Asteris Masouras a Global Voices blogger from Greece shares a very shocking report. With the war raging in Gaza, news reports emerge earlier this month about the routing of an extraordinarily large shipment of arms from the United States to Israel through the Greek port of Astakos caused an uproar among Greek bloggers. They rallied together, investigated the issue and were able to exert enough pressure on the Greek government to halt the transfer.
The story emerged initially via a Reuters news report on 9th January
At first the official Greek sources contested the story from Reuters, but it was picked up by Twitter users and investigated after Indy.gr - an offshoot of the Indymedia Athens group resulted in a flurry of twitter messages like “Can we organize an embargo of the port of Astakos? Only the US and Israeli ships…”.
As the pressure mounted the Greek authorities were then found trying to cover up the shipment to issue statement stating that the shipping of arms through Astakos or other Greek ports is a “non-issue” and shrugged it aside by vaguely denying press reports to the opposite.
By then a Greek blogger Odysseas had located a solicitation for the shipment on a US federal website which goes to show that the cargo existed and was awaiting a transport contractor to ship to Israel, but after the mess hit the ceiling the US defense shipping contract stands canceled dated 16th January.>>>>>snip
http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2009/01/19/arms-shipment-america-to-israelIsn't the internet grand?