That the CIA has been active in Greece for many years — along with the intelligence services of other countries — is well known. The United States has had a pervasive influence on Greek affairs over the last twenty-five years, however, which accounts for the current resentment and preoccupation of the Greek people with U.S. intelligence activities in this country. (To attribute it to left-wing conspiracies, as the press abroad has done in the last month is, at best, simplistic.) Nevertheless decency dictates that the death of an individual not be callously exploited for its news value.
The recent orgy of sensationalism in the press has been directed at Greeks, of all political persuasions, as well as at non-Greeks. Unsubstantiated theories impugning the reputations and integrity of individuals, news accounts presented as truth one day and denied or simply dropped the next, have all begun to create an atmosphere disconcertingly reminiscent of the period in U.S. history which led to the McCarthy witch hunts. Opinions or views that do not meet the rigid and arbitrary definitions of particular groups or individuals have been branded as ‘disloyal’ or otherwise suspect. The reputations of individuals have been placed at the mercy of innuenjdos frequently based on random and indiscriminate rumours, which all too often appear in the press as ‘news’.
The power of the press is great and carries with it the responsibility to respect and, moreover, uphold the rights of people and the principles of a democratic society. Such abuse undermines the fundamentals of journalism, raising as it does doubts about the credibility of all press reports, and negating the value of those that are true.
The best protection against foreign intervention and internal tyranny is not a people beset by rumours and confused by distortions. Only an enlightened and informed people, served by a responsible, analytical press concerned with issues and problems facing the country can ensure a nation’s independence.
The Lady of Ro
WHEN WE feel ourselves to be in a beleaguered state, we become nationalistic and our frontiers at such times take on an almost poetic importance. So it was natural that our choice of heroine in International Women’s Year was not so frivolous as one who fought for equal-pay rights, or walked out on a ‘closed’ marriage, or in any way advanced Women’s Liberation. None other than a nonagenarian, patriotic frontierswoman would do.
Last December the majestic Academy of Athens (whose list of Immortals is only surpassed by those who have humbly rejected invitations to have honours bestowed upon them) announced that it was giving a special honorary diploma to ninety-year-old Despina Achladioti, better known as the Lady of Ro.
Despina Achladioti, for thirty years leading the solitary life of a goatherd, raised the Greek flag on the rock islet of Ro less than one kilometre off the south coast of Turkey. A dependency of nearby Kastellorizo, an inhabited island hardly larger, Ro lies so far from the Greek mainland that it only appears on maps of Greece in an inset.
Indeed, when the Lady of Ro arrived in Athens in mid-January to accept the homage of the Academicians, she did seem to have come from another world. Heaped with honours by the Ministry of Defence and the Academy, received by the President’s Lady, the Governor of the National Bank, and by ERT in an hour’s tribute on prime-time television, she won the hearts and the admiration of all Athenians.
‘They were wonderful days,’ she explained, recalling in particular the heroic years 1940-44 when she played a notable role in assisting her fellow-countrymen to escape occupied Greece and join the Allied cause in the Middle East. .’The danger was great, but the duty was greater. Greece above all! In 1943 my deaf mother and Iwere the only ones left in Kastellorizo when they evacuated all the other inhabitants to Cyprus and the Middle East. With the flag raised above me and the love of Greece rooted within me, I was able to endure all misfortunes. I love the dry islands of Ro and Kastellorizo deeply. Certainly life is not easy but one understands Greece better there, lost at sea as one is, yet only a few hundred metres off the Turkish Coast.’
The slight but indomitable old lady then astonished those around her by jumping up, her bodice covered with her newly-won medals and shouted in a resonant voice, ‘Zito I Ellada!’
Having once more performed her patriotic duty — this time restoring the faith of fickle Athenians in national aims — the Lady of Ro has returned to the purer atmosphere of her rock islets and her goats.
The Last Picture Show
IN RECENT years itinerant, outdoor photographers have been disappearing from the streets of Athens. Today there are only eight left, active in two or three squares of Athens.
At one time there were one hundred and fifty such photographers in the city, picturesquely and strategically placed before imposing public buildings and fountains, in parks, and in front of statues of Kolokotronis, Byron, or assorted athletes, which afforded backgrounds to suit a martial, a poetic, or a sporting mood. On Sundays and holidays they were very busy, especially in the Zappion Gardens, as soldiers in uniform, grandmothers in fancy hats, and children in evzone or Amalia costumes stood ten – deep waiting to be snapped.
Who can forget those bulky square boxes with their sagging accordion lenses set askew on rickety tripods? Those photographers, in orange-brown smocks matching the colour of their cameras, always carried mirrors and sometimes combs as well so that their clients might groom themselves for the camera. ‘Smile now. In ten minutes your photograph will be ready.’
Today the few remaining photographers can be found only in front of the Town Hall, the University and on Syntagma Square. Among these anachronistic figures is Barba Iordanos who sits near the University, usually in the shadow of the statue of Socrates. For fifty years he has been photographing mankind as it strolls by: soldiers and civilians, children and lovers, Greeks and foreigners, the unknown and the famous. He remembers the day when he snapped Sophocles Venizelos and spent ten minutes discussing the virtues of the old camera obscura with the statesman.
Now Barba Iordanos is ignored except by those who mark time impatiently to have their picture taken for an identity card and by children who manage to persuade their hurrying parents to stop. In modern Athens this pleasant ten-minute interval is vanishing in the wake of the ubiquitous amateur photographers who now pose their friends and family before the same popular shrines once the exclusive territory of Barba Iordanos and his colleagues.
International Scoops
‘I SPOTTED the error immediately,’ our old sage Kyrios Stelios announced proudly when we visited him at his latest base of operations, the well-known haunt of members of the fourth estate, Orfanidis’ ouzeri. ‘Although one of the captions said that he had “the startled look of a provincial”,’ our old friend explained ‘the photograph showed a gentleman who might well have been an Oxford don given to shopping on Savile Row.’
Kyrios Stelios was referring, of course, to the December 27, 1975 edition of a mass circulation daily which devoted its entire front page to a blown-up photograph and the declaration of an ‘international scoop’, and the better part of its third to more ‘never before published photographs’, of the late American diplomat, Richard Welch, taken during his ‘sole public appearance’ while in Athens. Where else but at the Turkish Embassy, of course! The paper is now a collector’s item since the photographs were those of an Australian diplomat.
Since that day, Kyrios Stelios has abandoned tavli and politics and is devoting himself to uncovering other bloopers and generally making nervous wrecks of us all. His collection includes a January 3 edition of another major paper which devoted a quarter of its page twelve to photographs of Teddy Kennedy skating with ‘his wife Ethel’ in Brooklyn, and the January issue of this magazine which refers to the Kifissia zoo which closed down over a year ago. (We excused ourselves on the grounds that when we were up there last autumn we had assumed, intimately familiar as we had been for many years with the predatory habits of the zoo’s inhabitants, that they were simply out for a stroll, but he would not accept this.)
Perhaps the most charming item in Kyrios Stelios’s collection is the little map above which appeared on the front page “of another newspaper on December 19. At first glance it appears to be the boot of Italy turned upside down but, in fact, it is ‘North America’. And, indeed, there is Boston up on the northeast coast, and, a little below, New York. An arrow pointing to where Cape Cod used to be identifies the spot as Cape Hatteras which when last heard of was down in North Carolina. The swiggly lines around the peninsula indicate ocean, and Canada appears to have been completely submerged.
Deep Deception
EIGHTEEN months ago, when Athenian audiences were innocently jamming into cinema houses to see those edifying political movies which had been denied them for seven years, a film unpromisingly titled Deep Throat would have been dismissed out of hand as a bourgeois travelogue about the Samaria Gorge.
Democracy, however, is a maturing process (as it has been tirelessly repeated) and by last April, puberty had almost been reached by cinema audiences. Having had their fill of political fare, they were ready to give Emmanuelle full attention when it arrived from the rich coffers of Western pornography. Hardly more provocative than a cheerful, uninhibited tourist arriving early in the season, she was, however, sternly declared persona non grata by the Public Prosecutor and packed home.
Almost a year later, when advertisements announced that Deep Throatwas to open in January, the Athenian audience had reached the flower of man- and woman-hood and was fully prepared — Linda Lovelace having become, in the course of International Woman’s Year, a household word, second only to Patty Hearst and Squeakie Fromme.
The hardcore porn centre of Athens is Omonia Square, softening up in the neighbourhood areas, and becoming positively mushy out in the suburbs. Porno films in the heartland begin at ten o’clock in the morning — while the dew is still on them — and run unabated until the following morning, while in the more sedate parts of town, audiences are willing to wait for the more discreet hours of evening before queueing up.
But even eighteen months of democracy proved hardly enough to prepare audiences for the sophisticated ways of the Western cinema industry, for, unbeknownst to most, Athens’s Deep Throatwas not the original classic which everyone had been dreaming about, but an Italian remake with far shallower implications.
Although Deep Throatwas opening in thirteen cinema houses, the early birds got the first worm in Omonia by midday and those aficionados of porno spotted the deception immediately. Soon the news of treachery was spreading like wildfire throughout town. By nightfall the atmosphere had reached riot proportions and the Public Prosecutor had to step in as he had done at the debuts of other porno films. This time, however, it was in the interests of the aficionados — who felt they had been deeply deceived — as well as the theatre owners who, along with their theatres, were almost carried off by irate patrons.
Although the owners of the cinema houses did not refund money, they were prevailed upon to return tickets to customers, making them good for a later attraction. The next day the thirteen cinema houses were cautiously advertising Deep Throat, Number Two.
