tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1090662452273617669.post8117228250869603716..comments2012-01-19T11:15:15.939+02:00JOHN PSAROPOULOShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13398822698012000307noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1090662452273617669.post-65859988235435859752012-01-19T11:15:15.939+02:002012-01-19T11:15:15.939+02:00Simon, thank you for a very though-provoking reply, and my apologies it took me so long to figure out how to reply. It's not that the Greeks lie more or more often than, say, the Germans or the Brits. To be sure, there has been a lot of dishonesty. But the problem now is that Greece is now under a level of scrutiny that is unprecedented for an entire nation or political system in a long time. The country is seen as having destroyed itself and nearly dragging its best friends along with it. In this media climate, the Greeks are going to be seen as capable of very little that is good, while journalists are now scouring Greek sources for all that can be framed as bad. For example, a founder of Greece's public debt management agency recently told me he was grilled for four hours by a German reporter. Only his most negative and self-condemnatory statements were ever produced in the final copy. It is hardly new that many reporters come here with a preconceived story to prove, and set sound bites to collect. You can find what you go out in search of, unless you're fair minded.JOHN PSAROPOULOShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13398822698012000307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1090662452273617669.post-80593655001739525032011-12-22T11:32:29.296+02:002011-12-22T11:32:29.296+02:00Yes but no but...Byron's Philhellenism was all the more for his actual experiences of the Greeks...his letter to a fried a few months before his death at Mesolóngi ...Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate - not in the expectation of meeting with any especial indication of existing probity, but in the hope that time and better treatment will reclaim the present burglarious and larcenous tendencies which have followed this General Gaol delivery. When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries, they will not march so much ‘as if they had gyves on their legs’. At present the Chains are broken indeed; but the links are still clanking, and the Saturnalia is still too recent to have converted the Slave into a sober Citizen. The worst of them is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such damned liars; there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lived in Paradise. One of them found fault the other day with the English language, because it had so few shades of a Negative, whereas a Greek can so modify a ‘No’ to a ‘Yes’, and vice versa, by the slippery qualities of his language, that prevarication may be carried to any extent and still leave a loop-hole through which perjury may slip without being perceived...Hitchens at his best was perhaps not so rude about the things he loved.Simon Baddeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02385376572555781755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1090662452273617669.post-42021339839093682682011-12-19T10:09:40.711+02:002011-12-19T10:09:40.711+02:00Not QUITE Byron, but a bone fide fighter non the less. Just can`t quite stay with him about his support of Iraq war and the Chimp. Trouble with that is that it makes you wonder about his judgement on other matters...lostinthewildhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03051184312747324953noreply@blogger.com