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Olympia Victim of parasites.
#16
Let's be pragmatic.

a) They're utter bastards for doing that; they steal not just from the state but everyone from researchers to the little kids with wonder in their eyes when they get to go to the museums.
b) Define important. Honestly I don't think we need to bring up the massive problems with the way antiquities are handled in Greece but I'd say that we lose a lot of important stuff each year behind the scenes anyway... Most of what is really important from the POV of ancient greek cultures and religions is rarely on display anyway since it lacks the wow factor.
c) As I said we loose stuff every year that just doesn't make the news.

I think if people are going to start blaming the Greeks due to the crisis they can just....just stop. The backlash is going to be noticeable now isn't it? Great...
Jass
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#17
It's all such a shame. Every time I see or hear Greece mentioned in the news these days it is just bad news Sad
[size=75:2kpklzm3]Ghostmojo / Howard Johnston[/size]

[Image: A-TTLGAvatar-1-1.jpg]

[size=75:2kpklzm3]Xerxes - "What did the guy in the pass say?" ... Scout - "Μολὼν λαβέ my Lord - and he meant it!!!"[/size]
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#18
Quote:It's all such a shame. Every time I see or hear Greece mentioned in the news these days it is just bad news Sad

Which is in my opinion, utterly crap on behalf of the media, they're only making things worse. Yes...ok..it's going to crap...sins of the fathers and all that, but there's a lot of good there too. I worry sometimes there won't be a country to go back to when exams are over. :-(
Jass
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#19
Yes, it is always bad news about Greece, in the news!
The riots and burning of business's will not help anything at all, but make it worse
for everyone. :evil:
However, there are still many good things in Greece, and always will be!

I didn't know you were from Greece Jass!
Where abouts? I still have relatives there!
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
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#20
Quote:Yes, it is always bad news about Greece, in the news!
The riots and burning of business's will not help anything at all, but make it worse
for everyone. :evil:
However, there are still many good things in Greece, and always will be!

I didn't know you were from Greece Jass!
Where abouts? I still have relatives there!

Actually I'm not originally from Greece, though I have family there and have spent most of my time there for the past several years. Athens, like everybody else lol. Girlfriend can claim to be slightly more metropolitsa (one side from Thessaloniki the other from Kriti and Mikrasia).

I agree with you, there is a lot of good there that people don't just see. I really worry, I'll always remember a few years back when the riots started over the boy being shot. Just waking up from a nap and finding half the city in chaos. And the news focused on it, and it was right to. I noticed, however, how it missed out all the people leaving their homes at night to try and contain the situation, protect the museums, make sure the people and stray animals etc weren't hurt.

I remember the feeling of terror on finding my essential mother in law trapped down town in a bank at another time during some riots too.

Ah Greece. We're a sick country but the cure is getting there, slowly but surely.
Jass
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#21
Quote:
Ghostmojo post=307588 Wrote:It's all such a shame. Every time I see or hear Greece mentioned in the news these days it is just bad news Sad
Which is in my opinion, utterly crap on behalf of the media, they're only making things worse.
(concentrating on this thread) I know it's bad news, but it's still wothwhile to publish this. We've heard plenty of news like this from Iraq, which helped raise awareness and trace some stolen items. Unfortunately, Greece is not alone. Libya and Egypt have also been hit by thugs, looting warehouses and musea, which was not publishes as widely in the media.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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#22
Sometimes stories have happy endings.

BBC: Greek police recover stolen Olympia antiquities
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
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#23
That is great news!
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
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#24
Good news but as it goes, I am very skeptical about it. Robbers trying to sell locally antiquities stolen from a nearby museum? First of all, even the last grave-digger does not try to sell locally antiquities he got from illegal diggings. He will try to find someone from abroad. These guys performed a stunning terrorist-style attack in a well known museum, took some pretty rare specimens and, what?, they tried to sell them locally? Even if the Greek undercover police posed as a foreign buyer, I doubt these guys would had accepted dealing inside the country. The first logical thing to do would be to get the antiquities out of Greece and do the dealings in some other country, preferably in a non-EU country. Albania or Skopje-FYROM would be ideal for such dealings.

In Greece, there has been repeatedly known that "services" set up various incidents - I can develop a full list but this is not the forum to do so. Just take the biggest example: this is the country where a ridiculous 17N organisation went on for 30 years despite the fact that even the casual Greek policeman (let alone antiterrorist service) knew names and addresses of people involved since at least the 2nd year of existence of that "terrorist" group, however whenever arrest orders were placed these would be halted "from above" (far above Greek state itself...) - the terrorist group finally being "arrested" one year before the 2004 Olympics (do we have guarantee that these guys are in high-security prison and not enjoying their retirement in Hawai? No.).

Even so, it is good to know items are back in their place.
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#25
Well, without going into politics too much, it was when a non left leaning govt came in that they were apprehended. Previous govt's seemed to have no interest in finding them.
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
Reply
#26
Quote:Well, without going into politics too much, it was when a non left leaning govt came in that they were apprehended. Previous govt's seemed to have no interest in finding them.

Hmmm... left wingers in Greece, like elsewhere in the world, show an interest in the deconstruction of the national sentiment among citizens of the country, and the replacement with a "social-class based citizens of the world" type, but I do not think they would be insensitive in a theft from the museum. Nor would this work against one or another political party.

The most innocent 4 cases I could think could be :

1. Totally clueless thieves trying to get rid of the stolen things to the fist buyer.
2. Thieves who somehow lost their initial buyer, then seeking how to get rid of the stolen things to the first man that apeared a genuine safe buyer to their eyes.
3. Expert police action, posing as foreign buyer (Greek buyers exist but thieves would not trust in this case any) arranging the purchase, leading them to expose themselves (Greek police is not that bad as portrayed in Greece and above - when they "want", i.e. when permitted, they do really do some good work).
4. The whole process being actually a police exercise for training purposes, also for raising public awareness in a time of crisis and reduced fundings (yes, such things happen too).

However, the more dark scenario is the following:

5. Foreign intelligence sending a message to the country (a particular fraction within the country), then this week, perhaps with things arranged, ending this warning-affair via that way (with thieves in this case being uknown partners recruited in it).

The latter sounds improbable but in Greece and in Cyprus such affairs have been repeatedly occured even in the very recent past. The terrorist exhumation of the body of Tassos Papadopoulos from his grave and the subsequent explanation that foreign criminals "abducted the body" to ask for money did not convince most serious analysts who still interpret it as a warning. Such strange acts of warning are widely employed internationally in geopolitics and are meant to be understood only by the recipients, not by the mass of people.

Personally I am not totally inclined necessarily to no.5 but I find it somehow a bit more probable than 1 to 4, given the ongoing affairs. Somehow the whole affair seems strange as another "unrelated" theft occured the very same week in another museum in Athens where a loaned work of Picasso was stolen. Greece has 100s of museums and these were not any better guarded in the past than today. However criminals abstained from robbing museums since the whole country is filled with antiquities (uknown objects to the state, academics and the international community) which is by far easier and safer to dig & rob & sell.
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#27
Yes, I was referring to the group you mentioned! 8-)

I tend to go with the first possibility. There are a lot of elements who may have made their rep as hard men in their own locality, but not too clued up on anything other than being hard men.
It doesn't take much to overpower an unarmed guard.
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
Reply
#28
Quote:Yes, I was referring to the group you mentioned! 8-)

I tend to go with the first possibility. There are a lot of elements who may have made their rep as hard men in their own locality, but not too clued up on anything other than being hard men.
It doesn't take much to overpower an unarmed guard.

Sorry GJC, I had read very quickly your message while it was obvious where you were referring. However, given the details (few if any such robberies in the past or recent times - despite the rapid rise of imported crime in Greece and the amount of heavy weaponry brandished around...) as well as the fact that on the same week another such case occurred in another museum in Athens with an artwork are too coincidental to think of a coincidence.


Now, as we said, this is not the right forum to start such a discussion but speaking of Greece, historically the Left side of politics were founded, manned, financed and even resuscitated repeatedly after set-up events, by western powers, primarily Britain. USSR had played practically no role even at the heights of Cold War. Take it as a ying-yang kind of divide and conquer - this is the way Greece had been run as a protectorate for much of the last century. It would sound so strange to a non-knowledgeable foreigner (and even still many Greeks, especially of left-side of political spectrum do not want to digest) the fact that socialists and left-winger leaders with all their anti-NATO bravado rhetoric served directly western interests in the country while some of the right wingers who traditionally declared as NATO allies, knowing what this did to the country, looked desperately at means of decreasing the grip. Eloquent is the WWII case when a war-pressed Britain of 1941 found the means and the funds to a level of 250 million (in today's euros) to spent annually on a newly created communist resistance movement formed out of communists freshly liberated from greek prisons by Nazi invaders in Greece (!!!), communists who had been advocates of Greek soldiers surrendering to the Italian Fascists and German Nazis (on the basis of Molotof-Ribbetrop treaty which they followed as communists...)... !... !... all while characteristically snubbing the already set patriotic resistance groups manned by military experts who had beaten both Italians and Germans on the battlefields....this case says it all. British funded mostly ELAS then EDES (its right-wing equivalent, founded the same week by a joint action of union of existing groups... same week... you get the idea). As such the Greek civil war (that largely defined Greek politics to our days) came at no surprise. British had done it in 1915 (with Venizelos), as well as in 1823 (with Mavrokordatos) - in it British geopolitics being the politics of the world-oligarchy, rather than referring to British national politics as discussed in the British parliament or such (remember this to neutralise impressions created).

Thus, all is not what it seems. In the case of 17N, the group could be arrested any time as most members were known to Greek police (even common-uniformed policemen) but the order was coming from above (I a said far above the Greek state, I meant the overlords of the protectorate state or the para-state as it is locally called).

By all means this message refers strictly to modern geopolitics (geo, i.e. pure mathematics... not national politics) and is meant for the current discussion and can be deleted by moderators. No offense meant, I will take no offense in it being deleted.
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#29
Yes funny game that eh!

I understood them to be a very closed group of family and friends who covered for each other.
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
Reply


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