Lies, damned lies and Greek opinion polls

Yesterday the world's financial markets rose like a helium balloon on the news that weekend opinion polls in Greece showed that the conservative, pro-memorandum party, New Democracy was ahead. Even the Athens Stock Exchange got a respite from a nosedive that has seen its index fall to figures last seen in the 1990s.

There are many possible explanations for New Democracy's reversal of fortunes. Antonis Samaras has been building a conservative coalition and perhaps many voters who would have voted for smaller right wing parties are now transferring their votes to him as the only viable centre right alternative to SYRIZA.

On the other hand the constant barrage of predictions on TV about possible exit from the Eurozone has frightened older voters who fear their life savings will evaporate should the drachma be reintroduced and so perhaps signals a swing back to more mainstream politics.

Yet, according to an insightful analysis there may be another more concrete reason for the sudden challenge to the popularity of Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA). In the opinion of Greek blogger, Alepouda there is a systematic bias in polls conducted in Greece with the upshot that means that estimates of SYRIZA's share of the vote are wildly off. The most inaccurate being a GPO poll carried out for the current affairs programme, Anatropes on MEGA TV on the 25th April, just weeks before the 6th May elections. According to the poll SYRIZA was predicted to get 6.2% whilst the final election result was 16.78%. Strangely, the results for both PASOK and New Democracy were less than 2% off.

Nor is this anomaly limited to GPO, other pollsters have revealed similar deviations in their estimates of SYRIZA's electoral strength. Indeed, according to Alepouda's infographics the average result opinion poll researchers claimed for SYRIZA was 9.1%, more than 7 percentage points lower than their final figure. In the case of all other political parties the difference was less than 1%.

How to explain such  amazing accuracy in the case of every other party apart from SYRIZA? Statistically, there seems to be no logical explanation for such a large error. On the other hand, more sceptically minded commentators might be left with the impression that the media war being waged upon Greek parties opposed to austerity measures is not limited to the mainstream press but has extended to those companies that rely on such media outlets for their very survival.

Asteris Masouras - Activist, blogger, photographer, citizen journalist- always online

Asteris Masouras - Activist, blogger, photographer, citizen journalist - always online, a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ on Flickr.

On Twitter twitter.com/#!/asteris>;

On Global Voices

globalvoicesonline.org/author/asteris-masouras/

People Power in Egypt

IMG_6683, originally uploaded by 3arabawy - صَحـَـفي مِصـْـري.

Photographs of the protests in Cairo by photographer, blogger and journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy. For more pictures click here to see his Flickr page.

Remembering December 2008

Greek students mark second anniversary of death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in December 2008, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

For most people the defining moments of their life usually come during youth when we still have the passion and energy to give a damn about the world around them rather than just sit on the sofa and curse at the TV screen.

For me, however that experience came to me in my forties, hardly an age given over to violent uncontrollable emotion, Yet something in me was woken by the news that police officers had gunned down a 15 year old for no apparent reason in central Athens. I cannot say what I expected when I joined a demonstration on the following morning, an uncharacteristically warm Sunday morning. perhaps a small march with a few hundred (if that) politically active students which would last about an hour before everyone went back home or grabbed a bit to eat.

Instead thousands of people of all ages appeared and then more and still more till the marcher numbered anywhere near 10,000. But as well as the larger than expected turn out I noticed other, more worrisome signs such as the guys rapidly stuffing the necks of beer bottles with cloth.

From the beginning there was a feeling of anger and rage from many in the march, an undefinable sense that some unwritten covenent had been broken and that it wasn't business as usual. That was confirmed when the march verred off its usual route and made its way to the central police station in Aristotelous Square. Moving a little ahead of the front of the crowd I witnessed the first wave of clashes between protesters and riot police, a scene that would be repeated endless times over the following month in Thessaloniki and every other Greek city.

The police responded with endless rounds of tear gas and baton charges yet, almost miraculously people scattered then reformed, determined not to be intimidated by them. The rage and anger towards the police then mutated as the protests went on day after day into a general sense of violent discontent with the authorities in general.

Witnessing these events reminded me of all the account I had read of the student revolts of the late Sixties including Paris in 1968. Yet these protesters were not just teens or college students but rather came from virtually every age group including pensioners who red with anger would hurl the most furious insults at police officers.

The other aspect of the events of December and January was the sense of unreality that came from listening to the mainstream Greek media's account of the events which ranged from clueless to perneciously misleading. At a loss to explain a revolt which owed nothing to traditional party politics they attempted to describe it either in terms of mindless hooliganism or shadowy conspiracy theories.

It was then that I realised the true power of internet tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and blogs as they quickly proved a far more reliable source of information than TV stations which lumbered through the crisis like a half-blind brontosauras.

Two years on the conditions which fuelled the massive protests of 2008 have worsened still further and the anger feel by many then has grown and intensified as people feel betrayed by their leaders. The ruling political caste seems even more cut off from its popular grassroots support than ever before and seem oblivious that they are standing in the middle of a pool of petrol flicking cigarette butts into the void.

What exactly is going on?

I seem to be having a hard time accessing my blog. I keep on getting a message from Google saying that either my computer or network is sending out automated messages. I'm not sure what that means but it seems that other blogs in Greece are suffering the same difficulties. Also using Twitter is proving problematic, sometimes I can tweet but after a couple of posts it refuses to let me write any more.

It's interesting to note that so many sites have experienced problems in such a short period of time. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and Indymedia have all had difficulties over the last 48 hours. If nothing else it shows how vulnerable our supposedly open internet networks are to the possibility of interference.

As far as Indymedia is concerned the issue of the domain name seems not to have been simply a matter of human error according to Carpathia.dereferenced.org.

"If you are reading this page, then you probably know that Indymedia is down due to the primary nameservers being changed from NS2.RISEUP.NET and NS.LACKOF.ORG to NS1.BADWHOISSHUTDOWN.COM and NS2.BADWHOISSHUTDOWN.COM. People are presently investigating this change, however it is probably related to an ICANN whois data "inaccuracy" report (which, unfortunately, is a known tool that trolls have successfully used in the past to get sites they don't like taken down)."

Indymedia Athens and Indymedia Patras as still not accessible.

I'm not paranoid but......

It's enough to bring out the conspiracy theorist in you, I tell you. Yesterday the controversial Greek language blog, Troktiko.blogspot.com was taken offline since it had, according to Blogger violated its terms of service (TOS) agreement. This immediately provoked a furious response from the Greek language blogosphere who accused the company of censorship. On the same day Twitter, Facebook and Blogspot were subject to DOS (denial of service) attack which brought the sites down.

Today the Indymedia Athens and Indymedia Patras sites have gone down, though apparently they can be accessed from outside Greece according to some bloggers. In addition I can't put anything on Twitter, I can read what others write but the site will not let me tweet. Anyone else have this problem?

PS I have just tried other Indymedia sites from around the world but can't access them either. One exception being Indymedia London.

Still, this could all be a coincidence and I'm just being paranoid. Cue X-Files music..........

UPDATE

Just did some research on the internet and it seems that my conspiracy theories were misplaced, at least as far as Greece is concerned. The DOS attacks on Twitter, Facebook and Blogger yesterday seems to have been directed at a pro - Georgian blogger, at least according to executives at Facebook. In addition Indymedia is down across the globe though, according to the Entropic Memes blog this appears to be the result of an oversight by Indymedia.org concerning domain names rather than a devious plot to silence dissent and opposition. Also the Trotiko blog is once again back on the internet.

For more details on the Indymedia story check out the article I wrote for NowPublic.com.