I've got two interviews scheduled for tomorrow, and I'd like your suggestions for questions.
The first interview is with Nobel prize in economics winner Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University. As I wrote yesterday, Stiglitz is the man who recently came up with the $3 trillion price tag for Iraq, as described in his new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War. I'm thinking of asking him about Iraq, of course, and the mortgage crisis. But open to other suggestions.
The second interview is with George Papandreou, the leader of the largest opposition party in Greece, PASOK (and the son of former Greek Premier Andreas Papandreou. I plan to ask Papandreou to tell us, as Americans, what it means to be a socialist. Papandreou not only runs a socialist party, he's the newly re-elected president of the Socialist International. Americans of my generation and older, at least many of us, associated the Socialist International with the Soviet Union specifically, and anti-Americanism generally. It's now been some 17 years since the Soviet Union joined the dust bin of history, so perhaps it's time we revisited our knee-jerk distaste for anything termed "socialism." In any case, I plan to ask Papandreou about this, but again am open to whatever questions you may have.
I'm in Greece this week attending a retreat of progressive leaders from around the world, called the Symi Symposium. It's organized by George Papandreou, the head of the main liberal opposition party in Greece, PASOK. It's an annual conference of around 30 progressive political leaders from around the world, including the head of Greenpeace and the president of Estonia (who personally led the economic miracle that turned the country around they left the Soviet orbit). We'll be discussing issues ranging from the gas crisis to the Obama phenomenon. The actual meeting starts today, so nothing to report as of yet, but I hope to get some interviews on cam for you guys with several of the more interesting attendees.
In the meantime, I received an email a little over a week ago from a staffer to the Greek Foreign Minister, Dora Bakoyannis. He said that Minister Bakoyannis is a big fan of blogs and the Internet, and she was interested in meeting with me, as a prominent Greek-American blogger. After I determined that it wasn't a joke, I of course said yes, and met with the minister this past Friday in her office in the Foreign Minister (it's the same office, and even the same desk, my uncle John had when he was Foreign Minister, which was kind of cool from a family perspective). Anyway, we talked for about half an hour, off the record (at the Minister's request), and then she agreed to let me ask her a few questions on camera. Below is my brief interview with her. She's quite an interesting personality, as I'd mentioned the other day. She was the first female mayor of Athens in its entire history of 3000 or so years, and she's the first female Greek Foreign Minister, and highest women in government in Greece ever (she's also likely to take over the helm of the conservative party in Greece in the upcoming years). Since I only had a few minutes, I asked her about what it's like being a woman leader in Greece, then about Iraq, and finally about Barack Obama, since he came up during our private chat earlier. Anyway, here's my interview with her - hope it's interesting.
I got an email last week inviting me to meet with the Greek Foreign Minister, Dora Bakoyannis (you may recall that one of my uncles held the same job in the 1980s).
I'm heading off to Athens today to attend a conference starting this weekend in northern Greece (more on that in a sec), and the Minister's office coincidentally contacted me asking if I'd be in Greece any time soon. It seems that Minister Bakoyanni is very into the Internet and bloggers. Which is great. As I'd written before, Greece is behind many "western" European countries, like France and Spain and England, in its use of the Internet. I'd put Greece on a par with Italy in terms of its Internet use - and for neither country is that good. Perhaps a better way to put this would be, Greece and Italy appear to have embraced the Internet to the level we had embraced it in the US some time in the late 1990s. Some people love it, some people think it's a fad or downright dangerous, and others simply shrug, never having seen it, and not really planning to. But at the same time, in Greece at least, I've met a real core of great bloggers and online strategists that rival anything we have here in the states. So they're on the right track - the only question is to what degree the government and society will foster an Internet revolution, or fear it.
Anyway, so I'm meeting the Minister at her office on Friday and, while our conversation will be off the record, I was wondering if you have any questions for her? I've asked her office if I might interview her on cam or by audio for a few minutes after the meeting ON the record - so if I can, I'd like your suggestions for what topics you might find interesting. I just read her resume, it's rather astounding. She and her family were exiled from Greece during the years of the military dictators (late 60s, early 70s). My uncle was jailed and tortured at the time as well, which is interesting since he's on the left and her family is on the right - dictators know no difference. She then returned to Greece, where her husband was assassinated by terrorists, got involved in politics, was herself the survivor of an assassination plot six years ago, and eventually became the first female mayor of Athens in its 3,500 year history. She now has been Foreign Minister (i.e., Secretary of State) for the past two years.
As for next week, I was invited to attend the Symi Symposium, an annual gathering of, well, it's hard to explain, so let me let them explain:
The 11th Annual Symi Symposium will take place July 13-19, 2008 in Ouranoupolis, Greece. It will bring together about 30 of the most interesting thinkers, Nobel laureates, entrepreneurs, politicians, religious leaders, diplomats, scientists, and activists to address how progressive parties can develop successful political platforms that respond to the challenges of the coming decade, focusing on such issues on climate change and energy security; the reform or reinvention of international institutions; and the global food crisis.
The Symposium was first held in 1998 on the island of Symi, which has lent its name to this event ever since. Convened every year on a different Greek venue, the Symi Symposium is designed to nurture spirited debate in a discreet setting. Participants come from all over the world, and their divergent interests and backgrounds enliven both formal and informal conversations. The Symi Symposium has fostered ideas and friendships that have borne fruit in the form of significant projects, ventures, and public service.
It sounds really fascinating. We should have Internet access at the conference, so I hope to not just report on the conference, but get some good interviews, audio and video, with a number of the political and non-profit leaders from around the world. Then from there I'm flying directly to Austin for the Netroots Nation (aka Yearly Kos) blog conference. You can still register to attend the conference, it's open to everyone, here (and the price has been discounted to $299 - unfortunately, conference cost to put together).
It is kind of funny that the islanders actually call themselves "Lesbians." From Andy Towle:
A group of plaintiffs from the Greek island of Lesbos begins their quest in court today to stop gay women from calling themselves lesbians. It seems as though they'd have to take their court case around the world. And even then:
"The hearing has been initiated by plaintiffs on the Aegean island of Lesbos, who say they are unhappy that gay women have 'usurped' a term that locals claim should have only geographical connotations. 'We are very upset that, worldwide, women who like women have appropriated the name of our island,' said Dimitris Lambrou, a magazine publisher who is one of those bringing the complaint with other islanders. 'Until 1924, according to the Oxford English dictionary, a Lesbian was a native of our isle,' he said. 'Now, because of its new connotations, our womenfolk are unable to call themselves such and that is wrong.'"
Damn Greeks. Don't they know today is about Hillary?
Defying governmental wrath, the mayor of a remote Greek island performed the country’s first same-sex marriages on Tuesday, wedding two men and two women.
The civil ceremonies, held at sunrise in the nondescript town hall of Tilos, a tiny island in the eastern Aegean Sea, defied statements by a senior Greek prosecutor last week that such unions were illegal.
“It’s done, now,” the mayor, Anastassios Aliferis, said in a telephone interview. “The unions have been registered and the licenses have been issued. It’s a historic moment.”
Taking a break from politics. Had a number of interviews with the local papers in Athens, to talk about blogs in the US (I think), and attended my cousin's international relations class at the university, which was interesting. It's amazing how Athens has changed over the years. There are so many cool neighborhoods. Trendier than anything I've seen in DC, and on a par with NYC, if not far cooler. Just amazing. Having said that, only 15% of the population has Internet access (10% have broadband), per a study from last year (so it may be a bit higher now). So they still have a ways to go. Anyway, a few cool pics of Athens I thought I'd share:
Actually, this post is a few days old. I got into Paris last night and am working from Chris and Joelle's apartment. I had to snap a shot of the cheese shop next door. They were giving a cheese lesson, which was cute enough, but to top it off, the instructor was wearing a beret. :-)
These are the metal detectors you need to go through to get into the huge bi-annual conference of Greece's largest opposition party (mind you, this is a country with a history of domestic terrorism, and hours after this video was taken the party leader was giving his big speech of the conference). In case you can't tell, the machines aren't even on, and no one is manning them anyway. (I love how at the very end of the video you actually see a security person waltzing through along with everyone else!)
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.)
I got a last minute invitation from the lead opposition party in Athens, Greece - named PASOK - to do a couple of sessions at their bi-annual party conference about online advocacy, and specifically, how American political parties, and bloggers, were using the Internet to impact the elections. I've only been here for less than 24 hours, so am still a bit groggy, but beyond the never-ending pall of smoke everywhere (these people smoke like chimneys, no, chimneys don't even smoke like these people), it's already been quite interesting. To some degree, a political conference is a political conference is a political conference. The language changes, the venue may have a few fewer flags than we'd use (hell, there isn't a Greek flag anywhere to be seen), and yeah, there's the never-ending-smoke-thing, but it's very much your standard political conference. And there's even a blogger row. I'm told 37 bloggers have asked for, and gotten, credentials. The bloggers are pretty much what you'd expect - male, young, and geek-oriented.
Panayotis Vryonis, my Greek blogger friend and host, has finally introduced me to Twitter. It's a, well, I'm not sure what to call it. It's micro-blogging, as Panayotis calls it, or as I put it, haiku-blogging. With Twitter you post quick messages about what you're doing or thinking at that moment, and you only get 140 characters (maybe 22 words). For political blogging, especially blogging while on travel, it's a potentially useful concept. It's hard to break open your laptop when you're running around a conference, and it's equally hard to blog the small tidbits of info you glean, experiences you have, ideas you get, that might not be worthy of an entire blog post. For example, yesterday my Greek taxi driver on the way in from the airport was talking to me about work and people who work too much, and he told me a Greek saying: "Work never ends; life does." It was a great quote, and worth of something smaller than a blog post. Now I have Twitter for that purpose (and you can Twitter via email or text message, so I can do it from abroad on the road via my cell). Anyway, very interesting stuff, I think, and hope. I've posted our Twitter feed in the right-most column, beneath the fundraising box.
We had an interesting discussion about "making money by blogging." I'm told there are two blogs that have done well enough to earn a living blogging. One is a tech blogger, who also dabbles in politics (most of his revenue is from ads, and the advertisers come to him), and the second is a gossip blogger who has caused quite a stir here, if by "stir" you mean 100 lawsuits (or so they say). The blogger writes a site called Press-Gr. And the controversy is, to an American's eyes, quite absurd, and scary.
In a nutshell, the guy runs a successful gossip blog. One day, a reporter receives an email from a stranger saying that if the reporter doesn't pay the stranger X amount of money, the stranger will say horrible things about the reporter in the comments section of the blog. This rather odd threat led the police to raid the blogger's office, and his home, confiscate his computer, his files, etc. The parliament is now considering legislation to clamp down on people like this blogger, including holding bloggers legally responsible for what anonymous strangers write in their comments.
Wow. We had some similar issues in the states years ago, but the courts decided that bloggers, and Web site operators more generally, would not be responsible for the comments people left on their sites (or for the "diaries" that visitors created on your blog, a la DailyKos). The general theory was that we wanted to provide an incentive for people to use the Internet creatively and productively, and holding them to an impossibly high standard would effectively shut down the Internet. No one could blog if they were legally responsible for every anonymous nutjob who posts a comment.
There is some sympathy in Greece, at least from what I'm hearing on the sreet, to clamping down on bloggers. Which is really quite sad. Aside from the trite "birthplace of democracy" argument, Greece could use a few more incentives to spur creativity and productivity and overall the creation of more business and more wealth. Clamping down on free speech, clamping down on what is still a very nascent Internet, may help reporters who receive anonymous threats from commenters, but it does nothing to help Greece enter the 21st century.
(Greek liberal political blogger, Panayotis Vryonis, runs Vrypan.net. Like most foreigners, Panayoti has an incredibly cool, advanced camera/phone/GPS/video/voice recorder that is lighter than a feather and fits in your pocket. The camera is 5 megapixels. The GPS is free. I am so sick of going abroad and seeing phones that are generations beyond anything we have here. I'm suspecting that our wonderful domestic-spying friends at the American phone companies are restraining trade in some way. It's really pathetic how backwards we are in some things.)
When I was in Greece two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the chief of staff to Greek opposition leader George Papandreou. They were preparing for national elections held this past Sunday (the left lost). I got to meet with a number of senior media staffers, including their blogger, and it was surprising to what degree the Greek blogosphere reflects our own. Certainly, the US blogosphere, and especially political blogosphere, beats out most (if not all) countries in the world in terms of its size and import in national (and local) politics. But what I found funny, and interesting, were a few key points.
1. The liberal political blogosphere in Greece is more powerful than the conservative blogosphere.
2. Liberal blogs, while anti-conservative, don't necessarily identify with a particular party, or at least with the lead liberal party, PASOK. In other words, the liberal bloggers can be a bit bitchy with their own party (those are my words).
The funny thing is how closely this mirrors the US. The liberal American political blogosphere is more powerful than the conservative. When the media and politicians talk about "the blogs" they're using talking about us - about Markos, about Atrios, about Arianna. They're not talking about Michelle, Hugh and John. Whether this is because conservatives prefer talk radio as their unifying outlet, or the fact that liberals are more independent-spirited, something that lends itself to the Internet and political innovation, who knows.
The second, and even funnier thing, in my view, is that the left is often a bit critical of its own lead party. Sound familiar?
Greece only has 25% of its citizens online, or so I was told. While in the US, over half the population has broadband Internet access (e.g., cable or DSL). But there's still a lot you can do by organizing a key cabal of supporters, who then disseminate your message to the offline community. It's what many of us had to do in the late 90s in the US. With email lists of only a few thousand people, and Web sites that only got a few thousands visitors a day, we still wreaked havoc. And France was way behind in terms of blogs, and even its online presence wasn't quite up to the European par years ago. France now leads Europe in its blog presence.
Just a hodge podge of photos from my trip. Heading out tomorrow. Back to Paris for a week to see Chris and his wife Joelle, now that they're back from Egypt, and then back to DC on the 13th.
The local baker in Dorio, mom's hometown. This guy was a riot. He started to show off for me, taking the fresh hot bread out of the oven, etc. He made me promise to mail him a cd of my photos and videos of him and his wife, and I will. Oh, and the bread was superb.
A yiayia (grandma) walking home from the Dorio street market. After their husbands die, Greeks (well, at least of yiayia's generation) wear all black for the rest of their lives.
I didn't get to the islands this trip, but did get a near-island experience visiting the city of Coroni, near Kalamata in the south. It's a nice city, especially if you haven't been to the islands. If you HAVE been to the islands, then Coroni is only a poor imitation. Still, as poor imitations go, as you can see, it's pretty beautiful.
Possibly the most powerful kittens in Greece. They belong to my Uncle John, the former cabinet minister.
Just a sign scrawled on a wall in Coroni. Still, it's kind of prety.
In spite of the fires, we finally got to visit my Uncle John Haralambopoulos (or Theio Yianni, as we say in Greek - though many now call him Barba Yianni (from what I can gather, Barba is a term of endearment/respect for an olderman, it's a bit like "uncle," though people who aren't your relatives can still use it). Theio Yianni is, I believe, the most senior member of the main left party (aka Socialist party, aka PASOK) here in Greece. He retired from politics 3 years ago or so, was a member of parliament for three or four decades, and served as the Greek Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, UN Ambassador and Deputy Prime Minister under the government of Andreas Papandreou. For heading up the resistance against the military junta that controlled Greece (with US support) from the late 60s to the early 70s, Uncle John was repeatedly arrested and regularly beaten. He still gets terrible headaches every day from the beatings they gave him to the back of his head, now over 30 years ago. He was then exiled to a prison island, affectionately known as Devil's Island, for four years. My aunt, his wife, Aga, sent him some olive oil one time in prison. In the bottom of the container was a secret panel in which she hid a transistor radio, his only contact with the outside world for months until the junta fell and he was released.
Uncle John is a stately figure. Tall, confident, long swirling mustache like some figure out of Greek history (he actually resembles the statue of Kolokotronis, the Greek revolution hero). I'd met him 20 years ago when he was defense minister. But the big surprise of this trip was his wife, Aga, whom I'd never met. What an unexpected joy. Uncle John is around 88 or so. I believe Theia (aunt) Aga is more senior. You'd think she was 60. What an amazing presence and mind this woman has. It was like meeting someone I'd known all my life, and wished I'd known all my life. She has been for decades and decades a leader in the Greek women's movement. She's as smart as she is politically savvy, a wealth of data stored inside her head. I was simply blown away. I was so looking forward to talking with Uncle John about the family history and politics this weekend, and we did, but Theia Aga was the unexpected treat.
Unfortunately, Uncle John asked that our weekend discussions be kept off the record. He stopped giving interviews a few years ago, and thus doesn't want to be quoted about politics, understandably. So I can't fill you in on the substance of our discussions (other than the details of our famous uncle, Dimitris Papatsoris, who helped lead the revolution against the Turks in 1821 - he said that I could share his views on Greek history - I'll get to that another time).
But it really is amazing to meet people who have lived through history that we can't even imagine. Being born in a small village in southern Greece (Uncle John's mom and my grandma (yiayia) were sisters). He grew up a few blocks away from my mom in a town called Dorio (though we're actually from Soulima). To come from a village, then go through WWII, where he fought in exile during the German occupation of Greece, to watch your country then succumb to a military coup and watch yourself and your sons be thrown in jail and tortured for simply supporting democracy... all things that are hard to imagine for an American. I suspect all of these experiences give Uncle John, and all Greeks of his generation, a special appreciation for democracy and freedom that most Americans know in name only.
It's difficult, I suspect, to truly appreciate freedom, and the sacrifices you have to make to preserve that freedom, unless you've had it brutally taken away by a "benevolent" government. Yes, Americans like to talk about "freedom," but far too many have shown, since September 11, almost a disgust for our way of government and the values and rights it represents and engenders. I often wonder if the majority of Americans won't recognize the danger that omnipotent and omniscient government poses until each and every one of them suffer personally from the "benevolence" of such a government.
I'm back in Athens and finally have a Net connection after 8 days. This is the first time in two years, or more, that I've been offline for any serious period of time. Amazing how accustomed we get to our toys. Anyway, we finally were able to head to southern Greece to see my parents' relatives, and that required driving through fire country. The fires had died down, for the most part, in the area we were heading to. We didn't expect, however, to find ourselves in the middle of miles and miles of totally dead mountains. It looked like the moon, and smelled, everywhere, like the world's largest camp fire. I took a load of pictures, and did a quick video blog at one point that I'm posting below. The fires ended up stopping, quite literally, only a few miles from my mom's and dad's villages in the south near Kalamata.
I can only imagine what a terrifying (and oddly beautiful) site it must have been to seen an entire mountain aflame in the night.
This is a nice little "life goes on" shot I took today driving through the mountains on the way back to Athens from Kalamata. The guy has set up a fruit stand along the road - everything is dead surrounding him for miles. (Though there are sporadic trees and bushes, amid the ashes, that are still green and alive. Weird.)
Here's a second video shot from the road. Notice how even though the car keeps going, and we cover more and more land, the entire landscape is dead.
PS Funny little story. We were staying the night in a town called Kalambaka, checking out the monasteries (from hell) at Meteora (more on those monasteries and the truly truly truly hateful people who work there, later). The owner of our hotel was telling us how a few days before someone had started some kind of fire in town, perhaps burning their garbage, no one was sure, but the fire kept growing and growing on the mountainside in the distance, and about 20 different guests at the hotel called the front desk in a panic. After all, 1/3 of the country was on fire. So, the owner calls the local fire department and tells them - amidst a national fire disaster - that there's some kind of fire going on on the mountainside. The fireman's response? "Is it big?"
