After Magda came out on TV Jeff Kennett followed up this morning with his unsubstantiated AFL gay statistics (5% or about 40 players he reckons). Mind you, Jeff also claims he was shot at during his Premiership of Victoria and cool mints help you beat the breathalysers after a few beers so make what you will of Jeff and his statistical assertions.

Adam Bandt and Sarah Hanson Young are convinced Gay Marriage is the only pressing issue in our society today devoting all their parliamentary energy to the cause and Magda talks about gays committing suicide as if they are the only ones doing it. Newsflash Magda quite a few farmers, fathers screwed by the family courts and other heterosexuals with a myriad of problems are topping themselves too love.

Penny Wong has never given birth and has no biological connection to the baby her lesbian partner Sophie had last year but is repeatedly described as a ‘mum’ rather than a parent. To my knowledge in the history of the world no mammal has ever had 2 biological mothers but they don’t let these trivial facts get in the way when it suits the gay agenda.

When attacking existing marriage laws the gay lobby invoke science versus the bible and throws rocks at religion but when the issue is science or more specifically biology then this doesn’t help their argument. At the same time as hating religion they demand to have their relationships defined by a religious word. WTF!  40 years after usurping the word gay formerly known as a ‘happy time’ they’re determined to redefine the word marriage.

Margaret Court took a belting for having the temerity to speak her mind on the issue.  Lucky for her she’s retired because if she still had a Tennis career the gay lobby would have been intimidating her employer and sponsors to dump her like they did to Stephanie Rice after her faggot gaff. Tut Tut. The best they could muster to hurt Margaret was a failed attempt to have her name stripped from the show court 1 at the Tennis Centre.

Olivia Newton John and have Hugh Jackman added their names to the list of celebrities demanding gay marriage be legislated.  How brave. You’d be hard pressed to find any celebrity nowadays who wants to stay employed willing to say publicly they are against Gay marriage. Now that would be real financial bravery!  Plenty to lose and nothing to gain on that one.

Apparently the lack of a list of opponents is proof enough we’re all in favour of redifining marriage and the present laws are archaic and old fashioned. Well let’s have a referendum then and get it sorted. Why don’t Adam, Sarah and Getup push for that if they are so sure we all want this change. What?  Not that keen? But the statistics you spout claim 70% support and the rest of us are just plain homophobic bogans right. Should be an easy win if you’re correct on the stats. Then again maybe you’re wrong.

As the Gillard government staggers on the clock is ticking. A new parliament will undoubtedly take this issue off the agenda so the sense of urgency from the left with their private members bills is palpable.  While Guiness ponders recognizing the worlds slowest ever investigation into a misused credit card the PM continues to defer a trip to the Governor Generals residence letter in hand. As of today it’s very hard to imagine this government lasting this year.  In the words of John Lennon ”strange days indeed. Most peculiar mama”

"Oppress Yourself"....

So much for the fucking Arab Spring in Egypt. The fucking Muslim Brotherhood won 38% of the fucking vote, combined with the fucking ultra-conservative medieval nut jobs the Islamist Al-Nour Party that got 29%, that makes a two-thirds majority to religious crazies. The party of the youthful revolutionary movement was mostly a no show. Well done Egypt. Way to go. Three cheers for democracy and people power… You ignorant pigs.

What the fuck was Tahir Square about then? You get rid of a 30 year long dictatorship to replace it with a 1500 year old dictatorship. What a base bovine herd you are. I was suspicious of supporting you stupid cunts from the get go.

The media creamed in its collective pants about the inspiring struggle for democracy and human rights, your ‘heroic defiance’, your chants of ‘Egypt is free!’ and ‘we won!’. “The age of political reason is returning to the Arab world” wrote Tariq Ali at the time. Well they fucked that one up didn’t they Tariq? Or does the progressive Left now support Islam? Sorry but I wasn’t on the distribution list for that update.

So after years of deriding religion of all sides, the Left, in its anger against the imperialism and neo-colonialism of the West, is accepting Islam without muttering a word? You fucking whores! You fucking dopey one-eyed animals. What about the Enlightenment? What about human rights? What about freedom from oppression? Fuck Christianity and fuck Islam! Express yourself!
 

Come on Girls

Come on girls
Do you believe in love?
‘Cause I got something to say about it
And it goes something like this

Chorus:

Don’t go for second best baby
Put your love to the test
You know, you know, you’ve got to
Make him express how he feels
And maybe then you’ll know your love is real

You don’t need diamond rings
Or eighteen karat gold
Fancy cars that go very fast
You know they never last, no, no
What you need is a big strong hand
To lift you to your higher ground
Make you feel like a queen on a throne
Make him love you till you can’t come down
[You'll never come down]

(chorus)

Long stem roses are the way to your heart
But he needs to start with your head
Satin sheets are very romantic
What happens when you’re not in bed
You deserve the best in life
So if the time isn’t right then move on
Second best is never enough
You’ll do much better baby on your own
[Baby on your own]

(chorus)

Express yourself
[You've got to make him]
Express himself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
So if you want it right now, make him show you how
Express what he’s got, oh baby ready or not

Intermediate:

And when you’re gone he might regret it
Think about the love he once had
Try to carry on, but he just won’t get it
He’ll be back on his knees

To express himself
[You've got to make him]
Express himself
Hey hey

What you need is a big strong hand
To lift you to your higher ground
Make you feel like a queen on a throne
Make him love you till you can’t come down
[You'll never come down]

(intermediate)

So please

(chorus)

Express yourself
[You've got to make him]
Express himself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
So if you want it right now, make him show you how
Express what he’s got, oh baby ready or not
Express yourself
[You've got to make him]
So you can respect yourself
Hey, hey
So if you want it right now, then make him show you how
Express what he’s got, oh baby ready or not

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The Australian fever

There’s an Australian that has Northern Italians feverish. This year already 23,330 in Lombardy and 4,660 in Milan have been in bed with her. Its this seasons strand of influenza and they have named it l’Australiana (scroll down for the article, the second sentence actually reads “A lot of people are under the covers with the Australian”).

Why is it called The Australian? Because sufferers of it feel like doing nothing but drinking beer and watching sports? Do they call in sick to work “I’ve got The Australian, I’m going to the beach”?

No as far as I can find it is a strain A/H3N2/Perth – hence the moniker l’Australiana.

But it calls into reflection the perceptions surrounding different countries. For example would someone feel less worried that they have ‘The Australian’ Flu than say if it was called ‘The Somalian’? And if it was called the Chinese you’d instantly think that a billion people are going to get it by tomorrow. The German Flu would be a tough one. The English Flu would more likely bore you to death. The Jamaican Flu sounds like it might even be enjoyable. The Nauru Flu would just be embarrassing, I mean who has ever heard of the Nauru Flu? Almost as bad as the Tuvalu Flu. Much cooler to have something like ‘The Russian’, that just sounds big and dangerous. “I’ve got The Russian, I need a year off”. If you got the North Korean Flu you’d immediately lose all your Facebook friends. And if the Iranian Flu spread to the US war would be declared.

Apparently The Australian is not too severe. According to Fabrizio Pregliasco of the Institute of Virology at the University Of Milan, its been around for a couple of seasons so people are getting used to it. This tarnishes Australia’s usual competitive nature. Australians are famous for, and don’t shy from boasting about, the fact that we “punch above our weight” in the international arena. Well influenza is a tough game to do well in. We’re competing with Swine and Bird Flu just in the recent past. Hong Kong Flu killed a million in 1968-69. But the heavy weight champion is the Spanish Flu which decimated 50-100 million in 1918.

Its a tough ask for such an affable larrikin as the Australian Flu, whose sufferers just grin and bear it and are heard mumbling “yeah she’ll be right mate”.
 

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Blue Gnomes of the world unite!

 
Conspiracy theories really allow you to maintain a sense of humour when all about the world stagnates and all too slowly devours itself. A good one is that the early 1980′s cartoon The Smurfs was Cold War communist propaganda. Or atleast a great representation of a communist utopia.

Its all there, the communal living without the need for an economy, the principle from each according to ability, to each according to need. They are guided by the old wise Papa Smurf, clearly a Karl Marx caricature. Their enemies are the evil Jewish figure Gargamel and his capitalist ‘fat cat’ Azriel , bent on greed and profit by turning the Smurfs into gold.

Gargamel, the George Soros of smurf world.

There is a plethora of essays on this theory on the internet. The best place to start is the brilliant YouTube piece by Evan Topham.
 

 
What a great theory. Makes me want to listen to the Internationale and reread Capital. The Occupy Movement should have changed their slogan from “We are the 99%!” to “We are Smurfs!”

The Kardashians now with an FDA health warning

I know it won’t go on forever. I know at some point the publicity machine will come to a grinding halt. I know the cameras will stop clicking, the twitters will go unnoticed, the magazine covers will be filled with someone else and the television show will be cancelled. I know it will happen, every day I tell myself that it can’t go on forever. It can’t go on forever can it?

Please, please god tell me it can’t. Please tell me that this Kardashian nightmare that I live in will soon be over.

I simply can’t take it anymore; it just doesn’t make sense, none of it.

I don’t read the glossy magazines that always seem to have a Kardashian on the front cover. I don’t watch her “unreal reality” television show. I don’t watch any of the entertainment shows that thrive on celebrity. I no longer read The Daily Telegraph but I still cannot avoid seeing or hearing about the Kardashians.

I just want to make it through a day without having to see their faces or hear the name Kardashian.

I know we are living in the age of celebrity. I understand that people no longer want to be famous for being talented. No, being a famous singer, dancer, musician, actor or painter requires hard work, skill, determination, struggle, failure, pain and luck.

There is an easier and far more lucrative route that can now be travelled and the Kardashians are riding it all the way to the bank.

Maybe If I had watched a few episodes of” Keeping Up with the Kardashians” or “Kourtney and Kim Take New York” I would have understood the phenomenon.

Hmmmm nope, nothing there that could explain the phenomenon, just a poorly acted and scripted “unreal reality” show. That’s 1.07 of my life that I will never get back.

But maybe I’m still being too harsh, I mean Kim, the real star of the Kardashians hardly got a word in. It was dominated by Khloe, who definitely got handed the ugly glands in that family.

In the words of the great John McEnroe, “you cannot be serious”! Kim Kardashian has the personality of a cement block! Seriously, what is going on here?

Yes she is attractive but there are thousands upon thousands of equally attractive women in the United States gagging for work in the entertainment industry. Surely they could do a better job than the tripe served up by Kim Kardashian.

She is a vapid, boring, vessel of selfishness. At best she is a fifteen year old boy’s wet dream.

So what is driving this insane popularity? Surely to Christ people can’t be entertained by the contrived lives of the Kardashians?

Maybe we can at least try and drum up some sort of conspiracy theory to explain this idiotic fascination with the Kardashian clan…

Deep in the bowls of NBC Universal, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies, owned by Comcast Corporation the largest cable operator in the United States and multinational conglomerate General Electric, executives and marketing gurus are huddled together over a large mahogany table.

“We need a new creation to market to the masses” cries the fat, bald man at the head of the table. “Someone that the intellectuals will despise and ridicule but still watch, and someone the morons and feeble minded will adore and salivate over”.

“We need an attractive vessel that looks good but is unknown who we can mold and create” yells one of the marketing executives, desperate to be heard.

“How do we launch this vessel into the multimedia superhighway?” asks the fat man.

The sound of papers shuffling, the clearing of throats echoes around the crowded room…apprehension and nerves envelop the gathering executives.

A young assistant at the back of the room stands, everyone turns and looks at the nervous want-to-be-go-getter.

“A sex tape” he utters.

“What do you mean, what sex tape, who will be on this sex tape” yells the fat bald man.

“We make a sex tape, leak it to the media and launch the career of an unknown starlet. And I know a woman who can be our vessel, her name is Kardashian”.

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Isn't it football season yet?

Dear Mr Evans/Mr Hird,

I thought I’d write you a letter. Not because I think you will care what I have to say but it helps me feel better to get it off my chest. At least that what therapists say it does and I can’t afford a therapist.

I am a lifelong Essendon supporter but not a member for past 10 years. These days I go to local games in the Northern Football League (NFL) where I get to see contested attacking football. Sure the skills aren’t as good and the players aren’t as fit but frankly it’s more entertaining and it reminds me of the way the game was played in the VFL when I was growing up. At the local ground I also don’t have to put up with all the crap the AFL dishes up with their unwavering desire to squeeze every available cent out of the public before they spend their precious broadcast rights and advertising funding.  Gotta flush that 200 mil down the dunny in Penrith and Broadbeach I suppose.

And while I’m thinking Gold Coast what was the story with the match at Etihad being fully ticketed this year? Was there yet another sweetheart deal with Ticketek to force everyone to pre book a seat to a low attendance match and get an extra $6 a head booking fee? How does the divvy up of the spoils work on that little scam?

I read with some interest your plight today regarding the new training venue and the funds you are chasing from your supporters to finance it. Only 400k received towards the 5 mil target eh. A mate of mine joined the Essendonians but didn’t renew after 1 year. Bit too snobby and clicky he said but heaps of cash so I reckon those rich folks’ll hook you up with the moula. Good luck with that. If the ‘family day’ debacles I’ve attended these past 2 years are anything to go by I’m tipping more than a few average Essendon fans will pass on the opportunity to give you some more money. They’re apparently still choking on their membership cost rises and paying the parking fines from the family day.

Jim, I didn’t bother to line up with my kids for 3 hours to get any ‘autographs’. I could tell by the look on your face you’d rather have been having a public vasectomy than sit in that tent scribbling away. I’m the same age as you and when I was a kid I got a book full of signatures in the rooms after games. You know Timmy, Vander, TD, Budgie and Sheed’s with his glorious swirling and looping K and S. In the 80’s the players actually wrote their names and you could actually read them. Today it’s a mindless squiggle dished up in a hurry with a number beside so we can try and identify who the hell wrote it later on. It’s symptomatic of everything I hate about the AFL and it’s getting worse. Here’s my top 5 bitches.

5. Knobs trying to flog overpriced Record’s by holding them in your face and screaming recccorrrddd!!! Like you can’t see them as you walk by and then having another crack walking the aisles during the first qtr blocking my view of the game.

4. The car park at the MCG. I haven’t used it for years but if I’m walking through it I look at the zombie’s facing a 45 minute idle to get out and I often think of all you special people cruising out from downunder onto Brunton Ave and quickly down the highway to your lovely homes in the inner east.

3. 50 metre penalties given for stepping over an invisible mark by 2 cms resulting in a goal.  Yeah poetry in motion that one and a great way sell the game to foreigners.

2. The draw. Under no circumstances should the fixture ever be called a draw when the whole FIXture is unbalanced and fixed to maximise revenue and minimise equality. A real comp should be 17 rounds plus finals end of story!

1.The banners. Enough already! Why do we need 4 grown men to hold up a 3 metre pole that’s speared into the ground at each end of some poxy unfunny tissue paper sign with 3 more clowns straining away at ropes(on either end) in a bloody windless indoor stadium??? The players have no interest in the banners. They try to avoid them and duck under them. They are just embarrassing. If you want to be first at something be the first club to dump the banner or at least ban people over 15 from holding it up.

Now despite all my complaints I do wish you guys all the best for next year. I hope you win 12+ games and play finals again. I especially hope you beat Carlton twice. I hate those bastards more than the AFL!

Sincerely, White

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And in the end, the beard you get... Lennon won The Beatles beard battles.

There has been a lot written about why The Beatles broke up. Most of the penned ammunition unloaded on John Lennon’s sweet angelic muse Yoko Ono.  But this is a historic injustice. The evidence for the implosion of the greatest pop band of all time is right in our faces, or more correctly, on their faces. The obsessive competition of hair, moustache and beard growing among the quartet, most hostile between John and Paul, shook the earth and defined new avenues in masculine facial hair for the next four decades.

Hairy tension beginning.

You can see it in the first sprouting hair races of the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ era. They’ve all got it going, but George has edged in front and the others are thinking about their next move. You can see John already fantasising about the bushranger look but not yet having the guts to try it. Paul is so ripped on LSD he can read Johns mind but can’t believe he would go for a full-on Hells Angel style warrior beard, no Paul is cooking up something a little more astute. I don’t know what Ringo was thinking, probably nothing to do with beards.

(Incidentally, I sourced that photo from this website. Please check it out later. Christian nutcase websites are always good for a chuckle)

Battle won, but War is Not Over.

With Yellow Submarine the competition had reached the point where they thought it better just to cartoon themselves than compete in real life. This rare photo shows George and Ringo temporarily victorious, basically saying “We outlasted you guys with the moustaches”, but  John and Paul were just messing with their heads. They had both momentarily surrendered before the big war.  There were much grander games afoot.

There is then a time mix up. The last recorded album was Abbey Road (recorded Feb – August 1969), but the last released, recorded earlier and dropped, was Let It Be. This was due to the increasingly hostile beard battles.

Caution: Beards Crossing.

This should have been the end of it, the Abbey Road cover shoot, August 1969, the last round in the bloody beard boxing ring that The Beatles had become, with Paul sandwiched between beards, naked-faced, naked-footed, shamed, escorted by the beard police,  John out front with the glorious victorious flowing growth dreamed up years before.

Beard Together, he got hair down to his knee.

Another photo from the same period shows Paul struggling with defeat. Ringo seems to be saying “all’s fair in love and beards captain!”.

Instead the last mark of The Beatles in the history of beards is, famously, this one.

The Long and Winding Beard.

Paul clearly victorious with beautiful yet understated growth. Let It Be. Paul is reaching out for an end to the fighting. Leave it be lads, my beard is the best, lets move on.

You can see it and hear it in his words and music (January 1969, months before his Abbey Road humiliation). If we didn’t know the dates we’d think Paul had won for sure. Look at John there, feminine almost, lady-like resignation to shaving every day, Yoko at his side, whispering beardly words of encouragement. George and Ringo are still stuck on where their loyalty lies, they’ve remained on the fence, moustaches both. In the coming months John will pull them over to the bearded mobbing of Paul.

Paul obviously didn’t take the defeat sitting down, he made sure Let It Be was the last official record, his beard victory, and then filed the paper work for the break up of The Beatles  on the 31^st of December 1970.

But Paul eventually felt the weight of hairy guilt and rereleased Let It Be in 2003 as ‘Let It Be…Naked’, the title an obvious admission of defeat to the bearded ghosts of Lennon plaguing his no more lonely nights. Give my regards to Beardway.  Actually on the second cd of ‘Let It Be…Naked’, an audio of conversations and jamming while recording the album, you hear Ringo joke to Paul “I like your beard… Captain”. I think this was a point on which all of history could have gone either way.

We’re just scratching the grizzly surface here though. The truth requires a complete return to the whole Beatles archive, including all the post break-up albums, that are riddled with confessions, admissions and beardy reflections.

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Time to put down the democracy toy kids and let the elites get back to work.

 I would like to take issue with the recent scribbling about the change of government in Italy. To be brief Henington is out of his depth and should go back to criticizing Howard-era Liberals in Australia, as he has no idea about the complexities of Italian politics and the importance of stability in the Euro Zone.

I won’t bother to take apart his childish metaphors of Ronald McDonald, the fictional clown face of a global fast food company, with the legitimately elected prime minister of the 7^th largest economy in the world. But needless to say it has nothing to do with the current situation in Europe.

Henington seems to think that the resignation of Berlusconi, and the subsequent appointment of a technical government by President Napolitano, represents a kind of conspiratorial suspension of democracy or more ludicrously, a financial dictatorship. Lets get something clear, everything that was done was democratic and constitutional. Berlusconi resigned. This left a vacuum that the President had to fill. With the markets screaming for stability it would have been suicide to call elections. Napolitano did the right thing. He saved Italy.

And if Henington thinks that an election as soon as possible would be the best thing for Italy he is more off the map than usual. An election would plunge the country towards bankruptcy, something neither Europe or the global economy could afford.  

You have to understand something, the European Union is a work in progress. An experiment in grand economic and political power.  It is in the process of being created. This is its history. Decisions have to be made that serve that union, not the fragmentation of its individual states. The strength and stability of that union supersedes  tiring century-old democratic squabbling. The citizens of Europe need to keep quiet and let the experts steer the ship. They will make decisions that benefit the economy and in the end everyone. Stability is more important than democracy at this critical moment. They’ve said the Monti government will stay in power until 2013. I think this is positive, even longer would be better. They will get the tough reforms through. After that the politicians and citizens can go back to playing their sandpit democracy games.

My advice is to stick to writing about wine or travel or whatever other humorous subjects take your fancy. But don’t try to analyse a moment in history far beyond your intellectual reach.

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Berlusconi joins the Ousted Dictators of 2011 club

For as long as many can remember Ronald has been the clown face of McDonald’s, inhabiting his fantasy world called McDonaldland, having adventures with his strange friends such as Mayor McCheese, the Hamburgular , and Grimace. But after accusations of involvement with the McDonaldland criminal underworld, political corruption, abuse of his media power,  illegal business deals, paid orgies with minors –  Ronald was forced out for the sake of the solvency  of the Fast Food Union.

Seriously though, what will Italy be like without Silvio Berlusconi? DisneyLand without Mickey Mouse. Las Vegas without Wayne Newton. The Chocolate Factory without Willy Wonka.

Yes there is celebrating in the streets tonight here. But its a joy somewhat reserved, a bitter sweet relief, like “this is great but what the fuck just happened?” Berlusconi lost in a parliamentary vote, not in a national election. He is being replaced by a technical government, not an opposition that beat him. His replacement, Mario Monti, is an old rich boy banker, advisor for Goldman Sachs and Coca Cola. He is, in other words, one of those types that drove the world into crisis. People know this. As much as they are glad to see the back of Berlusconi, there’s no illusion about who is in charge here, the bankers of the Euro and the international financial superclass.

Berlosconi taken away by the international stock market police

While there is no reason why Berlusconi can’t candidate himself for the next election, I think it’s unlikely. So for Italy this is the ‘exit stage left’ moment for the most influential leader since Mussolini. The era of Berlusconismo, or as philosopher Slavoj Zizek called it ‘Groucho Marx Authoritarianism’ is over. Not beat in a humiliating election defeat, not assassinated, just politely asked to leave the stage by his fellow actors in the farcical theatrical tragedy that is Italian politics. The tired and frustrated audience wait to see if this expensive and ineffectual play continues with a mere shuffling of roles between the same old actors or if something new is possible.

If I put forward my most optimistic hope it would be that the Partito Democratico is able to get out of the way of itself and vote in as its leader the 36 year old Matteo Renzi, current Mayor of Florence. And then that Renzi gets voted in the national elections as Prime Minister. It would change the collective psyche of the country in a moment, a refreshing energy to wash out the clogged arteries and suffocating feeling of hopelessness and hatred of the political class. But that’s  just one little Anglo-saxons pipe dream for the country he currently lives in.

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New Greek Flag

Over the past few weeks, Disney executives have been in discussions with officials from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about acquiring the beleaguered state.

This morning, Greek Prime Minister Georgios A. Papandreou and members of his Cabinet met with Disney executives to finalise the acquisition. While details of the deal have been kept strictly confidential, Crystia Freeland, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times speculated that Disney agreed to take on 75 per cent of Greece’s national debt  ̶  estimated to be around €216 billion  ̶  in exchange for the country (officially known as the Hellenic Republic). The remainder of Greece’s debt will be written off by the EU and IMF.

“This is a great day for Disney and the people of Greece,” said Robert Iger, President and CEO, The Walt Disney Company. “We see many synergies between the values and ambitions of Disney and those of the Hellenic Republic. We are looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership.”

The deal comes as a saviour for European financial markets, which were bracing themselves for massive fallout in the likelihood that Greece would default on its debt. Greek Foreign Minister Stavros Lambrinidis, said: “We have to push this relationship forward at the political and economic levels.”

While there are still many aspects of the deal to be worked out, Patrick Shaw, financial columnist with the New York Post, suggested that Greece will become part of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division. This will strengthen Disney’s position as the dominant theme park operator in the world, well ahead of its main competitor, Merlin Entertainments. Shaw said “While underlying trends at Disney parks and resorts were solid. Domestic attendance in Q2 came in flat to prior year levels. This acquisition is definitely needed to enable Disney navigate what could be a potentially turbulent period”.

Greece attracts more than 17.5 million tourists each year, slightly more than Disney’s other European operation, Disneyland Paris, which comprises Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park and is currently Europe’s most visited tourist site, with 15.4 million visitors per year.

In 2009, Disney Corporation’s theme parks hosted approximately 119.1 million guests worldwide. Al Weiss, President of Worldwide Operations, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts said: “This new venture complements Walt Disney Parks and Resorts’ strategic efforts to continue to invest in its core theme park businesses around the world, while simultaneously expanding into other parts of the family vacation business.”

A bidding war has already begun between McDonald’s Corporation and Yum! Brands, Inc for exclusive concession rights to the country, once considered the cradle of Western civilization.

There is no information on if and when any rebranding will take place, but there has been speculation that Greece will eventually be rebranded Euro Disney.

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