Greek Property Owners: Beware! You do NOT really OWN your property...

...unless you can prove otherwise.
If you thought the house you purchased in Greece is yours to use & dispose of at will, think again. The house may soon become the property of the Greek State by default. In other words, it is in the running to be transformed into the next local politician's daughter's wedding present.
How?
The national cadastre, a triviality that much of Greece did not have and whose absence allowed some flexibility in defining what is mine and what is yours in my favour, of course.
The national cadastre was defined in a law published in 1995 and is finally being implemented. So far so good, and better late than never.
However, the closely guarded secret of this enterprise is... just that: that it is a closely guarded secret. If you do NOT declare your ownership, through the customary for Greece convoluted, complex, and expensive process, the property reverts to the Greek State.

In fact, the wording of this law is such that all property is presumed to belong to the Greek state unless proven otherwise -- proven otherwise by you, of course. Never mind your precious declarations made in your tax returns, etc; here we go again as if your declarations and subsequent tax levied on your property never has been and never happened.You need to provide and present "clear" claims and titles.

Far be it from me to present the declaration procedure. Suffice it to say, it is complex and expensive: by the way, a duty is levied per declaration, not per piece of property. So if you own 1% of 100 pieces of property, you will have to pay 100 times to validate your claims... Accordingly, of course, if you own 100% of one property, you are in luck.

Anyway, for those who are not in the know, get talking to a certified local accountant immediately. Or you may just find out that the house you paid for and lived in for a while, is now officially labelled a "forest"*: officially the house no longer exists. You may think you are looking at it, but it just isn't there. It's a forest. Worse, it's not your forest.

Do you think that this is the view from your house in Greece? Think again. This is a forest and it is in the public domain in Greece. What? It doesn't look like a forest? What counts is, it is officially labelled as a forest. Later on, the local authorities will declassify this forest, and sell the property, now a house again, to a local dignitary. So, either become a dignitary or run -- don;t walk -- to declare your property. And make sure you have proff of your declaration; mistakes are human.

*:Reference to an actual case. A man, living in a house with a small garden for the past 40(?) years and who failed miserably to follow the correct declaration procedure has seen his house + land officially labelled a "forest"... My goodness!

Eurovision: miserabile visu

We all know that the Eurovision* noise contest is an exercise in bad taste and jumping around, with some degree of voyeurism thrown in for good measure. This epitome of bad taste is so powerful, it makes one cringe and look away embarrassed pretending, "this is not happening and I'm not involved". One wonders if this bad taste is not part of the grand scheme of things: you really have to work hard to push the limits of conventional vulgarity so far -- and, moreover, a little bit further each year.

The whole thing is inexplicable -- except, perhaps, if considered in the context of national television...

Maybe the phenomenal bad taste is aligned to TV pundits' view of what "the people out there want to see and hear". As this usually translates into "the easiest and cheapest programming I can get away with on the air", aka "trash", Eurovision may just fit this bill. On the other hand, Eurovision is hardly a cheap investment, one country at least having invested just over Euro: 0,3 mill. for its "national" representation. That country did not win so, presumably, a much cheaper participation could only have yielded the same results -- or better. I.e. money that could probably have been better spent elsewhere.

In the above light, Italy may have the best view of things: Italy simply refuses to participate!


*Eurovision is a canned show, labelled "song contest", with one rep per participating country. It encompasses European countries as well as Middle East, at present. The list of participant countries may expand further in the future, who knows.

Mom's e-market value: porn is the best business

Well, we all suspected as much. And it can be thinly disguised as erotic art. It can genuinely be erotic and artistic - sometimes.

But just how good business it actually is, seems to be anybody's guess.
Well, here is someone's guess: $ +130 billion, or... € +100 billion!

How much of that is internet? I really do not know.
Another guess-ti-rumour has it that General Motors has more revenue through its entertainment investments than the better-known automotive interests... while this seems unlikely, it nevertheless offers an interesting sideline to the matter.

All sorts of interesting sites with experiments /projects have virtually surfaced; some purport to be amateur-run (but requiring paid subscription). Others are real projects uniting people who are trying to combat the fetishistic attitude and the voyeurism that makes glamour porn as big as it is boring.

On the other hand, it seems that the Internet has also brought together people of unconventional and politically incorrect persuasions (see opposite). Interestingly enough, people who probably thought they belonged to a deviant category and shunned from revealing their fantasies even to a psychiatrist, now find their virtual brethren...

So, whether it is for the love or for the money -- or both -- the Internet erotics & porn has done a lot to bring people together! No?
Shall we, all together now: two cheers for pornography!

Couldn't we "liberate" them, instead? 100.000 dead in Myanmar

and more than 2 million living in appalling conditions even by television standards, which makes it horrible indeed.

But "logistical bottlenecks" are slowing down the distribution of aid... whatever part of that aid is destined for its original recipients, that is. And in the face of this, the local regime does not look kindly upon "foreign goody-goody do-gooders", while more people are poised to, just to drive the message home, to die, to croak, to kick the bucket. AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING ANY AID to GO IN (but a trickle).

How affirmative and assertive of them. How good for us, to be so far away from all the fracas, too!

Since the Myanmar junta we once liked is not dancing to our tune any more and I think we don't like therefore and since, by the time I finish writing this, a few more people will have died and a few more body-masters will have set up shop to soon start shipping boatloads of refugees... couldn't we save them, in a jiffy???

I.e. instead of sending help to buy our sleep, why not invade the place instead and thereby liberate them.

We are saving Iraq et alia in this way, and they did not even have a cyclone.

In the old times, the Soviets entered a country and saved and liberated its inhabitants. Now that they gave up on such charity, it is up to the West to do the job.