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Samaras Says Won’t Backdown on Greek Broadcaster Closure As Coalition Splinters
While we usually think of a butterfly's wings flapping as the cause of chaotic tornadoes around the world, in the case of Greece, it appears Samaras' comments that he "won't tolerate the sacred cows of Statism," after his closure of the nation's TV broadcaster ERT has sparked much more widespread angst than many could have known. Amid the coalition, the 'opposition' leader Tsipras has called for a "no-confidence" vote amid the "institutional coup." A fascinating development given that the Greeks quietly folded when they took away their pensions - but remove the TV and revolution is around the corner.
- *KOUVELIS SAYS UNACCEPTABLE FOR ERT TO BE SHUT DOWN
- *VENIZELOS SAYS ERT ISSUES SPARKED INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEM
- *SAMARAS SAYS WE'RE SEEING FINAL SPASMS OF OLD SYSTEM
And the tension is rising since Samaras is adamant that "there is political will to change," and the ERT decision is a "symbol that wastage has ended." This is not going away.
Via The Guardian,
Greece's fragile coalition government is in disarray after the prime minister tipped the country into an unexpected crisis following a decision to shut down the state broadcaster with immediate effect to meet bailout austerity measures.
The draconian move on Tuesday night, designed to prove that the government was serious about tackling the bloated public sector, has left the Greek public in shock, leaving 2,700 unemployed and prompting two general strikes planned for Thursday.
Opposition leader Alexis Tsipras met the Greek president Karolos Papoulias on Wednesday afternoon condemning the move as an "institutional coup". "Many times the word 'coup' is used as an exaggeration," he said. "In this case, it is not an exaggeration."
...
even the East Germans weren't as abrupt when the cold war ended and kept their own service on air as part of the transition to reunification of the country.
...
However part of the bailout programme, the government agreed with the troika to pass legislation by mid-August to make cuts in "non-essential public entities" including "asset management companies; construction companies; and public television stations".
Deltenre said: "In every country where the troika have turned up, the public service broadcasters have been put under enormous pressure ... they push governments to something and the result is wrong," she said.
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rofl
take away beer & tv and the masses start to revolt
funny, isnt it
A drone TV channel might be in the offing.
Steal the frequency: Pirate TV - All Classic Ogrish, All The Time!
One thing to keep in mind is that different parts of the bloated greek state are sometimes more highly concentrated with particular party loyalties.. in this one, wake me up when they finally shut down the government train company OSE- the company which, with 6000 employees manages to lose over 2 billion a year. the service is so poor and the company so miserably managed that it would be cheaper to just hand the passengers plane tickets to their destination. Anyway. ERT was mostly built up during the PASOK days and was for a long time a bastion of very cushy government jobs (your typical paper pusher in the ministry of assfuckery made a comfortable but not extravagant salary, but in some branches they got several times that) and dont forget all the contracts to producers etc on the connected list. These folks don't have many ties to ND (samaras party) so he doesnt mind throwing them under the bus. so, the move to trim down ERT is also a purge of people from an opposing party (pasok is still around in a weakened state but most of tsipras' overnight following came over from pasok the day before).
This might explain why theyre flipping out so wildly over this.
TV in general is a miserable mass of shit, greek TV is quite representative, total garbage, including ERT. I'd love to see ALL television go off the air in greece, people might start to think for themselves again. It's mildly amusing to see that party alignments still play such a role. For the most part all parties that get into parliament in greece are on the statist side, but they still occasionally fight over who gets some particularly tasty morsel. Also consider that they're only throwing these clowns out now- it was several years ago that they slashed pensions for retired military officers (that was under gpap's watch, in case it mattered to anyone) in case anyone wondered about priorities.
Its not a revolt of the masses.
Its a revolt of the politicians.
The masses could give a shit about 2000 patronage jobs.
LOL only in Greece.
Think a little deeper folks. When preparing to commit massive crimes (fraud) against humanity in a specific region, always be sure to knock out communication channels in that region...
If you did't see it on tv, did it really happen?
I think it's even dumber than that.
I think what you have here is some political infighting between factions in a sort of fiddle while she burns type thing.
All this tells me is that things aren't bad enough yet in Greece.
i spend 3 months in greece in 2009 summer, all was well, beaches full of arrogant 50year old greek pensioners spending money like theres no tomorrow and prices of everything was 3-4times higher then few years before. Even the dumbest, retarded and most timid shepard came down from mountain to resort bought an old washing machine and opened a laudry, 1 round for 5 euro. All these greek pensioners were extremely arrogant, based on their 2-3000 euro pensions, young girls from eastern europe working 12 hours a day for 25euro plus free accomodation...they really deserve whats on the plate for them, and i mean all of them...no mercy
The Greece government is probably the worst criminal organization in Greece and yet they kept the one way comms alive...
You mean, "always be sure to knock out the state-run, taxpayer(=debt)-funded, one-way communication channels while leaving private equivalents in place and not touching the interactive/social media," right?
Because that's what this is: television and radio—broadcast media for a passive audience who cannot respond via the same media—run by employees of the state, to the detriment of private competitors in the same market, are being kicked out of their jobs. This is the sort of thing that ends up strengthening freedom of the press by taking it away from the government.
Note that the internet and social media by which most young people get their news nowadays and by which they react to it, exercising free speech rather than passively accepting broadcasts, is not being curtailed. The communications channels that the people actually use, and use for speaking against the government and even organizing protests against the government, are not affected by this move. Samaris is not trying to be Erdogan.
The only real downside here is that the Greeks might have problems entering Eurovision next year, unless the private broadcasters strike a deal to run the national competition.
edit: apparently Slashdot doesn't like writing stin ellinikin or with non-ascii characters.
Exactly. TV (in the U.S. anyway) is an element of the Oligarch's propaganda infrastruture. They don't want to shut it down. On the contrary, they are dismayed that fewer and fewer people watch MSM news.
To your point-- The channel that transmitted the parliamentary sessions was also shut down. The Golden Dawn (Nazi) party approves the shut down of the state broadcaster.
You can have my remote when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
Gettin' nothin' but static
Static in my attic from Channel Z!
And newspapers under glass, old-style Moscow, may be next.
good one ghandi... I think some in the US sadly won't even notice it was turned off.... they could just show reruns of everything and nobody would say anything! http://tinyurl.com/n8hmfya
Cancel PBS here and...*crickets*, and good riddance.
Cancel Monday Night Football however, maybe a different story.
Cancel PBS? I thought Karl Rove and Ken Tomlinson did that already.
They may have pushed to reduce the public subsidies which PBS receives, but I am pretty sure they still receive some public support even though it is a relatively small part of their total budget (and was also a small part of it prior to any such reductions). PBS is more private than public with respect to using taxpayer resources. Their website states that the federal funding is about 15% of their total revenues (but as much as 40 to 50% of the budgets of some of their smaller stations).
Television is always a political hot potato. No surprise there.
Now we are seeing the chaotic Greek cultural stereotype we are familiar with.
Does that mean the greeks can start thinking for themselves?
Why on earth would any government get rid of the "regularly scheduled programing." That's like Pavlov taking away the bell. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Compliant sheeple come from compliant programing.
JKC, there is the internet.
Just picture it: 'americans', severed from TV, forced to show that it was TV that prevented them from taking action.
Aahhhhh... Too harsh.
Thanks the internet, 'americans' will be able to cast blame on it for their lack of action not matching their words...
AnAnonymous said:
Ah, very good. Installing wifi hotspot in your JKC* franchise will allow you to propagandize from there while preparing for the lunchtime crowd instead of stumbling over to the free wifi at Peoples Liberation Opium Parlour.
Good to see you putting to good use the pure profits obtained from fishing river pigs to stock your establishment.
*Just Killed Cat, very popular Chinese citizenism fastfood franchise.
It's not about the TV station as there are other stations. What I sspect is that Greeks are close to breking point and are now looking for an excuse to revolt for everything that has already happened and for which they did not protest strongly enough.
Perhaps the events in Taksim Square have further radicalsed them.
It's like the wife who for 40 years puts up with constant beatings but suddenly walks because of some minor provocation.
With ERT shut down, finally the NBC network can point to a network with far worse ratings than NBC.
Well pensions are about tomorrow, TV is about today. Governments have taught people that the best thing to do about tomorrow's problems is to kick them down the road and let someone else worry about them. But you see the TV at home, today, can't be avoided or postponed.
Don't think US politicians aren't watching and learning. When it comes to be our turn (and we're ALL going to have a turn in the barrel), they'll try hard to keep the masses off the street, believe me the last thing anyone in the states will do is shut down TV stations. Keep the masses numb. I'm not convinced Americans will ever get off the asses to do anything.
Well I'm confused.
A govt. sponsored TV station is closed down.
So what's all the resentment about? Seems like win win to me.
Hey, the circus is gone, but you still have the bread! It's on the garbage dump.
If you ever watched Greek television then you would shut them all down, pubic or private. Apart from the usual trash there are endless heated political discussions between bloated important but mostly very unimportant commentators. TV is just a distraction anyway from getting off your butt and engage with your fellow human beings.
The funny thing is that ERT will re-open with a 100 mil /yr budget. WTF is the problem? OH, THE OPPOSITION HAD THEIR PARTY APPARATCHIKS SACKED.