{"id":10041,"date":"2015-07-05T23:07:22","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T23:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10041"},"modified":"2018-10-28T02:21:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T02:21:21","slug":"no-means-no-in-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10041","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;No&#8217; means no, in Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>In Greece, they celebrate something called &#8220;Oxhi Day.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oxhi&#8221; &#8212; and this is the rough spelling of the word, given that the Greek alphabet looks nothing like ours &#8212; is the Greek word for &#8220;no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s meant to mark then-Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas&#8217;s refusal to let Italian troops use Greek ports during the early years of World War II. Metaxas told Italian dictator Benito Mussolini &#8220;oxhi!&#8221; to his ultimatum; Mussolini then invaded Greece on Oct. 28, 1940 &#8212; and promptly had his troops slaughtered by the Greek army as they sought to advance\u00a0south from Albania.<\/p>\n<p>The Italian invasion stalled in the face of the ferocious Greek resistance. Adolf Hitler&#8217;s Nazi troops came in to rescue Mussolini from further humiliation &#8212; and conquered Greece.<\/p>\n<p>Oxhi Day has been a big deal for Greece.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/greece-enters-uncharted-territory-after-referendum-no-vote\/ar-AAczLKj\">http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/greece-enters-uncharted-territory-after-referendum-no-vote\/ar-AAczLKj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now the word takes on a fresh meaning. The Greeks have said &#8220;oxhi&#8221; to demands for more austerity, which was a condition of more bailout money from the European Union.<\/p>\n<p>The result might be that Greece leaves the EU, becoming &#8212; in the words of some observers &#8212; a &#8220;fringe nation&#8221; in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras vows to renegotiate a better deal for Greece. His left-wing government has grown weary of the austerity demands that others have placed on his country.<\/p>\n<p>But to be candid, the Greeks seem to need some more austerity to help them curb their spendthrift habits. They have spent themselves into a tremendous debt crisis that they cannot solve &#8212; seemingly &#8212; by themselves.<\/p>\n<p>I wish my the people who live in the country of my ancestors had voted the other way. The future of a once-vibrant nation now appears at best to be murky.<\/p>\n<p>Just saying &#8220;oxhi!&#8221; might not be enough to save this proud country from ruin.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Greece, they celebrate something called &#8220;Oxhi Day.&#8221; &#8220;Oxhi&#8221; &#8212; and this is the rough spelling of the word, given that the Greek alphabet looks nothing like ours &#8212; is the Greek word for &#8220;no.&#8221; It&#8217;s meant to mark then-Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas&#8217;s refusal to let Italian troops use Greek ports during the early &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10041\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;No&#8217; means no, in Greece<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[152,252,590,1639,1648,3467,5302],"class_list":["post-10041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-adolf-hitler","tag-alexis-tsipras","tag-benito-mussolini","tag-eu","tag-eurozone","tag-oxhi-day","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33120,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041\/revisions\/33120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}