In my ZNet Commentary, "Greece: 'The Odd Man Out'", of April 22, 2002, I mentioned:
"The palm-gesture…with all fingers extended apart… (known as 'moutza' [pronounced: moo'tza], of Byzantine, or French, or Venetian origin) is considered by the Greeks as the ultimate insult towards a person. There have been cases of one driver killing another one in a traffic incident after the exchange of such an insult."
Smedley D. Butler (also known as "Old Gimlet Eye") is considered to be the best soldier (Marine) that the American nation ever had. He was the most decorated Marine in US history.
In January 1931, Butler gave a speech in Philadelphia and mentioned a story told to him by a friend who as a guest of Mussolini [at that time Mussolini was considered by the US elites as "that dignified gentleman"] had been taken for a high-speed automobile ride through the Italian countryside. Mussolini hit a child and did not pay any attention. To the American guest's shock Mussolini replied: "What is one life in the affairs of a state."
Mussolini denied that he hit the child and protested. Major General Smedley D. Butler was arrested, for a week he was held almost incommunicado, and ordered court-martialed, by President Hoover, who apologized to Mussolini.
On October 28, 1940, Mussolini attacked Greece, the Greeks resisted for months and even managed to push the Italians into neighboring Albania, which had already been occupied by the Italians. Mussolini asked Hitler, his buddy, to help, and thus the Nazis and the Italians entered Athens in triumph. This resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from starvation, in 1941. I was ten years old and experienced everything.
Four years later, in 1945, Mussolini was hanged upside down by the ankles, together with his mistress, after he had been executed by shooting. Qaddafi was not that lucky.
So, the Greeks every October 28 celebrate their resistance against the Italians by having the pupils, the students, and the military parading in the cities and towns all over the country.
Larissa is the main city of Thessaly, the flat part of central Greece. The photo presented below shows what happened four days ago, on October 28, 2011, when the high schoolers of Larissa paraded in front of the representatives of the "official" state.
The high school kid, 16 or 17 years old, shows the disapproval
of an entire people, the Greek people, against the adult Greek "proxies"
of Merkel, Sarkozy, Hilary, and Obama.
Note, the uniforms of the brass with the Christian cross on their chests, the golden epaulets, etc. Also, the older officer on the right, with the grey mustache, is old enough to have been in active duty during the US-instigated military dictatorship of 1967.
The kid is now considered a hero of the Greek people. The photo is all over Greece, in every home.
Conclusion: Incidents like the one on the photo, took place in the entire (repeat: entire) country during the celebration for the October 1940 resistance. This is the beginning of a revolt.
Nikos Raptis was born in Athens, Greece, in 1930. He is a civil engineer. For the last 40 years he has been writing on social matters for papers and magazines (mainly) in Greece. He is the author of "Let Us Talk About Earthquakes, Floods and...the Streetcar" (1981) and "The Nightmare of the Nukes"(1986), both in Greek. He, also, translated into Greek and published Noam Chomsky's "Year 501", "Rethinking Camelot" and translated Michael Albert's "Parecon: Life After Capitalism". Also, he was a contributor to the book "The Media and the Kosovo Crisis", edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Hermam. He lives in Athens, Greece.
