one of the MANY reasons why not to vote

In the middle of August, the right wing party that rules Greece for the last 3.5 years announced elections on September 16th. The parliament in Greece is elected every 4 years, and according to the constitution there has to be given a reason of an event of national importance, in order that there would be elections before the end of these 4 years. But there had been a lot of scandals gathered around the current government, so the only way for the governing party to keep ruling country would be to avoid the scandals that would necessarily come out during the next 6 months until the end of the normal lifetime of a certain parliamentary body.

A few days afterwards, fires were burning significant amount of forests and small villages, especially in Evia (Εύβοια) and Peloponese (Πελοπόννησος) in south greece for about 15 days. It is kind of stupid to translate the result of such fires to numbers, but still I think it can show a lot: 65 dead people, 100,000 homeless people, 1,300,000 acres of burnt forests, 410,000 acres of burnt agricultural areas (source: IMC Athens). This was the result of a lot of years when the governments (no matter the party) put aside any concern about the nature. The only way to show that you don't expect anything from anybody who has or gains the power, is not to vote. No matter who comes out to rule.

I am against all these international championships - I think they provoke fanatism and nationalism - but I love basketball. So I came up to watch some of the matches of Eurobasket 2007. September 16th is the finals. The greek national team just passed within the pre-semi-finals. I saw this picture lately:

"Mama, you vote for me, I play on the finals on September 16th!" (Of course this is not possible, no mother can vote instead of her child!) Also, the players 'promised' not to vote on September 16th because of their duties in Eurobasket. So whoever has not been convinced yet that his/her vote goes to favoring the system, which has done no good, here is another reason not to vote: Go watch the finals of Eurobasket 2007 - Live in Madrid! Basketball is a sport that produces a lot of adrenaline to the spectator after all!