Greece - so cultured in the art of corruption

Here is a picture of slime. Germany is outraged, and rightfully so. Former Justice Minister under the conservative Greek government of Karamanlis, Sotiris Hatzigakis, according to German and UK media, ran up a 20 million Euro phone bill by handing out free mobile phones to family and friends, many of whom would ring premium-rate sexlines. Who pays? Well, by nature of the EU ideal of solidarity, Germany's taxpayers do (Greece don't have any). But wait, there's more. Haztigakis also renovated his 30 square metre office (the size of a garage) for the thrifty sum of 150,000 Euros, with 70,000 going to 'furniture'. As well, he opened a new state company fully financed by and tied to his Justice Ministry, which then employed 110 people, including his children and many people from his electorate. How nice! Now, to make this even more absurd is that Hatzigakis was even host and a speaker at the 13th International Anti-Corruption Conference held in Athens in 2008! He had apparently passed an anti-corruption law, but somehow it didn't seem to be applied.

Despite the EU saying that Greece is on the straight and narrow now, in reality it isn't. As a sign to the countries of the region who are fed the impression by Brussels that EU membership will miraculously facilitate an immediate change of culture and the rule of law would prevail, the reality is that 30 years of EU membership has provided no fundamental changes to the essentially Balkan and Third-World social, cultural, legal and political fabric of Greece. The justice system in Greece is extremely corrupt, as can be seen, and is also responsible for perpetuating the series of human rights abuses, ranging from ensuring minorities are denied all rights through to the police brutality and mob violence. It is a failed state and the best thing for everyone would be that Greece is expelled from the EU. It would need to reapply according to the same strict criteria now being applied to candidate states like Turkey and Macedonia. A name change would probably be necessary to remove the fake link with its namesake ancient civilisation, romatically connected to all things 'civilised' in our modern culture (purely on Euro-centric grounds), which has clouded Western perceptions of the country since the 1700s when the Orthodox Christians of Ottoman Turkey were renamed by the likes of Lord Byron from Romoi (Romans) to Ellinoi (Hellenes aka Greeks). Let's make it clear - modern Greece is no ancient Greece. But then again, the notion the West has of what constituted 'ancient Greece' is as mythical as the link to its supposed successor state.