#rbnews international show 20 July 2013 - Health in the time of the crisis

This week on #rbnews international, radiobubble contributor @Jaquoutopie and I discussed the Greek health system in the time of the crisis: the chronic issues, the cutbacks, and their impact on the population. Deep down, we wondered if the Greek health system is still serving its purpose of providing care but also protection for patients.

You can listen to the podcast after the jump.

#rbnews international show 13 July 2013: reactions to the case of Kostas Sakkas

For this week's #rbnews international show, we asked netizens from Greece and abroad to send in their reactions to the case of Kostas Sakkas, who was released on Thursday 11 June after 951 days in prison without a trial and 38 days of hunger strike.

Many thanks to all those who sent in a short sound clip, and apologies to those whose clips we couldn't broadcast due to a lack of time.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews weekly show 06 July 2013 - The failure(s) of democracy in Greece

This week on the #rbnews international show, we asked lawyer Crystali Bourcha from the Movement for the Liberties and Democratic Rights of our Times (Greek acronym KEDDE) and journalist Mariniki Alevizopoulou from Unfollow Magazine to comment on the items that we included in our news bulletin of the week, which all seem to point towards the failure of democracy in Greece.

You can listen to the podcast and read the news bulletin after the jump.
The interviews were taken by phone. We apologize for the poor quality of the sound, especially in the case of our interview with Crystali Bourcha. For some unexplainable reason, the recording device was particularly intent to add parasites to her speech. 

#rbnews international show 29 June 2013: Culture in the time of the crisis, part 4 - The ERT musical ensembles

This week on #rbnews international, we continued our series about culture in the time of the crisis with a show dedicated to the musical ensembles of Greece's public broadcaster ERT. The government's  sudden decision to shut down ERT on 11 June 2013 caused a public outcry in Greece and internationally. Much attention has however been focusing on issues pertaining to freedom of the press, and little to ERT's contribution to Greek cultural life at large. The ERT musical ensembles include a symphony orchestra, a contemporary music orchestra and a chorus, and are widely considered to be among the best in the country. A petition to save these musical ensembles can be found on Avaaz.

The show is based on interviews with conductor Michalis Economou (Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, Athens Municipality Orchestra, guest conductor at the ERT symphony orchestra), contrabassist Theo Lazarou (ERT symphony orchestra) and tenor Loukas Panourgias (ERT chorus).

The pieces of music included in this podcast (Elgar's Nimrod, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Verdi's Dies Irae, and the overture of Mozart's Magic Flute) were performed during the solidarity concert organized at ERT on 14 June 2013, with participation from all the major orchestras of the greater Athens area. You can watch a partial video of this concert here.

And of course, you can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 22 June 2013: Happy birthday Mr. Prime Minister

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the formation of the coalition government in June 2012 (and of the day when it lost one of its three member parties), we discussed its achievements (or lack thereof) over the past year with @tsimitakis and @YiannisBab.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 15 June 2013 - Why is the government shutting down ERT?

This week on #rbnews international, our guest was Michael Nevradakis, who also runs a web radio station, Dialogos Radio, and who has been actively following the government shutdown of Greece's national broadcaster ERT. We summarized how the Greek government is trying to close ERT and the reasons behind this decision.

You can follow Michael on Twitter @dialogosmedia.

And of course, you can listen to the podcast after the jump.

#rbnews international show 08 June 2013: Freedom of the press in Greece (or lack thereof)

This week, on the occasion of the upcoming appeals trial of Kostas Vaxevanis, the journalist who was arrested and tried once already in November 2012 for publishing the Lagarde list in his magazine HOT DOC, the #rbnews international show focused on the issue of freedom of the press in Greece. We were able to interview Kostas Vaxevanis himself, but also Dimitris Trimis, chairman of the Athens Daily Newspaper Editors’ Union, Marios Lolos,  chairman of the Greek Photojournalists’ Union, and his colleague Tatiana Bolari, and Angélique Kourounis, a correspondent for various French-speaking media in Athens, who also acts as the local representative of Reporters Without Borders. This show is part of a series prepared by the radiobubblenews team, which will carry on across the coming week and will seek to discuss the various impediments to the realization of this essential democratic liberty.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 01 June 2013: Fascism, antifascism and education

Today on #rbnews international, we continued our series on fascism and antifascism in Greece with a series on fascism, antifascism and education. Our guest was Gelly Aroni, a physical education teacher in an intercultural school in Faliro, a southern suburb of Athens, who also holds a PhD in social psychology from Panteion University and volunteers as a trainer on human rights education and intercultural education. Gelly shared with us some conclusions and thoughts from her 15 years of working in what is known as "intercultural education" in Greece, which essentially means education targeting non-native Greek speakers.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 25 May 2013: The Human Library against racism

Today on #rbnews international, we continued our series on fascism and anti-fascism in Greece with an interview with Zoe. Zoe is a member of the Human Library project in Greece, an anti-racist initiative in which books are people who have been victims of racism and readers are people who are trying to challenge their own prejudices against the "other".

You can contact the Human Library on Twitter, Facebook (their second page is here), by e-mail (humanlibrarygr (at) gmail.com or info (at) humanlibrary.gr) or through their website.

And you can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 18 May 2013: The letter, spirit and (lack of) enforcement of laws against racism in Greece

In this week's edition of the #rbnews international show, we continued our series about fascism and antifascism in Greece with an interview with @Chiguire79. @Chiguire79 is a lawyer and friend of radiobubble, and he explained to us the existing legal framework against racism and its shortcomings but also what we can expect from the new proposed bill against racism, which was finally brought to parliament yesterday.

You can read more about the proposed bill here. You can also find the rest of the shows in this series under the tag fascism and antifascism series.

And of course, you can listen to the podcast after the jump.

#rbnews international show 11 May 2013: Greece and the 2012 elections, one year on.

In this week's edition of the #rbnews international show, @tsimitakis and @IrateGreek interviewed Michalis Spourdalakis, professor of political science at the University of Athens and Chairman of the Hellenic Political Science Society. We took stock of the political situation of Greece on the anniversary of the elections of 6 May 2012, which was a political earthquake in which Greece's traditional bipartisan system collapsed, leading to the rise of alternative political forces, SYRIZA on the left and, most worryingly, Golden Dawn on the far-right.
You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 27 April 2013: the Junta and its legacy

This week on #rbnews international, on the occasion of the 46th anniversary last Sunday of the coup d'Etat that brought the Regime of the Colonels to power in Greece in 1967, we discussed the legacy of the Greek Junta with historian Vangelis Karamanolakis from the University of Athens.

This show is part of the #rbnews international series on fascism and antifascism in Greece.

Special thanks to @JonWiltshire, @mp_anana and @potmos for providing the voiceovers for the show.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 20 April 2013: The anatomy of the Golden Dawn vote

This week on #rbnews international, our guest was sociologist Vangelis Lagos, who is participating in the European research project MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy And Civic Engagement). The purpose of MYPLACE is to explore how young people's social participation is shaped by the shadows (past, present and future) of totalitarianism and populism in Europe. We discussed the reasons why more than 400,000 chose to vote, in the spring of 2012, for the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 13 April 2013: The Black Book of Golden Dawn

This week on #rbnews international, we continued our series of fascism and anti-fascism in Greece with an interview with Dimitris Psarras. Dimitris is a journalist with the investigative team Ios, whose reports are currently published by the Editors' Newspaper. He published in October 2012 a book titled The Black Book of Golden Dawn (Polis), a comprehensive summary of the years of research he conducted into the history and activities of Greece's neo-Nazi party. He is also the author of The secret hand of Karatzaferis: the media rebirth of the Greek far-right (Alexandria, 2010).

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump. We added some explanatory notes for those who are not familiar with details of Greece's political scene.

#rbnews international show 06 April 2013: Nationalism and national identity in Greece

This week on #rbnews international, we inaugurated a series of shows about fascism and anti-fascism in Greece with an interview with Athanasia Anagnostopoulou, a historian and associate professor in Panteion University in Athens. We discussed the formation of Greek national identity and its evolution towards elements of aggressive, dangerous nationalism not only in the recent crisis years, which saw the rise of Golden Dawn, but also in past decades, where the basis for such a form of nationalism was established.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 30 March 2013 - Skouries: the march to Stratoni

On 30 March 2013 on #rbnews international, we discussed once again the issue of gold and copper mining in Skouries, Halkidiki, while the anti-mining movement was holding a demonstration from Ierissos to Stratoni, the village where mining company Hellas Gold has its local offices.

With me in the studio were @potmos and @menacius from OmniaTV and Georgia Anagnou (@ganagnou) from Exandas Documentaries, and discussed, among other things, the production of two recent documentaries on the Skouries issue: Greedy Profit (OmniaTV) and Cassandra's Treasure (Exandas).

We also interviewed Maria Kadoglou, who was participating in the march to Stratoni, Vasilis Tzimourtos, a lawyer from Ierissos who is provided legal assistance to people detained in the latest police sweep operation, and Perka Peti from the Technical Chamber of Greece, who participated in producing the Chamber's study on the anticipated impact of the mining operation.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 23 March 2013: Greece and Cyprus, a tale of two crises

On 23 March 2013 on #rbnews international, we discussed how Greeks and Cypriot perceive each other and their countries in the context of the sudden, acute financial crisis that engulfed Cyprus since last week. Our guests (via Skype) were George Markides (@georgiemark) and George Iordanou (@iordanou) from Cyprus, Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) from Greece, and Yiannis Mouzakis (@YiannisMouzakis), who is a little bit from both.

Special thanks to @pitsirikos, @CorinaVasilopoulou, @adiasistos, @madamitsa, @giwrgoslouvaris, @MariaCuchicheo, @ZenonZindilis, @Kartesios, @atreyiou and @SovJohn whose tweets gave us food for thought for this show.

You can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 16 March 2013: "It is our duty, all of us, to stand by this struggle"

On 16 March on #rbnews international, our guest was Dina Daskalopoulou, a journalist from Greece's only truly independent daily newspaper, the Editors' Newspaper or Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών (it is owned by its own staff.) Dina just spent three weeks in Halkidiki (also spelled Chalkidiki), reporting on events as the government's reaction to the arson attack on the planned ore mining site in Skouries turned into full-fledged repression against anti-mining activists, especially the village of Ierissos.

You can read Dina's articles (in Greek) here.
You can read/listen to more radiobubble reports on Skouries here.

And you can, of course, listen to the podcast after the jump.

#rbnews international show 09 March 2013: Culture in the time of the crisis, part 3 - Interview with crime fiction writer Petros Markaris

On #rbnews international this week, we continued our series about culture in the time of the crisis. The first two shows focused on theatre and dance; today we moved on to books and had the pleasure to interview Petros Markaris, a Greek crime fiction writer whose latest novel, Bread - Education - Freedom, is the last installment of his Crisis Trilogy. Mr. Markaris told us of his approach to crime fiction, of his thoughts on Athens and Greek society during the crisis, and of his assessment of the impact of the crisis on cultural life.

Special thanks to @amaenad who translated the excerpts of Bread - Education - Freedom that you can hear in the show.

The podcast is available, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international show 02 March 2013: Skouries, Aegean Oil and the need for alternative media in Greece

On #rbnews international this week, our guest was Greek journalist Augustine Zenakos from Unfollow Magazine, who also runs the English-language site Borderline Reports. We discussed the case of gold mining in the Skouries forest of Halkidiki and the fuel smuggling scandal involving Aegean Oil as examples of the need for alternative, independent, quality media in Greece.

You can follow Augustine on Twitter @auzenakos and Borderline Reports @BorderlineRpts.

You can read more about the Skouries story here on radiobubble international and here on Borderline Reports. The analysis of coverage of the Skouries story on Twitter by Nikos Smyrnaios (@smykos), which we discuss at the beginning of the 2nd part of the show, is available here (in Greek).
You can also read more about the threats Unfollow Magazine received after publishing a detailed story on the fuel smuggling scandal here. The article about the fuel smuggling scandal was published in the print edition of Unfollow in January 2013 and will hopefully soon be translated to English on Borderline Reports.

The podcast is available, as usual, after the jump.