{"id":41924,"date":"2010-09-29T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T15:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.palmografos.com\/?p=41924"},"modified":"2010-09-29T18:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T15:39:00","slug":"vivvo-7009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/?p=41924","title":{"rendered":"Greece against… Stephen Hawking – by Takis Michas"},"content":{"rendered":"
The understandable focus of the international media on Greece\u2019s economic debacle has had as a result that other equally absurd situations are going unnoticed. Yet one does not have to look very far or very hard to find also other manifestations of social life in Greece that raise serious questions about the place of the country in the European family of nations. The latest incident concerns the venomous attack by a highly prominent state functionary against the British physicist Stephen Hawking. <\/span><\/div>\n
\u0391 couple of days ago the bishop of Pireus Serafeim issued a written statement dismissing Hawking\u2019s theories which he attributed to \u201cthe inferiority complexes\u201d which the British scientist suffers as a result of the fact that he is \u201creduced to an electric chair and is condemned to communicate by electronic voice.\u201d. According to the prominent Greek cleric Hawking suffers from \u201cconfusion in the mind\u201d resulting from his \u201dunbearable bodily misery\u201d. (http:\/\/news.kathimerini.gr\/4dcgi\/_w_articles_ell_1_24\/09\/2010_416157<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
This shocking statement is not simply a case of an irrational outburst by an individual Greek citizen. The Church in Greece is a state institution and its practitioners are paid by the Greek taxpayer (and by those who were deceived into buying Greek state bonds\u2026) Religion is the responsibility of the ministry of education (which is bizarely called \u201cMinistry of Education and Religions\u201d).The brainswashing of children into the teachings of the Orthodox jihad is a state imposed compulsory 12 year affair. The Orthodox religion is considered as being coextensive with the Greek national identity while in all national and religious celebrations the clergy together with the military and the politicians occupies the central stage. Every leading member of the Greek political nomenklatura (including the present prime minister George Papandreou) see it as his duty to do photo-os with the leaders of the Church. <\/span><\/div>\n
What was however even more interesting than the statement itself , was the deafening silence with which the Greek political class greeted the bishop\u2019s outburst.There was absolutely no reaction even from Anna Diamantopoulou who as the minister of education and religions bears a particular responsibility for the public statements of her underlings.<\/span><\/div>\n
Which of course is not surprising. Greek politicians. like their counterparts elsewhere in the world , are primarily concerned about votes. In Greece, having good relations with the clergy brings votes while defending Stephen Hawking does not. Some-rather most- things in Greece never change-crises or no crises. As this latest incidence shows the gap separating Greece from the West does not only \u2013or even primarily -concern deficit, debts and financial mismanagement.<\/span><\/div>\n
Takis says<\/a><\/span>
<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The understandable focus of the international media on Greece\u2019s economic debacle has had as a result that other equally absurd situations are going unnoticed. Yet one does not have to look very far or very hard to find also other manifestations of social life in Greece that raise serious questions about the place of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1702,1625,1700,1701,1623],"class_list":["post-41924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vivvo-category-3","tag-stephen-hawking","tag-takis-michas","tag-1700","tag-1701","tag-1623"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135769,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924\/revisions\/135769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palmografos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}