NEW TEASER TRAILER "DECEMBER RIOTS"

A FEATURE FILM ABOUT THE 2008 DECEMBER RIOTS AND THE LOOTING OF GREECE...

GREEK VERSION DECEMBER RIOTS TEASER

DECEMBER RIOTS TEASER

SEVERE STORMS RIP THROUGH AMERICAN SOUTH:OVER 250 DEAD

PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. (AP) — Dozens of massive tornadoes tore a town-flattening streak across the South, killing at least 250 people in six states and forcing rescuers to carry some survivors out on makeshift stretchers of splintered debris. Two of Alabama's major cities were among the places devastated by the deadliest twister outbreak in nearly 40 years.

As day broke Thursday, people in hard-hit areas surveyed obliterated homes and debris-strewn streets. Some told of deadly winds whipping through within seconds of weather alerts broadcast during the storms Wednesday afternoon and evening.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/28/severe-storms-continue-to-rip-through-the-south_n_854693.htm

RIP ADREAS MARNEZOS, aka WORD PROCESSOR

Andreas Marnezos, aka Word Processor, a pioneering rapper and tattoo artist died Friday from an apparent heart attack. Andreas, was still very young, in his early forties, a dedicated family man (fathered two children), and he also had created a rap music label and a prolific franchise with tattoo shops. He was also a member of the National Hellenic Team and won many medals in shooting at close range etc. He  participated with much success in K-1 boxing maches.
Rest in Peace, brother...
(In the photo pictured Andreas and his two children from a film that didn't materialize).

"DECEMBER RIOTS" IN POST-PRODUCTION...

Metaphor Entertainment, LLC. has wrapped filming of “December Riots" in Athens, while a second wave of riots swept Greece on December 6^th, marking the two-year anniversary of the cold-blooded execution of 15 year-old student Alexander Gregoropoulos by two policemen in a downtown Athens café.  "December Riots," a film about the Gregoropoulos killing and the 2008 riots that followed, is produced, and directed by Dimitri Vorris with cinematography by Spyros Pagonis and written by Vorris and longtime collaborator Michael Kokkinaris .  The filmmaker acquired exclusive access to many never-before-seen court documents and evidence from the trial that followed Gregoropoulos’s killing.

The claustrophobic thriller focuses on a group of Europeans and Americans trapped in an art-house movie theater in downtown Athens during the 2008 riots.  23 year-old Brit actress Lucy Lemos, prolific actor Abraham Papadopoulos, popular comedian-director Nikos Yannikas anchor a youthful and talented supporting cast that includes Vivian Ioannou, Aris Athan, Nasos Pappas, Michael Angels, Louise Rheas, Aris Papargyropoulos, Maria Floratou,  Kostas Antalopoulos.

The film is independently financed by Metaphor Entertainment and United Arab Emirates-based Gulf Crown of the Sun.  

“The fact that we’re having riots again now in Greece, proves that people have not forgotten about Alexander or his senseless killing.  There is still fury and rage that needs to be purged and there are still questions that need to be answered.  While a feature film can’t answer  a myriad of questions and dilemmas will answer all the questions, I do hope ’December Riots’ honors Alexander’s memory,” said Vorris, who's now finishing post-production of the film.

A teaser of “December Riots” is now available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Yay6ZMFqA&feature=related

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: YANNIS FUDULAKIS (FUDU)

CHARLIE SAID....

A LETTER FROM JAILED, BY THE IRANIAN REGIME, DIRECTOR JAFAR PANAHI READ AT BERLINALE...

NO FUNDRAISING EVENT AT THE OSCARS FOR A JAILED FILM DIRECTOR
FROM THE IRANIAN DICTATORSHIP? NO PROTESTS? NO BLURBS?

...The world of a filmmaker is marked by the interplay between reality and dreams. The filmmaker uses reality as his inspiration, paints it with the color of his imagination, and creates a film that is a projection of his hopes and dreams.
The reality is I have been kept from making films for the past five years and am now officially sentenced to be deprived of this right for another twenty years. But I know I will keep on turning my dreams into films in my imagination. I admit as a socially conscious filmmaker that I won’t be able to portray the daily problems and concerns of my people, but I won’t deny myself dreaming that after twenty years all the problems will be gone and I’ll be making films about the peace and prosperity in my country when I get a chance to do so again.
The reality is they have deprived me of thinking and writing for twenty years, but they can not keep me from dreaming that in twenty years inquisition and intimidation will be replaced by freedom and free thinking.
They have deprived me of seeing the world for twenty years. I hope that when I am free, I will be able to travel in a world without any geographic, ethnic, and ideological barriers, where people live together freely and peacefully regardless of their beliefs and convictions.
They have condemned me to twenty years of silence. Yet in my dreams, I scream for a time when we can tolerate each other, respect each other’s opinions, and live for each other.
Ultimately, the reality of my verdict is that I must spend six years in jail. I’ll live for the next six years hoping that my dreams will become reality. I wish my fellow filmmakers in every corner of the world would create such great films that by the time I leave the prison I will be inspired to continue to live in the world they have dreamed of in their films.
So from now on, and for the next twenty years, I’m forced to be silent. I’m forced not to be able to see, I’m forced not to be able to think, I’m forced not to be able to make films.
I submit to the reality of the captivity and the captors. I will look for the manifestation of my dreams in your films, hoping to find in them what I have been deprived of.

"WHERE'S HOME 4U, MARINA?" "DECEMBER RIOTS" TEASER 2

"MURDER 101" TEASER 4 "DECEMBER RIOTS"

"ALEXIS WAS KILLED" POETRY BY YIANNIS RITSOS, "DECEMBER RIOTS"

SHE DISAPPEARED ON DECEMBER 8, 2008....

...On December 8, 2008, around 10:35 pm rock radio 
DJ LIGHTDUST disappeared in a subterranean arthouse movie theater in Athens, Greece, never to return... 
Can you help? More info to follow...

FIDEL CASTRO:JEWS SUFFERED MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE....

BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING BONDS: THE ROBBER BARONS OF GREECE...

As Wall Street hangs on the question “Will Greece default?,” the author heads for riot-stricken Athens, and for the mysterious Vatopaidi monastery, which brought down the last government, laying bare the country’s economic insanity. But beyond a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for each working adult), there is a more frightening deficit. After systematically looting their own treasury, in a breathtaking binge of tax evasion, bribery, and creative accounting spurred on by Goldman Sachs, Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.

TUESDAY MARKS THE END OF WAR IN IRAQ.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on Monday as U.S. troops prepared to end combat operations on Tuesday.

Biden was expected to hold talks with Iraqi leaders during a period of political deadlock, almost six months after an inconclusive election in March, over forming the country's next government.
His visit comes at a time when Iraq is on high alert for attacks by insurgents after a series of bombings that killed dozens of people and underscored the fragility of Iraq's recent security gains.
(Reporting by Thaier al-Sudani; Editing by Michael Christie)

"OKEANOS EXPLORER" ROBOTIC VEHICLE DISCOVERS NEW SPECIES...

Scientists using cutting-edge technology to explore waters off Indonesia were wowed by colorful and diverse images of marine life on the ocean floor – including plate-sized sea spiders and flower-like sponges that appear to be carnivorous.

They predicted Thursday that as many as 50 new plant and animal species may have been discovered during the three-week expedition that ended Aug. 14.
More than 100 hours of video and 100,000 photographs, captured using a robotic vehicle with high-definition cameras, were piped to shore in real-time by satellite and high-speed Internet.
Verena Tunnicliffe, a professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, said the images provided an extraordinary glimpse into one of the globe's most complex and little-known marine ecosystems.

RECOVERY IN VERY SLOW MOTION!

The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, according to an authority on the history of financial crises.

That finding, contained in a new paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, generated considerable debate during an annual policy symposium here, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which concluded on Saturday.
The gathering, at a historic lodge in Grand Teton National Park, brought together about 110 central bankers and economists, including most of the Federal Reserve’s top officials. In 2008, the symposium occurred weeks before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy nearly shut down the financial markets. At the symposium last year, officials congratulated themselves on weathering the worst of the crisis.
But the recent slowing of the recovery cast a pall on this year’s gathering. As economists (some wearing jeans and cowboy boots) conferred on a terrace with a sweeping view of the 13,770-foot peak of Mount Teton, or watched a horse trainer tame an unruly colt at a nearby ranch, they anxiously discussed research like Ms. Reinhart’s. (Participants pay to attend the event, which is not financed by taxpayers, a Kansas City Fed spokeswoman emphasized.)
“I’m more worried than I have ever been about the future of the U.S. economy,” said Allen Sinai, co-founder of the consulting firm Decision Economics and a longtime participant in the symposium.

CALIFORNIA TOPS ANTI-SEMITISM ATTACKS....

LOS ANGELES — California had the country's highest number of anti-Semitic assaults, harassment and vandalism incidents last year, the Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday.


In its annual survey, the ADL identified 275 events in the country's most populous state in 2009, up 22 percent from the year before. The incidents included a Jewish student in Buena Park getting beaten up after confronting a classmate drawing swastikas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/california-antisemitism-o_n_661283.html

THE COLLAPSE OF GREECE'S SOVEREIGN DEBT WAS PLANNED?

So said the media, but note that Greece and Portugal were doing remarkably well only three months earlier. Then, "suddenly and without warning," global investors furiously dumped their bonds. Why? Weiss and other commentators blamed a sudden "contagion of fear about sovereign debt." But as Bill Murphy, another prolific newsletter writer, reiterates, "Price action makes market commentary." The pundits look at what just happened in the market and then dream up some plausible theory to explain it. What President Franklin Roosevelt said of politics, however, may also be true of markets: "Nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."


That the collapse of Greece's sovereign debt may actually have been planned was suggested in a Wall Street Journal article in February, in which Susan Pullian and co-authors reported:

Some heavyweight hedge funds have launched large bearish bets against the euro in moves that are reminiscent of the trading action at the height of the U.S. financial crisis.

The big bets are emerging amid gatherings such as an exclusive 'idea dinner' earlier this month that included hedge-fund titans SAC Capital Advisors LP and Soros Fund Management LLC.

There is nothing improper about hedge funds jumping on the same trade unless it is deemed by regulators to be collusion. Regulators haven't suggested that any trading has been improper.

NATALIE PORTMAN IN "BLACK SWAN"...

Natalie Portman in Darren Aronofsky's "BLACK SWAN" that opens the Venice Film Festival September 1, 2010....

REST IN PEACE SOCRATES GIOLIAS: THANK YOU FOR TRYING TO MAKE...

...GREECE  A MORE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY, A BETTER PLACE!
DON'T WORRY. MANY OF US LEFT BEHIND  DON'T SUFFER FROM AMNESIA.
WE SHALL OVERCOME. WE SHALL PREVAIL. 

BLOGGER-JOURNALIST SOCRATES GIOLIAS GUNNED DOWN IN ATHENS...

Socrates Giolias, 37, an investigative journalist, was gunned down by professional executioners with 17 bullets in one of the most crowded avenues of Athens.
Giolias was in a multi-year court fighting with his former boss Makis Triantafyllopoulos who insisted that Giolias was the mastermind behind TROKTIKO (THE RODENT) a megasuccessful blogspot with tremendous influence that exposed corrupted politicians, money-laundering and corruption.
Only in Moscow, or the lawless city of Athens this murder could take place.

JULY GLOOM IN LOS ANGLES-SUDDENLY IT GOT WORSE THAN NYC...

ALLEGED RUSSIAN SPY METSOS SKIPS BAIL. MAJOR GAFFE FROM CYPRIOT JUSTICE...

Christopher Metsos, the "money man" behind the Russian espionage ring- infiltrating the US,  uncovered a few days ago, by the Feds- skipped bail in Cyprus and probably has escaped to "no-man's-land", the ocuppied by Turks Northern Cyprus, where he can't be extradited, some reports indicate.

CONCERTS FOR THE GULF:THE OIL SPILL SAGA

COME SEE THE PARADISE....

BP would like to cordially invite you for a long weekend of oil surfing and contaminated beaches.

HOLLYWOOD NEEDS A REVOLUTION...(AND PEOPLE WHO CAN READ)!

JULIE GRAY IN HUFFINGTON POST:

Hollywood has become a corporate wasteland and the results are so plainly obvious that it's painful. It is time for a new generation of visionary writers and directors in Hollywood. Those driven by raw creativity. (...)

(...) Don't even try to go there and deny that a terrible fog of mediocrity is hanging over Hollywood. And it's choking the art form of cinema to death. The worst part is that the mediocrity is self-generated because I tell you right now that I see some great scripts and really fresh ideas come from aspiring writers from all over the world. But these scripts don't make it into the right hands. There is an industry around keeping them out and unfortunately that industry is in part fueled by the millions of scripts that pour into Hollywood each day that were written hastily by dabblers and pretenders who haven't bothered to learn a goddamn thing about the industry they flippantly think will pay them loads of money (...)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-gray/hollywood-needs-a-revolut_b_616934.html

ALEXANDRA COUSTEAU: BP IS INVESTIGATING ITSELF! WE HAVE TO INVESTIGATE THEM...

(....) Right now the corporate liability cap is $75 million. You have proposed raising it substantially.


Yes, to $10 billion. But we also need to take a closer look at how we regulate the oil industry. The low cap is representative of how involved the industry has been in determining its own regulations. I think there should be an independent commission with industry leaders hired to clean this up. Gather together the best minds, the best talent, and the most experienced people to fix this and send B.P. the tab. As part of the environmental crimes that they are being investigated for, B.P. is being asked to gather a lot of the evidence. I don’t get it. Shouldn’t we be investigating them? Shouldn’t the communities that they have harmed be allowed to investigate them as well?
It’s like letting the fox into the hen house only to wake up and find that half your chickens are dead, and then asking the fox to fix it. That’s sort of what’s happening right now. The government didn’t fail on the day of this disaster. It failed by putting regulations in place that allowed the fox inside the hen house.

Read More
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/with-the-gulf-oil-spill.html#ixzz0r7DCuA2j

STRAIGHT TALK FROM HENRY ROLLINS IN VF: SCRUDE!

(...)When the president said that we need to pursue alternative sources of energy, it sounded nice but the words fell gently to the ground like feathers unsullied by crude. I think president Obama is finding out that it’s a corporate world and he’s only getting his lunch taken in it...


Read More http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/scrude.html#ixzz0r5H86hbY

FROM BP WITH LOVE!

The biggest ecological disaster of the last 200 years...