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February 21, 2013

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Avramopoulos: "Our Priorities Are Our Country And Orthodoxy"

Dimitris Avramopoulos, greek politician. New D...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
"Our priorities are always our country and orthodoxy," said Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, after meeting and holding talks with Archbishop Demetrios of America.

Among other things, Avramopoulos stressed that "Greece is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history" and as such he hailed the contributions and hard work of both the Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church as well as the Greek American community.

During the meeting, which was held at the offices of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Manhattan, Avramopoulos and the Archbishop also discussed issues concerning the Greek Diaspora, the efforts that have been made to support Greece as well as spoke about the groups most affected by the crisis in our country.

Avramopoulos then proceeded to the United Nations, where he held a meeting with the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

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Indirect Proclamation of EEZ - Greece Gives Coordinates Of Continental Shelf To UN

AMAZING NEWS - The Greek Foreign ministry has submitted a verbal note to the United Nations in order to ensure that the unilateral action on the part of Ankara of licensing research by the Turkish state oil company TPAO even in areas of the Greek continental shelf, will not create a fait accompli case. The move is in the framework of ensuring that the limits of Greece's continental shelf, which coincide with those of its EEZ, will not be undermined by Turkey which in a couple of weeks is planning to conduct seismic surveys for hydrocarbon deposits within Greece's continental shelf. Basically, Greece indirectly proclaimed its EEZ!

The move was made following an order by Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos.

A Greek Foreign Ministry announcement said that this action ensures Greece's interests, and allows our country to defend its sovereignty in accordance with customary and conventional laws of the sea, and in particular the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982).

With this historical move, Greece has now formally and officially informed the United Nations and its relevant bodies, on Turkey’s licensing research in Greek continental shelf areas to the TFAO company, while the verbale note will also be published in the Law of the Sea Bulletin.

The Foreign Ministry said that Greece wants good neighborly relations with Turkey, as well as with all the countries in the region, but this should be based on mutual respect and international law, especially when it concerns matters that affect Greece's sovereign rights and exploitation of its natural wealth.

Since spring 2012, the Turkish government had unilaterally granted licenses for research to the Turkish state oil company to locate hydrocarbons. Among the areas that the Turks decided to divest to TPAO were some belonging to the Greek continental shelf south of Rhodes and Kastelorizo. In order to protect and safeguard the Greek sovereign rights, the Foreign ministry gave a verbal note to the UN to ensure that Turkey's unilateral action to baptize areas of the Greek continental shelf as Turkish will not produce other results nor create a fait accompli case or legal precedents.

On Thursday afternoon (Greek time), Avramopoulos met in New York with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and briefed him on the issue.

And while Greece was making history in New York, Greek Defence Minister Panos Panagiotopoulos, who was in Brussels to attend a Conference of NATO Defence Ministers, met and held talks with his Turkish counterpart Ismet Yilmaz. Reports said that Panagiotopoulos sent a stern message to Ankara noting that the violations (of Greek airspace and territorial waters) hurt the climate of good relations between both nations.

The Greek minister addressed him with an informal demarche, noting that: "My Turkish colleague Mr. Ismet Yilmaz, and I, had a long discussion, where both sides presented their positions. In regards to Greece's position, we made it clear (from our side) that our country seeks good neighborly relations (and cooperation from Ankara) as well as a framework of security, stability and peace in a region that includes both countries, Greece and Turkey." Although Panagiotopoulos was being extremely diplomatic and politically correct, he also said that the inflammatory statements made from Turkey from time to time, combined with the infringements and violations of Greece's airspace, and the unexplainable provocations by Turkish warships in the Aegean, do not help both nations achieve stability nor do they work towards achieving this.

(You bet they don't).

Articles in Greek
defencenet
onalert

Conspiracy Or Truth - Russia Puts Bombers On High Alert Over UFO Attack


CLICK ON BOLD LINKS TO CROSS REFERENCE ARTICLE
 
A truly unsettling Space Forces Command (VKS) report circulating in Russia states that President Putin had ordered a fleet of Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers equipped with Kh-55 nuclear armed cruise missiles to “prepare for strikes” against US targets in the Pacific should Russia be attacked by the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), whom military analysts in Moscow had detected last week were preparing for a “Bessel Beam” test against at least one of the estimated 40 “celestial objects” traveling towards our Earth and accompanied by Asteroid 2012 DA14.

2012 DA14, this report says, is a near-Earth asteroid with an estimated diameter of 50 meters (160 ft) and an estimated mass of 190,000 metric tons that was discovered on February 23, 2012, and which on February 15 passed 27,700 km (17,200 mi) from the surface of our planet, which is a record close approach for a known object of this size.

A “Bessel Beam”, this report continues, is a field of electromagnetic, acoustic or even gravitational radiation whose amplitude is described by a Bessel function of the first kind, and in a NASA funded research paper published last year, New York University physicists David Ruffner and David Grier proposed they could build a “working tractor beam” which, among other uses, could be used to gather samples of from space.

The “test” USSTRATCOM was preparing for, and which caused “grave concern” among top Russian space scientists, this report says, was an American attempt to use their High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HARRP) facilities located in Alaska, Norway and Guam to create a “tractor beam” around the “celestial objects” traveling with 2012 DA 14 with the “goal” of having at least one of them “crash land” in the remote barren regions of either the Alaskan or Canadian Arctic.

The value of being able to capture an asteroid cannot be overestimated, VKS scientists say in this report, as one single asteroid in our solar system, 241 Germania, alone has an estimated mineral wealth value of $95.8 trillion, which is nearly the same as the annual GDP of the entire world.

Two of the Tu-95 nuclear armed strategic bombers put on alert by Putin, US news reports say, traveled towards Guam immediately prior to this USSTRATCOM “test” utilizing “multiple refuelings” and causing both American and Japanese fighter aircraft to take flight to block them.

Aside from Putin’s anger over this USSTRATCOM “test”, this report says, Foreign Minister Lavrov became so “incensed” over the Americans “space lunacy” he refused to return the calls made to him last week by US Secretary of State John Kerry, though Russian diplomats say they may meet in March.

To the grim outcome of the USSTRATCOM “test”, this report continues, was the Americans first “tractor beam” attempt on February 13 which failed when the “celestial object” they were trying to “direct” towards the Arctic plunged into the atmosphere and exploded with great destructive effect over the Cuban town of Rodas, Cienfuegos.

The second, and most catastrophic, “tractor beam” attempt occurred over Russia when military defense forces fired upon the “celestial object” causing it to explode with a force estimated to be equivalent to a 300-kiloton nuclear warhead causing over 1,200 injuries, and which we had reported on in our previous report titled “Conspiracy Or Truth - Russia On High Alert After Meteorite (or UFO) Shoot-Down”.

The third, and final, “tractor beam” attempt, this report says, occurred last evening when the “celestial object” trying to be retrieved by USSTRATCOM erupted in a massive fireball that lit up the night sky throughout Northern California terrifying many residents already uneasy after the Russian explosion earlier in the day.

Though under strict orders from Putin not to “publicly discuss” anything related to these USSTRATCOM “tests”, this VKS report says, nationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky defied the President (once again) telling RIA Novosti reporters in Moscow that the catastrophic blast over Russia was, indeed, a “US weapons test”.  

Curiously, though not mentioned in this VKS report, Zhirinovsky further stated to RIA Novosti that US Secretary of State John Kerry had “wanted to warn Foreign Minister Lavrov about the “provocation” on Monday, but couldn’t reach him.”

Equally important to note is that within a few hours after the catastrophic blast over Russia, President Obama privately called Putin, after which the G-20 summit, which the Russian President had been hosting in Moscow, declared there would be no global currency war, the significance of which we reported on in our 9 February report titled “‘Conspiracy or Truth - Will "World War C" Crash US Economy By April?”.

To what the ultimate consequences of these US “tractor beam tests” will be it is not in our knowing, other than to note (of course) that the last people to know the truth about them will be the American people, who continue to fail to monitor the madman they have elected to run their despotic and cruel empire and whose latest actions do, indeed, put our entire world in danger.

Sorcha Faal
WhatDoesItMean
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Fox News Slams Papandreou - Teaching Capabilities Questioned

George Papandreou (junior)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Eureka! At least someone in the US is starting to "get it". In a recent report Fox News focused on former Premier George Papandreou and the fact that although he wrecked the Greek economy, he was able to land a small teaching job at Columbia University teaching others how to govern a crisis.

(We knew were not alone, sooner or later common sense would sink in!)

The report even slammed the Ivy League school for characterizing Greece as a “living laboratory” for key global public policy challenges.
"Bringing in the man who led Greece when its economy cratered - and then went begging for bailouts - had some critics second-guessing the Manhattan school."
Noooo.... really?

Speaking to Fox News one source said that it was good that students get to know firsthand knowledge of someone who was in the situation but at the same time take into account that his party has been responsible for the growth in government excess that has been a problem since 1981.
"The unsustainable promises his party made to the Greek people have now come home to roost. He’s been intimately involved in creating all of the problems that Greece now has today. He’s been intimately involved in creating all of the problems that Greece now has today."
Nonetheless it still didn't stop Columbia from hiring him and why should it. Papandreou -like many other wannabes- are opportunists and part of the 1 percent and as we all know the 1 percent protects its own. (Besides, doesn't George Soros fund Columbia, and isn't he a close friend of Papandreou? If yes, then it all makes perfect sense).

Some Americans, on the other hand, especially those at Columbia University, beg to differ. They see Papandreou as being more of a "trophy than a tutor", or at least that is what the report on Fox said, even though they know deep down inside that the man is not qualified to teach, let alone enlighten young minds on matters that deal with the economy. 
“I have no idea what he [Papandreou] is going to be teaching,” one source told Fox, “but one thing he shouldn’t be teaching is how to run an economy. He might want to teach them how to run an economy into the ground.”
Good publicity, bad publicity, we bet our bottom dollar that tens if not hundreds of students will rush to take part in his lectures because in the US "glam" and "hollywood" takes over common sense. Don't say we didn't warn you...

To read the Fox article click here
Greek tragedy? Papandreou to lecture Ivy Leaguers on leading in crisis
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/20/critics-question-former-prime-minister-greece-teaching-post-at-columbia/#ixzz2LXUDZ65D
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PASOK In Turmoil - Punches Fly - Lagarde List Burns Papakonstantinou

Four MPs might of returned to PASOK on Wednesday, only a few weeks after being written off for opposing the latest austerity package, but their return did not disguise the deepening tension in the socialist party. In fact their return comes in a period when supporters of George Papandreou are openly casting doubts on Evangelos Venizelos’s leadership, while new revelations from the ongoing probe on the Lagarde List is a ticking bomb that is ready to explode!

The return of Costas Skandalidis, Angela Gerekou, Michalis Kassis and Yiannis Koutsoukos came at a time when PASOK is getting set to hold its party congress at the end of February. In the run-up to the party congress, preparations have led to tension within the party.

Basically, about 75 members, who still support Papandreou, including some MPs, issued a statement expressing concern about the way the congress is being planned and their intervention was viewed as casting doubts on Evangelos Venizelos’s leadership. The atmosphere really heated up on Wednesday night when members faithful to George Papandreou came to blows with those supporting Venizelos at the party's headquarters over complaints that the congress participants had not been announced yet.

And if that wasn't enough, PASOK could even suffer further turmoil from the parliamentary inquiry into the Lagarde list since it was announced on Wednesday that the day George Papacostantinou received the data from France he checked for the names George Papandreou, Papakostantinou, Economou and Kozani. More exactly, authorities briefed MPs that files containing the names of some 2,000 Greek depositors had been opened on September 30, 2010, hours after the CD with the list was given to Papakonstantinou and that the person opening them had used 28 keywords to search the data, including “George Papandreou,” “Papakonstantinou” and names of other politicians and businessmen.



EVROKO decides to support Anastasiades in Cyprus run-off election

EPP Sumiit 15 May 2006
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Central Council of the European Party (EVROKO) decided, on Wednesday evening, to support Nicos Anastasiades in the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday. The Central Council approved by 304 votes in favour, 2 against and 2 abstentions the Executive Bureau's proposal to support Nicos Anastasiades, President of the right wing Democratic Rally (DISY) party. In statements after the decision was taken, party spokesman Michalis Giorgallas said that officials who had supported either Anastasiades or Giorgos Lillikas, who ran as an independent in the first round of elections, approved the proposal. (CNA)

Attacks on Monastery: Apartheid, Attempt to erase Serb History in Kosovo

Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin said that threats and protests outside the Decani Monastery represent an attempt to wrap up the ethnic cleaning and that there are attempts to remove evidence of existence of Serbs. Vulin thanked members of the Italian KFOR contingent, “without whom the monastery would most probably have been torched down”, recalling that this was the fifth assault on the Visoki Dečani since the 1999 bombing.

The remaining Serbs in Decani are monks of the monastery, so this is just another attempt to complete the ethnic cleansing set off with the bombing campaign, Vulin told Tanjug, adding that the idea is to expel our monks, hijack the monastery and prove that not even law applies for Serbs.
“It is incomprehensible that a court in Kosovo, which the Albanian side deems legitimate, delivers a verdict, and that verdict is not valid because it is in Serbs’ favor. It is evident that apartheid rules in Kosovo and Metohija, wherever there are interim institutions from Priština according to which no laws apply for Serbs, their property, the Church and its assets,” Vulin said.
Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija urged international community to reconsider decision to pull out the KFOR troops protecting the monastery.
“If there weren’t for the Italian KFOR today, and I offer my most sincere gratitude to them, our shrine would probably have been set on fire, or who knows what could have happened. I wish to recall that this is the fifth assault on the monastery since the bombing. It is therefore up to the international community to think twice before granting permission to pull out KFOR troops and transfer protection to the Kosovo Police,” Vulin said.
He questioned the rationality of abandoning the holiest of shrines of the Serbian people to the mercy of those who hold that Serbs do not belong in their environment and that neither law nor anything else applies for the Serbs.
“There is apartheid in Kosovo and Metohija, and it is high time that the international community put a stop on it ,” Vulin appealed.
He pointed out that every time that negotiations approach a solution that could suit Serbia and the Serbs, and each time Serbia comes by a better position in the international community, violence is triggered in Kosovo and Metohija.
“All of a sudden violence erupts and complete removal of evidence of the existence of the Serbs is attempted. Thus graves are destroyed, bombs are dropped on our children, young men are arrested on Orthodox Christmas, and the monastery Decani is assaulted. International community must understand that it has to increase its presence in Kosovo and Metohija, and not reduce it, “he Vulin.
The gates of the Visoki Decani monastery, which is under UNESCO protection, were closed on Friday for the first time in 13 years, owing to threats coming from ethnic Albanians – municipal managing staff and extremists. Access to the monastery was blocked by strong police forces and KFOR troops, including the Italian Carabinieri.

According to a release issued by the Serbian Orthodox Church Diocese of Raska-Prizren, the Visoki Decani monastery Abbot Archmandrit Sava Janjic decided to close its gates to all visitors for the first time in 13 years due to threats from the Decani municipal leadership and from groups which have been protesting in the town against the monastery for days, after a court upheld the monastery’s property rights.

Source - global research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/attacks-on-decani-monastery-apartheid-attempt-to-erase-serb-history-in-kosovo/5323152
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Turkey’s Secret Armenians - Church in winter, Mosque in summer

Armenian girl
Armenian girl (Photo credit: narek781)
The presence of “secret” Armenians in Anatolia has become the subject of a news report in the Argentine press. In an article titled “The Footprints of Secret Armenians in Turkey,” Argentine journalist Avedis Hadjian writes that people of Armenian origin, estimated to number hundreds of thousands, continue to live in Anatolia and Istanbul under false identities. Hadjian’s research begins in Istanbul’s Kurtulus neighborhood and then takes him to Amasya, Diyarbakir, Batman, Tunceli and Mus.

A recently published story has highlighted the existence of many Armenians living in Turkey who have changed their identities and religious practices to escape persecution.

According to the report, those who have been hiding their real identity for almost a century reside mostly in Turkey’s eastern regions. They have embraced the Sunni or Alawite sects of Islam and live with Turkish or Kurdish identities. Still, a tiny community living in villages in the Sason district of Batman province preserves their Christianity. Stressing that no one really knows the exact number of crypto-Armenians, Hadjian says he has seen that many of them are scared to acknowledge their Armenian identity. He quotes a crypto-Armenian in Palu: “Turkey is still a dangerous place for Armenians.”

The crypto-Armenians who live under various guises do not socialize with those who live openly as Armenians, and evade contact with strangers. According to Hadjian, some reject their identities even though they accept their parents or grandparents were Armenian and their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors still call them “Armenians” or “infidels.” Others acknowledge their real identity but say they keep it secret from their offspring.

To church in winter, to mosque in summer

Hadjian says that identifying crypto-Armenians is not easy, recounting several examples. The last Armenian in Amasya, Rafel Altinci, for instance, was brought up as a Christian and graduated from the same school as Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was killed. He then converted to Islam, married a Turkish woman and raised his daughter as a Muslim. Only recently has he begun to acknowledge that he is an Armenian. Jazo Uzal, a villager from the province of Mus, goes to church in Istanbul, where he spends the winters, but when he returns home during the summer he observes the Muslim rites of worship, including fasting.

In Diyarbakir, lawyer Mehmet Arkan says he became aware of his family’s Armenian identity at the age of seven. “Until 10 years ago, we used to conceal our identity from everybody, but being an Armenian in Diyarbakir is no longer dangerous,” Arkan says, pointing to the restoration of the Surp Giragos Church in the city. He explains he does not feel less Armenian for being a Sunni and performing Muslim prayers.

In some cases, secret Armenians have been transformed in surprising ways. The Ogasyan clan from Bagin village in Palu, for instance, survived the “events” of 1915 and emigrated to the United States, settling in Rhode Island. But before their departure, a Kurdish tribal chief abducted the family’s youngest son Kirkor to use him as a laborer in his fields. The chief then married off the underage Kirkor to an orphan named Zerman. The couple settled in a village in Palu, converted to Islam and adopted Turkish names. They even went on a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca together.

Years later, relatives in the U.S. got in touch with Kirkor and Zerman. Today the couple’s grandson is an imam in Harput, while their second-generation nephew Oshayan Cloloyan is the archbishop of the Armenian Church in New York.

Hadjian writes about the presence of crypto-Armenians also in Tunceli and its environs, and recounts an encounter he had in Sason. The journalist describes a girl aged 6 or 7 in a group of Armenians heading to the Raman Mountains on pilgrimage. Due to the force of the wind, the white sack on the girl’s back turns around to reveal the Armenian cross. The journalist approaches the girl to take a picture. She hides her face behind her scarf, and when asked whether she is Armenian or has Armenian relatives, she answers: “We are Muslims.”

Source - al-monitor

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