Who will represent Greece at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest? One thing is for sure, singer Anna Vissi was not impartial today showing complete preference to the two Cypriot artists that are competing to represent Greece and Cyprus. Just a few hours before the finals, Anna Vissi posted the winning names in a twitter post claiming that they would be Eleftheria Eleftheriou for Greece and Evi for Cyprus. All of a sudden her followers started flooding her account with tens of tweets so to correct this she made a second post claiming that she was just rooting for the two girls, and not necessarily announcing the winning names. We are still not convinced. And with that in mind.. good luck Eleftheria and Evi.
Eurovision 2012 Greece - The four songs competing this year are:
1)Velvet Fire - No Parking
2)Cassiopeia - Killer Bee
3)Dora ft. Claydee Lupa - Baby I'm Yours
4)Eleftheria Eleftheriou - Aphrodisiac
It looks like THE SLOG has set out to expose the Greek elite and we here at hellasfrappe say ITS ABOUT TIME! In a recent blog post the author of the blog examines "the good life and bad deeds of the Greek elite". He says large numbers of poverty-stricken Greeks are wondering this weekend why their Finance Minister’s current account with an Athenian bank has in excess of three million euros in it. He is clearly a man with little need to worry about sweating his assets, and with every day the evidence as to why that might be keeps on piling up – thanks to the generosity of Greek contacts fed up of seeing their country rogered by fatties. It seems that no matter where you start in the Greek elite, all roads lead to Evangelo Venizelos. But today... he will start with with Greco-German trougher, Margarita Mathiopoulus.
As the daughter of a senior leftist member of the Greek elite, Margarita Mathiopoulus was always going to be well-connected. After the military junta took over in Athens, the Mathiopoulus clan were given political asylum in Germany. Thus she grew up in the BundesRepublik, there mixing with many elements of the social democrat Left, and catching the eye of statesman Willy Brandt. She speaks fluent German and Greek, and very good English.
For a while her reputaion was based on a glittering academic career, but then some clouds appeared to spoil things a little. As the Soviet Union appeared more and more wobbly in the 1980s, Mathiopoulus declared in the German media that “The citizens of the GDR do not want reunification. At demonstrations they demand reform, not reunification. We have to recognise the division of Germany to overcome the division of Europe.” That was Brandt Ostpolitik personified – and an interesting comment given the events that immediately followed. Given the recent actions of Berlin, it sounds even more interesting.
She was proved spectacularly wrong – and classically gullible in the manner of most of the European soft Left at the time. But her governmental influence didn’t wane. In the academic sphere, however, her career took a nosedive. Investigative journalists at Der Spiegel had long suspected Margarita of being a phony, and in September 1989 the title reported that her doctoral dissertation was “in several places almost verbatim” copied from the work of others. Without much care or subtlety, it was fairly obvious that she had plagiarised other theses, and her doctorate was thus withdrawn. It was time for Margarita to diversify….and this she did with spectacular success.
From 1992 to 1997, she was a Board director, Head of Marketing Communications and International Relations at the Norddeutsche Landesbank.Very odd title that one, but perhaps reflecting that during this period she had become the Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to rising politician Guido Westerwelle. Herr Westerwelle is now Angela Merkel’s Foreign Minister. Hold that thought.
Mathiopoulus (l) with German Foreign Minister Bruno Westerwelle
From 1998 to 2001, Mathiopoulos became chief adviser to the CEO of the UK aerospace and defence company BAE Systems. And we all know what happened there. But being female and therefore born to multi-task, in 2000 she also became Chairperson of the panel sitting to decide on how to restructure the Greek armed forces. And in that last year of chairing the future of corrupt Greek arms procurement, Margarita teamed up in July with Klaus Naumann , Istvan Gyarmati and Carl Bildt, to found the European Advisory Group (EAG) with offices in Berlin, Hong Kong and Washington, where she is still the managing partner.
Like I said, a seriously connected lady. But once again, all is not rosy in her cv. Thanks to very much appreciated assistance from the Greek website porta2porta (door to door), I am now able to reveal some details from a confidential report on defense issues between the German Bundesrepublik and the Hellenic Republic of Greece. Further revelations from this will follow but for the time being (although Ms Mathiopoulus doesn’t feature much in the report) she is a person uniquely well placed to have taken advantage or otherwise from the German/Greek defense relationship.
During her years of diversification, Mathiopoulus had become a facilitating consultant via EAG to one of the most crooked engineering and military suppliers in history, the German company Ferrostaal. Simply typing ‘Ferrostaal bribery’ into Google evokes 312,000 references and sites. We shall be learning a great deal more about Ferrostaal in due course, but let’s focus on EAG’s leading light for a few paragraphs. In 2004 – again with Maragarita’s alleged facilitation input – Ferrostaal formed a joint venture with German arms dealer KruppThyssen to supply submarines to various southern and Third World folks…. including Greece. The venture – Marine Force International (MFI) – based itself in London. Given Mathiopoulus’s positive experiences with BaE, one can only assume that it was her advice that led to the office being based in the homeland of serial justice perverter Tony Blair.
As it happens, KruppThyssen is a straight company as far as one can tell. On 8th December last – following numerous graft charges being thrown at Ferrostaal by judges throughout Germany – Der Spiegel reported that Krupp was pulling out of MFI, effective immediately. The publication observed (my emphasis) ‘ThyssenKrupp’s planned withdrawal is believed to be linked to a corruption scandal involving Ferrostaal. The Munich public prosecutor’s office has accused Ferrostaal of paying millions of euros in bribes to Greece related to the purchase of 214-class submarines.’
The man in charge of the Defense portfolio in Greece from 2009-2011 was….Evangelo Venizelos. The very same man who authored a law to make all Greek Government ministers immune from corruption prosecutions. But meanwhile, back to Margarita the multitasking multinational minx. So central to the MFI joint venture was Mathiopoulus, she was consulting for the company even before it became operational. A confidential report commissioned by senior officials in Germany notes as follows:
‘[She] was to assist with anticipated projects in Egypt and Croatia. Although no projects materialized, Ms Mathiopoulus received 1.2 million euros….her attorney allegedly maintained in a telephone conversation with MFI that his client ‘could not turn up empty-handed’ for the discussions in Egypt’.
Call this a leap, but I guess that kind of fingers Margarita of the dolce vita as a bag-carrier for bribes. But there doesn’t seem to be a record of any money going from EAG to Egyptian authorities. Clearly, some of the MFI bigwigs concluded they’d been double-crossed. A later extract from the report states that:
‘MFI determined not to enter into additional agreements with Professor Mathiopoulus, notwithstanding various attempts on her part in the following years…’
This was the person chosen by the Greek elite to chair a committee about arms supplies. This was the committee that chose Ferrostaal as a major supplier of submarines (through MFI). Writes an opposition source in Athens:
‘Ferrostaal’s reputation as a corrupt supplier of arms was extremely well recognized long before this. They [the Government] have chosen them for the ease of making money, of stealing from Greek people. Venizelos was one of them. He still was last year. It is the same always in Greece….we are betrayed by the political class.’
The confidential report backs up the Slog correspondent’s allegation to the letter:
‘The overwhelming lack of compliance-related discussions and action at the Vorstand [Boardroom ] level is striking, particularly in the light of Ferrostaal’s history of paying bribes prior to Germany’s adoption of the OECD anti-bribery convention in 1997…’
But today’s piece is making a simple point, using the unfortunate but thoroughly deserving body of Margarita Mathiopoulus as the medium. It is this: the Greek elite is run on the basis of who knows whom, who has the contacts, who will pay the money, and where a turn can be made. Everyone knows everyone else in this tiny, almost incestuous Establishment – and almost all of them are ineluctably corrupted by the system into which they have been born.
Ms Mathiopoulus herself has shown how – despite cheating in her academic life, displaying glaring examples of poor judgement, and involvement in shady dealings – she has continued to prosper on the basis of happy connections rather than real talent. I am old-fashioned enough to reject David Cameron’s idea of ‘the leg up’. I think the leg up ends up in the carve-up….as the Greek people are finding to their sad cost.
The elite lording it over Greece are working for a paymaster, an EU, and a banking system shown to be equally corrupt, equally self-serving, and equally devoted to its own well being at the expense of the citizens. Of course the Greeks don’t want to leave the euro, because they do not believe they can make it in the post-default world without the help of their EU ‘partners’. In the economic, political and social senses, that is simply bollocks: Greece will be a cleaner, more competitive, happier and prouder country out of the EU. As will, in time, the United Kingdom itself.
The German type 214 submarine…. expensive if you’re Greek, says an article in THE SLOG which examines how poor German watchdog controls on bribery led to Greece being massively overcharged for many military items, particularly submarines…. which don’t come cheap in the first place. The article which was also featured on olympia (with a special tribute) says that we have already seen Berlin’s hypocrisy in enforcing the strangulation of the Hellenic economy via the ill-judged Troika austerity program…while insisting that all German arms contracts are honored in full.
“We paid double for three submarines from Germany,” says an Athenian source who has lodged several incriminating documents with The Slog. Most of this, once again, seems to involve the near-ubiquitous role in German engineering and arms supplies of the multiply corrupt company Ferrostaal. Looking at the numbers, some of this appears to have been German profiteering connected to payoffs: “we give you 3 million euros, you lets us stuff the invoice with another 20 million” and so forth. And always in this farrago of filled pockets lurks the presence of numerous company acronyms MFI, MIE (Marine International), PDM, Zelan etc….all odd joint ventures and often registered in Liberia or Cyprus. All of them have obvious attachments to Greek elite members, and most of them in turn have connections to civil service procurement officers and/or senior politicians.
Several names crop up with menacing regularity…. especially those of Yannis Beltsios, Michel Filipidis, Michael Matantos, Tony Georgiades, and his now retired father in law on the Board of Bank of Greece (a major participator in the recent default bond swap conducted by Athens) George Lanaras.
Using the quaint terms ‘related offset transactions and obligations’, MIE’s books for instance (supported by an independent legal investigation pointed out to The Slog) show that Michael Matantos of MIE alone handed on a grand total of 55.1 million euros during the period 2000-2004. Most of this was to oil the wheels (aka grease the palms) in relation to the supply of four submarines from Kiel dockyard.
The individual payments noted in that exhaustive report are horrifying, but relatively small-fry:
Between 2002-04, Ferrostaal paid 7.5m euros to PDM and Zelan. No activity of any substance can be traced to this Cypriot-based duo, and all the record of directors have vapourised. But their job was to ‘facilitate contract awards’ by Greek ministries. ‘The complete lack of any documentation supporting performance by these companies raises serious concerns’, says a confidential German report. In 2004, Dusseldorf prosecutors fingered Sotiris Emmanouil, the head of Hellenic Shipyards, as the recipient of illegal bribes running into millions of euros by yet another intermediary – HDW – and a later report showed he had indeed received 2.2 million euros via an affiliate in October of that year. Again, no evidence of services supplied exists. In July 2007, 11 million euros were handed to shady ‘facilitators’ Dolmarton. No back-up of tasks performed.
But when it comes to the Greek government’s purchase of four 214 Class submarines from Germany after 2000, you have to see the amounts syphoned off to believe them. Says the legal investigation referred to earlier:
‘The Project Archimedes [submarine supply] contract was signed in 2000. It was in the volume of 1.14bn euros…..the [German supplier] consortium incurred additional offset obligations of 1.53 billion euros.’
So the price to the Greek taxpayer doubled…. entirely due to corrupt payments made to the Greek governing elite.
A fourth submarine supply contract was signed May 2002. The audit investigation quoted above states that it ‘had a volume of approximately 464.9m euros….and offset obligations of 563 million…’
Again, backhanders doubled the price. And, say several Greek sources, even the ‘real’ price had been stuffed with additional items that represented profiteering by Ferrostaal and its associates.
This is hardly surprising when you consider Ferrostaal’s onerous expenses: between 2000 and 2003, the German supplier paid MIE a staggering 84 million euros, of which over 50 million went on bribing the necessary signees in the never-ending line of outstretched hands called the Greek Elite.
But it is the now even more heavily burdened taxpayers of Greece who are paying the price for this crude rip-off. Most of the perpetrators are doing very nicely thank you. For example, Ferrostaal worked with Yannis Beltsios and paid him €1 million because Greek Defense Minister Akis Tsohatzopolous instructed them to. In April 2011, Parliament voted to prosecute Tsohatzopoulos for corruption….but in August, Greece’s Supreme Court ruled against pursuing the bribery charge because the charge of accepting bribes has been barred by the 2005 immunity law.
That law was authored and pushed through by….Evangelos Venizelos. And naturally, Akis and Evangelos have been colleagues together in PASOK for nearly two decades.
Ever more outward go the tentacles of Greek elite squids, these gigantic deep-bribed calamares. George Lanaras’s ex-wife, following years of corrupt sales to South Africa, married F W de Klerk. Lanaras’s son in law Tony Georgiades is a billionaire shipping magnate, and alleged key sanctions-buster under apartheid. He reportedly had the ear of South African President Thabo Mbeki while acting as a lobbyist for Ferrostaal, which led the German submarine global marketing consortium. No matter who’s in power – black or white – these eminences grises are always there in the shadows.
Michel Filipidis is a lawyer who moved to France, where he owns and runs Syspertec, a software information specialist ‘serving large companies, banks, and financial institutions’ as the website puts it. Syspertec is being modest. It’s clients include the French Central Bank, the French Tresor Publique, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole….and many other institutions hugely exposed to Greek debt and fearful of a Hellenic default. Well well well.
And Michael Matantos is a director of three companies, Unimog Investments, Kassos Steam Navigation, and Sunbeam Maritime. It is remarkable how many of the intermediaries in this tale have names including ‘maritime’ or similar. Like Marine and Industrial Enterprises (MIE) of which we learned so much in yesterday’s Slogpost. Matantos’s partner in Sunbeam is Constantine Kyrkilis…who used to be an Executive Vice-President at MIE.
Nothing changes, and nothing ever will as long as these leeches are on Greece’s back. And they are, in essence and influence, the reason why the Greek elite didn’t tell the Troika to go jump in the lake months ago. For these people are part of a vast network of sales, graft, survival and prosperity which would largely cease to exist were Greece to be ejected from the EU.
The Greek nation is facing default for all kinds of reasons that range from insane lending policies by French and German banks to clever schemes worked out by Goldman Sachs to help the Greek Establishment lie to Brussels. But is is also in the mire because of many such cases of official greed and German profiteers. Perhaps, the next time German tabloids start shrieking about ‘lazy Greeks’, they should bear this in mind.
WORLD PAN-MACEDONIAN ASSOCIATIONS Communication: Nina Gatzoulis Coordinator of the Committee of the World Pan-Macedonian Associations Email: ninagatz@comcast.net"
Dear Minister and NATO Member,
On the occasion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Summit in May 2012 in Chicago and due to the fact that one of the issues of discussion may be the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s (The FYROM) joining NATO, we are sending you an analysis of the misrepresented suitability of this country to be a member of the Organization that was written by an expert Balkan analyst, Mr. Marcus Templar.
We are highlighting the following themes that are contained within Mr. Templar’s “Skopje's NATO Adventures: A Conversation on Insanity and Megalomania: The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Bribing its Way to Membership”
Stability in the Balkans is of utmost importance to Europe
Historically, the nationalism that is thriving in the Balkans has created either preconditions for war or, in some cases, was the reason for wars. While the Balkans can be dismissed as “Yesterday’s War,” the underlying causes of the 1945-2001 upheaval remain as strong and as precarious as ever.
Stability in the region can only be achieved if all Balkan countries cooperate
When one of the region’s countries, in particular the FYROM, promotes hostility and inaccuracies in an effort to boost nationalism and advocates an identity, which one could argue is the result of euphoric recalls considering that in the last century their alleged identity changed four times, then the results of such activities can only be negative.
There is internal strife in the FYROM with its own minorities
The 2001 civil war between the Albanian minority and the Slav majority in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) demonstrate that the nationalism that has fueled the fires of this region for centuries were not extinguished or resolved by the 2001 events. Internal strives are still continuing currently.
The FYROM leadership does not encourage good neighborly relations
The FYROM is a small country in the southern Balkans with serious external and domestic problems. It is the only country in Europe that fuels serious and entirely distinct conflicts in relations to its neighbors with no effort for immediate resolution.
There is no freedom in the basic human rights in the FYROM
For as long as the politicians sell their constituencies nonsense instead of the truth by forcing suppression of speech and press and other basic human rights through intimidation, the false concept of what democracy is will continue for the people of the FYROM, regardless of social standing or ethnicity.
The FYROM promotes hostility and inaccuracies in an effort to boost nationalism
The political elite of the FYROM cultivated and still does so through the country’s education system the idea of a “united Macedonia”. It banks on the mental condition of the Slavic population of the FYROM and its diaspora, not taking under consideration that their psychological instability could throw the Balkan Peninsula into a new bloodbath.
The FYROM does not fulfill the NATO preconditions and criteria
The FYROM does not meet any of the preconditions set by NATO and save for the exception of some troops that the FYROM sent to NATO’s International Security Assistant Force (ISAF), it does not meet any other NATO requirements, including a less than medium rated strategic location.
Included in this package you will also find a book titled “Macedonia-Evidence” that contains a letter to President of the United States, Barack Obama that was co-signed by 372 (a number which increases with time) well-known scholars of Greco-Roman Antiquity from the best academic centers and universities around the globe. In this letter the academics and researchers unequivocally declare the Greekness of Macedonia and the Greekness of Alexander the Great, diminishing and erasing all unfounded and unhistorical claims by those in the FYROM.
Sincerely, Pan-Macedonian Association USA- Kostas Hatzistefanidis - President Pan-Macedonian Association of Australia – Dimitris Minas - President Pan-Macedonian Association of Canada-Haralmpos Moutousidis- President Pan-Macedonian Association of Europe-Archimandrite Dr. Panteleimon Tsormpatzoglou-President Macedonian Chapters of Africa-Amyntas Papathanasiou-President
A retinoid called all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), which is a vitamin A-derivative, is already used successfully to treat a rare sub-type of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), however this drug has not been effective for the more common types of AMLs.
Team leader Arthur Zelent, Ph.D., and colleagues at the ICR have been working to unlock the potential of retinoids to treat other patients with AML. In a paper published in Nature Medicine today, they show that the key could be an antidepressant called tranylcypromine (TCP).
"Retinoids have already transformed one rare type of fatal leukemia into a curable disease. We've now found a way to harness these powerful drugs to treat far more common types of leukemia," senior author Dr. Zelent, from the ICR, said. "Until now, it's been a mystery why the other forms of AML don't respond to this drug. Our study revealed that there was a molecular block that could be reversed with a second drug that is already commonly used as an antidepressant. We think this is a very promising strategy, and if these findings can be replicated in patients the potential benefits are enormous."
ATRA works by encouraging the leukemia cells to mature and die naturally. The team thinks the failure of AML to respond to this drug may be due to genes that ATRA normally targets becoming switched off. In their search for a drug that could be used to reboot the activity of ATRA, the team looked to an emerging area of research called epigenetics. Epigenetic drugs do not target genes directly but instead target whether genes are switched on or off. They discovered that inhibiting an enzyme called LSD1, using TCP, could switch these genes on again and make the cancer cells susceptible to ATRA.
Along with collaborators at the University of Münster in Germany, the team have already started a Phase II clinical trial of the drug combination in acute myeloid leukemia patients.
Co-author Kevin Petrie, Ph.D., from the ICR says, "Both the retinoid ATRA and the antidepressant TCP are already available in the UK and off-patent, so these drugs should not be expensive for the health service. AML remains very difficult to treat and sadly is often fatal, with rates of the disease projected to increase significantly as the population ages, so it is particularly pleasing to have identified this new treatment approach. Importantly, we believe these drugs are targeting only the cancer cells and leaving normal healthy cells largely untouched, so we are hopeful that they would have fewer side-effects for patients than standard drugs. We look forward to seeing the results of the clinical trials."
Samuel Waxman, M.D., the Founder and the Scientific Director of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation added, "The Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has supported the work of Arthur Zelent for more than a decade. This major finding is the direct result of years of collaborative research to better understand the mechanism of action using a combination therapy of drugs that are already available on the market today, which may lead to faster cures for patients."
The articles posted on HellasFrappe are for entertainment and education purposes only. The views expressed here are solely those of the contributing author and do not necessarily reflect the views of HellasFrappe. Our blog believes in free speech and does not warrant the content on this site. You use the information at your own risk.
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