Real Crete Guy

from the roving explorer of all Worldly things, the RealCreteGuy, who spends his (spiritual time) in the Mediterranean

[mapsontheweb]

How wet is London vs. Europe?

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Maximum expansion of the Crown of Aragon in the Mediterranean Sea.

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European countries with economy smaller than Catalonia.

[realguides-blog]

There are two Labour Parties. There is the Labour Party of the trendy Metropolitan left, full of lawyers, teachers and various overpaid public sector no marks. These folk have an interest in maintaining poverty, mass immigration and 'identity politics' as it's lucrative managing the client state. The Metropolitan left are not comfortable with the British working class - culturally, socially, or politically - and despise them. Then there is the Labour Party of the ordinary British Joe and Jane, the 'working' working class and regular middle class folks in outdated shorthand. They are an increasingly excluded bunch in political circles but are still potent enough to put a spoke in the wheel of Westminster politicians. The [Brexit] referendum result was a wake up call as to the power of this constituency.

[elladastinkardiamou]

Shocking revelations of how in 1941, Australian prisoners of war on Crete were subjected to non-consensual medical experiments were first aired by the ABC in 2016, but after gaining exclusive access to a new evidence, Neos Kosmos can reveal further details of this horrific story.

While it is well-known that some of the most infamous Nazi atrocities in WWII involved enforced experiments by the SS in concentration camps, the evidence presented shows for the first time how similar actions were inflicted on Australian POWs by the German military.

Originally published in the Journal of Law and Medicine, an updated article detailing the evidence, written by Professor Konrad Kwiet, Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum, and Sydney surgeon Mr George Weisz, is about to be published by the Australian journal Genocide Perspectives.

The article, which is the culmination of years of research into German scientific records, and Australian military archives by Professor Kwiet and Mr Weisz, presents a stack of evidence that shows within days of the Allied surrender of Crete in June 1941, Nazi physician Dr Friedrich Meythaler selected five Australian POWs and injected them with the blood of hepatitis-infected German soldiers. The tests were carried out in Rethymno hospital, where Meythaler, a bacteriologist, was attempting to establish how jaundice and hepatitis were transmitted.

“He was engaged in experiments that the Nazi regime offered him … moving into an area of research that he normally would not have achieved in a more civilised society,” Professor Kwiet told Neos Kosmos. “He examined the prisoners, injected the infected blood, and then examined them again. What he found is that they responded with an enlargement of the liver, then an increase of temperature and other symptoms.”

[mapsontheweb]

The richest and poorest areas in northern Europe.

[realguides-blog]

London is the richest place in northern Europe, whilst 9 of the poorest 10 places in Europe are also in the UK

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Average wealth per adult in Europe, 2015.

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Per capita consumption of beef, pork, poultry and fish in Europe

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[realguides-blog]

Britain has the same consumption levels of fish and beef as Greece!

[mothbug-deactivated20200626]

today I found a Sad Bug Friend flipped on his back and flailing his little leggies in a puddle after a torrential downpour

so I picked him up and put him on a tree outside my building because cicada nymphs only come aboveground when they’re ready to complete their final molt and enter the adult instar

I came back an hour later and he’d done the thing and I’m so proud :’) he’s tired and drying off but he should be up and flying soon!

anyway this is a reminder to Be Cool to bugs because they have tiny lives and work really hard and I love them

[madsciences]

your tiny son is beautiful you should be very proud

[elladastinkardiamou]

At Home in the World

War hero, self-made scholar and the greatest travel writer of his generation, Patrick Leigh Fermor lived on a remote peninsula in the Peloponnese until his death last year. From a humble house he built himself, now being restored by an Athens museum, he explored Greece's romantic landscape—and forged a profound link to its premodern past.

A FAMOUS ANECDOTE, told by Patrick Leigh Fermor himself in his book Mani, relates how on one furnace-hot evening in the town of Kalamata, in the remote region for which that book is named, Fermor and his dinner companions picked up their table and carried it nonchalantly and fully dressed into the sea. It is a few years after World War II, and the English are still an exotic rarity in this part of Greece. There they sit until the waiter arrives with a plate of grilled fish, looks down at the displaced table and calmly—with an unflappable Greek stoicism—wades into the water to serve dinner. Soon the diners are surrounded by little boats and out come the bouzouki and the wine. A typical Fermor evening has been consummated, though driving through Kalamata today one has trouble imagining the scene being repeated. The somniferous hamlet of the far-off 1950s is now filled with cocktail bars and volleyball nets. The ‘50s, let alone the war, seems like another millennium.

Fermor, or “Paddy,” as many educated Greeks knew him, died last year at the age of 96. He is remembered not only as the greatest travel writer of his generation, or even his century, but as a hero of the Battle of Crete, in which he served as a commando in the British special forces. Article from 2012.

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Theoretical map of the Celtic Union of Ireland & Scotland, if Scotland & Northern Ireland were to leave the UK and join with the Irish Republic in a new union or federation.

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The world of Homer, including the regions mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey, and the wanderings of Odysseus.

[realguides-blog]

New Mobile EU Roaming Rates

Its been long promised, but the price drops are filtering through. as from April 30, 2016, using a UK phone in Europe (roaming) will be about 65% cheaper! Rates will no doubt vary according to your contract/ provider, but expect something along these lines: 1.0p per min to receive a call 4.4p per min to…

See more on Real Crete

Get the latest on Crete at RealCrete.co.uk

[elladastinkardiamou]

In the present crisis over Greece there is a furious argument about whether the Greek people should be allowed to vote on the proposed solution. Many of the voices against this come from the world of finance and economics. They say that the crisis is too dangerous to leave to the will of the people.

I just wanted to show why some Greek politicians - and especially George Papandreou, even though he may have retreated from a referendum - might think it important to allow the people a voice.

I have discovered a film in the archives that dramatically tells you why. It was made in 1974 and is an engrossing history of the Colonels’ coup in Greece in 1967 - and what life was then like for the Greek people under the military dictatorship that held power for seven years.

As you watch it you realise, given what the Greeks have been through, it is no wonder that politicians, especially Papandreou, think the mandate of the people is important.

The present language of the finance technocrats, and their supporters in the media, portray the Greek people as just another group of lazy southern Europeans who have fed too long at the trough of state money. A bit like us - but more crap.

What is forgotten is that from 1967 to 1974 the Greek people lived under a harsh and violent dictatorship that tortured and murdered thousands of ordinary people. The Colonels also corrupted the society by handing out vast loans to individuals in towns and villages across the country - to buy their loyalty. At the same time the repression and torture bred a powerful resistance that finally burst out in incredible bravery in 1973.

[realguides-blog]

nice video

[elladastinkardiamou]

For Greece's Farmers, Growing Pressure To Be More Competitive

Greece grows plenty of good agricultural products, but has trouble competing internationally. Many in Greece say it's time for the farm sector to modernize.

Nick Lapatas spent 18 years living in Chicago. Then he returned home to Greece and bought a small farm. Today he and his son sell tomatoes in an open-air market in Athens. Despite the depressed economy and cheaper imports from Bulgaria and Albania, he’s doing OK.

“I don’t know how, but we are making some money,” he says. “Now, what is going to happen a month from now, I don’t know.”

The Greek government has long allowed farmers like Lapatas to charge their customers lower taxes, but under the terms of the nation’s bailout by European creditors, that exemption is expected to be phased out.

Lapatas is dreading the change.

“For us, when they do that, we’re going to stay home,” he says. “I’m going to take a few chickens. I’m going to put [in] a little tomatoes for myself. I’m going to have my land. You cannot do that.”

Some 90 percent of Greece’s farms are family owned and most are very small — 5 acres, on average. Yiouli Doxanaki, who runs a consulting firm that works with farmers, says Greece’s rugged and hilly terrain doesn’t lend itself to big farms. And small farms have trouble investing in the machinery that would make them more productive.

[mapsontheweb]

Country leaders diplomatically for/against German Reunification in 1990.

Red: Against, Green: Support.