Greece is great for many reasons. When Syria’s crisis began, after the drought which led to the over-measured response to protesters by Assad, millions fled the IS crisis fomented in Syria (by you know who). After 2012, up until 2016, 2.5 Million refugees from Syria’s religious war for oil arrived on the shores of Greece.  A population of 10 Million Greeks accepted the desperate refugees with philotimia. The kindness we are taught as children, which follows many Greeks for life. This is one reason why there is much good feeling for Greece that may explain why terror attacks by Muslim groups in Greece are way below the European average.

At the beautiful Acropolis, every morning a detail raises the Greek flag.

When the Nazis arrived and presented the flag officer with a swastika to raise, he wrapped himself in his Greek flag and hurled himself over the edge.
Konstantinos Koukidis is his name, and although this character and deed was a morale boosting myth, death before dishonor is the Greek way. As is making up mythical figures to represent deeds and ideals. At the ceremony to mark the end of the German occupation, 75 years later, symbolically the day the swastika flag was taken down, Mayor Bakoyannis,  said;

“Above all, we must not forget. We must not forget what happened then and afterwards. We must keep in our memory the parts of our history that wanted us to become divided, separated and to turn on ourselves…we forgot the common enemy. Fascism, intolerance, racism and all that stems from fascism. This  enemy is still alive throughout the world. It may not conquer countries but it invades societies, corrupts souls and governs people. This is a daily, constant battle,  fought with the weapons of justice, democracy, meritocracy and respect for people and civilisation.”

Words every Trump fan has read or heard? Because they know a genius when they see one. And if he is a genius, then they must be extremely smart to know it.

Greece survived even those 400 years of attempted genocide with Philotimia and a great deal of Orthodox faith. And a ‘to the death’ Communist led resistance.
But after the war Communism was perceived as a threat – and Civil war followed.
The Marshal Plan rebuilding money went not to rebuilding Athens as intended, but to fighting civil war.
Right versus left.
Problem was – the right were right wing; Elites enriching elites, and the left were the heroes of the resistance who fought the Germans with enormous courage and success.
Churchill got that one badly wrong. Understanding civil war is one reason Greeks helped the Syrians in 2012 when the financial reality of austerity Greece is they could not afford it.After the war and the civil war, late forties, the population of Athens doubled again as poverty drove desperate people to the city. And  the need for housing became critical. What happened next has a word in Greek that has no literal translation. (Like philotimia.)

 What’s so incredible about antiparochi is that it emerged spontaneously out of the housing crisis in Athens. “There was no specific law saying ‘OK now you have the right to collaborate and build whatever you like’. It was the people themselves that found out this possibility.” City hall played no part.
Greeks, long accustomed to working things out as a community, found a way. Thousands of unemployed Greeks found work as builders, making enough money to send remittances back to their families in the provinces. The state, meanwhile, could focus its resources on building up other sectors of the economy such as infrastructure, agriculture and tourism.Between 1950 and 1977, the Greek economy grew by 7.7% each year (only Japan recorded higher GDP growth). Construction was one of the main drivers of this boom. The system also managed – very successfully – to diminish the political polarisation in Athens.“

There are some who say that the end of the Civil War took place with antiparochi,” says Panos Dragonas, “because antiparochi was the system that transformed the polarised society of the 1940s into a wide middle class, so there was no reason for conflict anymore.
Instead of a highly polarised city with expensive, bourgeois districts in one area and slums in another area, what happened was that the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class were living together in the same building.This created a social and economic integration that helped obscure the class divisions of post-War Athens.”“The building boom benefited a large part of society, not just the 1%, but the 95%,” says Ioanna Theocharopoulou.

Construction acted as a tool, a way for those who flooded the city from the countryside not only to create shelter for themselves but to also make a living and even within a generation, move from an agrarian way of life that was harsh to a new urban middle class.A further 680,000 internal migrants arrived in Athens during the 1960s, with the city’s population reaching 2 million by the mid-1970s. By this point, Neoclassical Athens had almost entirely vanished. In its place, a sea of ugly, low-rise concrete apartment blocks stretching as far as the eye could see. In the Grexit crisis, many Europeans learned that  the Greek system did not include property taxes. In 2006, a property tax was introduced which made antiparochi financially unviable for most individuals. For the first time in its modern history, the population of Athens actually started to decline. In this climate, construction effectively came to a halt. Antiparochi was dead – for now.

Actions have consequences. So do idiotic, poorly thought out actions. Stupidity is no defense in law. But that is just the beginning and unlikely to end the consequences of a blundering dolt trying to be smart with no reason to believe he could. Without even making the effort to learn the local history.
A lazy idiot product of a lazy idiot christian clan.
And as a result, almost certainly, many new homes will be built in Athens to accommodate the new generation of refugees.
The Trump refugees. Fleeing the blundering dolt.
The man who was paid for playing golf at $500,000 per 18 holes by American taxpayers, while Hevrin Khalaf was being brutalized on video by the consequences of his stupidity and greed. The product of Trump and his followers.

What next for the most idiotic least qualified leader in America’s storied History.
Retirement to a Whites-Only golf course, or a life in prison?
Heverin Khalaf has neither option.

Words: 1700

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  Links to Andrew’s Amazon Page
(Go on. Buy a book. Kindle or paperback.)
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2019 release: Who Lies Wins is based on actual judgments from Britain’s family court. By British author Andrea Lee. A story about family law based on actual profiteering by judges and lawyers abusing children for enormous remuneration.  Interesting for anyone affected by family law judgments.
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  2019 new edition of The Emergency Bouzouki Player first published in 2011,  is a first-hand account of conscription in South Africa’s Apartheid army in 1979 and how I met P.W. Botha.
An anti war polemic underpinned by dark humor.

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