INSEAD Blog by Zanat0s the INSEAD(er) @ Tokyo ! The Biggest among INSEAD MBA blogs. Insead is over, blogging not.

There is more to the game than the name

Original at http://zanat0s.typepad.com

Yesterday at an Event I organized with the help of some friends from Tokyo I was for the first confronted about an Issue that directly/indirectly influences me, my hometown and my country at large.

Most foreigners look at this and shrug and think that one is being bully and throwing around their weight. I do not expect N. Americans, British or anybody else to understand. Yes this issue has nothing to do with them or their countries. For me and my fellow nationals is a different story.

Probably they will never understand. I will definitely agree that the Greek Government is so disorganized that is losing the public battle and the battle for opinions. I can only add my voice to this issue. I only do that because i was piqued yesterday by a person and he brought me in a very difficult situation(which i didn't appreciate).

But this is my point people who do not get this dispute can make fun of it. My advice to the rest of you try to stay clear of sensitive matter that do not relate to you. I can only add my 2 cents of wisdom to this debate. I really did not want to do that. There are some intangible values in life which one cannot keep for oneself.

kopje's insistence on keeping the name Macedonia unsullied by any kind ofqualifying adjective, serves exactly Gligorov's project of 'freeing' one daythe 'unredeemed' parts of "Macedonia". Greece should insist that Skopjerepeatedly, officially and convincingly reject any idea of ever attempting to'liberate' lands that do not belong to them

The Fyrom authorities early last year decided to rename the country's main airport in Skopje into 'Aleksandar Veliki', after the ancient Greek conqueror Alexander the Great, adding fuel to a longlasting dispute with neighbouring Greece
LET US imagine what a scholar from Skopje might write to the Greek prime minister to argue that his country be recognised as the Republic of Macedonia.

"Dear Mr Karamanlis. I am addressing this letter to you both as a leader and as a Greek person with a certain family history. One of your direct ancestors was a 'karamanlis' (with a small k), ie an Orthodox Greek from the Karaman province in Anatolia so named after the 11th-century Seldjukid tribal leader who obliged Greeks to use the Turkish language only. Many complied but only in their speech. The result has been a number of interesting texts, the 'karamanlidika', which are in Turkish but written in the Greek script, the only one known to those who wrote them. When Greece became independent your ancestor left the Ottoman Empire and settled in the village of Kioupkioi (renamed Proti) near Serres. Your family have since become proud Macedonians. Don't you agree that we, who settled in the adjacent area some 12 centuries ago, also have the right to call ourselves Macedonians?

"People sometimes wonder why we reject our Slav identity. The reason is simple: because it serves us no purpose; because it does not bind us together; because Slavs can be Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovenes etc and they fight each other like deadly enemies if it comes to that. The main reason we want to differ, however, is that we do not want to be Bulgarians. We want our own nation-state; we want to forge our own destiny.

"Greeks, Mr Karamanlis, are blessed with a glorious past, a prestigious culture and a language whose continuity is not matched by anything in the Balkans. That is why the Greeks were the first, with the help of western philhellenes, to gain their independence from the Ottomans. The other Balkan peoples tried hard to promote various mediaeval kings and heroes in order to forge themselves a 'national' tradition. As you know from your studies, nations are not only formed bottom-up but also top-down. In Italy, at the time of unification, the educated elite were estimated at 2.5 percent. No wonder Massimo d' Azeglio (1798-1866) declared in parliament: 'Now that we have made Italy, we have to make Italians.' In the same way when Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s we moved on from the Socialist Republic of Macedonia to become the Republic of Macedonia, an independent state. In other words, we too made Macedonia and had then to make Macedonians. We chose Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great as our ancestors. In this we ask for your indulgence and your understanding. Allow us to be called Macedonians, let us be Macedonians and not Bulgarians. In a few years time, side by side in Nato and the EU we will enter together the post-national era in the Balkans, leave behind ethno-nationalism and embrace the American type of civic patriotism based on commonly accepted values and rules."

Such a plea could perhaps interest and move: it could not convince. The 'Macedonian' identity these people chose to adopt has not been an innocuous fantasy to assist peaceful state-builders in their task. It has led to xenophobic chauvinism and strident exclusivism. Their schoolbooks present the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Fyrom) - as the country is officially called after the Interim Agreement was signed in New York in 1995 - as a rump state. They also publish maps with the three Macedonias (Greek, Bulgarian and Fyrom) unified as one. Kiro Gligorov, the then president of Fyrom, welcomed on 14 September 1995 the Interim Agreement which he considered "a decisive step for the future of the Balkans". The selfsame man, however, writes in his Memoirs (Athens, Courier, 2000, p42) that "we have already achieved the freedom of one third of Macedonians, those that live in the Vardar part and have not yet addressed the question: what about our brothers in the other dispersed parts of Macedonia? From this question springs a view of foremost importance: a partly freed people are not free."

This is precisely the issue on which Greece ought to focus. Greece should move the emphasis from the name-as-symbol to the entity it symbolises; from the signifier to the signified, in linguistic terms. Skopje's insistence on keeping the name Macedonia unsullied by any kind of qualifying adjective, serves exactly Gligorov's project of "freeing" one day the "unredeemed" parts of 'Macedonia'. Greece should insist that Skopje repeatedly, officially and convincingly reject any idea of ever attempting to "liberate" lands that do not belong to them. In expensive advertisements published lately in all the major British and American papers the Skopje authorities mention as one of their "substantial concessions" to Greece that their country "has no territorial aspirations towards any neighbouring state and will not interfere in the sovereign right of the Greek government in respect of minority issues in Greece."

In what way, pray, is this a "concession"?

Any international organisation must demand an answer to this question as a preliminary to any accession application by Fyrom. A name for their country that would reflect the real, deep, genuine will of Skopje to live in peace with all their neighbours should be a precondition for membership. As for the Alexander the Great type of folie des grandeurs this is a question for psychiatrists not politicians or diplomats...

Thanx to Mark Dragoumis from Athens News

No dialogue can be possible on "revealed" truths

Moving decision-making from the public to the private sector is the best wecan do because there are more effective systemic pressures towards errorcorrection in the private than there will ever be in the public sphere. Theproblem is that no corresponding mechanism exists in politics to correctautomatically the wrong decisions on specific issues

MARK DRAGOUMIS (+1)

With or without dialogue, the anti-privatisation struggle can be spectacular, as this January 15 photo of dock workers trying to bring down the gate of Thessaloniki port shows. Dock workers continue their protests against the government's privatisation plans for the country's major ports' warehouses AS IS well known, Karl Popper's contribution to philosophy has been his insistence that what distinguishes scientific from religious truth is that the former is based on the principle of falsifiability, the latter on revelation. No matter how overwhelmingly obvious it may seem that the sun turns around the earth, if scientific evidence proves otherwise this belief has to be dropped. Galileo got into serious trouble over this issue because the Catholic Church, interpreting the scripture narrowly, thought that this was an offence to the Gospel truth. The big question, now, facing the modern world and especially Greece is whether the falsifiability criterion should apply not only as an a priori for science but to the discussion of political issues as well. It was most instructive to see on February 2 on TV an irate gang of trade unionists of the Public Power Corporation (known as DEI by its Greek acronym) brutally storming the Piraeus premises of the corporation to stop the executive from deciding to allow the participation of the private sector in it. The leader of the invaders was quite blunt in addressing Mr Athanassopoulos, the corporation's CEO. "DEI belongs to the Greek people," he said in a display of barely controlled fury, "and you have no right to sell it to foreigners. You should at least have first entered into a dialogue with us but now it is too late even for that." The time has thus come for Mr Alogoskoufis to widen the concept of "dialogue" and explain to the citizenry why privatisation is really necessary in this globalised world of ours. He must find the courage and say openly that the public sector of the economy fails, not because of the incompetence of those in charge of it, but because of their motivation. Governments are not in business to do business and make a profit. They are in business to do favours and gather votes. That is why they clutter the public corporations with thousands, useless as employees but useful as voters; that is why they give in to the claims of the unionists who demagogically identify state control with patriotism. Some in the government would like to escape this conundrum by "selling", say, OTE to a foreign corporation while keeping the management as a vote-catching device. At that point, the potential buyer asks: "Do you seriously want to sell?" End of conversation. Here then is the rub. The private sector is not inherently more capable to succeed than the state. It is simply driven to succeed because of the competition. The state is under no such pressure. State monopolies provide bad service but survive thanks to the protection extended to them by their owner who also happens to hold power in the country. Public corporations working in a competitive market sometimes do make progress but eventually tend to lose ground to their private competitors and then need to be wholly privatised to survive. The advantage of the private economy is that it is self-regulated. A car owner need not know why the price of oil is going up but when it does he will economise on petrol. Billions of interacting consumers all over the world will thus respond correctly to a price signal just as drivers respond to traffic signals. No worldwide authority could ever achieve this with the required speed, if at all. The collapse of communism proved that a fully nationalised economy where products and prices are decided by the state was a hopeless dystopia. However, in a private economy, "actor rationality", as it is called, is secured without the need to subject the actor to any training programme. The above process, one might object, is too abstract, too idealised. A perfect equilibrium where market prices always signal faultlessly to the ignorant consumers how they should behave to their best possible advantage is not of this world. True enough, it is not. However, in the real world which changes rapidly, where misleading advertisements can create fictitious demands and media sometimes dispense the wrong information, it so happens that the market process contains the seeds of its own correction. Imaginative, profit-seeking entrepreneurs start promoting the genuine article and reallocating resources for new products to meet new demands. The use of biofuel is such a response to the high price of petrol. Thus moving decision-making from the public to the private sector is the best we can do because there are more effective systemic pressures towards error correction in the private than there will ever be in the public sphere. The problem is that no corresponding mechanism exists in politics, even in a democracy, to correct automatically the wrong decisions on specific issues. A free press and an open discussion can help but the insistence on "revealed truths" does not enhance the search of the best possible solution through dialogue. The market allows you to benefit from knowledge that you have not actually acquired. No such shortcut is available in politics where any flat-earther can invoke his revealed truth about the shape of the planet and lobby for world travel to be abolished lest the travellers fall over the edge. So let us by all means have a public dialogue on privatisation principles or on everything else, based on the principle of falsifiability and not on a variety of conflicting "revealed truths" issued Left, Right and Centre

(+1) posted by athensnews.gr

E-rooster post! Well put!

The following article was published on E-rooster.gr (a blog where I input my ideas about the economy and education). This article thought should be heard..

Modern Greece: Decadence Unbound

The Egnatia Motorway across the north of Greece is one of the ‘largest road construction projects in Europe’. Six hundred and eighty kilometers long and 24.5 meters wide, it requires the construction of 1,650 bridges, 74 tunnels, 50 interchanges, 43 river and 11 railway crossings. A modern Greek marvel in the making where at least half of the costs are financed by the European Union. In Greece today, a plethora of public works are completed or in progress thanks to the generous aid of the EU. Billions in funds have been transferred southward to the EU’s only Balkan state member since its entry in 1981. By the 1990s, that assistance averaged about 3.5 per cent of GDP yearly. To put it in perspective, it would be as if the U.K. received around $87 billion from the EU in 2007. For almost a quarter of a century, Greece has been the beneficiary of a European willingness to become one cohesive whole, but despite all the bridges, ports, tunnels, roads and agricultural subsidies, Greece remains as far away from the European core as it did when it joined the Union.

There is always some optimism when a grand public project is announced. The Athens underground was supposed to solve the city’s traffic problems, the Olympic Games were supposed to revitalize tourism, and the Egnatia Motorway is supposed to make Greece the economic tiger of the region. There are pronouncements of great hopes when a project is planned, followed by more pronouncements when the project begins, more pronouncements during the construction and a couple more at the opening or numerous openings. Finally pessimism seems to overtake everything. These public projects are like miracles without miraculous ends. The great leap forward is always postponed for a later day.

Farming is associated with independence and self-sufficiency but the subsidy farmer is a new breed

European assistance has been to Greece what oil has been to the Middle East; the lifeline of poor government, mischievous habits and exasperated hopes. Kathimerini, an authoritative daily newspaper, reported what the cotton subsidies have done in agriculture: there was cotton production of good quality in Greece, cultivated efficiently in the most suitable fields at a good price – now farmers receive subsidies that are up to three times the market price of cotton. Cultivation of cotton has expanded in millions of unsuitable acres. Excess well drilling has drained the valleys of their underground water, and pollution from the senseless use of fertilizers has been linked to serious health problems in the adjacent residential areas. This year the cotton farmers are to receive 690 million euros in subsidies. Since this amount is based on an agreed-upon quantity to be produced, farmers will produce more and attempt to get the national government to make up the difference. The common practice is to block major motorways with tractors; then the negotiations start.

Farming is associated with independence and self-sufficiency but the subsidy farmer is a new breed. He is entirely dependent on the political process, which he thoroughly cultivates, and his connection to the land is shallow. If the farmers are not out fighting for their ‘rights,’ then someone else will be: The teachers who do not want to be evaluated, contract civil servants who want to become permanent, policemen who do not want to police, students who do not want to learn. The list is long, reflecting a Greece cut to pieces with each faction trying to impose its absurd demands on the rest. The pre-eminent action of civic participation is to demand employment in the public sector, or to defend retirement at 50, to illegally build houses in the forest, or to fully exploit one’s state-sanctioned monopoly.

For the local intellectual class, this is the triumph of politics. For decades now, progressive ideas are the only ideas in Greece. They have been so thoroughly instilled in everyone, from the first grader up to the Prime Minister, that they permeate everything. Any movement in a different direction is anti-social, reactionary, liberal, or an Anglo-Saxon barbarity. Under the tutelage of progressive ideas there are privileges without duties, advantages without merit, crime without punishment and hard work with no reward. Can a society flourish under these conditions? What is the character and the purpose of the nation? Important questions, but in Greece they were decided years ago. The only questions remaining are who gets what, when and how. Not long ago I watched a TV report about an explosion in an illegal propane station in a residential area in Athens. The illegal market for fuel is thriving thanks to exorbitant taxes. The journalist reporting the incident mentioned the illegality without a shred of emphasis. It became worse when the owner of the station talked to the camera. I could not discern any expression of shame. She had just broken the law in a dramatic way and in the process put the lives of her neighbours in danger. None of this seemed to matter to her or anyone else. It was the noise and the spectacle of explosion that counted the most; a story reported for its cinematic value, where causes and consequences are unimportant.

Someone would expect that decades of policies intended to foster social cohesion would produce a society of benevolent people

This is the relativism of everyday life. The most important thing is what you can get away with. It is the tragedy of the commons writ large; a public sphere where the private and the public meet under the most disadvantageous terms. Someone would expect that decades of policies intended to foster social cohesion would produce a society of benevolent people. Instead we have narrow-minded, cynical, egotists gyrating in alternate states of self-satisfaction and self-hatred.

It is not surprising that between 1991 and 2001 deaths exceeded births by more than 40,000. The rearing of a family involves an unconditional commitment to another person, an undertaking whose emotional and financial costs are obvious and direct while many of the benefits are spread out in society and over time. A family man would say that nothing could compensate for the joys of family, but in a society where the individual perceives himself as the centre of the universe committed to the proposition that all joys and pleasures are equal, the family becomes just another choice among others. When duty and virtue have become antiquated terms that one only finds in books no one reads, we have a declining society entangled in the most petty and ephemeral affairs. Unburdened by the past, unimpeded from posterity, there stands the modern Greek: a person free of any civic and moral duties. The coming of the welfare state brought the monetarization of civic responsibilities and gradually degraded them to special interest sloganeering.

Unlike any other foe the Greeks faced in the past, the one that they face now has no armies laying siege to any walls. There are no occupiers trying to impose their customs and language, no military junta to imprison, torture or banish anyone. It is a foe that does not challenge their strengths but rather assuages their weaknesses. Instead of attacking the culture, it merely trivializes it by draining it of any transcendent qualities. There is no need to assail honesty, merit and hard work; they have simply been rendered irrelevant.

A commentator recently disclosed the slogan that the army is planning to use to attract recruits: ‘A career with the security of the public sector.’ In Pericles’ funeral oration you find no such catch phrase. Pericles talks of ‘the spirit in which we faced our trials and also our constitution and the way of life which has made us great,’ of a city that is ‘open to the world’ and of ‘men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard.’ He reminded Athenians that ‘happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.’ In such a city, the soldiers met danger ‘with a natural rather than state-induced courage.’ And they did so not because they knew they would return to some secure government job, but because they wanted to preserve a city they were proud of, a city that ‘future ages will wonder at’.

In the many narrow dirty sidewalks planted against ancient ruins, the many cars that flock the busy, gray streets of Athens, the cold boxy apartment buildings, the dim image of a city emerges, a gap reveals itself. A distance greater than the passage of time, of what we were once and the way we live now.

by Napoleon Linardatos¹

Redefine the boundaries of humiliation

I cannot help but post a very old article from my own favorite author(dragoumis). I am sorry for not having writen about INSEAD but I didn't have anything in mind. I guess you will like this opiniated article

The day when a tax-dodger will be treated in Greece with the same contemptas a deserter in times of war, 'civic patriotism' will have triumphed in this country
MARK DRAGOUMIS

In the coming electoral contest, the New Democracy ruling party can only be damaged by the nationalist fringe party of George Karatzaferis (C)

THE GOVERNMENT'S success in managing the economy has created disarray in the ranks of the opposition. The clearer the Minister of the Economy Mr Alogoskoufis appears on TV, quoting chapter and verse, facts and figures, sums and balances, the more Pasok officials resort to incoherent attacks on the government's alleged evil intentions and devious lies. The more decisive and straightforward Premier Karamanlis appears on TV, the more his challenger George Papandreou strains himself to display the most vituperative behaviour he is capable of to make people forget what a good-natured, polite, easy-going person he was before inheriting the party. New Democracy has nothing to fear from the sinking Socialists; it can only be damaged by the nationalist fringe of Karatzaferis that may deprive it of the precious margin it needs to form the next government.

This then is the time for Greeks and their leaders to redefine their attachment to the nation, their patria, in the era of globalisation. It is a platitude - though often forgotten - that in a world mostly at peace, the global and unimpeded traffic of persons, capital, labour, information and ideas, is undermining the nation state as we knew it. Nationalists need protectionism in every field and a closed monocultural society to brood, unchallenged, over past glories (when present ones are sadly lacking), to celebrate over present triumphs (when these happen) and to indulge in hate campaigns or conspiracy theories in case of setbacks. Leaving for a moment the worship of ancient Greece aside (on which there is not much dissent in today's world anyway) the common denominator of Greek patriotism ever since Greece gained its independence in 1830, has been territory. The 'Great Idea' itself - as expressed in 1847 by Koletis, a Greek prime minister of Albanian extraction - consisted in liberating all the Greek lands under foreign (mainly Turkish) occupation. Young Greeks were urged by their elders to prepare themselves to give their lives in the fight to acquire territory and to defend every inch of Greek soil from the attacks of barbarous enemies (usually neighbours).

Today's problem for such "territorial patriots" is that for the first time in many years, Greece's territory is reasonably safe. Consequently, these "patriots" have to invent threats such as, for instance, when a tiny neighbouring country, totally dependent on Greece's support both economically and internationally is using a name that Greeks claim exclusive rights to, or when a history schoolbook is not vehement enough in expressing hatred against Turks.

Let us be clear, however. Attachment to one's nation is certainly natural and welcome. Descended from the holdings of monarchs or, in the case of Greece, from a revolution against an alien Empire, the nation state has produced many varieties of governance, both absolutist and democratic. The left used to consider the nation not just an "imagined community", to use Benedict Anderson's words, but as a concoction devised by the ruling elites to disguise their particular class interests and use national ideology to stop the "workers of the world unite". In Greece, this has now changed as the communists are singing the same tune as Karatzaferis (even losing voters to him) hoping to transmute extreme nationalism into anti-Americanism, thus vindicating once again good old Samuel Johnson's dictum defining patriotism as "the last refuge of the scoundrel".

To be certain, not every nation thinks of itself, like some Greeks think of Greece, as having been born with a silver spoon in its mouth proclaiming itself an exemplar of perfection to justify claims for special treatment. Two great nations were born of revolutions standing for values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the USA, liberty, fraternity and equality in the case of France. Such values, redefined and completed, have now become more or less universal, while respect for the territorial integrity of all nations (OK forget Iraq for a moment!) is enshrined in the UN Charter. It would thus seem that the old-fashioned territorial patriotism would have by now become obsolete. Well, in Greece it hasn't.

So, how should it change? The time has come, this columnist modestly believes, to introduce the concept of "civic patriotism", based on values, not territory.

In the case of Greece which is 98 percent ethnically homogeneous, this means a nation displaying culturally one of those phenomena defined by family resemblance: there is no single feature borne by all the members, but intuition recognises that they belong in fact to the same family. Not everybody's impression of the family will be exactly the same, but a consensus will emerge eventually among both outsiders and insiders. Insofar as the common civic Greek mores are concerned - Toqueville's "habits of the heart" - such as, say, motivation to excel (filotimo), strong family ties and hospitality (filoxenia), these need to be identified, analysed and self-consciously taught. The great innovation of the concept of "civic patriotism" lies in the fact that love of one's country no longer means hatred or contempt for any other but dedication to its welfare, institutions and environment. The day when a tax-dodger will be treated in Greece with the same contempt as a deserter in times of war, "civic patriotism" will have triumphed in this country.

In the meantime Karamanlis should, in the electoral contest to come, make clear his intention to save the nation from the Karatzaferis nationalists and the state from the Pasok statists.

* Mark Dragoumis' book The Greek Economy 1940-2004 is available at bookstores throughout Greece and directly from this newspaper

* Mark Dragoumis' books Greece on the Couch, Session 1 and Greece on the Couch, Session 2, containing select 'Analyse This' columns, are available at bookstores throughout Greece and directly from this newspaper

The forces of stagnation trump the forces of progress! The church and the ultra-nationalists show their power!

Original article posted on e.kathimerini!

History schoolbook axed
Church applauds decision but reaction from academic community is mixed

The Education Ministry yesterday withdrew a sixth-grade history textbook following complaints by the Church and right-wing critics that it distorted historical facts, following months of controversy over the education material originally destined for state schools.

Critics had said the book played down the suffering of Greeks at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and accused it of containing inaccuracies and being unpatriotic.

Recently appointed Education Minister Evripidis Stylianidis said the book was removed from the national curriculum after a panel of experts reviewed it on Monday.

“Given the serious reservations regarding the content of the book, it has been decided that the book should be withdrawn,” Stylianidis said.

“It will be replaced with the older textbook until a new book is ready,” he added.

During the election campaign in the runup to the September 16 polls, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis had said he “strongly disagreed” with parts of the book but made no mention of its withdrawal.

The Church of Greece was one of the book’s most fierce critics, demanding its immediate withdrawal months ago.

The Church said the book fails to highlight its own role during the 1821 Greek revolution against the Ottoman Empire.

Archbishop Christodoulos, in Miami awaiting a liver transplant operation, in a statement congratulated the minister for exercising the “right judgment and being outspoken.”

The decision is seen as a victory for the right-wing LAOS party that had petitioned for the withdrawal of the book.

Stylianidis, however, denied this.

“Schoolbooks are constantly reviewed and assessed by the ministry. That is how it works,” he said.

Although the book never even went to print, many parents were opposed to it and welcomed its withdrawal.

Reaction from members of the education community was mixed, with some teachers branding excuses to withdraw the book as “cheap.”

“Unfortunately, the withdrawal of the book... shows that promises made by Karamanlis, namely that he does not cooperate with extreme (political) groups, do not hold water,” said historian Antonis Liakos, a professor at Athens University.

How an immature nation shows that there are no limits to stupidity!

THe original article can be read here! It is a bit late but i couldn't resist posting another humiliating article about this sorry state and its patriots!

Critics charge that a new Greek textbook for sixth graders sacrifices conscience of national identity for political correctness

WHEN the education ministry issued a new sixth-grade textbook on modern Greek history (1453 to the present) in September, few expected that an unprecedented intellectual and ideological war would break loose.

The battlefields in which the rewriting of Greek history is being fought are TV news shows (with impassioned debates), the press (with a barrage of opinion pieces) and parliament, where Education Minister Marietta Yannakou refused to recall the book but conceded that it can be changed.

The debate has drawn in the Church of Greece, with Archbishop Christodoulos charging that the role of the Orthodox Church in Greek history is obliterated by the book.

Asia Minor Greeks charge that the burning of Smyrna and the killing and expulsion of the Greek population is silenced for the sake of political correctness. And Pontic Greeks complain that the massacre of their forebears by the Turks is omitted.

A work by 19th-century great painter Nikolaos
Gyzis depicts a so-called secret school where,
according to the legend, Greek children were
secretly taught by clergymen in monasteries
during the Ottoman rule. The controversial history
book questions the existence of this sort of school

Most recently, Yannakou asked the Academy of Athens, the country's highest intellectual institution, to issue an opinion on the book.

Professor Maria Repousi, a Thessaloniki University historian who led the four-member panel that wrote the book, told the Athens News that her opponents "criticise the book as being non-patriotic". "They say it tries to undermine the foundations of Greek identity," she stresses. At a recent news conference, she labelled her critics as "the nationalist bloc" and said she would accept no changes to the book demanded by them.

Though she insists the book has no factual errors, she admits misguided turns of phrase and says these types of changes will be made in the first revision.

That the 1922 burning of Smyrna by Kemal Ataturk's forces and the widespread killing and expulsion of the Greek and Armenian population are downplayed in the textbook has stirred an outcry in the public debate. "On 27 August 1922, the Turkish army enters Smyrna. Thousands of Greeks crowd at the port and try to leave for Greece" is the only reference.

"We said that this was an unfortunate wording that will be changed in the first correction of the book," Repousi says. She defends the book on the grounds that it "introduces a new method of history teaching and learning, which depends largely on using images as well".

"I feel pushed in a corner. It's not easy being at the centre of public attention, with name-calling," she says, noting the petition against the book on the website www.antibaro.gr.

The petition sums up the criticism of the book in five pages. It says that the Ottoman conquerors of Greece and their slaughter and oppression of Greek populations is prettified and cleansed in the name of political correctness.

It also maintains that the book muzzles "the significance of Orthodox Christian tradition in preserving the national conscience of the Greeks". It says legends and traditions of the "glorious Byzantine past influenced deeply the Greek revolutionaries", but are totally omitted.

"The heroism, self-sacrifice, martyrdom and national struggle that characterised the revolution were replaced by a dry list of numbers and events, stressing the socio-economic demands of various groups," the petition says. It also stressed that "the genocide of Christian populations is silenced and the historic dimension of the Asia Minor catastrophe is annulled".

Another criticism is that the Ottomans' act of seizing Greek boys from their families to serve in the Janissary corps is described as "recruitment", rather than kidnapping.

Archbishop Christodoulos charged that the book aims to "enslave the youth". "They challenge even March 25 [the date chosen as the symbolic start of the revolution, to coincide with the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary], the banner of the revolution raised by [Bishop] Paleon Patron Germanos, and the heroes Kolokotronis, Makrygiannis, and all those heroes who in their struggle said first 'for the faith' and then 'for the fatherland'," he said. "We sacrifice the historic truth on the altar of Greek-Turkish friendship."

The new book was commissioned by the education ministry in 2003 when Pasok was in power. Those who reject the book say it was changed to remove elements of passion and hatred of the Turks in the context of a Greek-Turkish rapprochement dating to 1999. Foreign Minister George Papandreou and Turkish counterpart Ismail Cem signed an accord to review each country's textbooks for nationalist bias.

Dimitris Nezeritis, a retired ambassador to Turkey who, with Turkish Professor Ilber Ortayli, is on a bilateral committee to review Greek and Turkish textbooks, told the Athens News that neither side has yet agreed to any change in its textbooks.

Repousi and the Pedagogical Institute, which advises the education ministry and is responsible for the writing of school books, deny that any political criterion influenced the writing of the sixth-grade history book.

Ioannnis Papagrigoriou, who supervised the sixth-grade textbook and also wrote the previous one in 1988, told the Athens News that the new book aims to teach critical thinking and use new technologies, but he said he had expressed reservations. He believes that history should instill patriotism, which critics say the new book does not. "Is it nationalist to love your country and traditions? The aim is to instill love of country and a national conscience, " he says.

Papagrigoriou stresses that the textbook was written based on an "analytical programme" prepared by the institute with detailed guidelines, which have the force of law. He says a DVD created as a teaching aid covers many things that the book does not, such as the destruction of Smyrna, but he admits that it has not been sent to a single school "due to bureaucracy". He has asked that it be sent now.

Papagrigoriou says teachers and students around the country have been sent a questionnaire on the book, and that changes will be made based on the results. The views of the Academy of Athens will also be taken into account. Questions include whether the narration is adequate and if national conscience is cultivated.

The academy's draft report, as leaked and published in the weekly newspaper Paron on March 18, was damning on over 70 points. The report said that the book fails to cultivate national conscience (which the Greek constitution says the state is obliged to do) and does not comply with the legally mandated analytic school programme.

"A school history book must be well edited, follow rules of historiography, attract students and earn their trust and that of their families, teachers and other possible readers. The book in question is faulty on all these counts," the draft said.

The academy said the book conceals Ottoman discrimination against non-Muslim populations, attacks against Greeks and forced conversions to Islam. It also says the role of legends, traditions and symbols contributing to Greek identity are ignored, as are Greek uprisings.

The Internet Movement of Amalia's Friends

ANNOUNCEMENT TO MEDIA

It was only natural that today’s internet protest “For Amalia” brought a lot of attention to the Greek blogs. We are bombarded with invitations from t.v. stations in order to comment as bloggers about our initiative. We choose however not to participate in any news or show for the following reasons:

• We have deep respect for Amalia Kalyvinou’s memory, who chose to fight with strength and dignity till the end.

• We have deep respect for her family’s and friends’ mourning for their loss.

• The reason for our protest being massive is exactly that it is unselfish and completely off any political or economic interests. We focus on the core of the problems and not on show-offs and futile debates.

• We regard anyone’s intentions to take advantage of Amalia’s tragic loss for feeding his/her vanity, off-mark, to say the least

• We believe that free expression via the internet is multi-collective by nature. However, in a team effort like today’s, there can be no single person who can represent such an uneven group.

• Organizing today’s movement was achieved by democratic processes open to everyone, aiming at sensitizing the State, the citizens and the Healthcare community about the ineffectiveness and corruption phenomena of the Greek National Health System.

Thank you for the invitation you addressed to us and for the publicity you keep on giving to our protest.

We continue.

INTERNET MOVEMENT OF AMALIA’S FRIENDS

Amalia's Video on Youtube!

Greek bloggers are mourning the loss of one of their own, a young Greek cancer patient whose adventures through the Greek medical system touched thousands, and are dedicating June 1 to her memory.

Amalia Kalyvinou, who died last week at the age of 30, had attracted many to her Internet Weblog [www.fakellaki.blogspot.com]
with her stories about incompetent and corrupt doctors who failed to diagnose her for years or took financial advantage of her despair.

http://fakellaki.blogspot.com - Amalia's Blog
http://giatinamalia-blog.blogspot.com - Amalia's friends

Dear friends,

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIg0q9H5 auc) is a protest of Greek bloggers demanding -on behalf of all Greek citizens- efficient, decent and free Healthcare for all. The story begun when a young blogger, Amalia, died after years of strugle with not only her health problem but also with the disfunctional Health System.
Pls visit our protest blog
http://giatinamalia-blog.blogspot.com/
and support us in our protest.

We want the whole world to know we won't quit unless the State takes action!

Thank you in advance!

For Amalia: Rest well

This one is for Amalia…





"Every patient has the right to being respected and maintaining his dignity."


(Greek law, article 47, L.2071/1992)





"Quacks should be the exception, you guys, not the norm…"


(Amalia Kalyvinou , 1977-2007)







Since the age of 8, Amalia Kalyvinou started having pains. Despite her numerous visits to doctors and several admissions to hospitals, no-one managed to diagnose her in time with the benign neurinoma of her lower extremity, which was the actual diagnosis at that point. 17 years later, Amalia was told that the neurinoma had transformed by then into a malignant tumour.





For the next 5 years, Amalia not only had to fight with the cancerous disease and amputation, but also with a corrupt Greek National Health System: it ignores (by choice) the ongoing patient-to-doctor bribery and insists on time-consuming bureaucratic methods and practices. Besides radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Amalia had to face the financial exploitation by doctors that stood opposite to rather than by her side. On top of her pain, she had to endure the greediness of private clinics and the exhaustingly long waiting queues of the health insurance system, in order to get legal approval for some ridiculously low financial compensation.




Amalia passed away on Friday, May the 25th, 2007. She was just 30 years old.




Before dying, she managed to document her experience and share it with us in her blog http://fakellaki.blogspot.com/. The promising literature graduate named in there each and every one of the doctors she had to bribe, praising at the same time the ones that honoured the Hippocratic Oath. Her testimony moved thousands of people that stood by her side all the way to the end.





"Amalia's main aim was to tell her story, so that she could awaken as many people and as many consciences as possible. She mainly wanted to show that there are ways to resist not only the self-regulation and authority of dishonest and heartless doctors, but also the bureaucrats of the Health System."





(Dikaia Tsavari & Georgia Kalyvinou – Amalia's mother & sister)







According to the Greek law, it is considered a major disciplinary offence for the doctors of the Greek National Health System to:





"Accept bonus and especially any compensation or property grant, for any medical service provided.”





Amalia Kalyvinou fought for things that are taken for granted in a modern European country. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Greece. Continuing Amalia’s effort where she left off, we protest in public and we demand:







* THE STATE TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION TO STOP BRIBERY AND THE INEQUALITY BROUGHT IN THE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS.





* THE NATIONAL HEALTH COMMITTEE TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE SO AS PATIENTS STOP FALLING VICTIMS TO TIME-CONSUMING BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES.





* THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH TO ENSURE STRICTER CONTROL ON THE RELATION OF DRUG COMPANIES – MEDICAL SERVICE.





* FULL UTILISIZATION OF CURRENTLY ABANDONED HOSPITAL INFRASTRUCTURE. CONTINUOUS AND COMPLETE SCIENTIFIC TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT FOR DOCTORS AND NURSES.





* CREATION OF A NATION-WIDE ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD SYSTEM, TO SPEED UP PROMPT DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT





LET’S END THE HYPOCRISY OF THE ONES THAT GOVERN, WHO PREFER TO ALLOW DOCTORS TO BE BRIBED BY THEIR PATIENTS, INSTEAD OF PROVIDING THEM WITH A DECENT SALARY.







* NO MORE BRIBERY


* NO MORE BUREAUCRACY


* NO MORE LIES






WE DEMAND FREE AND EFFICACIOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES FOR ALL.







Next time you’ll have to bribe a doctor, just don’t. Choose instead to make a donation. Amalia’s last wish was to contribute to the -under construction- Oncological Centre for Children. (Elpida foundation, tel no          0030210-7757153       , email: info@elpida.org,
Bank accounts: National bank of Greece, account no 080/480898-36, Alphabank account no 152-002-002-000-515. Please remember to quote that your donation is “for Amalia”)









INTERNET MOVEMENT OF AMALIA’S FRIENDS

Amalia Post 1 : An introduction to a Hero and to her Story

The next posts will be dedicated to a real hero. What is a hero first of all? Here are some definitions found over the internet:

1. (Myth.) An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.

2. A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.

Each man is a hero and oracle to somebody. --Emerson.

3. The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and [AE]neas in the [AE]neid.

The shining quality of an epic hero. --Dryden.

The above comes from dictionary.net, while the next quotes come from http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212302/hero2.html

What does it mean to be a hero?

1. A hero is someone who helps other people, or helps to make other people's lives better. 

2. A hero is a person who tries to make the world a better place. 

3. A hero is a person who does something that is more than what is expected.

4. A hero is someone that doesn't do something for his or her own problems but for the benefit of others.

5. A hero is a person that doesn't want to be a hero just to be famous.

There are some truths in the above definitions. I will add my own dimension to what constitutes a hero. It is not important how hard you can hit, it is important how hard you can get hit, how much you can take and keep on going forward, how much you can suffer and not give up. This is how heroes are made. Not giving up is an integral characteristic of heroes.

I am not a hero. There are heroes all over the world how are being tested right now, but they do not give up. They may not be illustrious Investment bankers or consultants, but their thirst for life is immense.

Amalia, was one of them. So who is Amalia? Amalia was a girl who was sturck down by the combination of crooked doctors, a filthy health system and an illness that could have been avoided. She lost her money in the beginning, she lost her health later, she lost her leg and in the end her life. Instead of giving up and surrendering to the Greek Bureaucracy she documented her whole adventures (with specific names) and started making her story public through her blog.

She didn’t have any motives other to save others like her and improve the system. Her last wish (her last post on her blog) was to change the status quo:

To change once and forever the situation where the corrupt and arrogant doctors are the establishment, and in case they cannot be eradicated at least be the minority, not the established majority.

Her last post on her blog has gathered 1518 comment. I wish my non-Greek readers could read her blog(which is only available in Greek) and read the horrors and the inefficiencies in

Greece

. The Greek public sector is living proof(most of the times) that stupidity is invincible.

She is referring to doctors who swindled her, played with her health and didn’t care at all. She gives detailed accounts of what happened to her and how the doctors made the situation better. Of course not everybody is a crook. Amalia also congratulates and thanks doctors and nurses who really helped(without asking for bribes). It is really excruciating to read what this girl has(had) been through.

Amalia’s story became a hot issue in Greece (like everything else, until it blows off). This time the Greek-blogging community decided to participate. The Greek-bloggers brought the issue to the surface. It was a pity though that soon afterwards Amalia passed-away. One prominent member of the Parliament (and the best constitutional lawyer) brought Amalia’s blog to be used as evidence material during a hearing at the parliament. Of course even he had to go through the layers of the impenetrable Greek bureaucracy. A very clever lady (which her abilities must be inversely related to her intransigence) in the beginning declined his request by citing an article. Of course Venizelos’ intellect is of a higher caliber and he countered by citing another article. Venizelos warned the employee that with this denial they are going against the bloggers’ movement. There are some critics who pertain that all this interest is staged. Even if it is, it is stimulating people into action, people like me. A new movement has sprung up: http://giatinamalia-blog.blogspot.com! There you can read in English what has been happening if you are interested. Amalia died 1 week ago, after battling for 22 years. She did what most of us trying to ignore or avoid: she saw reality and went public with it. Doctors have an oath: The Hippocratic Oath! Doctors in Greece have the Hypocrites Oath. Doctors are supposed to care for their patients. They are supposed to care about health. Unfortunately this is not what Amalia found out. A society will only change if force is applied to it. Change is not decreed, Change comes from within.