A metal door mural depicting a Greek goddess, presumed to be a work by Banksy: photo by Adel Hana/AP via The Guardian, 1 April 2015

Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus, and the wife of Amphion.

...Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth [including Gaza] as it is in heaven. #Banksy: image via Andrew Dutney @AndrewDutney, 16 April 2015

Niobe and Amphion produced quite a big family: six sons and six daughters, according to Homer; or seven sons and seven daughters, according to Ovid; and there are other accounts as well, some with curiously unequal offspring totals, as though the keeper of the annals had been toiling by uncertain lamplight in an underground still hid deep in the primal woods on the ruined twilight borders of Arcadia.

@Naz1love: #Banksy #returns to #Gaza & #creates 4 more pieces of #artwork: image via Gianni Rambelli @gianni_nigla, 15 April 2015

The point about Niobe to be condensed from the in this numerical way somewhat confusing data, as far as the never overly patient gods were concerned, was simple.

The now empty doorway on the rubble of a building destroyed in last summer’s Israel-Hamas war: photo by Adel Hana/AP via The Guardian, 1 April 2015

It might be expressed as a formula. Niobe = reproductive abundance + attached lineage potential.

At the center of the dispute is the image of a goddess holding her head in her hand, which had been spray-painted on a iron-and-brick doorway: photo by Mohammed Saber/EPA via The Guardian, 9 April 2015

The significance of this talent of hers was, naturally, not lost on Niobe. Ability to bear offspring was considered a formidable asset in these mythic spheres. If, moreover, you are, in any sphere, lucky enough to be good at something, it's not unforgiveable to now and then give in to the temptation to appreciate yourself, at least a little bit.

Bomb damage, Gaza City: image by Banksy, 2015

Niobe's natural pride in her appreciable skill would betray her, though. The next thing that happened was down to her regrettable habit of getting her swag on in range of serious, supersensitive, movie-star-vain senior goddesses.

Bomb damage, Gaza City (detail): image by Banksy, 2015

Couldn't help herself really.

A metal door that depicted a Greek goddess, presumably painted by British street graffiti artist Banksy, was standing on the rubble of a destroyed building damaged in last summer's Israel-Hamas war, east of Jebaliya, 31 March 2015: photo by Adel Hana/AP via Time, 1 April 2015

She finally went too far when she bragged openly that in terms of offspring-production, she was at least the equal of -- nudge, nudge, wink wink, everybody understood she meant infinitely superior to -- for example, Leto.

Artemis frieze from the scaenae frons of the Roman theatrem (plaster cast), myth of Niobe, the killing of the daughters of Niobe by Artemis and Apollo, Hierapolis Archaeological Museum, Turkey: photo by Carole Raddato, 3 April 2015

Everyone was aware Leto had produced but two offspring; yet while hardly numerous, this divine brood made up in distinction what it may have lacked in units; it included major forces of earth and sky, by name, Artemis and Apollo.

Woodcut illustration of Niobe, Amphion and their dead sons, hand-colored in red, green, yellow and black, from an incunable German translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Giovanni Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm ca. 1474: photo by POP, 22 December 2011

Bigging herself up at Leto's expense was not a good move on Niobe's part. Capricious they are, and cruel, and cold, and infinitely gossip-loving, these gods, the original celestial one percent, ensonced as they are on their comfortably funded sofas looking out over a landscape in which the distant figures of peasants are miniaturized, stilled -- falling about, enjoying watching the sufferings of those tiny figures crawling across the distant horizon, even, if they please, taking an idle hand to the history, writing-in the odd bit of casual mischief, the gratuitous prank here and there, revisions executed in the vague Arcadian twilight with odd blank expressions of half-distracted amusement, almost as if human, kids in a school playground, pulling the wings off flies.

Lady Malcolm Campbell as Niobe, Madame Yvonde, Artist Muse, Study Gallery: photo by Claudia Gabriela Marques Vieira, 19 January 2008

Though of course school is out, now.

Niobe: Na Praça da República, em frente ao Palácio do Campo das Princesas (Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil): photo by Alexandre Maia, 21 December 2011

Have you noticed, by the by, the extraordinary numbers of crows that are all about us here in northern Arcadia these days? We're having kamikaze flights of twenty and thirty large corvids flocking at a time, in the midst of morning rush hour traffic, large black bodies dipping suicidally down into the busy roadway to snap up bits of carrion -- often, in fact, the snack-bit will consist of the embarrassed recent remains of one of their own lot, another martyr to the traffic gods. They're dropping like flies.

"Niobe in Tears" (Havana, Cuba): photo by Francis Mariani, 16 January 2008

I mean talk about omens. Et in Arcadia: ruin.

Arcadia: photo by Dick Claésson, 5 August 2011

Certainly an inclination to boast will often tilt back to haunt, but let's not forget that Niobe, to now take her part for a moment, had grounds: those impressive production numbers of hers.

Et in Arcadia ego: photo by Dick Claésson, 15 August 2011

That finished it for Niobe, that one little remark. The heavenly offspring of Leto, Apollo and Artemis, put their divine heads together for about two seconds and came up with a typically direct celestial resolution of the matter: to defend their mother's honour they would execute a brutal mass murder that would wipe out Niobe and her entire brood, on the one hand because it just had to happen, and on the other just for the sheer two-seconds random fun of it (because, of course, they were the gods, and could do as they pleased).

Niobe weeping (Ann Arbor, Michigan): photo by Phil Dokas, 8 November 2009

In mythology this unseemly archaic bloodbath is described as divine retribution, cosmic justice working itself out.

Niobe, Gray Grave, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta: photo by Wayne Hsieh, 22 May 2010

Homer tells that an impatient Zeus finally had the whole offending lot turned to stone, though Niobe herself survived long enough to interrupt her lamentations by tucking away at least that one nutritious meal before, wearied by all her tear-shedding, she too was turned to stone, and became Mt. Sipylon.

Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta: Gray memorial -- Niobe weeping: photo by Steve Grundy, 31 July 2011

On the tenth day after these events, the gods, not so much because they had any sort of a heart or hearts as because the slopes near the site of the slaughter were becoming less and less pleasant to visit, what with the unfortunate views and the odd smell and all, had the stone dead children of Niobe buried at last.

Niobe Glacier: photo by Jamie McIntyre, 3 April 2011

Niobe's petrified grief became the symbolic garment of grieving women in moments of extreme pathos, especially weeping mothers, everywhere, such is her belated vindication, the recognition in stone of a sort of not quite good enough recompense, so belated, after all that, who would really wish to be honoured as a woman of stone forever bereft, forever weeping, and of course the gods never issued an apology.

Edge of a glacier on Niobe: photo by Patrick Gillin, 14 September 2014

The Transformation of Niobe

Widow'd, and childless, lamentable state!
A doleful sight, among the dead she sate;
Harden'd with woes, a statue of despair,
To ev'ry breath of wind unmov'd her hair;
Her cheek still red'ning, but its colour dead,
Faded her eyes, and set within her head.
No more her pliant tongue its motion keeps,
But stands congeal'd within her frozen lips.
Stagnate, and dull, within her purple veins,
Its current stop'd, the lifeless blood remains.
Her feet their usual offices refuse,
Her arms, and neck their graceful gestures lose:
Action, and life from ev'ry part are gone,
And ev'n her entrails turn to solid stone;
Yet still she weeps, and whirl'd by stormy winds,
Born thro' the air, her native country finds;
There fix'd, she stands upon a bleaky hill,
There yet her marble cheeks eternal tears distill.

Ovid: Metamorphoses, 1 A.C.E, translated into English verse under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and other eminent hands, 1717: from Book VI: The story of Niobe

Niobe, North Dakota: photo by Andrew Filer, 21 May 2008

She falleth on the corses colde, and taking no regard,
Bestowde hir kysses on hir sonnes as whome she afterwarde
Did know she never more shoulde kisse. From whome she lifting thoe

Hir blew and broosed armes to heaven sayd: O thou cruell foe
Latona, feede, yea feede thy selfe I say upon my woe
And overgorge thy stomacke, yea and glut thy cruell hart
With these my present painefull pangs of bitter griping smart.
In corses seven I seven times deade am caried to my grave.
Rejoyce thou foe and triumph now in that thou seemste to have

The upper hande. What? upper hand? no no it is not so.
As wretched as my case doth seeme, yet have I left me mo
Than thou for all thy happinesse canst of thine owne account.
Even after all these corses yet I still doe thee surmount.
Upon the ende of these same wordes the twanging of the string
In letting of the Arrow flie was clearly heard: which thing
Made every one save Niobe afraide. Hir heart was so
With sorrowe hardned, that she grew more bolde. Hir daughters tho
Were standing all with mourning weede and hanging haire before
Their brothers coffins. One of them in pulling from the sore
An Arrow sticking in his heart, sanke downe upon hir brother
With mouth to mouth, and so did yeelde hir fleeting ghost. Another
In comforting the wretched case and sorrow of hir mother
Upon the sodaine helde hir peace. She stricken was within
With double wound: which caused hir hir talking for to blin
And shut hir mouth: but first hir ghost was gone. One all in vaine
Attempting for to scape by flight was in hir flying slaine.
Another on hir sisters corse doth tumble downe starke dead.
This quakes and trembles piteously, and she doth hide hir head.
And when that sixe with sundrye woundes dispatched were and gone,
At last as yet remained one: and for to save that one,
Hir mother with hir bodie whole did cling about hir fast,
And wrying hir did over hir hir garments wholy cast:
And cried out: O leave me one: this little one yet save:
Of many but this only one the least of all I crave.
But while she prayd, for whome she prayd was kild. Then down she sate
Bereft of all hir children quite, and drawing to hir fate,
Among hir daughters and hir sonnes and husband newly dead.
Hir cheekes waxt hard, the Ayre could stirre no haire upon hir head.
The colour of hir face was dim and clearly voide of blood,
And sadly under open lids hir eyes unmoved stood.
In all hir bodie was no life. For even hir verie tung
And palat of hir mouth was hard, and eche to other clung.
Hir Pulses ceased for to beate, hir necke did cease to bow,
Hir armes to stir, hir feete to go, all powre forwent as now.
And into stone hir verie wombe and bowels also bind.
But yet she wept: and being hoyst by force of whirling wind
Was caried into Phrygie. There upon a mountaines top
She weepeth still in stone. From stone the drerie teares do drop.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Arthur Golding. London. W. Seres. 1567

Niobe, North Dakota: photo by Andrew Filer, 21 May 2008

Ill newes, the peoples griefe, her housholds teares
Present their ruine to their mothers eares:
Who wonders how the Gods their liues durst touch;
And swels with anger that their powre was such.
For sad Amphion, wounding his owne brest,
Had now his sorrow, with his soule releast.
How different is this Niobe from that!
Who great Latona's Rites supprest of late,
And proudly pac't the streets; enui'd by those
That were her friends; now pittied by her foes!
Frantick she doth on their cold corses fall,
And her last kisses distributes to all.
From whom, to heauen erecting her bruz'd armes:
Cruell Latona, feast thee with our harmes:
Feast, feast, she said, thy saluage stomack cloy;
Cloy thy wild rage, and in our sorrow ioy:
Seauen times, vpon seauen Herses borne, I dy.
Triumph, triumph, victorious foe. But why
Victorious? haplesse I haue not so few:
Who, after all these funeralls, subdew.
This said, the bow-string twangs. Pale terror chils
All hearts saue Niobes; obdur'd by ills.
The sisters, in long mourning robes array'd,
About their herses stood, with haire display'd.
One drawes an arrow from her brothers side;
And ioyning her pale lips to his, so dide.
Another striuing to asswage the woes
That rackt her mother, forth-with speechlesse growes;
And bowing with the wound, which inly bled,
Shuts her fixt teeth; the soule already fled.
This, flying falls: that, her dead sister makes
Her bed of death: this, hides her selfe: that quakes.
Six slaine by sundry wounds; to shield the last,
Her mother, ouer her, her body cast,
This one, she cryes, and that the least, ô saue!
The least of many, and but one, I craue!
Whilst thus she sues, the su'd-for Delia hits.
Shee, by her husband, sons, and daughters, sits
A childlesse widdow; waxing stiffe with woes.
The winds wags not one haire; the ruddy rose
Forsakes her cheeke: in her declining head
Her eye-balls fix: through-out appearing dead.
Her tongue, and pallat rob'd of inward heat
At once congeale: her pulse forbeares to beat:
Her neck wants power to turne, her feet to goe,
Her armes to moue: her very bowels grow
Into a stone. She yet retaines her teares.
Whom straight a whirle-winde to her country beares;
And fixes on the summit of a hill.
Now from that mourning marble teares distill.

Ovid's Metamorphosis, George Sandys, 1632

Niobe, Alberta Grain Elevator: photo by Wilson Hui, 28 September 2013

Et in Arcadia ego (detail): photo by Dick Claésson, 15 August 2011

A muddied girl, donning a cape made of dried banana leaves, makes the rounds of the streets to collect candles prior to attending a mass to celebrate the Feast Day of St John the Baptist in the village of Bibiclat, in northern Philippines: photo by Bullit Marquez/AP via FT Photo Diary, 24 June 2015

Our fate: spilled lead; our fate can’t change --
nothing’s to be done.
They spilled the lead in water under the stars, and may the fires burn.

If you stand naked before a mirror at midnight you see,
you see a man moving through the mirror’s depths
the man destined to rule your body
in loneliness and silence, the man
of loneliness and silence
and may the fires burn.

At the hour when one day ends and the next has not begun
at the hour when time is suspended
you must find the man who then and now, from the very beginning, ruled your body
you must look for him so that someone else at least
will find him, after you are dead.

It is the children who light the fires and cry out before the flames in the hot night
(Was there ever a fire that some child did not light, O Herostratus)
and throw salt on the flames to make them crackle
(How strangely the houses -- crucibles for men -- suddenly
stare at us when the flame’s reflection caresses them).

But you who knew the stone’s grace on the sea-whipped rock
the evening when stillness fell
heard from far off the human voice of loneliness and silence
inside your body
that night of St John
when all the fires went out
and you studied the ashes under the stars.

George Seferis (1900-1971): Fires of St. John, from Book of Exercises, 1940, in Collected Poems (Revised edition), translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, 1991

Smoke from the High Park Fire fills the sky near Laporte, Colorado: photo by Marc Piscotty/Reuters, 10 June 2012

"On the eve of the feast day of St John (24 June), it was customary in Seferis’ childhood village of Skala near the town of Vourla in Asia Minor -- as in other Greek villages generally -- for the children to light small fires in the streets after sunset and jump over them for good luck. Among the various divinatory rituals practiced by unmarried girls on this feast day are the two mentioned in the poem: 1) The girl drops molten lead into a container filled with “silent” water (i.e. water brought secretly from a spring by a young girl or boy who is forbidden to speak to anyone on the way), and the shape the lead takes on cooling indicates the trade or profession the girl’s future husband will follow; 2) The girl undresses at midnight and stands naked before a mirror, invoking St John and asking him to reveal the man she will marry; the first name she hears on waking the next morning is that of her future husband.

"Herostratus, in 346 BC, burned down the famous Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in order to make his name immortal."
-- Keeley and Sherrard

A Los Angeles City Fire helicopter drops water on a wildfire in Santa Clarita, Calif. About 1,000 people have been evacuated from homes as a 100-acre wildfire burns through brushy canyonlands north of Los Angeles

A Los Angeles City Fire helicopter drops water on a hillside fire in Santa Clarita, Calif. About 1,000 people have been evacuated from homes as a 100-acre wildfire burns through brushy canyonlands north of Los Angeles: photo by Rick McClure/AP via FT Photo Diary, 25 June 2015

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, March 2013

A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God

For all the mysteries, engines, instruments, wherewith the world is filled, which we are able to frame and use to thy glory.

For all the trades, variety of operations, cities, temples, streets, bridges, mariner's compass, admirable picture, sculpture, writing, printing, songs and music; wherewith the world is beautified and adorned.

Much more for the regent life,

And power of perception,

Which rules within.

That secret depth of fathomless consideration

That receives the information

Of all our senses,

That makes our centre equal to the heavens,

And comprehendeth in itself the magnitude of the world;

The involv’d mysteries

Of our common sense;

The inaccessible secret

Of perceptive fancy;

The repository and treasury

Of things that are past;

The presentation of things to come;

Thy name be glorified

For evermore.

O miracle

Of divine goodness!

O fire! O flame of zeal, and love, and joy!

Ev’n for our earthly bodies, hast thou created all things.

{ visible

All things { material

{ sensible

Animals,

Vegetables,

Minerals,

Bodies celestial,

Bodies terrestrial,

The four elements,

Volatile spirits,

Trees, herbs, and flowers,

The influences of heaven,

Clouds, vapors, wind,

Dew, rain, hail and snow,

Light and darkness, night and day,

The seasons of the year.

Springs, rivers, fountains, oceans,

Gold, silver, and precious stones.

Corn, wine, and oil,

The sun, moon, and stars,

Cities, nations, kingdoms.

And the bodies of men, the greatest treasures of all,

For each other.

What then, O Lord, hast thou intended for our

Souls, who givest to our bodies such glorious things!

Thomas Traherne (1637-1674): from A Serious and Pathetic Contemplation of the Mercies of God, In Several most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same, 1699

Untitled [Dorris, California]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2015

Untitled [Vancouver, Washington]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, September 2012

Untitled [Salinas Valley, California]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 2011

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, September 2012

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2013

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizarraga, May 2013

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, July 2013

Untitled [Pelton Dam, Deschutes, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, June 2013

Untitled [La Grande, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, June 2013

Untitled [Willamette River, Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, January 2013

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, January 2013

Untitled [La Grande, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, June 2013

Untitled [Samoa, California]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2015

Untitled [Portland, Oregon]: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2013

Workers are seen at a coke plant in the town of Avdiyivka near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Situated close to the 'contact line' between Ukrainian government forces and well-armed rebels, the Avdiyivka Coking Plant outside the rebel-held regional capital, Donetsk, has been hit by about 230 rocket and artillery attacks since hostilities erupted over a year ago. The Avdiyivka plant, owned by industrial tycoon Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest group, is one of Europe's biggest coking plants and provides the fuel for the steelmaking industry, itself a vital branch of Ukraine's economy

...................................................................Workers at a coking plant that has been under heavy rocket fire because it is situated close to the 'contact line' between government and rebel forces near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine: photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters, 23 June 2015

That good shield I threw away
beside a bush is making
some Thracian proud.
.............................To hell
with both of them.
.........................I'm here
and I'll get me a better one.

Archilochus (active on the island of Paros, mid-seventh century BC): Fragment 6, translated by Barriss Mills in The Soldier and the Lady: Poems of Archilochus and Sappho, 1975

..............................................................................................................

.................................Tehran. A child looks on as Iranian mourners attend the funeral of Mohammad Hamidi, Hasan Ghafari and Ali Amrai, killed in Syria fighting against Islamic State jihadis: photo by Atta Kenare/AFP, 25 June 2015

ἀσπίδι μὲν Σαίων τις ἀγάλλεται, ἣν παρὰ θάμνῳ
ἔντος ἀμώμητον καλλίπον οὐκ ἐθέλων,
αὐτὸν δ’ ἐξεσάωσα. τί μοι μέλει ἀσπὶς ἐκείνη;
ἐρρέτω· ἐξαῦτις κτήσομαι οὐ κακίω.

Archilochus: fr. 6: text from Elegy and Iambus, ed. J.M. Edmonds, vol. 2 (1931)

A woman walks past a graffiti by Greek street artist Cacao Rocks in Athens...A woman walks past a graffiti by Greek street artist Cacao Rocks in Athens, Greece, June 26, 2015. Greece failed again to clinch a deal with its international creditors on Thursday, setting up a last-ditch effort on Saturday to avert a default next week or start preparing to protect the euro zone from financial market turmoil. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

A woman walks past a graffiti by Greek street artist Cacao Rocks in Athens. Greece failed again to clinch a deal with its international creditors on Thursday, setting up a last-ditch effort on Saturday to avert a default next week or start preparing to protect the euro zone from financial market turmoil: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 26 June 2015

....................................................Workers at a coking plant that has been under heavy rocket fire because it is situated close to the 'contact line' between government and rebel forces near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine: photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters, 23 June 2015

Meanwhile in Athens: A timeless allegory. That changes by the hour: image via Nein. @NeinQuarterly, 28 June 2015

The spider sees bliss
Approaching in the eye

Of an immobile fly.

Vassilis Zambaras: Web from Vazambam, Sunday 28 June 2015

A young woman walks past a graffiti in Athens called 'Death of Euro': image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 19 June 2015

A woman walks past a wall painting in #Athens, Greece on June 24, 2015. #photo by @ArisMessinis: image via Agence France-Pressse @AFP, 24 June 2015

A woman stands in front of a graffiti bearing the number zero on a euro coin in central Athens: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 27 June 2015

#Greece stands on the brink of bankruptcy's referendum: image via The Telegraph @Telegraph, 29 June 2015

DETAILS: Limit daily cash withdrawals 60 euros, payments and transfers abroad banned #Greece: image via RT @RT_com, 29 June 2015

#GreeceCrisis Graffiti and people in the streets in Athens on June 28, 2015. #AFP PHOTO by @ArisMessinis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 28 June 2015

Anti-EU group gathers in Syntagma Square. Sign reads: No to the agreement, overthrow the EU and the IMF #athens: image via Katie Slaman @katieslaman, 28 June 2015

A man walks past a graffiti in Athens with a EU flag reading in German "NO" concerning Greece's referendum: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 28 June 2015

People withdraw money from ATM of Greek Alpha Bank

People line up to withdraw money from an ATM outside a branch of Greece's Alpha Bank in Athens on Sunday: photo by Alexandros Vlachos / European Pressphoto Agency via Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2015

Leftist youth hold a placard reading, "No more recession, out of the Eurozone," during a demonstration in Athens calling for Greece's exit from the Eurozone: photo by Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2015

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis arrives at the Finance Ministry in Athens for a meeting of the Systemic Stability Council: photo by Simela Pantzartzi / European Pressphoto Agency via Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2015

#Greece has "bent over backwards" on bailout deal but others "have not come to the party", finance minister tells BBC: image via BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking, 28 June 2015

Graffiti around Athens as #Greece crisis escalates #photo by @atzortinis: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 June 2015

Graffiti around Athens as #Greece crisis escalates #photo by @arismessinis: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 June 2015

#GreeceCrisis Graffiti and people in the streets in Athens on June 28, 2015. #AFP PHOTO by @ArisMessinis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 28 June 2015

Banks in #Greece to stay closed on Monday = Sunday evening queue at the ATM ... Some anxious faces: image via jon henley @jonhenley, 28 June 2015

That's a shut bank ... #Greece: image via jon henley @jonhenley, 28 June 2015

A lot of these around this morning ... #Greece: image via jon henley @jonhenley, 28 June 2015

The identity of experience in the form of a life that is articulated and possesses internal continuity -- and that life was the only thing that made the narrator's stance possible -- has disintegrated. One need only note how impossible it would be for someone who participated in the war to tell stories about it the way people used to tell stories about their adventures... For telling a good story means having something special to say, and that is precisely what is prevented by the administered world, by standardization and eternal sameness.

Theodor W. Adorno: from 'The Position of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel', in Notes to Literature: Volume One, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 1991

#digilit15 Thomas Ernst zitiert Adorno (Standort des Erzählers): image via Philippe Wampfler @phwampfler, 26 June 2015

@NeinQuarterly Are you already in Greece? [photo by Aris Messinis / AFP]: image via Micha Hartsch @michahartsch, 28 June 2015

@NeinQuarterly Are you already in Greece? [photo by Aris Messinis/AFP]: image via Micha Hartsch @michahartsch, 28 June 2015

Is this normal for Athens? Busload of troops w/ assault rifles outside my hotel, apparently guarding govt buildings: image via Simon Shuster @shustry, 28 June 2015

A sad spectacle in Athens: image via Stathis Kalyvas @SKalyvas, 28 June 2015

Greek banks to shut for several days and limit withdrawals from cash machines: image via independent,ie @independent, ie, 28 June 2015

Some ATMs in #Athens empty after ECB retains emergency funding limit: image via Ruptly @Ruptly, 28 June 2015

Cut the debt #IMF go home graffiti in #Athens: image via Lizzie Phelan @LizziePhelan, 28 June 2015

Greek media showing pictures of long lines at ATMs. People in coats and scarves. It was 30° in Athens. SHAME ON YOU.: image via Alex Andreou @sturdyAlex, 28 June 2015

Georgios Karvouniaris and his sister Barbara outside their donated caravan, without which they would be homeless: photo by Jon Henley for The Guardian, 28 June 2015

The Greeks for whom all the talk means nothing –- because they have nothing: For Georgios Karvouniaris, his sister Barbara, and many thousands like them, whether Greece stays in the eurozone or not is unlikely to have any effect: Jon Henley in Athens for The Guardian, 28 June 2015 (updated 29 June 2015)

On a steep, gardenia-scented street in the north-eastern Athens suburb of Gerakas, in one corner of a patch of bare ground, stands a small caravan.

Plastic mesh fencing –- orange, of the kind builders use –- encloses a neat garden in which peppers, courgettes, lettuces and beans grow in well-tended raised beds. Flowers, too.

The caravan is old, but spotless. It is home to Georgios Karvouniaris, 61, and his sister Barbara, 64, two Greeks for whom all the Brussels wrangling over VAT rates, corporation tax and pension reforms has meant nothing -- because they have nothing, no income of any kind.

Next Sunday’s referendum -- which, if the country stays solvent that long, will either send Greece back to the negotiating table with its creditors or precipitate its exit from the eurozone -- is unlikely to affect them much either.

“I do not see how any of it will change our lives. I have no hope, anyway,” said Georgios, sitting in a scavenged plastic garden chair beneath a parasol liberated from a skip.

After seven years of a crisis that has left 26% of Greece’s workforce unemployed, 30% of its people below the poverty line, 17% unable to meet their daily food needs and 3.1 million without health insurance, it is hard to see how anything decided in Brussels or in Athens in the coming week will do much to change the lives of a large number of Greeks any time soon.

“Those that were already on the margins have been pushed right to the very, very edge, and those who were in the middle have been pushed to the margins,” said Ioanna Pertsinidou of Praksis, a charity that runs day centres for vulnerable people and offers legal and employment advice.

“So many people – ordinary, low-to-middle income people with jobs and homes and their lives on track -- have seen their lives go drown the drain so fast,” Pertsinidou said. “People who never dreamed that one day they would not be able to pay their electricity bill, or feed their children properly.”

As it has scrabbled for every last cent to satisfy its creditors and ward off bankruptcy, Greece’s government has taken cash wherever it could -- local authorities, healthcare, pensions, social services have all been tapped. In a country of 11 million people, public spending is now €65bn (£45.6bn) less than it was in 2010. “There is no safety net left,” said Pertsinidou.

No one need tell that to the Karvouniaris family. Georgios is a stern man, still strong, smartly shaven and dressed in a clean green polo short and jeans. His sister, remarkably jovial, wears black for their younger brother Vangelis, who died of nobody will say exactly what two years ago next month, aged 52. He spent a brief week in hospital before his death, for which his siblings recently received a €2,000 bill -- which they managed to get written off.

Until March 2013, the three lived in an apartment a mile or so away that they had shared since 1980. None of them had ever married. It worked well. Georgios, a welder and mechanic before becoming a bank security guard, and Vangelis, a salesman, shoe repairer and, latterly, gardener, were the breadwinners. Barbara cooked, cleaned and looked after her brothers.

Quite early in Greece’s crisis, Vangelis lost his job. Then in February 2011, Georgios lost his at the Agrotiki bank, where he had worked for 12 years. After leaving school at 12 and working ever since, Georgios got €465 unemployment benefit for eight months, then €200 for a year, then nothing.

The rent on the apartment was €250. “We spent all we had,” he said. “Our savings. We sold Barbara’s jewellery, for half its worth. We tried to sell this patch of land but no one would buy it. For the first time in 30 years, we didn’t pay our rent. By the end we couldn’t even afford food.”

If the Karvouniarises are not now sleeping rough, it is because a neighbour saw them sitting in tears outside their apartment building, formally threatened with eviction and all packed up but with nowhere to go. They had not eaten for three days.

It took time, but Despina Moragianis -- a relative of that neighbour -- and her friends, Ann Papastavrou and Niki Festas, women in their 60s, rallied their women’s group in Halandri.

Twenty-odd people, none wealthy, pitched in to buy the 15-year-old caravan, which was towed to the Kourvaniaris family’s small plot, once intended as Barbara’s dowry.

For 13 months there was no water, but a campaign by the women persuaded the Gerakas town hall to fit a standpipe in May last year. Later, the group raised €1,000 to have it plumbed into the caravan and a septic tank dug, so the toilet works. The next target is a solar panel for electricity.

Georgios Karvouniaris and his sister Barbara outside their caravan: photo by Jon Henley for The Guardian, 28 June 2015

Every month the group holds a raffle, the proceeds of which buy fresh fruit and vegetables -- apples, oranges, beans, potatoes -- which Moragianis and her friends bring up to the caravan once a week. Fresh meat is once a week. Non-perishables -- spaghetti, rice, flour, condensed milk, tomato sauce -- come from the food bank.

And so the Karvouniaris siblings survive. Georgios digs, recycles what he can find on the streets, takes long walks and dreams of fresh milk. No electricity means no fridge. Barbara cooks – there is a gas stove – cleans, washes clothes and tends her garden.

The couple have no money -- a friendly town hall official paid their latest €18 water bill out of his own pocket -- and no hope of any until Georgios qualifies for his pension at 67. “I’d hoped it might be 65, in four years’ time, but they’ve just recently decided to raise the age limit,” he said.

He is not sure how much he will get even then. Pensions have been a major stumbling block in Greece’s aid-for-reforms talks with its creditors, who want further savings from a system whose benefits have already been cut by 45%, leaving nearly half of Greece’s pensioners below the monthly poverty threshold of €665.

It is not just pensioners in penury. Under a limited relief programme promised by the Syriza party during its election victory in January, more than 300,000 of the poorest Greek households applied last month for food aid, a small rent allowance and to have their electricity reconnected for free.

So far the government has found the money to pay a small housing benefit to precisely 1,073 people, the social solidarity minister, Theano Fotiou, admitted. The €70 a month grocery voucher Georgios and Barbara were promised under the scheme -- “We have no house and no power, so there was nothing else we qualified for,” said Georgios -- has yet to materialise.

Barbara’s face briefly clouds. How does she feel about the way they have been treated? “Disgusted,” she said, quietly. “Just … disgusted.” She smiles again. “But we’ve been lucky. There are people who have nowhere to sleep at all.”

According to a University of Crete study earlier this year, there are now 17,700 people without proper and secure housing in Athens alone. Some sleep rough or in cars, others camp with friends or relatives, or live in squats and hostels.

A majority are in their own homes, threatened with imminent eviction because they are among the estimated 320,000 Greek families who have fallen behind with a mortgage or other payment to their bank.

Two are in a small donated caravan, living on food donated by a group of Greek women. Georgios is grateful, but he also gets angry sometimes. “I have worked all my life. I’ve paid my taxes all my life,” he said.

“I’m 61 years old and if it wasn’t for the generosity of people who three years ago we had never met, we would be sleeping on a bench. You do what you can. But it doesn’t seem right.”

#GreeceCrisis Graffiti and people in the streets in Athens on June 28, 2015. #AFP PHOTO by @ArisMessinis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 28 June 2015

Pensioners waiting outside a closed National Bank branch and hoping to get their pensions, argue with a bank employee through a closed door in Iraklio on the island of Crete: photo by Stefanos Rapanis/Reuters, 29 June 2014

Michael Longley: Laertes

When he found Laertes alone on the tidy terrace, hoeing
Around a vine, disreputable in his gardening duds,
Patched and grubby, leather gaiters protecting his shins
Against brambles, gloves as well, and, to cap it all,
Sure sign of his deep depression, a goatskin duncher,
Odysseus sobbed in the shade of a pear-tree for his father
So old and pathetic that all he wanted then and there
Was to kiss him and hug him and blurt out the whole story,
But the whole story is one catalogue and then another,
So he waited for images from that formal garden,
Evidence of a childhood spent traipsing after his father
And asking for everything he saw, the thirteen pear-trees,
The apple-trees, forty fig-trees, the fifty rows of vines
Ripening at different times for a continuous supply,
Until Laertes recognised his son and, weak at the knees,
Dizzy, flung his arms around the neck of great Odysseus
Who drew the old man fainting to his breast and held him there
And cradled like driftwood the bones of his dwindling father.

Michael Longley: Laertes (after Odyssey 24.226-348), from Gorse Fires, 1991

A woman pulling a shopping cart reacts outside a closed Eurobank branch in Athens...ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS PICTURE HIGHLIGHT A woman pulling a shopping cart reacts outside a closed Eurobank branch in Athens, Greece June 29, 2015. Greece closed its banks and imposed capital controls on Sunday to check the growing strains on its crippled financial system, bringing the prospect of being forced out of the euro into plain sight. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY REUTERS NEWS PICTURES HAS NOW MADE IT EASIER TO FIND THE BEST PHOTOS FROM THE MOST IMPORTANT STORIES AND TOP STANDALONES EACH DAY. Search for "TPX" in the IPTC Supplemental Category field or "IMAGES OF THE DAY" in the Caption field and you will find a selection of 80-100 of our daily Top Pictures. REUTERS NEWS PICTURES. TEMPLATE OUT

A woman pulling a shopping cart reacts outside a closed Eurobank branch in Athens. Greece closed its banks and imposed capital controls on Sunday to check the growing strains on its crippled financial system, bringing the prospect of being forced out of the euro into plain sight: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 29 June 2015

Pensioners stand behind shutters of the Alpha Bank headquarters in central Athens on June 29: photo by Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

I told the carpenters, told the builders, told the electricians,

I told the grocer's delivery boy: "Secure that shutter;

all night long, loose-jointed, it bangs in the wind,

won't let me sleep. The owner is away. The house is becoming a ruin.

Nobody has been in it for twelve years. Secure it. I'll pay for it."

"We don't have the right," they said. "We can't interfere," they said.

"The owner's away. It's a stranger's house." That was just what I was hoping for,

what I wanted them to say, to recognize they had no right.

Let the shutter alone, let it bang in the wind over the garden,

over the empty cisterns with the slugs and the lizards,

with the scorpions, the empty spools, the broken glass. That noise

gives me an argument, allows me to sleep nights.

February 10, 1969

Yannis Ritsos: The Unhinged Shutter, from Railing [1968-1969], in Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974, translated by Edmund Keeley, 1985

People wait outside the National Bank of Greece headquarters in Athens on June 29, hoping to receive their pension payments, even though banks were ordered closed for a week: photo by Petros Giannakouris / Associated Press via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

Pensioners wait to get to get their payments outside an Athens branch of the National Bank of Greece on June 29: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

A man working at Athens' central fish market waits for customers on June 29: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

Debt crisis in Greece

A notice at an Athens gas station reads "NO Fuel.": photo by Milos Bicanski via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

#Greece defiant as default looms: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 30 June 2015

Unhinged: Saying 'No' to the banks

TOPSHOTS Carrying banners calling for a "NO" vote in the forthcoming referendum on bailout conditions set by the country's creditors, protesters gather in front of the Greek parliament in Athens, on june 29, 2015. Some 17,000 people took to the streets of Athens and Thessalonique to say 'No' to the latest offer of a bailout deal Monday, accusing Greece's international creditors of blackmail. AFP PHOTO / LOUISA GOULIAMAKILOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images

Carrying banners calling for a “NO” vote in the forthcoming referendum on bailout conditions set by the country’s creditors, protesters gather in front of the Greek parliament in Athens, late on Monday. Some 17,000 people took to the streets of Athens and Thessalonique to say ‘No’ to the latest offer of a bailout deal Monday, accusing Greece's international creditors of blackmail: photo by Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP, 30 June 2014

Protesters gather in central Athens on June 29, urging rejection of the latest offer of a bailout deal by Greece's international creditors: photo by Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

Demonstrators gather in front of the Greek parliament in Athens on June 29 to protest what they say is an unfair bailout deal offered by the country's international creditors: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

Supporters of a "no" vote in the upcoming referendum on a proposed bailout deal for Greece gather near the White Tower, a landmark in Thessaloniki, on June 29: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015

Explaining 'the situation': Don't worry, Europe helps you

#Greece: Austerity street art (photo by Louisa Gouliamaki): image via image by Pedro da Costa @pdacosta, 30 June 2015

#Greece street artists vent their fury over financial crisis with graffiti masterpieces: image via Jim Roberts @nycjim, 30 June 2015

Sadness in Hellas

Illegal

Tender, ever

green

#Greece street artists vent their fury over financial crisis with graffiti masterpieces: image via Jim Roberts @nycjim, 30 June 2015

Tragic: #Greece bank manager explains 'the situation' to distraught retirees (photo by Yannis Behrakis) #EuroCrisis: image by Pedro da Costa @pdacosta, 29 June 2015

Unhinged: Stardust ofcapitalism,disintegrating

Stardust of Capitalism. Xin-Y, Taipei, Taiwan: photo by Brandon Wong, 8 January 2013

Disintegration of Capitalism | by Ian Sane

The Disintegration of Capitalism: photo by Ian Sane, 7 August 2010

Capitalism Kills Love (Brussels): photo by Jeremy Hunsinger, 5 January 2009

Capitalism = death | by gaviota paseandera

Capitalism=death. Esquina de Mendoza y Buenos Aires (Rosario): gaviota paseandera, 7 August 2005

Capitalism (Ann Arbor, Michigan): photo by Ross, 30 March 2007

Capitalism: image by rstrawser, 7 October 2007

Women line up for a job interview at a Buenos Aires store promoting “liquidación", or sale, amid Argentina’s default crisis of 2001: photo by Diego Giudice/AP via The Guardian, 30 June 2015

Way of Capitalism (Hamburg): photo by Txmx 2, 3 December 2014

Capitalism (Varna, Bulgaria)): photo by marcel601, 25 May 2012

Unhinged: A head full of snakes

Head of Medusa: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1598-99, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 58 cm diameter (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)

Where capitalist production is fully naturalised... The social statistics... raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it.

Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.

Karl Marx, Capital, 1867, preface to the first German edition

Destroy Capitalism $30 [stencil art by Banksy, on exhibit in downtown Los Angeles]: photo by lance robotson, 16 September 2006

Oh the irony: Banksy's "Destroy Capitalism" prints for sale on Walmart.com: image via Emily CohnVerified account@emily_cohn, 3 December 2013

The Horror [stencil art by Banksy, on exhibit in downtown Los Angeles]: photo by lance robotson, 16 September 2006

Enjoy Capitalism. I just printed a hundred of these together with a friend. We are going to sell them to people who enjoy capitalism and market economy: photo by Jacob Bøtter, 23 December 2004

Unhinged: Refill it all

Refill it all. Los Angeles, California: photo by michaelj1998, 2 January 2015

Stoli. Los Angeles, California: photo by michaelj1998, 24 October 2014

Saul. K-Town, Los Angeles, California: photo by michaelj1998, 13 February 2015

Oreo. Wilshire Blvd: photo by michaelj1998, 13 March 2015

For an unhinged future: tight lips from Frau Nein, chump change from Bono, growing resolve to dump the capitalist model -- and a mysterious smell of burning plastic turncoat

BREAKING: Merkel says she won't discuss #Greeces new bailout proposal until Sunday referendum: image via RT @RT_com, 30 June 2015

Bono "delighted" to donate €2 to #Greece: image via Eurohand News @eurohand_org, 30 June 2015

#GreeceCrisis | "We don't owe, we won't sell, we won't pay": Voices from the streets of Athens: image via teleSUR English @telesurenglish, 30 June 2015

Zeus sent home thousands of pro-Troika protesters, earlier today in #Athens #Greece: image via 15MBcn_int 15 @15MBcn_int, 30 June 2015

A sea of umbrellas saying yes to reform and the eurozone. Smell of burning plastic in air. Don't know why. #Greece: image via Ros Atkins @BBCRosAtkins, 30 June 2015

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Wassen_Gotthardpost_1845.jpg

Gotthardpostat Wassen: aquatintby Weberafterdrawing byStraub, 1845; image by Adrian Michel, July 2007, from Artur Wyss-Niederer: Sankt Gotthard

...........................Ways of the wanderer!

For......................Shadows of the trees

And hills, under sun, where

The path leads

To the church,

.......................Rain

And trees, drowsing

Beneath the heavy tread of the sun,

For even so, even as it burns higher,

Over the steaming cities

Hang curtains of rain

For like ivy it dangles

Down without branches. Beautiful but

Now the ways yield

Fresher blossoms

To the wanderer

.....all outdoors sways.....as a field of grain.

Toward wooded Avignon over the Gotthard

Toils the steed. Laurels

Whisper above Vergil, so that

The sun does not

Unmanfully search out his grave.

Moss roses

Wax upon the Alps. Flowers start up

At the city gates, on the level untended paths

Like crystal growth in fallow wastes of the sea floor.

Gardens bloom round Windsor. On high

Arrives from London

The carriage of the King. Lovely gardens

Relieve the season.

By the canal. Deep below however lies

The even sea, glowing.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843): Griechenland (Greece), Hymnal Draft, first version, 1803, translation by TC

Schifflände Flüelen: colored aquatint by Hürlimann after a drawing by Gabriel Lory, 1820: image by Adrian Michel, June 2007, from Artur Wyss-Niederer: Sankt-Gotthard


                                 Wege des Wanderers!
Denn                        Schatten der Bäume
Und Hügel, sonnig, wo
Der Weg geht
Zur Kirche,
                      Reegen, wie Pfeilenregen
Und Bäume stehen, schlummernd, doch
Eintreffen Schritte der Sonne,
Denn eben so, wie sie heißer
Brennt über der Städte Dampf
So gehet über des Reegens
Behangene Mauren die Sonne

Wie Epheu nemlich hänget
Astlos der Reegen herunter. Schöner aber
Blühn Reisenden die Wege
      im Freien            wechselt wie Korn.
Avignon waldig über den Gotthardt
Tastet das Roß, Lorbeern
Rauschen um Virgilius und daß
Die Sonne nicht
Unmänlich suchet, das Grab. Moosrosen
Wachsen
Auf den Alpen. Blumen fangen
Vor Thoren der Stadt an, auf geebneten Wegen unbegünstiget
Gleich Krystallen in der Wüste wachsend des Meers.
Gärten wachsen um Windsor. Hoch
Ziehet, aus London,
Der Wagen des Königs.
Schöne Gärten sparen die Jahrzeit.
Am Canal. Tief aber liegt
Das ebene Weltmeer, glühend.

Friedrich Hölderlin: Hymnische Entwürfe: Griechenland, Erste Fassung, 1803

Landscape of the Alps: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1552-1554, pen and sepia ink (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

The Hölderlinian correspondences, those sudden connections between ancient and modern scenes and figures, stand in the most profound relationship to the paratactic method. Beissner too noted Hölderlin's tendency to mix eras together, to connect things that are remote and unconnected; the principle of such associations, which is the opposite of the discursive principle, is reminiscent of the serial ordering of grammatical parts. Poetry wrested both from the zone of madness, where the flight of ideas thrives, as does the readiness of many schizophrenics to see anything real as a sign of something hidden, to encumber it with meaning.

-- Theodor Adorno: Parataxis: On Hölderlin's Late Poetry, a talk given at the annual conference of the Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, Berlin, 7 June 1963; revised version first published in Die Neue Rundschau, 1964; translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen in Theodor Adorno: Notes to Literature, Volume Two, 1992

The Hare Hunt: Pieter Bruegel the Elder,1560, etching and engraving, 223 x 291 mm (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Solicitudo Rustica (Country Concerns): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1552-54, pen and brown ink over black chalk, 244 x 352 mm (British Museum, London)

Solicitudo Rustica (Country Concerns) (detail): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1552-54, pen and brown ink over black chalk, 244 x 352 mm (British Museum, London)

Milky Way's Galactic Plane | by sjrankin

Milky Way's Galactic Plane. Edited European Southern Observatory mosaic image (created by the ESO) of the Milky Way's galactic plane: image by Stuart Rankin, 29 December 2014

The time of nature has passed

NSA data center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 4, Bluffdale, Utah, USA | by gruntzooki

NSA Data Center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 4, Bluffdale, Utah: photo by Cory Doctorow, 7 July 2014

like the dinosaurs.

If Kahn designed a data center, it would go a little something like this. | by ckeech

If Kahn designed a data center, it would go a little bit like this [390 Lorimer, Brooklyn]: photo by Corbin Keech, 28 October 2012

The thought of a "natural"
state of things troubles
and distracts.

Dead Admin. No One was really dead of course: p. But as I was shooting pictures of a datacenter... I thought I wanted to be part of the pictures ;) So here I am -- [Valbonne, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azul, France]: photo by Arthur Caranta, 8 October 2009

There is increasingly the threat
of an objective penalty
for being excluded
from the game,
from these networked arrangements.

Untitled [Underground data centers, Stockholm]: photo by Antony Antony, 28 July 2009

That no longer matters.

Google Data Center - The Dalles, Oregon | by Tony Webster

Google Data Center, The Dalles, Oregon: photo by Tony Webster, 17 May 2015

The world gradually draws into
a global unit, knitted
together by the networks stitched
into everyone's private
arrangements.

Snowing in Lockport, keeping Yahoo servers nice and cool! | by robscomputer

Snowing in Lockport, keeping Yahoo servers nice and cool. [Yahoo! Lockport Data Center, Lockport, New York]: photo by Rpbert Freiberger, 26 March 2015

At the same time
seeing these arrangements
clearly and objectively from the inside
is impossible.

NSA data center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 1, Bluffdale, Utah, USA | by gruntzooki

NSA Data Center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 1, Bluffdale, Utah: photo by Cory Doctorow, 7 July 2014

Only by being cut adrift,
stranded
on the outside,
does one begin
to make out the workings
of the game --
to make out that it is a game
and not a "natural" state of things.

NSA data center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 3, Bluffdale, Utah, USA | by gruntzooki

NSA Data Center (seen from Freedom Ridge) 3, Bluffdale, Utah: photo by Cory Doctorow, 7 July 2014

A "natural" state of things
may or may not
ever have obtained.

Anonymous in Salt Lake City | by Occupy Global

NSA Utah Data Center. Protest. National Security Agency Data Center at Camp Williams. The Utah Data Center and Bumblehive Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (IC CNCI). Anonymous "Guy Fawkes" protest of the NSA Utah Data Center at the Bonnevile Salt Flats: photo by Occupy Global, 13 July 2013

That no longer matters.
The thought of a "natural"
state of things troubles
and distracts.
The time of nature has passed
like the dinosaurs.

Information. Datacenter up at the ol' 9-5: photo by John McStravick, 3 December 2009

All that is left,
effectively, is the present
drawing toward it
as a magnet attracts
iron filings
the mechanical regime
of a future
from which the players of the game,
enclosed
as in bubbles
by their socially enforced subscription
to what is perceived
as an inevitable
and necessary
condition,
would not be able to escape
even if the inchoate impulse to escape
were to become a conscious motive.

NSA Utah Data Center Protests | by Occupy Global

The world gradually draws into
a global unit, knitted
together by the networks stitched
into everyone's private
arrangements.
There is increasingly the threat
of an objective penalty
for being excluded
from the game,
from these networked arrangements.

At the same time
seeing these arrangements
clearly and objectively from the inside
is impossible.
Only by being cut adrift,
stranded
on the outside,
does one begin
to make out the workings
of the game --
to make out that it is a game
and not a "natural" state of things.

A "natural" state of things
may or may not
ever have obtained.
That no longer matters.
The thought of a "natural"
state of things troubles
and distracts.
The time of nature has passed
like the dinosaurs.
All that is left,
effectively, is the present
drawing toward it
as a magnet attracts
iron filings
the mechanical regime
of a future
from which the players of the game,
enclosed
as in bubbles
by their socially enforced subscription
to what is perceived
as an inevitable
and necessary
condition,
would not be able to escape
even if the inchoate impulse to escape
were to become a conscious motive.

Google Glass (detail): photo by Antonio Zugaldia, 27 June 2012

even if the inchoate impulse to escape

Google search cables: photo by Google /EPA (via the Guardian, 22 January 2013)

were to become a conscious motive.

Google data center, Council Bluffs, Iowa: photo by Google/EPA (via The Guardian, 29 June 2013)

The world gradually draws into

Google data center, The Dalles, Oregon, exterior view: photo by Visitor7, 11 September 2011

a global unit, knitted

NSA data center, Bluffdale, Utah: photo by Swilsonmc, 21 April 2013

to make out the workings
of the game --

I had always imagined paradise as a kind of library (Borges): photo by Ryan Dearth, 30 January 2011

to make out that it is a game

Bibliothek("Paradise as a kind of library"): photo by Andreas Gursky,1999 (via The Photography Files, 25 July 2011)

The world gradually draws into
a global unit, knitted
together by the networks stitched
into everyone's private
arrangements.

Children playing by road near school house, Kansas [?]: photo by John Vachon, c. 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

At the same time
seeing these arrangements
clearly and objectively from the inside
is impossible.

^{Three children playing "hide and seek" in a forest (Versteckspiel im Wald): Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim (1808-1879), n.d., oil on tinplate, 17 x 20 cm}

A "natural" state of things
may or may not
ever have obtained.

Children's Games (detail: "Hide and Seek"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

That no longer matters.

Blindman's buff | by Boston Public Library

Blindman's Buff: Winslow Homer (1836-1910, wood engraving, illustration in Ballou's Pictorial, Volume XIII, 28 November 1857 (Winslow Homer Collection, Boston Public Library, posted by BPL 23 March 2011

The time of nature has passed
like the dinosaurs.

Children's Games(detail: "Blind Man's Buff"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

The thought of a "natural"
state of things troubles
and distracts.

Children's Games: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

The world gradually draws into
a global unit, knitted
together by the networks stitched
into everyone's private
arrangements.

Blind-Man's Buff: artist unknown, before 1830, published by Paul Jarrard & Sons (London, England). Print made within the lifetime of King George IV of England (12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830); image by Daderot, 30 April 2008

There is increasingly the threat
of an objective penalty
for being excluded
from the game,
from these networked arrangements.

Blind Man's Buff: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1788-89, oil on canvas, 269 x 350 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

Only by being cut adrift,
stranded
on the outside,
does one begin
to make out the workings
of the game --
to make out that it is a game
and not a "natural" state of things.

Blindman's Buff (detail): Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1775-80, oil on canvas (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

At the same time
seeing these arrangements
clearly and objectively from the inside
is impossible.

Blast 2, Crows Landing (Mysterious Camera): photo by efo, 23 June 2014

even if the inchoate impulse to escape

Cyber-security Initiative | by Occupy Global

were to become a conscious motive.

People gather to watch the Independence Day fireworks display in Independence, Iowa: photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters, 4 July 2011

and not a "natural" state of things.

fireworks: photo by shannon richardson (electrolite), 12 June 2009

enclosed

as in bubbles

fireworks and flags on the fourth (Amarillo): photo by shannon richardson (electrolite), 3 July 2012

by their socially enforced subscription

Tom Brown Park on July 4th, Tallahassee, Florida: photographer unknown, 4 July 1985 (State Library and Archives of Florida)

to what is perceived

Visual Pollution Along Interstate 24, September 1972 | by The U.S. National Archives

Visual pollution along Interstate 24, Tennessee: photo by William Strode, September 1972 (U.S. National Archives)

as an inevitable

Visual pollution along Interstate 24, Tennessee: photo by William Strode, September 1972 (U.S. National Archives)

and necessary

Central cooling plant, Google data center, Douglas County, Georgia: photo by Connie Zhou/Google (via Wired, 17 October 2012

condition,

Google data center, Hamina, Finland. Some halls remain vacant -- for now: photo by Connie Zhou/Google (via Wired, 17 October 2012)

the mechanical regime
of a future

Server room, Google data center, Council Bluffs, Iowa: photo by Connie Zhou/Google (via Wired, 17 October 2012)

from which the players of the game,
enclosed
as in bubbles

Google data center, Council Bluffs, Iowa, exterior view. Radiator-like cooling towers chill water from the server room down to room temperature: photo by Connie Zhou/Google (via Wired, 17 October 2012)

by their socially enforced subscription
to what is perceived
as an inevitable
and necessary
condition,

These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of Google's Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.

Google data center, The Dalles, Oregon. These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of Google's Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled: photo by Rex Features (via The Telegraph, 19 December 2012)

would not be able to escape

Fireworks over Houston, Texas: photo by Carol M. Highsmith, c. 1980 (Library of Congress)

to make out the workings
of the game --
to make out that it is a game

Pop singer Miley Cyrus performs "Party in the U.S.A.", wearing black hotpants suit and a denim vest, atop a luggage cart, at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon, as part of her 2009 Wonder World Tour: photo by calm down love, 14 September 2009

the players of the game,
enclosed
as in bubbles

Diet Coke and Mentos. A Diet Coke and Mentos eruption (or Diet Coke and Mentos geyser) is a reaction between carbonated beverage and Mentos candies that causes the beverage to spray out of its container. The numerous small pores on the candy's surface catalyze the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas from the soda, resulting in the rapid expulsion of copious quantities of foam. Although any carbonated beverage will produce a similar effect, the reaction was popularized using Diet Coke for seemingly producing the best results: photo by Matthew Woitunski, 26 October 2012

by their socially enforced subscription
to what is perceived

Coke-Mentos stunt. Vinnie gets a faceful: photo by Ruby Skye P. I), 17 August 2010

as an inevitable
and necessary
condition,

Celebrate (Diet Coke and Mentos... too much fun): photo by Tara (taralees), 14 September 2011

would not be able to escape

One person was killed and at least 2 injured when a trailer holding fireworks for a July 4th show exploded at Comanche High School in Comanche, Texas: photo by WFAA-TV, 3 July 2014

even if the inchoate impulse to escape

Utah Data Center Protest | by Occupy Global

were to become a conscious motive.

FaceBook's new custom-built data center, Prineville, Oregon. The photo was taken by FaceBook's Chuck Goolsbee and I found it in FaceBook's Prineville Data Center Wall Photos page: image by Tom Raftery, 7 April 2011

Milky Way's Galactic Plane. Edited European Southern Observatory mosaic image (created by the ESO) of the Milky Way's galactic plane: image by Stuart Rankin, 29 December 2014

Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece.

..........................................Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens. Bank branches around Greece are open today to allow pensioners to receive a small part of their benefits: photo by Milos Bicanski via FT Photo Diary, 1 July 2015

Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens: photo by Milos Bicanski via FT Photo Diary, 1 July 2015

The blood swells now

as heat swells

the veins of the inflamed sky.

It is trying to go beyond death,

to discover joy.

The light is a pulse

beating ever more slowly

as though about to stop.

George Seferis (1900-1971), from Summer Solstice, in Three Secret Poems (Athens, 1966); translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard in Collected Poems (revised edition, 1995)

\ A pensioner, center, is squeezed as she waits outside a National Bank branch to receive part of her pension in Athens: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 1 July 2015

Pensioners are given priority tickets by a National Bank branch

A National Bank branch manager in Athens, center, gives pensioners priority tickets as they wait: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis,/Reuters, 1 July 2015

846: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 16 June 2015

Why are you punishing me? What is my crime?

Yannis Ritsos: November 6

Evening. The bell for the evening meal.
Shouts from the boys playing soccer.
Was it yesterday? -- I don’t remember; -- a stunning sunset
so violet, so gold, so rosy.
We stood there. We watched. We talked
alone, alone, tossing our voices into the wind
so as to tie things together, to unbind our hearts.

A letter arrived in the yard:
Panousis’s son was killed.
Our talk nestled against the walls.
The sunset suddenly nothing.

The night had no hours. The knot loosened.
Panousis’s aluminum plate grew cold on the table.
We lay down. We covered ourselves. We loved one another
around that untouched plate that no longer steamed.

Around midnight the black cat came in through the window
and ate some of Panousis’s food.
Then the moon came in
and hung motionless over the plate.
Panousis’s arm on the blanket
was a severed plane tree.

Well then -- must we really be so sad
in order to love one another?

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): November 6, from Diaries of Exile (1948-1950), translated by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Leroy Keeley, 2014

7314: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 2 January 2015

8904: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 11 November 2014

9036: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 6 September 2014

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 13 March 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 8 March 2014 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 7 March 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 2 March 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 5 March 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 1 March 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 28 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 24 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 23 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 10 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 9 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 8 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 6 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 4 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 3 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 1 February 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 31 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 29 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 27 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 26 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 7 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 12 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 2 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 1 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

Untitled: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 15 January 2015 (from Daily Practice)

#Greece Ppl in athens confronted riot police chanting We r not slaves No to euro-No to drachma. FREEDOM to all of us: image via U @kinimatini, 3 July 2015

Le message à #Exarchia #Athènes #Grèce: image via Aude Lasjaunias @AudeLjs, 1 July 2015

"Once with #tanks, now with #banks." #Exarchia, #Athens, #Greece. via @TeamVaroufakis: image via elise hunchuck @elisehunchuck 4 July 2015 Toronto, Ontario

Hayır! #Exarchia "O zaman tankları kullanmışlardı. Şimdi bankaları kullanıyorlar." #OXI: image via Fraksiyon @fraksiyon, 4 July 2015

Finishing touches on painting of a homeless man that took 3 days to complete, 5 years to inspire. #Athens #Greece: image via Daniele Hamamdjian @DHamamdjian, 4 July 2015

The walls in Greek capital are covered with OXI messages #Athens #referendumgr #Greece #Grcija #Atene #OXI: image via Katja Lihtenvainer, 2 July 2015

Anti-austerity banknotes from Greece via @jonhenley: image via Tom Overton @tw_overton, 4 July 2015

At the 'No' rally, Syntagma. Fair question ... #Greece via @jonhenley: image via jon henley @jonhenley, 4 July 2015

Un bel rogo in mezzo di strada, a #Exarchia è praticamente una tradizione anarchica #Greferendum: image via Matteo Pucciarelli @il_pucciarelli, 3 July 2015

Cassonetti bruciati e disordini a #Exarchia. Black block lanciano molotov, mobilitazione della polizia: image via Andre Balestri @bacao 5 June 2015 Attica, Greece

Smoke rises over barricades on an Athens street before the referendum: photo by Kay Nietfeld / European Pressphoto Agency via Los Angeles Times, 5 July 2015

Financial Chaos Looms After Greeks Reject Bailout With Resounding 'Oxi' Vote

"No" supporters celebrate with a Greek flag outside Parliament in Athens after Greek voters reject EU bailout in Sunday's referendum: photo by Petros Giannakouros/AP via Vice News, 5 July 2015

Athens

O shining and wreathed in violets, city of singing,

stanchion of Hellas, glorious Athens,
citadel full of divinity.

Pindar (518?-after 446 BC): Dithyramb 76, translated by Richard Lattimore in Greek Lyrics (second edition), 1960

A supporter of the “no” vote expresses her enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Germany’s economy minister said Greeks have “torn down the last bridges” to compromise: photo by Petros Giannakouris /Associated Press, 5 July 2015

ὠ ταὶ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι καὶ ἀοίδιμοι,
Ἑλλάδος ἔρεισμα, κλειναὶ Ἀθᾶναι, δαιμόνιον πτολίεθρον.

Pindar: Dithyramb 76, text from The Odes of Pindar, including the principal fragments, ed. T.E. Page & W.H.P. Rouse, 1916

Greeks celebrate in front of Greece's parliament building as early polls forecast a win for the "oxi," or "no," campaign in the Greek austerity referendum: photo by Christopher Furlong via Los Angeles Times, 5 July 2015

Scenes of joy as Greece's 'No' voters celebrate victory #Greferendum: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 5 July 2015

Greeks said NO at the referendum: photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via AFP Photo Department, 5 July 2015

Minister No More!

Yanis Varoufakis: The referendum of 5^th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage

Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution -– to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.

Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.

I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.

And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.

We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government.

The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.

Yanis Varoufakis: Minister No More! from Yanis Varoufakis: Thoughts for the post-2008 world, posted 6 July 2015

After 'No' vote, Greek finance minister #Yanis Varoufakis quits #GreeceCrisis: image via Hindustan Times @htTweets, 6 July 2015

#Grexit I shall fully support PM #Tsipras, the new #FM & our Govt: #Yanis Varoufakis: image via ET Industry News @ET Industry News, 6 July 2015

#Varoufakis writes on twitter 'Minister no more': image via RT @RT_com, 6 July 2015

#Varoufakis resigns as Greek voters reject creditors' bailout terms: image via RT @RT_com, 6 July 2015

Greeks said NO at the referendum: photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via AFP Photo Department, 5 July 2015

Afterlife in Elysium

For them the sun shines at full strength -- while we here walk in night.

The plains around their city are red with roses

and shaded by incense trees heavy with golden fruit.

And some enjoy horses and wrestling, or table games and the lyre,

and near them blossoms a flower of perfect joy.

Perfumes always hover above the land

from the frankincense strewn in deep-shining fire of the gods' altars.

And across from them the sluggish rivers of black night

vomit forth a boundless gloom.

Pindar: Dirges 129 and 130, translated by Willis Barnstone in Greek Lyric Poetry, 1962

Crossing the River Styx: Joachim Patenier, 1515-24, oil on panel, 64 x 103 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

Untitled (Korçë, Albania): photo by Geoff Wong, 12 July 2009

I've been smoking steadily all morning
if I stop the roses will embrace me
they'll choke me with thorns and fallen petals
they grow crookedly, each with the same rose colour
they gaze, expecting to see someone go by; no one goes by.
Behind the smoke of my pipe I watch them
scentless on their weary stems.
In the other life a woman said to me: 'You can touch this hand,
and this rose is yours, it's yours, you can take it
now or later, whenever you like'.

I go down the steps smoking still,
and the roses follow me down excited
and in their manner there's something of that voice
at the root of a cry, there where one starts shouting
'mother' or 'help'
or the small white cries of love.

It's a small white garden full of roses
a few square yards descending with me
as I go down the steps, without the sky;
and her aunt would say to her: 'Antigone, you forgot your lessons today,
at your age I never wore corsets, not in my time.'
Her aunt was a pitiful creature: veins in relief,
wrinkles all round her ears, a nose ready to die;
but her words were always full of prudence.
One day I saw her touching Antigone's breast
like a small child stealing an apple.

Is it possible that I'll meet the old woman now as I go down?
She said to me as I left: 'Who knows when we''ll meet again?'
And then I read of her death in the newspapers
of Antigone's marriage and the marriage of Antigone's daughter
without the steps coming to an end or my tobacco
which leaves on my lips the taste of a haunted ship
with a mermaid crucified to the wheel while she was still beautiful.

................................................................Koritsa, summer '37

George Seferis (1900-1971): Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses, from Logbook I, 1940, in George Seferis: Collected Poems (Revised edition), translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, 1991

Rose Garden, Central Korca, Albania | by David&Bonnie

Rose Garden, Central Korca [Korçë], Albania): photo by David & Bonnie, 15 June 2010

Sunset silhouette (Korçë, Albania): photo by Geoff Wong, 12 July 2009

Xhiro (Korçë, Albania): photo by Geoff Wong, 12 July 2009

Locals (Korçë, Albania): photo by Geoff Wong, 12 July 2009

#Korçë #Albania: image via Juxhin Çela @Juxhin ÇelaEU, 7 May 2015

George Seferis in London, 1925: photographer unknown; image via Denise Harvey

George Seferis served as a diplomat for the government of Greece from 1926 to 1962. Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses was written during his two-year tenure as Greek Consul in Koritsa (Korçë), Albania. Seferis touched on the relation between his diplomatic work and his work as a poet in a 1968 interview with his translator Edmund Keeley, conducted at Princeton, where the poet was then a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Some excerpts from the interview:

INTERVIEWER

Was there anything in your professional career -- that is, the experience you had as a diplomat -- which may have influenced in some way the imagery of your poetry or affected the particular themes you chose to express?

SEFERIS

I don’t believe that any themes or any imagery were created by my job, though I might mention -- how did you translate it? -- the lines from “Last Stop”: “souls shriveled by public sins, each holding office like a bird in its cage.” I mean that is one of the few images I have drawn directly from my public service. But I could have felt that even if I had not been in the diplomatic service. But it was important for me that I had a job which was not related to my creative work. And the other thing is that I was not -- how shall I put it? -- not obliged to deal with models which belonged to literature. Of course, there are troubles in that career. The main thing I suffered from was not having enough time. Although others might tell you that it is better not to have time because it is the subconscious which is doing the poetical work. That’s the point of view of Tom Eliot. I remember once, when I was transferred from London to Beirut (this was after just one and a half years of service in London), I told him: “My dear Mr. Eliot, I think I am fed up with my career and I shall give up all this.” I remember his saying: “Be careful, be careful if you do that,” and then he mentioned the subconscious -- the subconscious working for poetry. And I told him: “Yes, but if I have a job, an official job which is interfering with my subconscious, then I prefer not to have a job. I mean I would prefer to be a carpenter and to be where my subconscious is quite free to do whatever it likes, dance or not dance.” And I added: “You know, I can tell you when my public life began to interfere with my subconscious. It was on the eve of the war with the Italians -- in September ’40 -- when I started having political dreams. Then I knew quite well that my subconscious was suffering the onslaught of my official job. 'In dreams responsibilities begin.'"

Backstreet in central Korçë, Albania: photo by Markussep, 25 July 2009

INTERVIEWER

You’ve spent three periods of service in England, spread over the best part of your literary career. Did you find it an especially congenial climate for work?

SEFERIS

Not really. A very good place for me for writing was when I was in Albania because I was quite unknown there, and very isolated; at the same time I was near Greece, I mean, from the language point of view, and I could use my free time to advantage. There were no exhausting social functions.

KorçaMarktplatz [Korçë, Albania]: photo by Joergsam, 15 June 2013

INTERVIEWER

How about the relation of the Greek poet to his particular historical tradition? You once said that there is no ancient Greece in Greece. What did you mean by that exactly?

SEFERIS

I meant Greece is a continuous process. In English the expression “ancient Greece” includes the meaning of “finished,” whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet. That is a fact.

-- from George Seferis, The Art of Poetry No. 13: George Seferis Interviewed by Edmund Keeley: The Paris Review #50, Fall 1970

Ο Γ. Σεφέρης παραλαμβάνει το βραβείο Νόμπελ στις 10 Δεκεμβρίου του 1963 #greece #seferis #proudtobegreek[George Seferis receiving the Nobel Prize, 1963]: image via ThessTips @ThessTips, 10 December 2013

A man walks past graffiti painted on a closed shop at Monastiraki area in central Athens...A man walks past graffiti painted on a closed shop at Monastiraki area in central Athens, Greece, July 7, 2015. Greece faces a last chance to stay in the euro zone on Tuesday when Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras puts proposals to an emergency euro zone summit after Greek voters resoundingly rejected the austerity terms of a defunct bailout.

A man walks past graffiti painted on a closed shop in the Monastiraki area in central Athens: photo by Christian Hartmann/Reuters via FT Photo Diary, 7 July 2015

#Greece Travel Bookings From #Germany Collapsed 39%, Amadeus Says (via Bloomberg Business): image via Zoe Schneeweiss @ZSchneeweiss, 8 July 2015

Ouch! Polish RightWing MEP @mikkenewsjust called for a military coup in #Greece: image via Julian Röpcke @Julian Roepcke, 8 July 2015

George Seferis: Postscript

But their eyes are all white, without lashes
and their arms thin as reeds.

Lord, not with these people. I've known
the voices of children at dawn
rushing down green slopes
happy as bees, happy as butterflies
with so many colours.
Lord, not with these people, their voices
don't even leave their mouths --
they stay glued to their yellow teeth.

Yours is the sea and the wind
with a star hung in the firmament.
Lord, they don't know that we are
what we are able to be
healing our wounds with herbs
found on the green slopes,
these slopes nearby, not any others;
that we breathe as we are able to breathe
with a little prayer each dawn
that reaches the shore by crossing
the chasms of memory --
Lord, not with these people. Let your will be done in another way.

...............................................................11 September 1941

George Seferis (1900-1971): Postscript, from Logbook II (Alexandria, 1944), in Collected Poems, translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, 1991

The day the Germans came to Kondomari

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-V01732, Nürnberger Prozess, Angeklagte.jpg

Hermann Göring (in dark glasses, leaning on the dock), at the Nuremberg trials, 1945: photographer unknown (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

Source: Information supplied by Franz Peter WEIXLER
Krailling, near Munich, 11 November 1945
TRANSLATION BY Herma Plummer

Goering Case

Defendant Hermann Göring in the prisoners' dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg, 20 November 1945-1 October, 1946: photographer unknown (Harry S. Truman Library, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives)

In connection with the Nurnberg trials against Goering et al. I would like to make the following statement with the express authorization that it may be used in the trial.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 01/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I was a prisoner of the Gestapo from January 16, 1944 to April 1945.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 02/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I had been indicted for treason before the People's Court, and the only reason I was not executed was the fact that my files were destroyed once in Berlin, and once at the Gestapo office in Nurnberg.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 03/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

One of the reasons for my indictment was the fact that I had told friends the truth about the parachute enterprise in Crete in May 1941, and also the fact that I had taken pictures there.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 04/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I am attaching an "order" of the German Army, which I appropriated and kept, issued by the divisional staff of the Parachute Division, commanded by General STUDENT.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 05/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I shall now describe the manner in which I was enabled to take the photos mentioned above.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 08/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

On June 1 or 2, 1941, I was in my billet in the capital of Crete, Chania, when a young officer told me that that afternoon I would see something very interesting.

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

In answer to my question he told me that a punitive expedition would be sent against several villages since the corpses of parachutists, massacred and plundered, had been found.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 17/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

The supreme command of the Luftwaffe had been informed of this several days before, and an order had been received from Goering according to which 'the sharpest measures', i.e. the shooting of the male population between 18 and 50 years of age, was to take place.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 18/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I told the young officer and Captain GERICKE that I had never seen a single massacred parachutist, but had seen dozens of dead comrades whose faces had been partially destroyed because of the tropical heat.

Paracaidista aleman kondomari | by www.historiassegundaguerramundial.com

Fallen German parachutist, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, May/June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by Historia Segunda Guerra Mundial, 4 April 2015)

I then went to see Major STENZLER who told me that a delegation of the German Foreign Office had left Berlin the day before in order to make an investigation concerning the alleged massacring of German soldiers.

Fallen German parachutist, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, May/June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by Historia Segunda Guerra Mundial, 4 April 2015)

I told Stenzler that during the first days of the fighting I had seen vultures pick on the corpses of our comrades.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 15/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I reminded the major that we had seen innumerable half-decayed comrades, but that we had never seen a single murder or massacre, and [said] that I would consider it outright murder to execute Goering's order.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 16/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

I implored Major Stenzler not to send out the punitive expedition. He told me that this was none of my business.

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

I went to see Lieutenant Trebes, who was just making a speech to a group of about 30 men, to the effect that "the action would have to be carried through as quickly as possible, as a reprisal for our comrades who had been murdered".

Oberleutnant Horst Trebes (right) at the ceremony to receive his decoration for 'valor' in Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 9 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

The punitive expedition consisted of Trebes, another lieutenant, an interpreter, two sergeants and about twenty five parachutists of the Second Battalion.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 09/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

As a photographer assigned to my division I was permitted to accompany this Kommando [unit].

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 06/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

Near the village of Malemes, we stopped and Trebes showed us the corpses of several soldiers, obviously in the process of decay. He incited the men against the civilian population.

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

We continued our drive to the village of Kondomari.

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by The Pappas Post 28 May 2014)

The men got off, and ran into the few houses of the little community.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 13/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

They got all men, women, and children onto the little square.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 14/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

A German soldier brought out the coat of a parachutist which he had picked up in one of the houses, and which had a bullet hole in the back.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 07/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

Trebes had the house burned down immediately.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 11/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

One man admitted having killed a German soldier, but it was not possible to convict any of the others of any crimes or plundering, and I therefore asked Trebes to stop the contemplated action and give us orders to return, taking with us only the one man.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 12/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

Trebes however gave orders to separate the men from the women and children; then he had the interpreter tell the women that all of the men would be shot because of having murdered German soldiers, and that the corpses would have to be interred within two hours.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 10/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

When Trebes turned his back for a few moments, I made it possible for nine men to get away.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 19/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

Trebes had the men form a half circle, gave the order to fire, and after about fifteen seconds, everything was over.

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 20/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

1941, Crète, Kondomari, le 2 juin - 21/23 | by ww2gallery

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by ww2gallery, 4 January 2015)

Kondomari Creta 28 | by www.historiassegundaguerramundial.com

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by Historia Segunda Guerra Mundial, 30 November 2013)

crete1013822_10203169461591752_3634255859570121124_n | by sahill1968

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by Steve Hill, 18 May 2014)

crete1907641_10203169462311770_2385062965952942583_n | by sahill1968

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by Steve Hill, 18 May 2014)

I asked Trebes, who was quite pale, whether he realized what he had done, and he replied that he had only executed the order of Hermann Goering, and avenged his dead comrades.

Defendants in the dock, Nuremberg trials, 1945-1946: front row, left to right, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel; in second row, left to right, Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel: photo by Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality/Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S) (National Archives and Records Administration)

A few days later he received the Knights Cross from Goering for his “braveness” in Crete.

Kondomari, Crete: photo by Franz Peter Weixler, 2 June 1941 (Deutsches Bundesarchiv; image by The Pappas Post 28 May 2014)

It was possible for me to get the negatives of my photos to a friend in Athens, who saved copies.

Hermann Göring during cross-examination, Nuremberg trials, March 1946: photographer unknown (USHMM Photo Archives, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

In spite of the fact that the original film was taken away from me by my superiors, and that I had to sign a declaration to the effect that I had no copies, it was possible for me to save copies and use them later in activity against Hitler and his regime.

Franz Peter WEIXLER

Rebecca West: Göring at Nuremberg

German Reichsmarschall, Commander of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring (1893-1946) during cross examination at his trial for war crimes in Room 600 at the Palace of Justice during the International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg, Germany, March 1946: photo by Raymond D'Addario, 3264th Signal Photo Service Company, US Army (National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives)

And though one had read surprising news of Göring for years, he still surprised. He was so very soft. Sometimes he wore a German Air Force uniform, and sometimes a light beach suit in the worst of playful taste, and both hung loosely on him, giving him an air of pregnancy. He had thick brown young hair, the coarse bright skin of an actor who has used grease paint for decades, and the preternaturally deep wrinkles of the drug addict. It added up to something like the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He looked infinitely corrupt, and acted naively. When the other defendants’ lawyers came to the door to receive instructions, he often intervened and insisted on instructing them himself, in spite of the evident fury of the defendants, which, indeed, must have been poignant, since most of them might well have felt that, had it not been for him, they never would have had to employ these lawyers at all. One of these lawyers was a tiny little man of very Jewish appearance, and when he stood in front of the dock, his head hardly reaching to the top of it, and flapped his gown in annoyance because Göring’s smiling wooden mask was bearing down between him and his client, it was as if a ventriloquist had staged a quarrel between two dummies.

File:Defendants in the dock at nuremberg trials.jpg

View of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg [Göring, with US Army blanket draped over his lap, at far left in front row]: photographer unknown, November 1945 (National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives)

Something had happened to the architecture of the court which might happen in a dream. It had always appeared that the panelled wall behind the dock was solid. But one of the panels was really a door. It opened, and the defendants came out one by one to stand between two guards and hear what they had earned. Göring, in his loose suit, which through the months had grown looser and looser, came through that door and looked surprised, like a man in pajamas who opens a door our of his hotel room in the belief that it leads to his bathroom and finds that he has walked out into a public room. Earphones were handed him by the guard and he put them on, but at once made a gesture to show that they were not carrying the sound. They had had to put on a longer flex to reach from the ground to the ear of a standing man, and the adjustment had been faulty. His guards knelt down and worked on them. On the faces of all the judges was written the thought, "Yes, this is a nightmare. This failure of the earphones proves it," and it was written on his face too. But he bent down and spoke to them and helped with the repair. This man of fifty-three could see the fine wires without spectacles. When the earphones were repaired he put them on with a steady hand and learned that this was not a nightmare, he was not dreaming. He took them off with something like a kingly gesture and went out, renouncing the multitudinous words and gestures that must have occurred to him at this moment. He was an inventive man and could not have had to look far for a comment which, poetic, patriotic, sardonic, or obscene, would certainly have held the ear of the court and sounded in history; and he was a man without taste. Yet at this moment he had taste enough to know that the idea of his death was more impressive than any of his ideas.

Rebecca West: from Greenhouse with Cyclamens (I), 1946, in A Train of Powder, 1955

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-V01057-3, Nürnberger Prozess, Angeklagte.jpg

Defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg trials, 1945; center row, from left, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhem Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: photographer unknown (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

An elderly man stands beside a lifebuoy hanging on a wall in central Athens on July 7, 2015. Photo @ArisMessinis: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP Photo, 7 July 2015

There were still -- beyond denial -- certain places and events:

the gardener's footsteps beside the wall, the morning train

in the deserted station under fog, a dried-up lemon tree,

when they left the large wooden boxes on the stairs,

and the faces of the young were so distant, unreconciled, lovely,

changing the future almost into the present, approaching the windowpanes,

holding an apple in two fingers only, not knowing

whether to bite into it or to use it to break the mirror --

and later a certain word, every now and then, late at night, the moon out,

the word that is most ours, summer, between two strokes with the oars.

Athens, February 28, 1972

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1980): Sources, from Sidestreet [1971-1972], in Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974, translated by Edmund Keeley, 1985

A model wears a creation of the Marc Cain Spring/Summer 2015 collection during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin

A model walks the runway during the Marc Cain show during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin: photo by AP, 8 July 2015

A pensioner leans against the main door of a branch of the National Bank as he waits to receive part of his pension in Athens, Greece

A pensioner leans against the door of a branch of the National Bank as he waits to receive part of his pension in Athens, Greece: photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters via the Telegraph, 8 July 2014

PHOTO: A senior citizen leans against the door of a closed bank as he queues up to collect his pension outside a National Bank of Greece branch in Kotzia Square, July 7, 2015 in Athens, Greece.

A senior citizen leans against the door of a closed bank as he queues up to collect his pension outside a National Bank of Greece branch in Kotzia Square, Athens: photo by Christopher Furlong via ABC News, 7 July 2015

Drifting nearer the maelstrom

A customer in a coffee shop reacted while watching Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' live television address in Athens on Wednesday, July 1. Tsipras called on Greeks to vote 'no' in Sunday's referendum on a bailout package offered by creditors: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 1 July 2015)

Calm defiance gives way to panic as Greek deadline looms: Paul Mason in Athens, 8 July 2015

I sat last night with a Greek family and their friends as they heard the news that the Eurozone’s leaders had given a final ultimatum. A deal by Saturday or a specially convened EU summit to prepare for the collapse of the banking system, expulsion from the Eurozone and a “humanitarian aid” package to deal with the inevitable food riots, premature deaths and state failure.

A long exposure photo shows lightning striking across the sky during a storm in Allershausen, Germany: photo by Marc Mueller/European Pressphoto Agency, 8 July 2015

The old took it with equanimity. They believed their government when it said a no vote would strengthen its hand in negotiations for a third bailout. Those who spoke of the way they’d voted had voted no, like 80% of people in the working class suburbs of Athens.

Pensioners waited outside a National Bank branch in Athens to receive part of their pensions on Monday, one week after capital controls began: photo by Christian Hartmann/Reuters, 6 July 2015

But behind the apparent calm Greeks are getting panicky. There is a rumour mill: vital factories producing medicines or baby milk are rumoured to be closed. Someone rings to check: it’s wrong. People break down suddenly in tears, overwhelmed by the stress.

#Greece -- Frail pensioners queue in blazing sun to withdraw €120 from #Banks - IB Times: image via Dio Perix @DioPerix, 9 July 2015

If I give you three stories that were told to me yesterday by this extended group of family and friends, it will explain the pressure Alexis Tsipras is under to do a deal, but not one that humiliates his country.

Photo published for Greece debt crisis: Banks stay shut as endgame looms - BBC News

Greece extends bank closures: image via BBC News (World) @BBCWorld, 8 July 2015

Ms A works at a private sector job. Her bosses pressured everybody at work to vote yes, she tells me. When she told them she would vote no, the bullying became intense. It’s a non-union workplace, and half her wages come “off the books” so there’s no HR department to go to. Now, after the no victory, she’s been told not to come into work and will not be paid.

Daily life in central Athens: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 7 July 2015

Ms B voted yes. She breaks down tearfully every so often. She has two bank accounts but only one has a bank card. She’s borrowing cash. She does some work as a teaching assistant: “one of the children drew Euro notes and cut them out and shared it with their playmates” she says. They are hearing on TV only about money, and how nobody has any. The stress is getting through to them.

Goldman says the #Euro will drop to $0.95: image via Bloomberg TV @BloombergTV, 5 July 2015

Ms C voted no. She is supposed to take unpaid holiday each August, keeping her job effectively non-permanent, by arrangement. But now she has to take July off as well. Unpaid.

Closed Bank of Greece, Athens: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Breitbart, 7 July 2015

What strikes you -– and must strike the heavily state-employed and pension-protected older generation around the table -– is the precarious nature of everything in these young people’s lives.

The family dinner table, with grandma, dad and mum working the barbecue represents the institution Greeks will have to rely on most in the coming days: the extended family and the village identity.

A sign outside the Bank of Greece in Athens is defaced with graffiti to read, "Banque de Merkel": photo by Christopher Furlong, 6 July 2015

For many of the young the family has become a kind of soft prison: they live with their parents; those who don’t are relying grandma’s pension. Its a refuge, yet they have little privacy nor independence.

Here, with the barbecue smoking and the pot-plants withering in the summer heat, in a tiny apartment in a non-descript suburb, is the Greece whose fate will be decided on Sunday.

They are not surprised to be powerless. They’re a small country with a delinquent ruling elite. Nor are they surprised that, finally, after months of saying it was impossible, half the Eurozone is preparing to kick them out.

A camera control light frames German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) and Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who briefed the media on Monday, June 29 at the chancellery in Berlin after a meeting with leaders of all parties represented in the German parliament about the economic crisis in Greece: photo by Markus Schreiber/AP, 29 June 2015

The only thing they’re surprised by is that Tsipras did not cave in. We’ll see if that lasts until Sunday night.

A pensioner leans against the gate of the National Bank of Greece as he waits to withdraw money. Photo @atzortzinis: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP Photo, 7 July 2015

A nut and herbs stall in Athens. Five years of economic crisis have already taken their toll on Greece, hollowing out the solid middle class and causing tens of thousands of small and midsize businesses to close their doors: photo by Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times, 9 July 2015

A model wears a creation of designer Anja Gockel Spring/Summer 2015 fashion collection during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin, Wednesday, July 8, 2015.

A model wears a creation of designer Anja Gockel Spring/Summer 2015 fashion collection during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin on Wednesday: photo by Markus Schreiber/AP via FT Photo Diary, 8 July 2015

Posters at Blossom Gate | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Blossom Gate, Kilmallock, County Limerick: photographer unknown, July 1909 (National Library of Ireland)

A New Song on the Taxes

All you young men and maidens come and listen to my song,
It is something short and comical, it won't detain you long.
Go where you will by day or night, the town or country through,
The people cry and wonder what with us they mean to do.

(Chorus)
No wonder people grumble at the taxes more and more,
There never was such taxes in Ireland before.

They're going to tax the farmers, and their horses, carts and ploughs,
They're going to tax the billygoats, the donkeys and the cows;
They're going to tax the mutton, and they're going to tax the beef,
And they're going to tax the women if they do not learn to read.

They will tax the ladies' chignons and their boas, veils and mats,
They're going to tax the mouse traps and the mousies, cats and rats;
They'll tax the ladies' flouncey gowns, their high-heeled boots and stays,
And before the sun begins to shine they'll tax the bugs and fleas.

They're going to tax the brandy, ale and whiskey, rum and wine,

They'll tax the tea and sugar, the tobacco, snuff and pipes;

They're going to tax the fish that swim and all the birds that fly,

An' they're going to tax the women who go drinking on the sly.

They're going to tax all bachelors as heavy as they can,

And they'll double tax the maidens who are over forty-one;

They'll tax the ground we walk on and the clothes that keep us warm,

And they're going to tax the childer on the night before they're born.

They're going to tax the crutches and they'll tax the wooden legs,

They're going to tax the bacon, bread and butter, cheese and eggs;

They're going to tax old pensioners as heavy as they can,

And they'll double tax young girls that go looking for a man.

They'll tax the ladies all that paint and those that walk with men,

They're going to tax the ducks and geese, and turkeys, cocks and hens;

They're going to tax the farmers' boys that work along the ditches,

And they'll double tax old drunken wives that try to wear the beeches.

They're going to tax the corn fields, potato gardens too,

They're going to tax the cabbage plants, the jackdaws and the crows;

They'll double tax the hobble skirts and table up some laws,

But the devil says he'll tax them if he gets them in his claws.

A New Song On The Taxes: anon., n.d., from Irish Street Ballads, ed. Colm Ó Lochlainn, Printed and Published at the Sign of the Three Candles in Fleet Street, Dublin, 1939

Blossom Gate, Kilmallock, County Limerick: photographer unknown, July 1909 (National Library of Ireland)

Mitchelstown Eviction Resistance at O'Sullivans! | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Mitchelstown Eviction Resistance at O'Sullivan's, County Cork. The plan of the campaign was an attempt to gain lower rents through collective bargaining because prices on agricultural exports had fallen dramatically in the 1880s: photographer unknown, c. June 1887 (National Library of Ireland)

Dr Tully's House | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Dr Tully's House. A eviction on land of the Marquis of Clanricarde at Woodford, County Galway. Farmer and boat builder Francis Tully, known locally as "Dr Tully", was an activist for the Plan of Campaign in Galway. The Plan of Campaign was an attempt to gain lower rents through collective bargaining because prices on agricultural exports had fallen dramatically in the 1880s. Maud Gonne agitated for change by projecting images like this one onto a building in Parnell Square, Dublin: photographer unknown, 1 September 1888 (National Library of Ireland)

Greece may be financially bankrupt, but the troika is politically bankrupt. Those who persecute this nation wield illegitimate, undemocratic powers, powers of the kind now afflicting us all. Consider the International Monetary Fund. The distribution of power here was perfectly stitched up: IMF decisions require an 85% majority, and the US holds 17% of the votes.

The IMF is controlled by the rich, and governs the poor on their behalf. It’s now doing to Greece what it has done to one poor nation after another, from Argentina to Zambia. Its structural adjustment programmes have forced scores of elected governments to dismantle public spending, destroying health, education and all the means by which the wretched of the earth might improve their lives.The same programme is imposed, regardless of circumstance: every country the IMF colonises must place the control of inflation ahead of other economic objectives; immediately remove barriers to trade and the flow of capital; liberalise its banking system; reduce government spending on everything bar debt repayments; and privatise assets that can be sold to foreign investors.

*
All this is but a recent chapter in the long tradition of subordinating human welfare to financial power. The brutal austerity imposed on Greece is mild compared with earlier versions. Take the 19th century Irish and Indian famines, both exacerbated (in the second case caused) by the doctrine of laissez-faire, which we now know as market fundamentalism or neoliberalism.

In Ireland’s case, one eighth of the population was killed –- one could almost say murdered -– in the late 1840s, partly by the British refusal to distribute food, to prohibit the export of grain or provide effective poor relief. Such policies offended the holy doctrine of laissez-faire economics that nothing should stay the market’s invisible hand.

Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite’s war on democracy (excerpts): George Monbiot, The Guardian, 7 July 2015 (updated 8 July 2015)

The Great Irish Famine | by Elizabeth Haslam

The Great Irish Famine. County Cork. The cemeteries are full of those who died of starvation in the Emerald Isle. Some call it genocide: photo by Elizabeth Haslam, 21 August 2014

Old Graveyard | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Old Graveyard. Salruck Graveyard at Leenane, County Galway, scattered with clay pipes or dúidín: photographer unknown, c. 1907 (National Library of Ireland)

Weighed | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

A weigh station in the heart of Clifden, County Galway, that had presumably just been used to weigh the contents of the panniers carried by this old woman's donkey: photographer unknown, c. 1908[?] (National Library of Ireland)

Works Canteen | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Works Canteen. Lined up outside workmen's huts at the German-engineered Shannon Hydro-Electric Scheme at Ardnacrusha, County Limerick. Can't make out what's on the plates, but fairly sure there's bread and/or spuds...: photographer unknown, 1928 (National Library of Ireland)

Irish Famine Memorial, Cambridge MA | by EandJsFilmCrew

Irish Potato Famine memorial, Cambridge Commons, Cambridge, Massachusetts: photo by EandJsFilmCrew, 14 January 2009

Mystery Market = Grattan Square, Dungarvan! | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Market day, Grattan Square, Dungarvan, County Waterford: photographer unknown, c. 1870 (National Library of Ireland)

Paddy's Market, Cork City | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Paddy's Market, Cork City: photographer unknown, c. 1900 (National Library of Ireland)

boys dormitory in an Irish workhouse | by Dorman Architects

Boys' dormitory in an Irish workhouse. The workhouses in Ireland were built during the Great Famine in the 19th century to help deal with the poverty which arose as a result of the successive potato harvests. 165 of these huge complexes were built between 1841-1847 and designed to house 400-1000 destitute men, women and children. This particular workhouse was built to house 800 'paupers' however at the peak of the famine it housed over 3000. Many died from cholera and other diseases and were buried in mass graves at the end of the complex. On arrival families were separated into their respective gender and age category. This photo is one of the attic level dormitories for boys. An 'innovative' design feature were these raised sleeping platforms obliterating the need to provide individual beds. The children slept under straw with little else. Basically they froze during the winter and roasted during the summer. This one closed in 1921, many were demolished in an attempt to erase them from our collective memory and some remain as hospitals: photo by Dorman Architects, 8 May 2007

Mamorial to the Great Famine | by John P Brady

Monument to the Great Famine. Site of the Paupers' Grave, Kells Urban, County Meath. This cemetery was a necessity in the times of great poverty in this country. Mass is still celebrated there annually and the cemetery is a grim reminder of the Workhouse and the extreme poverty which was engendered by changes in farming practice in the 19th century, and also of the Famine: photo by John Brady, 27 March 2012

A Navajo man on a horse poses for touris...A Navajo man on a horse poses for tourists in front of the Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Utah, on May 16, 2015.

Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Utah: photo by Mladen Antonov / AFP via FT Photo Diary, 27 May 2015

"Harry Carey tutored me in the early years, sort of brought me along, and the only thing I always had was an eye for composition -- I don't know where I got that -- and that's all I did have. As a kid, I thought I was going to be an artist; I used to sketch and paint a great deal and I think, for a kid, I did pretty good work --- at least I received a lot of compliments about it. But I have never thought about what I was doing in terms of art, or 'this is great', or 'world-shaking', or anything like that. To me it was always a job of work -- which I enjoyed immensely -- and that's it."
-- John Ford, in Peter Bogdanovich: John Ford, 1967

John Ford's point was the composition

The little figure
Against the big rock and sky landscape dwarfed

The big rock and sky landscape
Against the little figure dwarfing him

The point was not the grandeur
Or the drama

The composition was John Ford's point
The dwarfing
The putting in his place
The unimportance in the whole scheme of

The tiny horseman
Against the bigger everything
The vast blue sky
The ancient red rock

With folding chair hid
Down the trail, round a corner
At table mesa top
To rest upon
Between shots

Cuckoo-clock cowboy
He comes every day

Up the same trail, on his horse

To John Ford's Point

To gaze out upon

The same butte

Diurnal chronotype, recursive

Dotted, splotched

Into otherwise

Always changing world

He is there every day

He is there in all weathers

He is there today
He may be there again tomorrow

He may not

Out in the weather

Everything gets old

A Navajo man on a horse poses for tourists in front of the Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal park, Utah, on May 12, 2014. Monument Valley has been featured in many Westerns since the 1930s, including director John Ford’s best-known movies and has become the epitome of the American West: photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP, 12 May 2015

A Navajo man on a horse poses for tourists in front of the Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal park, Utah, on May 12, 2014. Monument Valley has been featured in many Westerns since the 1930s, including director John Ford's best-known movies and has become the epitome of the American West: photo by Mladen Antonov / AFP via Hurriyet Daily News, 25 May 2015

A Navajo man on a horse poses for tourists in front of the Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Utah: photo by Mladen Antonov / AFP via The Telegraph, 27 May 2015

The day's best photos — May 21

A Navajo man on a horse poses for tourists in front of the Merrick Butte in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal park, Utah, on May 12, 2014. Monument Valley has been featured in many Westerns since the 1930s, including director John Ford's best-known movies and has become the epitome of the American West: photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP via Mumbai Mirror, 13 May 2015

Ode aan john ford. John Ford, meester van de amerikaanse cinema en de man die John Wayne groot gemaakt heeft, prefereerde Monument Valley als locatie in zijn westerns. Dit punt in het bijzonder, nu dan ook genaamd Ford's point. Ford en Monument Valley waren altijd met elkaar verbonden. Na het filmen van de eindscene van My Darling Clementine in de studio vond Ford dat de achtergrond reproductie van Monument Valley niet voldeed en eiste dat de set op locatie in Monument Valley herbouwd werd voor deze laatste legendarische shot. Momenteel is Monument Valley een Navajo reservaat en een heilig gebied voor de Navajo. Navajo zien in de buttes ed. dieren en elementen die ze toeschrijven aan de goden. Tegenwoordig exploiteren de Navajo dit als een park waar alleen zij in mogen gidsen: photo by groucho, 21 June 2007

Monument Valley. Cowboy Actor on John Ford's Point, Monument Valley, Utah/Arizona (part of he tour from Goulding's Lodge): photo by Debs, 6 October 2008

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point 3 | by jfew

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point 3: photo by Jeff Few, 7 September 2009

This picture was taken this morning at John Ford Point, Monument Valley. This young cowboy, apparently in the employ of the Navajo Tribal Park, came down on his horse and posed out on the point. I wish I hadn't seen him checking his smart phone on the way down. Still, it was a nice prop provided by the park, and certainly adds to the image. Monument Valley is a stunningly beautiful place, that doesn't feel over developed or over crowded. It was our third time here, and by far the best weather we've experienced, with pleasant temperature, beautiful clouds and, blissfully, no howling winds. I plan on coming back again, just because I enjoy the experience so much: photo by Bill Gracey, 10 October 2012

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point 4 | by jfew

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point 4: photo by Jeff Few, 7 September 2009

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point | by jfew

Navajo Cowboy at John Ford's Point: photo by Jeff Few, 7 September 2009

Monument Valley. Il nostro viaggio del West americano: photo by Davide Bedinjoevare, 12 August 2007

080610 Colorado Plateau 0952 | by joevare

Colorado Plateau. John Ford Point, Monument Valley: photo by joevare, 12 June 2008

John Ford Point, Navajo tribal park, Monument Valley: photo by Agustín Hernández Campillejo, 28 June 2008

John Ford's Point - Monument Valley, Utah | by Trodel

Monument Valley. John Ford's Point in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Utah/Arizona. Picture by Luca Galuzzi.: image by Jim Trodel, 22 July 2007

#JohnFord point at #MonumentValley is just one of the hundreds crazy good views out there!: image via Davide Squaldini @Davide Squaldini, 2 May 2015

Just finished watching #TheSearchers on #more4. Monumental in every way.: image via Brian Coyle @brianscoyle, 27 December 2014

Ford Point Rider, Monument Valley: photo by James Salvas, 20 October 2009

Chair at John Ford's Point -- Monument Valley (UT) August 2013 | by Ron Cogswell

Chair at John Ford's Point, Monument Valley: photo by Ron Cogswell, 8 August 2013

A Satyr Mourning Over a Nymph (detail): Piero di Cosimo(1462-1522), c. 1495, oil on poplar, 65.4 × 184.2 cm (National Gallery, London)

(To Iphigeneia)

Your hair is scattered light:
The Greeks will bind it with petals.

And like a little beast,
Dappled and without horns,
That scampered on the hill-rocks,
They will leave you
With stained throat --
Though you never cropped hill-grass
To the reed-cry
And the shepherd's note.

Some Greek hero is cheated
And your mother's court
Of its bride.

And we ask this -- where truth is,
Of what use is valour and is worth?
For evil has conquered the race,
There is no power but in base men,
Nor any man whom the gods do not hate.

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961): Chorus to Iphigeneia, from Choruses from The Iphigeneia in Aulis and the Hippolytus of Euripides, The Egoist, London, 1919

A Satyr Mourning Over a Nymph (detail): Piero di Cosimo(1462-1522), c. 1495, oil on poplar, 65.4 × 184.2 cm (National Gallery, London)

Pro-European Union protester demonstrates in front of the Greek parliament in Athens. Photo Louisa Gouliamaki: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 9 July 2015

Tusk @eucopresident has suspended #EuroSummit on #Greece for bilateral meetings in search of compromise: image via Preben Aamann @PrebenEUspox, 12 July 2015

Triptych of Temptation of St Anthony (central panel): Hieronymus Bosch, 1505-06, oil on panel, 131 x 119 cm (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon)

Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb arriving at today’s Eurogroup finance ministers meeting: photo by Olivier Hoslet/EPA via The Guardian, 12 July 2015

Eurogroup Finance ministers meeting<br>epa04843524 Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos (L) and Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb talk at the start of a special Eurogroup finance ministers meeting on the Greek crisis, at the European Council headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, 12 July 2015. Eurozone Finance Ministers set 12 July 2015 as the deadline to reach an agreement saving Greece from bankruptcy, amid warnings that failure to strike a deal by then could lead the country to crash out of the eurozone. EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET

The award for awkward conversation of the morning is shared between Tsakalotos and Alex Stubb: photo by Olivier Hoslet/EPA via The Guardian, 12 July 2015

Eurogroup Finance ministers meeting<br>epa04843519 German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble (R) and French Finance Minister Michel Sapin talk at the start of a special Eurogroup finance ministers meeting on the Greek crisis, at the European Council headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, 12 July 2015. Eurozone Finance Ministers set 12 July 2015 as the deadline to reach an agreement saving Greece from bankruptcy, amid warnings that failure to strike a deal by then could lead the country to crash out of the eurozone. EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET

Is Wolfgang Schäuble telling Michel Sapin how the idea of a "temporary Grexit" suddenly came to him?: photo by Olivier Hoslet/EPA via The Guardian, 12 July 2015

A Satyr Mourning Over a Nymph: Piero di Cosimo(1462-1522), c. 1495, oil on poplar, 65.4 × 184.2 cm (National Gallery, London)

This is Germany's plan—all of it—to make Greece sell €50bn of "valuable assets" or leave the euro for at least 5 yrs: image via Matt O'Brien @ObsoleteDogma, 11 July 2015

Moin Moin Warum die #EU so bedenklich ist!: image via Einzelfallbearbeiter @Einzelfallbearb, 9 July 2015

@sunnydayforamum @rapanasta: image via Einzelfallbearbeiter @Einzelfallbearb, 11 July 2015

'How much?!': image via Danny Kemp@dannyctkemp, 12 June 2015

Excellent! #Humour #Varoufakis #love: image via S.C. @sunnydayforamum, 11 July 2015

Σοιμπλε #Schauble #schauble #Schaublexit #urogroup Germans: image via Rapa Nasta @rapanasta, 11 July 2015

#Schaeuble: I want more power!! Destroy the poor! I want my companys to own all Greece! Why they have sunshine?: image via Rapa Nasta @rapanasta, 11 July 2015

#Eurogroup Φινλανδια #vouli Μαλτα Germans Σοιμπλε#Schaublexit #eusummit #Grexit: image via Alexarium @Alexarium, 11 July 2015

Pretty much the conclusion of the #Eurosummit: image via Athena C @Athenaconstandi, 8 July 2015

EU Commissioner for Economicand Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici, left, Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb and EU Commissioner for the Euro Valdis Dombrovskis talk with Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, back to camera, Saturday in Brussels: photo by Thierry Charlier / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2015

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras listens during a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels on Saturday night: photo by Menelaos Myrilas/SOOC via the press project, 11 July 2015

*There must be no alternative.** #Schaublexit: image via g00ndy @g00ndy, 11 July 2015

This man wants 11 million pounds of flesh and the end of democracy in Europe. Are you going to stop him or not?: image via Elikasg00ndy @Elikas, 11 July 2015

Greek pensioners wait outside a National Bank of Greece to get their pensions on July 9 #GreekCrisis: image by Louisa Gouliamaki @lgoulia, 10 July 2015 Greece

Greek pensioners wait outside a National Bank of Greece to get their pensions on July 9 #GreekCrisis: image by Louisa Gouliamaki @lgoulia, 10 July 2015 Greece

Anti-austerity protesters demonstrate in front of the Greek parliament: image by Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis,10 July 2015

A pensioner (R) arrives at a National Bank branch to receive part of her pension at the city of Thessaloniki, Greece July 10, 2015.The Greek parliament will give the government a mandate to negotiate with creditors for a cash-for-reforms deal, the parliamentary spokesman of the ruling Syriza party told reporters on Friday

A pensioner arrives at a National Bank branch to receive part of her pension at the city of Thessaloniki, Greece on Friday: photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters via FT Photo Diary, 10 July 2015

A pensioner arrives at a National Bank branch to receive part of her pension at the city of Thessaloniki, Greece on Friday: photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters, 10 July 2015

#IMF head #Lagarde may lose post due to #GreekCrisis: image by Sputnik @Sputnikint, 5 July 2015

Greekfinance minister Euclid Tsakalotos listens to IMF managing director Christine Lagarde during a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Saturday: photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters, 11 June 2015

Diners bowed their heads in prayer before eating at the Galini charity’s soup kitchen in Athens. Greece’s fiscal crisis has made many destitute and desperate, and is stretching the resources of charities and government agencies that help the poor: photo by Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press via New York Times, 12 July 2015

Greece Financial Crisis Hits Poorest and Hungriest the Hardest: Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, 12 July 2015

ATHENS — Behind the lace curtains of a soup kitchen run by a parish in the humble Athens neighborhood of Kerameikos, the needy and hungry sit down to a plate of sliced cucumbers, three hunks of bread, a shallow china bowl of chickpea soup and often a piece of meat. Sometimes there is even ice cream, a special treat.

People prize the refectory, run by a priest, for its homeyness, and they travel long distances to fill their empty stomachs at least once a day.

But on Thursday, the priest, Father Ignatios Moschos was worried that he would no longer have enough food to go around if the country’s economic paralysis continues, as it seems likely to do even if Greece and its creditors manage to work out a last-minute deal this weekend to avert a Greek exit from the euro.

“It will be hard, dark, painful,” the priest said, nibbling from a bowl of pistachios as a long line of people waited for their turn to eat at the communal tables. “We will have trouble receiving food.”

Poverty in Greece has been deepening since the financial crisis began more than five years ago. Now, aid groups and local governments say they are beginning to feel the effects of nearly two weeks of bank closings, as Greece struggles to keep its financial system from failing and to break out of years of economic hardship.

A man slept on an Athens street near a closed store this month. Officials are trying to raise funds to meet the needs of increasing numbers of destitute residents.: photo by Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press via New York Times, 12 July 2015

And any deal with creditors this weekend will bring further cuts in government spending. It will also bring higher taxes and, as a consequence, more short-term pressure on the economy.

As Athens takes on the aura of Soviet Russia, with lines of people outside banks waiting to receive their daily cash allowance, some aid groups are seeing their supply channels narrow. By some accounts, lines for food, clothing and medicine have grown fivefold in parts of the capital in the last two weeks alone.

The European Parliament president, Martin Schulz, has said he shares Greeks’ concerns. President Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission said this past week that the European Union was making plans for humanitarian aid to Greece to cushion the blow if a third bailout was not worked out by Sunday and Greece was forced out of the euro system.

Several organizations and the city government of Athens said they were making fund-raising plans. A prominent group, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, announced on Wednesday that it was immediately allocating 20 million euros, or more than $22 million, toward the municipal governments of Athens and Thessaloniki “to cover the immediate needs of citizens in the large urban centers, who are experiencing the consequences of the deepening crisis more severely.”

Of course, not all of Athens is suffering. In central Athens and more affluent suburbs, the cafes are full of Greeks and tourists eating, drinking and talking until well past midnight. And if there is a deal with the creditors, it could lead to the banks reopening at some point soon.

But much of Greece has been struggling for years with extremely high levels of unemployment, cuts in social welfare programs and pensions and what the Greek central bank concluded in 2014 was one of the highest rates of income inequality among European Union countries.

"in Greece there will be no consumers -- there will be only beggars"

Since July 3, after the cash controls began, the Venetis chain of about 80 bakeries has expanded its charity program and has been giving away about 10,000 loaves of bread a day -- a third of total production -- to the destitute, families with many children, the unemployed and retirees.

They could be seen flying out of the darkness like birds to a Venetis outlet in the Pangrati neighborhood of Athens one evening a few days ago, belying the neighborhood’s facade of prosperity. In the poorest neighborhoods, scuffles have broken out, Panayiotis Monemvasiotis, the general manager of the company, said Friday.

“In the third round of austerity measures, which is beginning now, it is certain that in Greece there will be no consumers -- there will be only beggars,” he said.

In neighborhoods where tourists are less likely to go, such as the area around Omonia Square, people in ragged clothes can be found sleeping on sidewalks and in public parks. Others who are just a bit luckier are able to hide their poverty. They negotiate rent cuts from landlords, take advantage of social service agencies like Praksis that offer free showers and washing machines to people without electricity or water, or go to the soup kitchens scattered throughout Athens.

Xenia Papastavrou, a founding member of Boroume, We Can, a nongovernment agency that matches excess food from supermarkets, restaurants and even wedding parties, with organizations that distribute it to people who are hungry across Greece, said that more people have wanted to donate over the last two weeks, because they see the need.

“I’m sure that things will get worse,” Ms. Papastavrou said.

One of the largest soup kitchens in Athens is run by the city government, in collaboration with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Athens, near Omonia on Pireos Street. It serves 600 to 1,000 people a day, city officials said. Mayor George Kaminis of Athens issued a statement Thursday saying that the city was helping support 20,000 people a day with groceries, hot meals and other basics.

At a donation center run by the city in Kato Patisia, the number of people arriving each day for food, medicine and clothing has risen to 100 from 20 in just the last two weeks, Alexandros Kambouroglou, an adviser to the mayor, said Thursday. He attributed that escalating demand to fear of future shortages.

Charities and government officials say that as long as the banks are closed and the movement of money outside Greece is prohibited, they face the same problem as every other Greek -- they cannot import supplies.

“As a city we are working very systematically to make sure we have provisions,” during this period of capital controls, Yorgos Stamatopoulos, press secretary for the mayor of Athens, said Thursday.

“But at least we’ll suffer together”

Until recently, the Galini Institution soup kitchen run by Father Moschos, gave food to anyone who wanted it. But the demand has grown so quickly that it has begun asking for documentation that people are poor, such as proof of monthly income, employment status and the inability to make rent or utility payments.

It also used to close for part of the summer. But Father Moschos said he believed the need would be so great this summer that it would have to remain open.

In the morning, the soup kitchen gives a package of cooked food to people who prefer to take it home than to eat lunch communally. On Thursday the take-home package contained a container of pasta with bacon and tomato sauce, bread, sesame bread rings called koulouria and a can of evaporated milk. People are expected to bring the container back for more.

The volunteers, including Evaggelia Konsta, whose family donates meat from its meat company, sprang up to greet a 93-year-old woman who arrives every day by bus, alone, to fetch food for herself and, she said, her five grandchildren.

The dining hall seats 56, and people eat in several shifts. The number of people rises to about 450 a day on weekends, from 350 on weekdays, Ms. Konsta said. There is air-conditioning, a relief from the scorching sun. A heavy brass chandelier hangs overhead and volunteers politely put plates of food on the table one at a time.

Fotis Nikolaou, 39, an unemployed painter and tiler, wolfed down some soup on Wednesday, then swabbed his plate with bread. He complained that the daily wage for a laborer like him had dropped as low as €10 for 12 hours of work, and that is off the books.

Only immigrants would take such jobs, he said.

He had no doubt that life would only get harder for Greece in the coming weeks and months, and that he would only wait longer for the soup. But he found comfort in thinking he would not be alone.

“We could suffer 20 years,” he said. “But at least we’ll suffer together.”

GREECE - A woman passes by a graffiti depicting a homeless person in central Athens. By @ArisMessinis #AFP: image by AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 11 July 2015

#BanksyBristol: image via BigFatBakes @bigfatbakes, 30 March 2014

Stencil by Banksy at waterline on social entertainment boat Thekla, central Bristol, England: photo by Adrian Pingstone, 2 April 2005

A Satyr Mourning Over a Nymph: Piero di Cosimo(1462-1522), c. 1495, oil on poplar, 65.4 × 184.2 cm (National Gallery, London)

A pensioner wait to receive part of his pension at a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece on Monday. Euro zone leaders clinched a deal with Greece on Monday to negotiate a third bailout to keep the near-bankrupt country in the euro zone after a whole night of haggling at an emergency summit

A pensioner waits to receive part of his pension at a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece on Monday: photo by Yiannis Kourtoglou/Reuters, 13 July 2015

Daily life in central Athens: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 13 June 2015

#Greece to extend bank holiday for two more days: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 13 July 2015

Killing the European Project

A reaction to #ThisIsACoup from Belgium: image via Ismail Küpeli @ismail_kupeli, 13 July 2015

German flag over Irish government buildings. That's it lads, drop all the pretense #ThisIsACoup: image via Conor McCabe @Thouxic, 13 July 2015 Dublin City, Ireland

Merkel's plan. Athens 2020. #ThisIsACoup #acropolis #brandenburgate #athens #oxi2015 #greece #inexarchiag: image via inExarchiagr @inExarchia, 13 July 2015

Killing the European Project: it wasn’t the Greeks who did it:Paul Krugman, New York Times, 12 July 2015

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

whoops [road accident, Greece]: photo by linmtheu, 13 March 2004

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this?

In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end.

whoops [road accident, Greece]: photo by linmtheu, 13 March 2004

Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.)

The European project -- a project I have always praised and supported -- has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

Who said Schauble wants #grexit? #Schaublexit #Schaueble #GreeceCrisis #EuroSummit #Eurogroup: image via Classikos @classikos, 12 July 2015 Rome, Lazio

Greeks react with fury at new €86bn EU bailout deal saying #ThisIsACoup: image via Daily Mail Online @MailOnline, 13 July 2015

The #ThisIsACoup Politically correct Panzer!: image via Tiziano de Simone @tiziodesio, 13 July 2015 Rome, Lazio

Hope Dies Last

#Greece has three days to make cuts or face #EU exit: image via The Times of London @thetimes, 12 July 2015

#Greece crisis: Eurozone leaders talk through the night in bid to agree terms for new bailout: image via BBC News (World) @BBCWorld, 12 July 2015

Is this going to be the defining image of this deal? #Greece: image via Shawn Donnan @sdonnan, 12 July 2015

Vassilis Zambaras:Hope Dies Last

You get up
Every day hoping
It won’t be your last
And you go to bed wishing
It had been.

Vassilis Zambaras: Hope Dies Last, from Vazambam, 9 July 2015

The #ThisIsACoup meme burned bright in the BRICS as well as Euro periphery. LatAm watching Syriza's fate intently: image via Paul Mason @paulmasonnewstorinoman, 13 July 2015

Q: you've been accused of staging a coup. Juncker: we said it'd be worse after the referendum. So, yes #ThisIsACoup: image via Oscar Reyes @oscar_reyes, 12 July 2015

I woke up like #ThisIsACoup: image via Mary Sinatsaki @mariboo, 13 July 2015

An Air of Acquiescence

Agreement - 13.07.15 #ThisIsACoup: image via Tonousou @Tonousou, 12 July 2015

Vassilis Zambaras: An Air of Acquiescence

Their slender stalks fastened
With twine to thin reeds stuck
In a brown, earthenware pot,

The blood-red carnations nod
In accord with each blustering gust,
All the while suffusing the air

They breathe
With redolent dyes
Of thick, heady musk.

Vassilis Zambaras: An Air of Acquiescence, from Vazambam, 13 July 2015

Carnations in the street, Polytechnic University protest, Exarchia, Athens: photo by linmtheu, 17 November 2013

Carnation... on the grave of Melina Merkouri, in Athens First Cemetery: photo by Robert Wallace, 15 January 2008

La dignidad de un pueblo frente al chantaje de una mafia. #ThisIsACoup: image via Miguel Urbán Crespo @MiguelUrban, 13 July 2015

Graffiti, Athens: photo by linmtheu, 30 March 2014

EXCLUSIVE: What a secret IMF report reveals about #Greece [photo: A man walks by a mural in Athens: Yannis Behrakis]: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 14 July 2015

Greece put its faith in democracy but Europe has vetoed the result: The EU has humiliated Syriza and ignored its referendum: now the only power the country has left is to implement what the lenders want: Paul Mason, The Guardian, 13 July 2015

The only thing certain about the aftermath of Sunday's Euro summit is the disgrace of the political leaderships.

The EU’s main powers tried to ritually humiliate the Greek government, but ruthlessness of intent was matched by incompetence when it came to execution. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, threw on to the table a suggestion for Greece to leave the single currency for five years. Senior MPs from his coalition partner, the socialist SPD, screamed from the sidelines that they had not agreed to this -– yet enough of Germany’s partners did agree to get the proposal into the final ultimatum.

The Greeks were negotiating under threat of their banking system being allowed to collapse, a threat made by the very regulator supposed to maintain financial stability.

For the Greek leadership, it has also been a week of miscalculation. Armed, they thought, with a mandate for less austerity, they listened once again to the French, whose technocrats actually helped design the Greek offer going into the Brussels summit, only to see that offer ripped apart and replaced with a demand for the reversal of every measure against austerity the government has ever taken.

But the real problem is not the politicians. It is the eurozone’s inability to contain the democratic wishes of 19 electorates. When the Finnish government threatened to collapse the talks, it was only expressing the wishes of the 38% of voters who backed the nationalist rightwingers of Finns Party. Likewise, when Schäuble sprang his temporary Grexit plan, he was expressing the demand of 52% of German voters, who want Greece to leave.

GREECE - A banner "The End" during a demonstration against European Union's austerity in Athens. By @ADS4AFP #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 13 July 2015

Little did leftwing Greece understand how scant was the power its ministers actually wielded from their offices

As for the Greeks, having tramped the streets of Athens alongside them for the best part of two months, I am certain that the “Oxi” movement was essentially a demand to stay in the Euro on different terms. You cannot get 70-80% of people in the working-class suburbs of Athens turning out –- in the face of a rightwing media bombardment –- on far-left anti-Euro sentiment alone.

Now it seems that both sides of the Greek referendum were voting for an illusion. One of the most touching aspects of Greek life is people’s obsessional respect for parliamentary democracy. Syriza itself is the embodiment of a leftism that always believed you could achieve more in parliament than on the streets. For the leftwing half of Greek society, though, the result is people continually voting for things more radical than they are prepared to fight for.

I asked one of Syriza’s grassroots organisers, a tough party cadre who had been agitating for a “rupture” with lenders for weeks, whether he could put his members onto the streets to keep order outside besieged pharmacies and supermarkets. He shook his head. The police, or more probably the conscript army would have to do it.

When it comes to the now-abandoned Thessaloniki Programme, the radical manifesto on which Alexis Tsipras came to power, there is always talk of implementing it “from below”: that is, demanding so many workers’ rights inside the industries designated for privatisation that it becomes impossible; or implementing the minimum wage through wildcat strikes. But it never happens. When strikes are called, it’s by the communists. When riots happen, it’s the anarchists. The rest of leftwing Greece is mesmerised by parliament.

Little does it understand how scant was the power its ministers actually wielded from their offices. And now the realisation dawns: the Greek parliament has no power inside the eurozone at all. It has the power only to implement what its lenders want.

And what of rightwing and centrist Greece? Its party structures are already shattered by the political defeats of January and the referendum. But here, too, the mass base is prone to voting for an illusion. When they went on to the streets with their badly translated red-baiting placards in mid-June, the Greek right claimed to be for nothing more than “Europe”. But the Europe they want is the Europe that tolerated corruption and fiscal profligacy, and indeed paid for it. The Europe of the submarines purchased from Germany, under conditions which put a former Greek defence minister in jail for taking bribes. Peoples with sovereignty have the right to vote for illusory things. But the Euro took sovereignty away.

GREECE - Anti-EU demonstration calling for dismissal of accords between Greece and its creditors. By @lgouliam #AFP [photo by Louisa Gouliamaki]: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 July 2015

“Let’s go to the beach. Let’s bring women that look like supermodels and a bunch of handsome guys and let’s flip the finger at the world, saying: ‘We’re still Greece’".

I followed the summit in a bar, with a bunch of young Greek freelancers –- photographers, fashion magazine journalists, speakers of perfect English who could work anywhere, but choose to tote their DSLRs and laptops here. They know they’re sitting on the most visually stunning and compelling story in the developed world. We watched the hashtag #ThisIsACoup proliferate until our eyes could not stay open. Then, said one: “Let’s go to the beach. Let’s bring women that look like supermodels and a bunch of handsome guys and let’s flip the finger at the world, saying: ‘We’re still Greece’. That will go viral.” It probably would, but the Greece they’re part of is shattered. The economy can and will rebound. Syriza will purge itself and be reformed. The right will find leaders who don’t look bewildered by their own defeats.

The problem is with democracy. If democracy cannot express illusions and crazy hopes; if it cannot contain narratives of emotion and ideals, it dies. By countermanding first the landslide victory of an elected government and then a 61% plebiscite majority, the EU functionally vetoed the outcomes of Greek democracy. If the democratic spirit now dies in Greece –- and it might –- we had better hope that phenomenon too does not go viral.

A man passes by a graffiti showing a euro sign bleeding, in central Athens: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 14 July 2015

Telos: Endless Tunnel

"Better to be broke with the Drachma than a slave with the Euro." #Greece: image via Alexander Marquardt @MarquardtA, 7 July 2015

Exclusive: Greece needs debt relief far beyond EU plans - Secret IMF report: Reuters, 14 July 2015

Greece will need debt relief far beyond what euro zone partners have been prepared to consider due to the devastation of its economy and banks in the last two weeks, a confidential study by the International Monetary Fund seen by Reuters shows.

The updated debt sustainability analysis was sent to euro zone governments late on Monday, hours after Athens and its 18 partners agreed in principle to open negotiations on a third bailout program of up to 86 billion euros in return for tougher austerity measures and structural reforms.

"The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date -- and what has been proposed by the ESM," the IMF said, referring to the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund.

European countries would have to give Greece a 30-year grace period on servicing all its European debt, including new loans, and a very dramatic maturity extension, or else make explicit annual fiscal transfers to the Greek budget or accept "deep upfront haircuts" on their loans to Athens, the report said.

Telos. California: photo by Aaron Durand, 15 May 2012

The newspapers age in an hour

Pensioners sit waiting outside a national bank branch, as banks opened only for pensioners to allow them to withdraw their pensions, with a limit of 120 euros, in Thessaloniki, on July 3, 2015 (AFP PHOTO /SAKIS MITROLIDIS)

Pensioners wait outside a national bank branch in Thessaloniki, as banks opened only for pensioners to allow them to withdraw their pensions, with a limit of 120 euros: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 3 July 2015

May 11

After the rain the buildings and the stones
change colors.
Two old men sit on the bench. They don’t talk.

So much shouting and so much silence remains.
The newspapers age in an hour.

Stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed,
the monotony of change; -- stressed,
unstressed, stressed, strophe, antistrophe
and neither rage nor sorrow.

Evening lights out;
just as heavy for the one who struck
as for the one he struck.

The men sit on the stones,
pare their nails.
The others died.
We forgot them.

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): May 11, from Diaries of Exile (1948-1950), translated by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Leroy Keeley, 2014

Selling off the silver: #Greece agrees to create independent fund that'll manage privatisation: image via BBC News (World), 14 July 2015

January 25

For a moment we took refuge
against the latrine wall.
The wind was cutting.
An old man stared at a cloud.
I looked at him smiling
in the light of that cloud -- so peaceful,
so far removed from desire and pain --
I was jealous.

Old people agree with the clouds.
And it’s taking us a long time to get old.

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): January 25, from Diaries of Exile (1948-1950), translated by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Leroy Keeley, 2014

Greek pensioner Giorgos Chatzifotiadis, outside a national bank branch in Thessaloniki on July 3, 2015 [photo bySakis Mitrolidis] #Greece: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 7 July 2015

Telos: Endless Tunnel

TELOS. God Even Loves You [Mission District, San Francisco]: photo by Thomas Hawk, 28 August 2009

TELOS graffiti - Oakland, Ca | by EndlessCanvas.com

TELOS. Oakland, Ca.: photo by Endless Canvas, 26 March 2011

TELOS. SODO IN SEATTLE WA: photo by dim9th, 7 January 2012

Telos [San Jose, California]: photo by SabadoGigante, 29 July 2012

TELOS. South Bay, CA..: photo by Same $hit Different Day, 10 January 2012

TELOS. Boxcar World. Benched in Southern California: photo by **TRUE2DEATH**, 23 December 2013

14 July: Under the rule of the unliving

Paris 14th of July 1789 by #TasosAnastasiou #ThisIsACoup: image via George Mitakides @GMitadikes, 14 July 2015

Wow. Just wow. #ThisIsACoup: image via Owen Jones @OwenJones84, 12 July 2015

Excellent article on the current situation - 'Fragments against the Ruin'. #ThisIsACoup: image via Ronan Burtenshaw @Ronan Burtenshaw, 12 July 2015

#Greece is being treated like a hostile occupied state | @AmbroseEP: image via The Telegraph @Telegraph, 14 July 2015

RT @Channel4News: #GreekCrisis - @ PaulMasonNews with all the latest from #Greece: image via Janine Louloudi @janinel83, 13 July 2015

Yanis Varoufakis: First Thoughts on Greece’s Terms of Surrender

Outgoing Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis puts his helmet on as he is surrounded by media after his resignation in Athens, Monday, July 6, 2015. Greece and its membership in Europe's joint currency faced an uncertain future Monday, with the country under pressure to reach a bailout deal with creditors as soon as possible after Greeks resoundingly rejected the notion of more austerity in exchange for aid.

Outgoing Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis puts his helmet on as he is surrounded by media after his resignation in Athens on Monday: photo by Petros Karadjias/AP, 6 July 2015

Yanis Varoufakis: On the Euro Summit’s Statement on Greece: First thoughts: from Yanis Varoufakis: thoughts for the post-2008 world, 14 July 2015

In the next hours and days, I shall be sitting in Parliament to assess the legislation that is part of the recent Euro Summit agreement on Greece. I am also looking forward to hearing in person from my comrades, Alexis Tsipras and Euclid Tsakalotos, who have been through so much over the past few days. Till then, I shall reserve judgment regarding the legislation before us. Meanwhile, here are some first, impressionistic thoughts stirred up by the Euro Summit’s Statement.

A New Versailles Treaty is haunting Europe -– I used hat expression back in the Spring of 2010 to describe the first Greek ‘bailout’ that was being prepared at that time. If that allegory was pertinent then it is, sadly, all too germane now.

Never before has the European Union made a decision that undermines so fundamentally the project of European Integration. Europe’s leaders, in treating Alexis Tsipras and our government the way they did, dealt a decisive blow against the European project.

The project of European integration has, indeed, been fatally wounded over the past few days. And as Paul Krugman rightly says, whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks or Syriza who killed off the dream of a democratic, united Europe.

Back in 1971 Nick Kaldor, the noted Cambridge economist, had warned that forging monetary union before a political union was possible would lead not only to a failed monetary union but also to the deconstruction of the European political project. Later on, in 1999, German-British sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf also warned that economic and monetary union would split rather than unite Europe. All these years I hoped that they were wrong. Now, the powers that be in Brussels, in Berlin and in Frankfurt have conspired to prove them right.

The Euro Summit statement of yesterday morning reads like a document committing to paper Greece’s Terms of Surrender. It is meant as a statement confirming that Greece acquiesces to becoming a vassal of the Eurogroup.

The Euro Summit statement of yesterday morning has nothing to do with economics, nor with any concern for the type of reform agenda capable of lifting Greece out of its mire. It is purely and simply a manifestation of the politics of humiliation in action. Even if one loathes our government one must see that the Eurogroup’s list of demands represents a major departure from decency and reason.

The Euro Summit statement of yesterday morning signalled a complete annulment of national sovereignty, without putting in its place a supra-national, pan-European, sovereign body politic. Europeans, even those who give not a damn for Greece, ought to beware.

Much energy is expended by the media on whether the Terms of Surrender will pass through Greek Parliament, and in particular on whether MPs like myself will toe the line and vote in favour of the relevant legislation. I do not think this is the most interesting of questions. The crucial question is: Does the Greek economy stand any chance of recovery under these terms? This is the question that will preoccupy me during the Parliamentary sessions that follow in the next hours and days. The greatest worry is that even a complete surrender on our part would lead to a deepening of the never-ending crisis.

The recent Euro Summit is indeed nothing short of the culmination of a coup. In 1967 it was the tanks that foreign powers used to end Greek democracy. In my interview with Philip Adams, on ABC Radio National’s LNL, I claimed that in 2015 another coup was staged by foreign powers using, instead of tanks, Greece’s banks. Perhaps the main economic difference is that, whereas in 1967 Greece’s public property was not targeted, in 2015 the powers behind the coup demanded the handing over of all remaining public assets, so that they would be put into the servicing of our un-payable, unsustainable debt.

On sale for 24 hours. All $ goes to Greek solidarity group providing care for refugees #Greece: image via Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple, 14 July 2015