18 hours because he had a gun in his hotel room. Eric Dewayne Baylis, 45, said he didn't know that the hotel was owned by the University of Georgia, which put him in violation of a state law forbidding weapons within school safety zones. His employers made the lodging arrangements and he had no idea the hotel is owned by UGA. "I actually didn't know (it) was campus property," Baylis said Thursday, soon after posting a $2,000 bond to get out...

The frontrunner to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, was a Paris agent for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in the early 1980s when it ran a series of missions to kill Palestinian terrorists in European capitals, according to former colleagues. They say Livni, now foreign minister, was on active service when Mamoun Meraish, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was shot dead by a Mossad hit squad in Athens on August 21, 1983. She was not directly involved in the killing, in which two young men on a motorcycle drew alongside Meraish’s car and opened fire,...

2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa 11 Feb 2008, 0028 hrs IST,Minati Singha,TNN Experts say Sishupalgarh is the ‘most visible standing architectural monument’ discovered in India (TOI Photo) BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens. Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle...

Although the White House is poised to back away from misguided attempts to "engage" the Iranian mullahs, don't expect the State Department to play along. Just as State has undermined the president multiple times already on matters relating to every spoke of the "axis of evil," State most likely will continue talking to the mullahs. A recent Washington Post article gave an indication that Foggy Bottom officials may grudgingly embrace a new tough-on-Iran policy—if officially handed down by the White House—noting that State "appears inclined to accept such a policy." But history suggests otherwise. The State Department's top policy official,...

Greek forest fires kill 47 as blaze nears Athens By Roya Nikkhah, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:40am BST 26/08/2007 Forest fires have ripped through southern Greece, killing 47 people, injuring 40 and leaving hundreds homeless. A hot, dry summer and a three-day heatwave with temperatures of 40C created the tinderbox conditions A national state of emergency was declared yesterday as firemen fought up to 170 fires which have raged since Friday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of villages. The southern Peloponnese region was described as a "crematorium" by officials, who said the death toll was expected to rise as gale-force...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A man was being detained in New York for the death of a woman who was dragged for several miles under a minivan after trying to stop the driver from fleeing a collision, officials said Monday. Abdelaziz Bilal Hamze, 24, was detained on Delta flight 132 bound for Athens, Greece, Broward County Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him while the plane was pulling away from the gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Cohen said. Broward sheriff's deputies were en route to New York to interview Hamze,...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - January 19, 2007, Friday Analysis. By GIS Staff. Reliable sources indicate that the Chinese-built RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007, was supplied to the leftist Greek terrorist organization, Revolutionary Struggle, by the Albanian jihadist -linked group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK). The confirmation of the link demonstrates the growing linkages between anti-Western leftist terrorist groups and anti-Western Islamist jihadi groups, and there is some suggestion that the reappearance of Revolutionary Struggle may have been prompted directly by support received from the cash-rich KLA. The KLA...

Dig unearths ancient theater Excavation work at a site in a northern Athens suburb, where sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered on Thursday, should prove whether the structure is the fabled ancient theater of Acharnae, archaeologists said yesterday. Modern Menidi, where the remains of the 4th century BC theater were found by construction workers, is believed to have been built upon the ancient village of Acharnae, the largest of a string of settlements outside Athens, according to chief excavator Maria Platonos-Yiota. If the theater is proven to be that of Acharnae – which is referred to in the...

Greece’s political world unanimously condemned the hit at the US embassy compound in central Athens. A rocket-propelled device was fired early on Friday morning from across the street and hit the third floor of the building, causing minimal damage only. The Greek Government declared its determination to stamp out reviving terrorism, whose latest hit is but a blow against Democracy and Greece’s interests, and affects the bilateral ties between Greece and the USA. Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis was immediately briefed on the attack, and then chaired a meeting at Maximos Mansion attended by Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Public Order,...

Hieromartyr Hierotheus the Bishop of Athens Commemorated on October 4 (Old Calendar Oct 17) The Hieromartyr Hierotheus, the first Bishop of Athens, was a member of the Athenian Areopagos and was converted to Christ by the Apostle Paul together with St Dionysius the Areopagite (October 3). The saint was consecrated by the Apostle Paul to the rank of bishop. According to Tradition, Bishop Hierotheus was present with St Dionysius at the funeral of the Most Holy Theotokos. St Hierotheus died a martyr's death in the first century.

Police arrested a University of Georgia student Tuesday for allegedly running down two women in the parking lot of a local McDonald's after they argued over who was next in line. Ruth Catherine Driscoll-Dunn, 24, was taken into custody at her apartment a half-mile from the fast-food restaurant on Gaines School Road and charged with two counts of aggravated assault. Police said Driscoll-Dunn argued Saturday morning with two women over who was first in line when a new cashier opened up, and that Driscoll-Dunn waited for the women in her Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot and veered into them...

The California Assembly just passed a bill widely described in the press as “an end run around the Electoral College.” It now goes to the California Senate, which is likely to agree. There is only one slight problem with this proposal. It is thrice-times unconstitutional. The bill is an “interstate compact,” and has been introduced in the legislatures of most of the largest states, by do-gooders who are clueless about the Constitution and how it works. The theory is that if states possessing “a majority of the votes in the Electoral College” pass similar bills, those states would be committed...

Typhoid May Have Caused Fall of Athens, Study Finds Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News February 27, 2006 An ancient medical mystery—the cause of a plague that wracked Athens from 426 to 430 B.C. and eventually led to the city's fall—has been solved by DNA analysis, researchers say. The ancient Athenians died from typhoid fever, according to a new study. Scientists from the University of Athens drew this conclusion after studying dental pulp extracted from the teeth of three people found in a mass grave in Athens' Kerameikos cemetery. The mass grave was first discovered in 1994 and was dated...

ATHENS (AFP) - Its austere white is on every postcard, but the Athens Parthenon was originally daubed with red, blue and green, the Greek archaeologist supervising conservation work on the 2,400-year-old temple said. "A recent cleaning operation by laser revealed traces of haematite (red), Egyptian blue and malachite-azurite (green-blue) on the sculptures of the western frieze," senior archaeologist Evi Papakonstantinou-Zioti told AFP. While archaeologists had found traces of the first two colours elsewhere on the temple years ago, the malachite-azurite colouring was only revealed in the latest restoration process, Papakonstantinou-Zioti said. Given the testimony of ancient writers, it is not...

Secret of ancient Athens plague is being unraveled Kerameikos, Athens’s ancient cemetery, has yielded conclusive evidence as to the nature of the plague that decimated a third of the population of the ancient city and influenced the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars. Scientists at Athens University’s School of Dentistry have used molecular biology to help solve the riddle of one of history’s biggest mysteries.Greek scientists find typhoid after excavating graves By Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis (1) Recent findings from a mass grave in the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos in central Athens show typhoid fever may have caused the plague of Athens,...

strong earthquake occurred at 11:34:52 (UTC) on Sunday, January 8, 2006. The magnitude 6.7 event has been located in SOUTHERN GREECE. The hypocentral depth was estimated to be 38 km (23 miles). (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.) Magnitude 6.7 Date-Time Sunday, January 8, 2006 at 11:34:52 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Sunday, January 8, 2006 at 1:34:52 PM = local time at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location 36.250°N, 23.498°E Depth 37.7 km (23.4 miles) Region SOUTHERN GREECE Distances 95 km (60 miles) NNW of Chania, Crete, Greece 150 km (95 miles) SE of...

US vows to track down hijacker freed early By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 23/12/2005) The United States has vowed to track down and bring to trial a Lebanese hijacker who has been secretly released after serving 19 years in a German prison for seizing an airliner in 1985 and killing a US navy diver. The Bush administration said it had asked Germany not to release Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was jailed for life for his role in the hijacking of TWA's Flight 847 from Athens to Rome and the shooting of one of the passengers, Robert Stethem. Despite...

The main square in Athens has been rocked by a bomb explosion, police say. The blast occurred at about 0600 (0400 GMT), in or just outside a post office in Syntagma Square, near the Greek finance ministry building. It was not immediately known if there were any casualties from the blast. TV pictures showed damaged to nearby cars, cafes and shops. A Greek daily newspaper received a bomb warning 30 minutes before the blast, state television said. Police say the device was apparently made from several gas canisters. No group or individual was known to have claimed responsibility for the...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Nov. 16, 2005) -- An Athens, Ga. native was presented the Purple Heart Medal here Nov. 10 for wounds received in combat in Iraq. Lance Cpl. John T. Shepard, a 31-year-old boat mechanic formerly with Small Craft Company, Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, and several members of his unit had been conducting a foot patrol through Ramadi’s streets in August when they were ambushed by several insurgents. The capital city of western Iraq’s Al Anbar province is located approximately 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, and has been a focal point of resistance against U.S....

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version November 07, 2005, 11:15 a.m. Ruin? Was is death or renewal in Athens? EDITOR'S NOTE: Victor Davis Hanson's latest book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War has recently been released by Random House. This week National Review Online will be excerpting Chapter 10 of the book. Below is the first part. Check back tomorrow for part two and click on Amazon to purchase A War Like No Other here. Was Athens — or Greece itself — destroyed by the war? An entire...

Paris - A confusing series of alarm signals and the lack of an effective common language between its pilots doomed a Cypriot airliner that crashed near Athens last month, killing all 121 people on board, the daily International Herald Tribune said on Wednesday, quoting investigators. An air system knob that had been incorrectly set during maintenance on the ground prevented the Helios Airways Boeing 737 from pressurising properly, but the crew failed to notice the problem during their preflight checks, people connected to the investigation told the newspaper. Then, as the aircraft ascended through 3 000m, a pressurisation alarm -...