A Thursday Tune - Rose

 

A relatively young artist, I found a review of one of her shows here Eau da Funk’s debut gig at the first Evening of Creativity of 2023, alongside Elena Mylonas and Olivia Wilkes

In a packed Oikos Café, the Friday night crowd saw further performances from Elena Mylonas and Olivia Wilkes, both vocal coaches.

Elena performed songs by The Cranberries and Dolly Parton, but also her own song ‘Rose’ accompanied by some musicians from Eau da Funk (at the Evening of Creativity events, spontaneous collaboration between the artists is often involved). She started playing guitar at 11 years old in her native Greece, and after attending Birmingham University aged 23 she started teaching as a vocal coach.

Backstage, Elena revealed details about her song writing and approach to performing: “When I was younger, in Greece, for some reason everybody expected me to play only cheerful songs.

“Furthermore, people in the music industry were requiring from me to adhere to certain beauty standards, asking me to appear more sexy or girlish. I felt really uncomfortable with it, especially after the death of my brother about seven years ago.

“I needed to express my grief somehow, and music gave me the perfect opportunity to channel those feelings. I wasn’t fitting in the Greek scene of the time though, so I decided to move to the UK, where there is a long tradition of ballads and a broader variety of music genres.”

Elena regularly performs both original songs and covers with bands in small venues, with her debut album set for release in the coming months.

I wish her luck. It's a tough business. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Meanwhile In The Kitchen up on time and under budget at The Other McCain.

DNA Ties Philistines to the Greeks

Caravaggio - David with the head of Goliath

Scholars say Philistine genes help solve biblical mystery

Goliath the Greek? Human remains from an ancient cemetery in southern Israel have yielded precious bits of DNA that a new study says help prove the European origin of the Philistines — the enigmatic nemeses of the biblical Israelites.

The Philistines mostly resided in five cities along the southern coast of what is today Israel and the Gaza Strip during the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago. In the Bible, David fought the Philistine giant Goliath in a duel, and Samson slew a thousand of their warriors with the jawbone of an ass.

Many archaeologists have proposed they migrated to the coast of the ancient Near East during a period of upheaval at the end of the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 B.C.

Rubens - Samson and Delilah

I remember hearing that years ago, probably when, as a teenager, I read all of Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization

The Philistines emerged as other societies around the eastern Mediterranean collapsed, possibly because of a cataclysmic intersection of climate change and man-made disasters. Philistine ceramics bear similarities to styles found in the Aegean, but concrete evidence of their geographic origins has remained elusive.

Now, a study of genetic material extracted from skeletons unearthed in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon in 2013 has found a DNA link. It connects the Philistines to populations in southern Europe during the Bronze Age.

Dyck van Antoon - Samson and Delilah 

The study, spearheaded by researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute and Wheaton College in Illinois, was published Wednesday in the research journal Science Advances.

The biblical account relates that the Philistines originally hailed from a distant isle. An Egyptian temple built by Rameses III bears reliefs of battles with “Sea Peoples” who appeared on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. One group listed in the Egyptian text is strikingly similar to the Hebrew name for Philistines. Excavations of Philistine sites have found ceramics and architecture that differed from those of their neighbors in ancient Canaan.

Gustav Dore - David and Goliath

But archaeologists can’t be absolutely certain that different pots mean different people.

Eric Cline, an archaeologist from George Washington University specializing in the Late Bronze Age in the Near East, said conclusive evidence has eluded scientists until now — even if the material remains have indicated that the Philistines migrated to the Levant from the Aegean around 1200 B.C.

Cline, who was not involved in the study, is the author of “1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed,” which examines the period when the Philistines arrived. He called the paper’s findings “extremely exciting and very important” by helping resolve the long-standing mystery about their origins.

Cheap and reliable DNA sequencing is revolutionizing  history.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Cynthia Kirchner up on time and within budget.

Greece Agrees to Take More Other People's Money

In exchange for vague, and unbelievable promises that it will attempt to get it's financial house in order: In Greece, defiance dissipates into capitulation

. . . Friday, the euphoria had faded as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s vows to stand up to ­Europe caved to the harsh realization that the birthplace of democracy stood just 48 hours away from financial ruin — and Greeks were poised to swallow what amounted to the same dose of austerity they had refused in a vote Sunday.

“Each one of us shall be confronted with his stature and his history. Between a bad choice and a catastrophic one, we are forced to opt for the first one,” Tsipras said in a speech before his party’s lawmakers, according to local media. “It is as if one asks you for your money or your life.”

That was gracious. . . I can can see he's serious about accepting some responsibility for paying back the debts.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Greek Parliament backed a ­last-ditch plea to creditors for more than 50 billion euros in emergency funding that could carry the country through the next three years. European officials in Brussels also planned to pore over the proposal Saturday afternoon. Approval from the 19-member euro zone’s finance ministers would open the door to restarting formal negotiations that had broken down in the run-up to the referendum. 

And what will the Europeans (mostly the Germans) receive in return, other than sulkiness?

In return for a bailout, Tsipras offered to undertake a massive restructuring of the national budget that has eluded his predecessors but that analysts say may be unavoidable if Greece is to stabilize its foundering economy. The package of spending cuts and tax increases is estimated to total 12 billion to 13 billion euros — even more than previous Greek proposals had offered. It includes abolishing key tax breaks for islands that are popular tourist destinations, phasing out a subsidy for poor pensioners and privatizing sprawling state industries.

It's a pretty good bet that not much of that will actually happen, and the Greeks will cheat on the rest.

But one thing that the European will probably benefit from will be the out migration of the cream of Greece's crop:  Youth exodus fuels brain drain in Greece

The exodus of young Greeks — driven by fruitless job searches in Athens, depleting bank accounts and the mass-mailing of applications abroad — marks a massive brain drain that could deprive the country of leading minds for a generation. Regardless of whether the crisis forces Greece from the continent’s single-currency zone, the loss of that talent will cast a shadow over the country.

“We are going to be in a situation where it’s a country of older people,” Lois Labrianidis, a secretary general in the Greek economic and infrastructure ministry who has studied the brain drain, said in a phone interview from Athens. “It’s going to be a huge blow for society as well as the economy.”

With a youth unemployment rate near 50 percent, it might not seem surprising that many of Greece’s young people are leaving. But it is a testament to the severity of Greece’s crisis, given that brain drains are rare in developed nations with well-regarded education systems.

Over the past five years, more than 200,000 Greeks have left, shaving about 2 percent from the country’s population. The majority of those economic refugees are young and well-educated, according to several research papers. Emigration is up 300 percent from pre-crisis levels.

When the young, ambitious, smart people start to leave in droves, the country is in for a bad spell.

Greece Flips the Bird at Europe

Greeks Set to Reject Creditors’ Bailout Terms, Projections Show

With more than 87% of votes counted, preliminary results showed more than 61% of voters had cast ballots against creditors’ demands in the historic referendum—a heavier-than-expected victory for the “no” campaign against the austerity policies demanded by Greece’s lenders: the rest of the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

Voter turnout, based on the partial counting of votes, was reported at about 62%. Opinion polls conducted during Sunday by private broadcasters had pointed to a narrower majority for the “no” camp.

The projected outcome would strengthen the domestic standing of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who campaigned vehemently for Greeks to reject lenders’ terms for further bailout funding.

But Mr. Tsipras might soon find it difficult to deliver on his promise to secure a more lenient bailout deal from Europe, where other governments, led by Germany, are in no mood to offer Greece more generous terms.

As Insty points out, the Greeks basically had a choice between Hillary and Bernie Sanders, and chose Bernie Sanders. How that works out for them is likely to prove instructive. Too bad they don't have a better choice, but they put themselves into this bag, now they have to fight their way back out.

As George Will points out:

It cannot be said too often: There cannot be too many socialist smashups. The best of these punish reckless creditors whose lending enables socialists to live, for a while, off other people’s money. The world, which owes much to ancient Athens’ legacy, including the idea of democracy, is indebted to today’s Athens for the reminder that reality does not respect a democracy’s delusions.

A Holiday In Greece

Bank Holiday that is. They're still out of other peoples' money: Greece Closes Banks in Crisis

It was first announced that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras debt-ridden left-wing government would close banks Monday, but now they’ve decided the banks will remain closed all week:

Greek banks are to remain closed and capital controls will be imposed, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says.
Speaking after the European Central Bank (ECB) said it was not increasing emergency funding to Greek banks, Mr Tsipras said Greek deposits were safe.
Greece is due to make a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday – the same day that its current bailout expires.
. . .Greek banks are expected to stay shut until 7 July, two days after Greece’s planned referendum on the terms it had been offered by international creditors for receiving fresh bailout money. . . .
Eurozone finance ministers blamed Greece for breaking off the talks, and the European Commission took the unusual step on Sunday ofpublishing proposals by European creditors that it said were on the table at the time.
But Greece described creditors’ terms as “not viable”, and asked for an extension of its current deal until after the vote was completed.
“[Rejection] of the Greek government’s request for a short extension of the programme was an unprecedented act by European standards, questioning the right of a sovereign people to decide,” Mr Tsipras on Sunday said in a televised address.
“This decision led the ECB today to limit the liquidity available to Greek banks and forced the Greek central bank to suggest a bank holiday and restrictions on bank withdrawals.” . . .
The temporary closure of banks in Greece, and the introduction of capital controls, is very bad news for Greece. Greek people will have less money to spend and business less to invest; so an already weak economy will probably return to deep recession.

(More at Memeorandum.) Notice how Tsipras suggests that the creditors are being undemocratic, rather than admitting that Greece has been irresponsible? Tsipras obviously believes Greeks have a right to other people’s money, and that it is wrong for European creditors to expect them to pay back what they borrowed.

And this interesting news item, a bit closer to home:

Oh, by the way: Puerto Rico can’t pay its debts, either.

Puerto Rico’s governor, saying he needs to pull the island out of a “death spiral,” has concluded that the commonwealth cannot pay its roughly $72 billion in debts, an admission that will probably have wide-reaching financial repercussions.

The governor, Alejandro García Padilla, and senior members of his staff said in an interview last week that they would probably seek significant concessions from as many as all of the island’s creditors, which could include deferring some debt payments for as long as five years or extending the timetable for repayment.

“The debt is not payable,” Mr. García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”

Time for the Jubilee?

The Jubilee (Hebrew yovel יובל) year is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years), and according toBiblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the Land of Israel; there is some debate whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year. Jubilee deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According to Leviticus, slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. 

Greece Still Out of Other Peoples' Money

Greece's attempts to gain some breathing space in its ongoing debt crisis by accusing the countries it hopes to lend them money of bad faith and imperialism, and by not showing any willingness to put it's financial house in order has paid off exactly as one would expect. Its own citizens are losing faith in the government and bank and are trying to reclaim the money they have before it is confiscated or devalued out of existence:

Via Stacy McCain

The Eurozone’s problem child throws a tantrum:
Two senior Greek retail bank executives said as many as 500 of the country’s more than 7,000 ATMs had run out of cash as of Saturday morning, and that some lenders may not be able to open on Monday unless there was an emergency liquidity injection from the Bank of Greece. An official with Greece’s Capital Markets Commission, the markets’ regulator, also warned that the Athens Stock Exchange may be unable to operate on Monday without a cash injection into the banking system. A Greek central bank spokesman said it was making efforts to supply money.
 . . .
After withdrawing more than 30 billion euros as the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, took power, depositors are now reacting to the latest twist in the five-month standoff with European leaders and creditors.

In addition to Margaret Thatcher’s famous maxim about socialists eventually running out of other people’s money, there is also Stein’s Law. This was coined by Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Richard Nixon’s presidency: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

And the problem of the Eurozone’s weaker nations expecting bailouts from their rich neighbors obviously cannot go on forever. So what happens when it stops? We don’t know.

Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland — the other fiscal weak sisters in the Eurozone — may manage to avoid default, and the richer EU nations may be able to stabilize the overall regional economy. If so, the Greek problem is just a Greek problem.

On the other hand, who knows?
. . .
We’ve spent seven years in a slow, weak recovery from the crash of 2008, and it might be that the Greek crisis will trigger a worldwide recession. Riots, famine, hyperinflation — anything is possible.

The only question is whether the financial collapse of Greece will be the trigger in a series of similar catastrophes leading to a world wide debt crisis, or the bad example which will at least temporarily cause the remainder of the PIIGS to pay attention.

Silver and gold are still pretty cheap . . .

Greeks Continue to be Out of Other People's Money

It seems like their playing a protracted game of chicken with the rest of the EU (and Germany in particular), 'If you don't give us more time and money, we'll crash into you head first, and then won't you be sorry!'

Greeks demand end to creditor 'looting' after talks break down

In his first public comments since the talks broke down, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday said Greece would wait for its creditors to become more realistic and accused them of making unreasonable demands for political ends.

"One can only see a political purposefulness in the insistence of creditors on new cuts in pensions after five years of looting under the bailouts," Tsipras said in a statement to Greek newspaper Ton Syntakton.

"We will await patiently until the institutions accede to realism," he said. "We do not have the right to bury European democracy at the place where it was born."

You're banking a lot on a memory of a 2000+ year old culture, that you haven't been for a long time.

My free advice to the EU? Kick them out quick and take the losses, it'll save time, money and aggravation in the long run. 

Greece Not Yet Out of Other People's Money

Greece introduces cashpoint tax in desperate bid to raise revenue and stop run on banks as country teeters on brink of bankruptcy

Greece has revealed it is to introduce a surcharge for all cashpoint withdrawals and financial transactions in a desperate attempt to prevent citizens withdrawing their money from the country's beleaguered banks.

Ministers hope the controversial move could raise as much as €180 million, which the Athens government hopes will help the country avoid defaulting on debts owed to international creditors.

As the Greek economy teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, millions of panicking citizens have completely cleared their accounts - pulling more than €28 billion out of banks and pushing the total cash revenue held in the country's financial institutions to a 10-year low.

The controversial introduction of mandatory cashpoint charges still requires approval by the European Central Bank but is expected to amount to €1 for every €1,000 transaction.

While the measure is unlikely to impact on day-to-day withdrawals, Greece hopes it will deter citizens clearing out their bank accounts.

Please don't give Barack Obama and the democrats any new ideas.