Erkan's field diary

Our Nikolia Apostolou who had been an Erasmus student in our Media department sent me a short piece on Greece fires. Hopefully, she and some other friends will be my guest authors from now on....

 

"You left Greece burn. WHY? Demonstration on the 29th of August in front of Syntagma Square (in front of the Parliament in Athens) 7 pm. Wearing black

Wire from Greece

 64 people have died. Most were burnt. 110 villages no longer exist. Thousands of people are homeless. It has been the 7^th day and Greece is still burning and mourning.

 
They say it is the worst ever fire Europe suffered from.

 
People are numb. Even in Athens, some hundred miles away, the feeling is awkward. A feeling of mourning is spread around the country. Everyone is talking about the fires. Yesterday some 10.000 people protested in front of the Parliament wearing black.

 
Officials announced that they believed it was an organized terrorist attack. Typically, that the country is under a new kind of terrorist attack. People were shocked. Returning home my grandmother said: “Today they will burn as all. Nothing will be left”. Conspiracy theories started. Unfortunately (for them), there were no evidence. Only few believe them. As a friend said, the whole situation is like the Madrid bombings: Zapatero “united” the people under the common fear of the terrorist attack. Others said it was Turks or Macedonians (FYROM).

 
Greek television had until yesterday no other programs. The most prominent journalists were sent to the fire the first days.

 
Nevertheless, polls show that the ruling party New Democracy (Nea Democracy - Νέα Δημοκρατία) is going to win (losing only a few voters).

 
 

 Photo is from Epikouros and www.kulluwahad.blogspot.com

Greeks clamour for state fire aid

Thousands of Greeks queue for government aid after the country's worst forest fires for decades.

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December 04, 2004

So I accidentally saw Prof Oncu today. She was one of my professors from Sociology, Bogazici University. She was at a meeting at Bilgi. I wanted to correspond with her before because she was the only one to study media in the department. However, I could not get in touch with her during last year. So I learnt the reason: She moved to another university: Sabanci University. She seemed to be interested in my thesis and made me promise to come as a guest speaker who does ethnograpy of media to her media class next semester.

An evening phone talk is what made me very disappointed and angry. I called a former professor of mine, whom I admire too much, and confirmed our meeting on Sunday. She finally realized that i am working at Bilgi University. She seemed to be disappointed and implied that this was a wrong thing to do while I was in my fieldwork. I told her I did not get any grants yet. So i had to work until I found another source of funding. And she said that I never had confidence. Although I always had confidence problems, I don't think this has anything to do with confidence. I was indeed quite confident about my thesis project and proposal I prepared... Maybe this sunday i will finally have courage enough to talk to her that her ideas/intellectualism and feminism are so class-based. How easy to be an intellectual while having an elite status with no financial problems

Continue reading "Nahal's SF report" »

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