More from the PASOK conference in Athens

I had my first panel discussion this morning with a few other Greek Internet activists and a member of Parliament who is Internet-friendly. There is a real debate in the country about the value of the Internet and particularly blogs, and whether they should be treated as something to be feared and regulated. There was a heated discussion during our panel, started by a young journalist who said that blogs should be required to say who is writing them - i.e., no anonymity. Another member of the audience stood up and quoted Marx as saying something about anonymity of journalists being bad. I replied that I was sure Marx's brother Vladimir Putin would agree that the names of journalists should be public so that he could have them arrested and put to death. I also informed them that Turkey was taking the lead, regionally, in clamping down on the Internet - treating it as something to be feared - so they could decide for themselves if they wanted to follow the Turkish model for democracy. (Hey, not here to pull punches.)

I also got a chance to speak for a few minutes with George Papandreou (he's the one in the photo, above), the leader of the main opposition party, PASOK (it's the same party in which my uncle, Yiannis Haralambopoulos, served as foreign minister, defense minister, deputy prime minister, and UN ambassador). Papandreou is the son of a former prime minister, and has served as the Greek Foreign Minister as well. He also, oddly, went to my high school in the states. We talked briefly about the Internet - he's a huge advocate of the Net, having been brought up and studied abroad, and he's made cultivating bloggers, and the Net more generally, a priority for his party. There's a good, relatively short, article in yesterday's Guardian about Papandreou and the challenges he faces. (And for the record, I was better dressed, jacket and all, right before I got to meet Papandreou - they sprung the quick meet-up on me just as I changed back into my blogger clothes.)

Right now hanging out in Blogger Row, or more precisely, the smoke-filled blogger room, at the conference. Tomorrow morning I'm hosting another, less formal, discussion with bloggers, and anyone else who's interested, to talk more specifically about what kind of things we're doing with the Internet in the states (things like ActBlue, how we're using YouTube, etc.)