Disturbing trans news from Greece

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This is important news from our brothers and sisters in Greece. This needs to be spread widely.

Greek police arresting transgender people

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Thanks!

Andrea Lena's picture

I just posted the link to my FB page.

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Disturbing news indeed, Karen

Then the Greeks have a long history of assholes in power.

The Parthenon is a monument to times when Athens used its great navy to demand protection money from weaker city states. Only when building the Parthenon overtaxed both Athens assents and what they could extort from their vassal states did the others rise up and order Athens navy burned. Thus in large part contributing to the rapid decline of Greece and Rome's assent to power.

We also have the case of Socrates.

As to Greece as the birthplace of Democracy. That first flowering of democracy was almost a farce as only a very few MEN had the vote and it was in effect mob rule.

Add in today's crippling monetary/economic crisis and you have a recipe for extremists of all kinds to take advantage and attack groups they believe are *wrong* or they just don't like.

Easy to be tolerant in good times. Easy to be a hater in bad times.

IE the Jews are destroying Germany, both economically and by polluting our Aryan blood. Hitler used that crap to help attain power and to justify murder millions. So today the LGBT are perverting the souls of honest Greeks and this economic trouble is gods punishment. Hey a line like that works for that Rev Phelps and his tiny church of gay haters.

Great to see there are bastards of all races, faiths and creeds. Equal opportunity in cruelty.

John in Wauwatosa

John in Wauwatosa

I'd have thought

Angharad's picture

the European Commission would be the best way to deal with this, they could take the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights, though that would take some time.

Some time ago I suggested the pendulum was swinging to the right, it is beginning to look as if I was correct.

Angharad

I tend to agree

It's reaction time. Heinlein wasn't too far off in his prediction of the "Crazy Years" followed by theocratic dictatorship in the U.S. At times I think the only good thing for me is that I'll likely be dead before it happens. I doubt it will happen in the 2014 elections, but by 2018 I wouldn't be surprised.

As for the rest of the world, who knows?


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Don't you mean the 2016 and

Don't you mean the 2016 and 2020 elections? Those are when the presidential elections take place along with local and state elections.

If you say so

I don't really look that far ahead anymore.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

I tend to agree as well.

I think that we are in for some real trouble here, and honestly, throughout the world.
The sad truth is, that I do see religion as being the greatest threat humanity has ever
faced. The last time a religion gained ascendancy, the people suffered for a thousand
years. Now, it will be global, with no outside balance of any kind, and it makes me
shudder to think of how it will come out. The one value our religious nuts might have
had, is negated by the fact that they are saying nothing, even though Christians are
suffering a Genocide in at least four countries right now.

I would have never thought it possible for the US to have slipped so far in the short
few years of my lifetime, but given that it looks like both their morality and power
have stepped right off a cliff, we can have no hope for secularism.

Worst of all, the people who you would hope would know better... an example would be
Theresa Sparks, instead of realizing the danger, acts instead like a useful idiot. Seemingly,
incapable of reason, as well as completely ignorant of of the history, theology, and economy
that hare bringing us to this pass.

Like so many here, I've lived with one of the most terrible frustrations a person can
have, every day since I was old enough to know what the problem surely was. But... This is
worse, this seeing little or no hope. And, the little hope that I have left, is probably just
an irrational desire to just not give up on people.

I should probably start writing again, and just ignore the news completely, because my
risk for a stroke rises significantly, every broadcast I see. It's quite sad.

Sincerely,
Sarah Lynn

Sad, though not unexpected,

Jemima Tychonaut's picture

Sad, though not unexpected, news. The US govt has had a travel advisory for Greece for a little while now, concerning a "rise in unprovoked harassment and violent attacks against persons who, because of their complexion, are perceived to be foreign migrants" and the BBC reported this weekend about Greek coast guard pushing Syrian refugee boats back into Turkish water with sometimes fatal results. And then there is the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn, which it is alleged has links to the police and judiciary, capitalising on the failure of the centre-right and centre-left in Greece to solve the economic problems hitting the country by telling people it isn't their fault the country is in such a mess, it's foreigners, etc.

Greece is definitely not a good place to different right now.



"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

'At the bequest of the Orthodox Church'

I think the key phrase here may be 'at the bequest of the Orthodox Church'. This is not an enlightened organisation. It has sensed a mood of discontent in Greece and has decided to cash in on it. Shame on them.

Ban nothing. Question everything.

The key thing

For me is not the request, that's the same sort of thing I expect from most organized religions. For me it's how willingly the police and judiciary were to act on that request. And with such apparent enthusiasm. They didn't need any coercion, they jumped right in and proceeded to bash heads and jail people, even the lawyer that represented one on the arrestees. That purely does scare the you-know-what out of me.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin