Perhaps it is appropriate that Thessaloniki, which this weekend celebrated the 100th anniversary of its liberation from the Ottoman Empire looked like a city under siege. For three days the centre of Greece's second largest city was the objects of draconian security measures designed to avoid a repetition of last year's peaceful protests which closed down the annual military parade and forced the president of the republic to flee.
      Mindful of the fact that the event lead to the resignation of the then prime minister, Giorgos Papandreou just weeks later the current political leadership decided to make sure last year's events were not repeated.
    As a result 2,000 extra police were drafted to protect prime minister Antonis Samaras and president Karolos Papoulias as they visited Thessaloniki over the weekend. The security measures for the Oxi Day parade were so tight that no even the parents of high school pupils taking part were allowed within the 1 km “dead zone” that surrounded the VIP stand and effectively isolated the parade from the vast majority of citizens who'd turned out to follow it.

      Of all the operas written during Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-33), probably the most haunting is the last. Kurt Weill's The Silver Lake, written with playwright Georg Kaiser, tells the story of two losers - a good-hearted provincial cop and the thief he has shot and wounded - as they make their way through a society ruined by unemployment, corruption and vice.
      After spending a week again in Greece - amid riots, hunger and far right violence - I finally understood it.
     The opera was meant to be Weill's path back into the mainstream. It was his first break from collaborating with Bertolt Brecht, and was scheduled to open simultaneously in three German cities on 18 February 1933. But on 30 January Adolf Hitler was appointed Germany's chancellor. The first performances of The Silver Lake were disrupted by Nazi activists in the audience and on 4 March 1933 it was banned. The score was torched, together with its set designs, in the infamous book-burning ceremony outside the opera house in Berlin.

Greetings, I would like to bring a new project to your attention. We are journalists based in Greece, and we have created a new blog, "Reports from the Edge of Borderline Democracy". We will be posting some shorter texts, opinion pieces etc, but the main effort is to publish extensive reports, in English, on issues affecting politics and society in Greece, so they are as accessible as possible around the world. You can see our first report on the rise of Golden Dawn, Greece's neonazi party that is rapidly rising, here: http://borderlinereports.net/2012/10/25/report-golden-dawn-1980-2012-the-neonazis-road-to-parliament/ If you like the idea, we would like to ask you to spread the word as much as possible, particularly to non-Greek speakers in other countries. Best regards, Augustine *Augustine Zenakos* *Reports from the Edge of Borderline Democracy<http://borderlinereports.net/>

      Earlier this morning I got a call from a friend, saying that she'd found a job but I was at a loss whether to congratulate her or not, as she will not only leave her country but her two young children as well. For the next nine months my friend will be teaching English at a private school in the Gulf States. In doing so she'll be following a path trailed by many other friends and acquaintances over the last few years.

     Her children will remain here to be looked after by grandparents for the duration, a story reminiscent of the sacrifices that many Greeks were obliged to make in the 60's and 70's as guest workers who went north to find jobs in the booming economies of northern Europe and especially in German factories then powering the country's export led economic miracle.

     As with so many other Greeks six years of recession has forced my friend to consider working abroad as the only alternative to a slow slide into poverty at home so repeating a story that has been told and re-told so often here over the last 100 years. However, this latest generation is both luckier and unluckier than their parents and forebears.