Paw Prints in the Heart.

Paw prints in the Heart.

The Geezerette's asleep, she is deep in a REM, with dogs and her puppies she dreams once again.

All German shepherds that fifty odd years, brought her some joy, even brought her some tears.

Tonight it's Adri, the one that just died, walks through her sad heart and walks through her mind.

Adri as puppy, a bundle of fur, she learns her name well and is following her.

When she is picked up she is without fear, the pup nibbles ear rings and even an ear.

To be a guide dog she learns many things, like avoiding dropped food that temptation brings.

She walks through a crowd, up/down the stairs and keeps to her job if loud noises she hears.

She visits with others several times and is handled by them so she does not take fright.

When pup raisers meet they  learn many things that guide dogs must absorb, before training begins.

But Adri to her clings, 'handler-dependent' she is and as for  guide training - she gives it a miss.

To be home with us, to be just a pet, she soon becomes ours doing just that:

To ride in a car with the wind in her face, chase what does move, to try win a race;

To chase the fleet squirrels and even some cats, she caught and killed rabbits without regret;

To chase and catch Frisbees and bouncing kongs, to eat apples and pears and grapes off the vines;

To swim and chase water coming from the hose, snap at the liquid as it tickles her throat;

To shovel with nose the arm off the keys, her way of just saying 'it's playing time please';

To drop her red kong in a newly dug hole, her way of saying 'please throw it some more.'

What a good life it was for twelve solid years, not even ruined by thunder storm fears.

The Geezerette's asleep she is deep in a REM, with dogs and her puppies she dreams once again.

Her knees are still working, the joints are whole and deep-furrowed paw prints do cover her soul.

 

In Memoriam of Adri, who was put to sleep at about 3:30 CST in Mt Pleasant, Texas, on the 16th of September 2010. The poem is dedicated to my wife, Dorothy, alias the Geezerette.

Adri was diagnosed with a condition of tightening spinal cord that eventually paralyses the back end of the animal. We gave her pills until she started coughing, gagging and spitting up and at first we thought that she had acid reflux. We changed her diet several times, but in the end nothing really helped except the sponge bread that would stop the gurgling of her stomach for maybe a couple of hours.  Then we took her to the Vet for a barium swallow and the X-rays showed her to have a large tumor in the esophagus. While we contemplated what to do, she lost a lot of strength in her back legs and that is when we decided to end her life. I had to lift her back end into the car, but she walked into the Vet's office on her own feet. Maybe she thought that she was going to get another test so she did not struggle. She lost consciousness almost as soon as she got the injection.  She died while I was petting her nose.

The Vet says the guy who cremates dead dogs uses the ashes to fertilize his rose bushes and peach trees.

Three of her habits did not make it into the poem. Maybe I will add them later, maybe not. Kathy would call her the "fun police," because Adri would discipline the other dogs if they got too rowdy having fun. And she got so tuned in on chasing squirrels that all we had to say "squirrel" and she would get all keyed up to run out and chase the critter. After a while, we started saying "SQI" so she would not get so keyed up, but she learned the meaning of SQI. And did I say she loved bananas? We knew she had troubles at the end when she refused bananas, apples and grapes.

The Vet tried to comfort me by telling me that my petting her nose was the last thing Adri felt. But, I am comforted by remembering the years of fun we had sharing her life.

The expression 'walking through the heart and mind' came from the Geezerette.

9/21/2010 10:10 AM

Mt Vernon, TX

©Geezer Bela in Exile

 

 

The Obama Plan: Gut the GOP.

Here is the Obama plan as reported:

1. Give Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling;
2. Raise tax rates on top 2% of earners;
3. Give Obama a $50B stimulus (another slush fund);
4. Postpone any cuts for at least a year.

Pretty much as what I expected except the request for giving Obama the authority to raise the debt limit. This request is unconstitutional, because by law it is the House of Representatives where spending requests must originate. Its inclusion in Gaithner's "secret" proposal to the Republicans is designed as a deal breaker.

In "Progressive" circles it is bandied that they get the best deal (the biggest move toward Socialism) by going over the Fiscal Cliff. That would raise everyone's taxes via the AMT. It would also enable the Left to seriously slash the military. Obama is thinking ahead to the 2014 elections. He wants his cake (higher taxes on the higher earners) and eating it too (claim that he preserved the lower tax rates for the "middle class." Obama knows that if the Dems lose the Senate he is toast, because his ineligibility to be President will come to light.

Back at home - taxes.

Obama was re- elected. So, he figures he can do anything he wants. No doubt, he counts on a sycophantic Media to push his point of view, but he also has the cowardice of some Republicans going for him.

So, what is Obama after? His main goal is to level incomes and destroy Capitalism. He hopes to achieve this by manipulating taxes. He and Liberal Democrats have a full table of goodies. Here are his options:

1. Press for raising tax rates on the top 2%. Even if he gets it, the revenue increase will not be that much, but it will convince the rich-hating blacks and Hispanics that Obama is really after the rich;

2. He can dig his foot in and let us go over the "fiscal cliff." This will put most taxpayers into the AMT (alternate minimum tax). When this was initiated its purpose was to make high earners pay some tax even if they took advantage of all tax breaks. The problem is  that because of the inflation, you are snared by the AMT if you earn $35K/year or $45K if filing jointly. This would be a huge tax hike.

3.ObamaCare will have 5 taxes attached to it;

4. The regime is also eying nationalizing all the 401Ks (a la Argentina) where your contributions of actual money would be replaced by a Trust Fund  and payments would be equalized according to a formula the regime is still working on.

And (boy oh boy) do the Democrats have a BAWGAN for the Stupid Party. Tax hikes now and budget cuts later - maybe like years later.

Does Obama have a plan to balance the budget? Of course not. He has a plan to raise taxes so high earners can be knocked down. Does he want growth? Growth of the government, but not of the private sector. Democrats (like blacks and Latinos) think that white people get rich off of growth so it is unfair.

Socialists can not learn.

In the 2009-2010 tax year, 16,000 British citizens reported income in excess of 1M Pounds. Gordon Brown (previous PM, a Socialist) thought that this was a great opportunity to fatten the Treasury, so income taxes on the "rich" were raised to 50%.

NEXT YEAR, THERE WERE ONLY 6,000 CITIZENS reporting incomes above 1M Pounds.

Do Left wingers have the capacity to reason? The British govt actually got less revenue with the higher rates. Not surprising. When Ronald Reagan reduced income tax rates, tax receipts almost doubled. That's the way it works folks.

PM Cameroon and his govt is going to reduce tax tares to 45%. Will that be enough to yank Britain out of a recession? I wonder.

For people like Gordon Brown and Obama, it is NOT the results of tax policy that matters. Socialists simply do not think it fair that some people earn more than others. They want to stimulate the economy by govt spending. Does it work? No.

The Greek Soap Opera: Latest Chapter.

Greece was promised bailout funds of $310B, of which $195B have been delivered from the European Stability Fund. The process of delivering Greece from the fruits of Soft Socialism has been very painful and very messy and it is far from over. Hence my periodic updates.

The latest update concerns the delivery of the rest of the rescue funds, some $115B.The next installment of $57.8B will commence Dec 15, if all goes well. Yeah, that's right. The deal will have to be approved by the Greek Parliament and then by the European Finance Ministers. Maybe even the IMF.

There is more to this latest agreement. Greece is now expected to reduce its debt to 120% of GDP by 2020 and to 112% of GDP by 2022. //originally covered up but now admitted, these terms mean that the Greek debt is reduced by E40B.//The maturity of the loans to Greece has been increased by 15 years and the start of interest payments was pushed back by 10 years.

The Agreement is hailed as putting Greece back to recovery. Slice it and dice it as you wish, this is a partial default, because Greece can not meat the original conditions of the loans.

Just as a quick reminder, the US debt is now $16.2T. That works out to $750,000 for every average family. The debt is no longer financed by selling Treasuries only but 70% is financed out of printing money. The debt crisis will come to our shores sometime between now and next Summer. Ben Bernanke will get his wish of more inflation and prove once again that one must be careful of what one wishes for. Jody Miller of NewsBusted had quipped that Pres Obama cried when he thanked his campaign workers and when he remembered of the problems he is now facing, he cried again. The phony "fiscal cliff" will be resolved by increasing tax rates on upper earners which will put us into recession.

The European Soap Opera: budget and Greece.

The EU is once again in crisis mode. What now? The EU budget and aid to Greece are being debated by the Finance Ministers. What makes this hard is that every country has veto power in the decision making. That alone almost guarantees failure sooner or later.

The budget is expenditure for the next six years. A trillion is proposed. And what does that have to do with aid to Greece? Hard to see, but the petulent Finance Ministers are holding up Greece's rescue check.

Larry's take on the future.

Larry Edelson has issued his latest "Real Wealth Report." It is scary reading. Here are his two bulleted subheadings on the front page:

1. Why Obama's policy of class warfare will escalate and tear our country apart at the seams...

2. How it will deepen the looming sovereign debt crisis and eventually destroy the U.S. dollar...

His messege: we have till the middle of next year to get out of bonds and prepare for the disaster. By the middle of next year the disinflation will end and inflation will begin along with the debt crisis coming to the US shores. And the long-awaited rally in gold, past 1,900, should take off.

I still disagree with Larry that gold will drop below 1,500, but we will see. It depends on whether the ECB defends the Euro.

Gold prospects now.

I. Monetary factors.

The US continues to export deflation and other countries are responding by inflating their currency. Most notable is the Bank of Japan. Japan has a debt to GDP ratio higher than two. By the reckoning of the authors of the "It's different this time" such a ratio puts Japan on the road to HYPERINFLATION. Yet, Japanese inflation rate is about 2%. The reason is because the Japanese economy (like ours) is imploding. The ruling party of Japan is calling for more money printing and raising inflation rate.

The EU continues its slide into recession. France is now hastening its slide and only Germany remains free of recession - at least for the time being.

China is recovering from "austerity" and its dose of stimulus is beginning to work.

The US economy is also limping economically. The latest figures show  a 10% drop in the Philly Manufacturing Index, big jumps in unemployment, but also an increase in M2 of 12% on an annualized rate. The FED is promising about $85B QE (QE3 and QE4) every month.

Theses are all bullish for gold.

II. Nonpolitical factors.

Gold mines are getting old and costly to operate.

China is starting two gold ETFs with promises that they will deal with actual gold, rather than just paper slips from COMEX.

III. Political factors.

The big question is what will happen in the US. Will the Republicans cave, extend the debt ceiling and raise taxes? And will these measures reduce the deficit and Federal borrowing? Expert opinion is that they will cave partially. The debt ceiling will be raised, some taxes will be raised, which will worsen the economy and have the FED continue printing. The Dems have figured out how to win elections: 1. nominate "moderate" Republicans, 2. demonize the GOP 3. scare young women and cheat at the polls. Thus, a turnover in the Senate can be avoided.

IV. Non-political factors.

The Middle East is always a wild card. Iran will have its first nukes in about 7 months.

Conclusion: Gold is going up early next year.

France: Hollande unraveling.

French politics has its own pattern. The French vote for a candidate that promises "change," then spend the time to the next election protesting the changes. President Hollande was elected with a popularity of 60%, which has plunged to less than 40% now. Clearly, the French are not enamored by the efforts to reform Socialism:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/new-style-new-slogans-no-new-policies-beleaguered-hollande-tries-to-start-again-8313292.html

Clearly, there are enough Muslims, imported Africans and miseducated youth in France to keep voting Socialist. The problem is with the electorate: they expect the Socialists to reform Socialism. So far, this has been only done in China, where most of Socialism has been reformed out of existence. But, China has started at a very low level of competitiveness so any reform has big consequences. France is mired in deep sloth and government interference and most any change is politically impossible.

Divergence - again.

The tug of war in the PM market is reflectred in the opinion of leading experts. There is Larry on the one hand telling us that his charts predict gold going to 1,400 and there is KINGWORLDNEWS that predicts a big rally coming in precious metals. The facts seem to favor KWN. China is expected to import 800 tons of gold this year and that is 10% of the gold supposedly in US hands. Venezuela and Germany want their gold back and we do not know if the US can deliver. Supposedly, gold has been lent to pretend that the paper gold at the COMEX is backed by real gold.

On the other hand, SOMEONE big is able to manipulate the gold price and the shares in gold miners are kept artificially low. This is important, because the major gold miners are running out of gold to mine and their production costs are increasing.

Gold is not the only commodity that is manipulated and subjected to hocus-pocus procedures. Lots of people are posturing:
1. The FED announced QE3, but has not started yet;
2. The ECB promised to buy some bonds, but is yet to do so;
3.  Spain is talking about going to the ECB for help, but it is yet to do so.

The Wiedemer Video.

There is a video circulating on the Internet that predicts a Stock Market Crash (with a 90% loss of value), 50% unemployment and 100% inflation. It is to begin in 2013.

Markets on the knife edge again.

There are two important points that technicians pinpointed:

1. If the USD index closes above 81.0, it will then take off to 84.0. and

2. If gold closes above 1,727 then it will rally further.

Today, the US Dollar Index closed at 81.03 and gold closed at 1730.9 Yet, there is no real sign of rally in either. There was an article in BARCHART, indicating that the European debt crisis is easing and they expect the Euro now to rise. I guess they put the fires out in Athens till the next riot.

The fiscasl cliff: who will blink?

There are a number of false images circulating around.

1. Higher taxes on the rich? NO! The tax is on INCOME, not WEALTH. Obama wants to punish high earners by higher taxes to make it fair.

2. Does Obama care? NO! He wants to gut military spending and wants to continue with a bad economy so the govt can expand handouts. That's what got him re-elected.

3. Does he want an agreement? Not really. He gets his priorities (a worsening economy and reduced military capabilities) by scuttling any agreement and the Media will blame the Republicans.

4. Will the Republicans cave on "immigration reform?" Some are advocating amnestying 20 million illegal Hispanics. Because Hispanics vote 70/30 for Democrats legalizing the illegals would break the back of the GOP.

5. Would the GOP benefit from legalizing the illegals? NO! In 1986, Reagan agreed to legalize 3 million illegals. The GOP got 37% of the Hispanic vote that year. Two years after thelegalization the GOP's share of the Hispanic vote fell to 30%.

Monty Pelerin reviews his predictions.

Monty Pelerin has reviwed his predictions for 2012:

http://www.american thinker.com/2012/11/obamas_election_seals_our_fate.html

Of his 12 predictions, more than 1/2 has been fulfilled and the rest are pending. One of the pending predictions is the economic collapse of the United States within the next two years.

How can he do that, you might ax and why?

Here is why. The Country is inching toward European style spending patterns where the govt spends 40% of the GDP. I have already discussed the inefficiency this creates and will not review this again. Suffice to say that the current spending leaves the Country with deficits over a trillion dollars a year. Obama wants tyo close the gap by raising taxes. Part of the tax hike is already in the works by sunsetting the Bush tax cuts. This will result in a gargantuan rise in taxes. But, Obama wants even higher taxes. The  result of this will be a slipping into another recession and even greater deficits.The deficits will be covered by more money printing.

Can House Republicans block this? Not likely. The pressure is already building from the Media calling for Republicans to "compromise" (i.e. agree to tax increases).

So far, the FED avoided  a collapse by keeping the newly created money tied up in the banks as reserves. That does precious little to spur the economy. The continued government spending and freezing newly created money will further strain the economy untill the whole thing collapses. Obama then can use the Roosevelt model to keep people on govt dole and makework.

Here comes the Black Soup.

No, this does not refer to the people who elected Barak Hussein as America's Caliph. "Black Soup" has an entirely different meaning from a different century.

In the sixteen hundreds and early 1700s the parasitic Islamic Ottomans had overran Greece and Serbia and torn Hungary into three parts: 1. the central part of the Hungarian plane that was a free looting and robbing area under Muslim rule, the Northern and part of the Western slice under Hapsburg rule, where the Turks were laying siege to Hungarian forts and the Principality of Transylvania in the East  that paid tribute to the Ottomans and remained under local, Hungarian rule. In order to determine the tribute to be paid, Transylvanians would have to travel to Istanbul to determine the next tribute to be paid. The Hungarians would be "entertained" at a lavish dinner. Since, the Turks refused to discuss business during dinner, the discussion of the next tribute would be done when the "Black Soup" (coffee) was served. It was usually bad news hence the saying "wait till the black soup."

The re-election of Barak Hussein Obama puts us in waiting for the "black soup," a slew of new taxes and continuous efforts to destroy the American economy, the Constitution, the US Dollar and US military might. Expect Obama's EPA to try to outlaw the use of coal, interfere with drilling for oil and gas and continue with the disastrous economic policies of the last four years. I am old enough to expect that some death panel will deny medical care to me sooner or later. I go by the Polish saying: "as long as there is death, there is hope."

Gold: the new paradigm.

 

Gold bears cite the inflation adjusted price of gold to tell us that gold has peaked. What they do not provide is an analysis of the figure. Note that we had another gold rally following the failed presidency of another Democrat (Jimmy Carter). The rally began with a preliminary move like the one we are experiencing nowadays and then turned up almost vertically on the scale used here. We are not yet into the final blowoff.

 

A reason for gold's ascendancy is credited to the amount of debt and derivatives floating around in international finances. The second graph illustrates the size of the derivatives  compared to the amount of gold outstanding. Banks are full of these derivatives, which in reality are of dubious value.

 

 

 

 

The real reason for the expected rise in the value of gold is the coming monetizing of gold. What is amazing is that the lamestream Media says nothing about this unfolding situation. The driving force of it all is the Basel Committee on Banking. It is this Committee that decides on banking rules. And the Committee decided two things: 1. beginning on Jan 1, 2013, gold held by Central Banks will be counted at its full value (it is counted at 50% value now) and 2. international banks will be required to own 6% of their reserve in gold (current value is 4%).

Central banks have been buyers of gold, while the Bouillon banks are keeping the price of gold down. Every time there is a take down, such as last Friday, people flock to acquire coins.

We know that  lot of gold may have been leased to control price and the resulting scramble may prove interesting.

Greece: once more.

The Greek Parliament is holding another crucial vote next week. That can be only another tightening, right? Right. The bill introduces another cut of 13B in govt expenditures. A YES vote is required for the next disbursement of money for Greece. One problem though; two Socialist deputies have just announced that they will not support the coalition government's plan of further austerity. That brings the Coalition to a plus five vote - it started with a 29 vote plurality. Talk of Greece leaving the EU is heard again. What is not heard is privatization of services and an increase in productivity. In its absence, Greece will stay an impoverished Social Democracy.

Greece: the stories.

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Hit by crisis, Greek society in free-fall

ELENA BECATOROS - AP - 13 mins ago

FILE- In this Sept. 28, 2012 file photo, private hospital nurse Paraskevi Petropoulou holds up her unpaid electricity and income tax bills during a protest outside the Health Ministry in central...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May," it read, "Please respect their work."
Patients and their relatives glanced up briefly and moved on, hardened to such messages of gloom. In a country where about 1,000 people lose their jobs each day, legions more are still employed but haven't seen a paycheck in months. What used to be an anomaly has become commonplace, and those who have jobs that pay on time consider themselves the exception to the rule.
To the casual observer, all might appear well in Athens. Traffic still hums by, restaurants and bars are open, people sip iced coffees at sunny sidewalk cafes. But scratch the surface and you find a society in free-fall, ripped apart by the most vicious financial crisis the country has seen in half a century.
It has been three years since Greece's government informed its fellow members in the 17-country group that uses the euro that its deficit was far higher than originally reported. It was the fuse that sparked financial turmoil still weighing heavily on eurozone countries. Countless rounds of negotiations ensued as European countries and the International Monetary Fund struggled to determine how best to put a lid on the crisis and stop it spreading.
The result: Greece had to introduce stringent austerity measures in return for two international rescue loan packages worth a total of €240 billion ($313 billion), slashing salaries and pensions and hiking taxes.
The reforms have been painful, and the country faces a sixth year of recession.
Life in Athens is often punctuated by demonstrations big and small, sometimes on a daily basis. Rows of shuttered shops stand between the restaurants that have managed to stay open. Vigilantes roam inner city neighborhoods, vowing to "clean up" what they claim the demoralized police have failed to do. Right-wing extremists beat migrants, anarchists beat the right-wing thugs and desperate local residents quietly cheer one side or the other as society grows increasingly polarized.
"Our society is on a razor's edge," Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said recently, after striking shipyard workers broke into the grounds of the Defense Ministry. "If we can't contain ourselves, if we can't maintain our social cohesion, if we can't continue to act within the rules ... I fear we will end up being a jungle."
CRUMBLING LIVING STANDARDS
Vassilis Tsiknopoulos, runs a stall at Athens' central fish market and has been working since age 15. He used to make a tidy profit, he says, pausing to wrap red mullet in a paper cone for a customer. But families can't afford to spend much anymore, and many restaurants have shut down.
The 38-year-old fishmonger now barely breaks even.
"I start work at 2:30 a.m. and work 'till the afternoon, until about 4 p.m. Shouldn't I have something to show for that? There's no point in working just to cover my costs. ... Tell me, is this a life?"
The fish market's president, Spyros Korakis, says there has been a 70 percent drop in business over the past three years. Above the din of fish sellers shouting out prices and customers jostling for a better deal, Korakis explained how the days of big spenders were gone, with people buying ever smaller quantities and choosing cheaper fish.
Private businesses have closed down in the thousands. Unemployment stands at a record 25 percent, with more than half of Greece's young people out of work. Caught between plunging incomes and ever increasing taxes, families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Higher heating fuel prices have meant many apartment tenants have opted not to buy heating fuel this year. Instead, they'll make do with blankets, gas heaters and firewood to get through the winter. Lines at soup kitchens have grown longer.
At the end of the day, as the fish market gradually packed up, a beggar crawled around the stalls, picking up the fish discarded onto the floor and into the gutters.
"I've been here since 1968. My father, my grandfather ran this business," Korakis said. "We've never seen things so bad."
Tsiknopoulos' patience is running out.
"I'm thinking of shutting down," he said, "I think about it every day. That, and leaving Greece."
JUSTICE
On a recent morning in a crowded civil cases court in the northern city of Thessaloniki, frustration simmered. Plaintiffs, defendants and lawyers all waited for the inevitable — yet another postponement, yet another court date.
Greece's sclerotic justice system has been hit by a protracted strike that has left courts only functioning for an hour a day as judges and prosecutors protest salary cuts.
For Giorgos Vacharelis, it means his long quest for justice has grown longer. Vacharelis' younger brother was beaten to death in a fairground in 2003. The attacker was convicted of causing a fatal injury and jailed. The family felt the reasons behind the 24-year-old's death had never been fully explained, and filed a civil suit for damages. Nearly 10 years later, Vacharelis and his parents had hoped the case would finally be over.
But the court date they were given in late September got caught up the strike. Now they have a new date: Feb. 28, 2014.
"This means more costs for them, but above all more psychological damage because each time they go through the murder of their relative again," said Nikos Dialynas, the family's lawyer.
Vacharelis and his family are in despair.
"If a foreigner saw how the justice system works in Greece, he would say we're crazy," said the 35-year-old.
"Each time we come to court we get even more outraged," he said. "We see a theater of the absurd."
VIGILANTES
In September, gangs of men smashed immigrant street vendors' stalls at fairs and farmers' markets. Videos posted on the Internet showed the incident being carried out in the presence of lawmakers from the extreme right Golden Dawn party. Formerly a fringe group, Golden Dawn — which denies accusations it has carried out violent attacks against immigrants — made major inroads into mainstream politics. It won nearly 7 percent of the vote in June's election and 18 seats in the 300-member parliament. A recent opinion poll showed its support climbing to 12 percent.
Immigrant and human rights groups say there has been an alarming increase in violent attacks on migrants. Greece has been the EU's main gateway for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants — and foreigners have fast become scapegoats for rising unemployment and crime.
While there are no official statistics, migrants tell of random beatings at the hands of thugs who stop to ask them where they are from, then attack them with wooden bats.
Assaults have been increasing since autumn 2010, said Spyros Rizakos, who heads Aitima, a human rights group focusing on refugees. Victims often avoid reporting beatings for fear of running afoul of the authorities if they are in the country illegally, while perpetrators are rarely caught or punished even if the attacks are reported.
"Haven't we learned anything from history? What we are seeing is a situation that is falling apart, the social fabric is falling apart," Rizakos said. "I'm very concerned about the situation in Greece. There are many desperate people ... All this creates an explosive cocktail."
In response to pressure for more security and a crackdown on illegal migration, the government launched a police sweep in Athens in early August. By late October, police had rounded up nearly 46,000 foreigners, of whom more than 3,600 were arrested for being in the country illegally.
Police say that in the first two months of the operation, there was also a 91 percent drop in the numbers of migrants entering the country illegally along the northeastern border with Turkey, with 1,338 migrants arrested in the border area compared to 14,724 arrested during the same two months in 2011.
HEALTHCARE
At a demonstration by the disabled in central Athens, tempers were rising.
Healthcare spending has been slashed as the country struggles to reduce its debt. Public hospitals complain of shortages of everything from gauzes to surgical equipment. Pharmacies regularly go on strike or refuse to fill subsidized social security prescriptions because government funds haven't paid them for the drugs already bought. Benefits have been slashed and hospital workers often go unpaid for months.
And it is the country's most vulnerable who suffer.
"When the pharmacies are closed and I can't get my insulin, which is my life for me, what do I do? ... How can we survive?" asked Voula Hasiotou, a member of an association of diabetics who turned out for the rally.
The disabled still receive benefits on a sliding scale according to the severity of their condition. But they are terrified they could face cuts, and are affected anyway by general spending cuts and the pharmacy problems.
"We are fighting hard to manage something, a dignified life," said Anastasia Mouzakiti, a paraplegic who came to the demonstration from the northern city of Thessaloniki with her husband, who is also handicapped.
With extra needs such as wheelchairs and home help for everyday tasks such as washing and dressing, many of Greece's disabled are struggling to make ends meet, Mouzakiti said.
"We need a wheelchair until we die. This wheelchair, if it breaks down, how do we pay for it? With what money?"
___
Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece contributed to this story.

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That's where we head under Obama.