Back in September

I'm back from Naxos. Within the first 24 hours, it all came back: The strikes, the misery of the thieves in the government, even the traffic. The newest "escapade" of the politicians is to take some 140 or so of the drivers of Metro line 1 and put them to work in a museum. (Yes, you read that right, highly trained technical train personnel will cut your tickets in a museum or tell you not to take pictures with flash.) Result: Line 1 is variously crippled (a train every 30 minutes) or shut down.

Anyway, it's still summer. My weblog is still there, even if I didn't post. I'm still writing code. Due to the fashion for this autumn changing, I selected a slightly darker shade for the cursor color in the Terminal (the "green fonts on black" thing where I write my code). It makes me feel so fresh and new now. I tried (without success) setting the cursor to blink too, but it was too much of a fashion revolution all in one step for me. I guess I'm a bit conservative deep in my heart.

The Freedom to Demonstrate

Today various organizations have called people to demonstrate again on the central Syntagma square in Athens. The police answered with brutality. They beat up unarmed and peaceful people and teargassed them. Women and children were attacked.

I was at the lower part of the square, in the early evening. At the time all the entrances to Amalias avenue (the upper part of the square) were blocked by the riot police. We waited for some time for what would happen. When the police line was pulled back to the other side of Amalias avenue, they fired shock grenades and teargas into the people. We were disgusted and in no mood to risk our health, so we left. In the meantime we learned that the crowd persisted and has taken back the square again.

So, while the crooked politicians and the speculators cut up their pie of the profits, they don't want any of that "democracy" stuff that causes only trouble. People might have a right to demonstrate peacefully, but only if they are willing to risk their health.

No battle today

This Tuesday there was a battle again in Athens, with the riot police attacking people (and there was one scene where they hit an 8 year old girl). The "online tv station" stopcartel transmitted images and commentary live. Good job, lots of people from all over the world paid attention.

Today (Thursday evening) though, there is no battle going on, instead stopcartel decided to replay Tuesday's video on their live streaming site. Huge success: Since they did not remove the "live" label on the video, lots of people believed that police attacked demonstrators right now and again today. Right now there are still twitter messages repeating the story. Stopcartel had placed a message "now playing back video" on there, but only in Greek.

This kind of thing does not work. I have previous work experience at a TV station and back then I learned one thing: If something looks like "live" and it isn't, you have to make it absolutely clear. Leaving a logo that says "live" in there is a disaster.