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Athens Plus
Weekly newspaper published by The International Herald Tribune & Kathimerini SA • No 104 • Friday, June 18, 2010 • €2.50
Back in the saddle
Rock veterans
Top-selling American supergroup
Aerosmith brings four decades’
worth of material to Athens for
just one show. Page 25
Hospitals
back from
the brink
A tentative deal was struck between
the government and state hospital
suppliers this week to put an end to
an impasse that had led to a grave
shortage of provisions. Before the
agreement was reached, several
major hospitals were so short of
some supplies that they could not
carry out basic services. Page 7
Greece hit with
new downgrade
Greece was dealt a fresh blow this
week when rating agency Moody’s
downgraded its debt rating by
four notches from A3 to Ba1, or junk
status, raising doubts about the
government’s ability to reduce
the country’s debt and deficit.
However, the downgrade was la-
beled as irrational by the president
of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude
Juncker. Page 8
on
Educati ent
Supplem
INSIDE
25
9 771791 550005
Free for the taking Dusted off
No-cost treats It’s playtime
Check out our diverse selection of “Toy Story” returns for
things to do in Athens and other Part 3 with a strong
parts of the country without having script and the voices of
to spend a cent. Pages 20-21 a stellar cast. Page 27
Weaknesses in fire protection
Gov’t proclaims readiness despite warnings of dwindling resources to combat forest blazes
As Greece enters the firefighting season, there are fears The head of the firefighters’ union sets out for Athens Attica last summer. On their part, environmental-
that the financial restrictions resulting from the eco- Plus the serious shortages in staff and equipment ists highlight the absence of a legal framework and
nomic crisis mean authorities will be poorly prepared that could prevent the service from being able to tack- the necessary coordination to protect forests from
and underequipped to tackle blazes this summer. le major blazes like the one that ravaged northeastern developers and landgrabbers. Pages 2, 4-5
WONDERFUL
WORLD
Greece’s Vassilis Torosidis
celebrates scoring the winning
goal in the national side’s
encounter against Nigeria at the
World Cup in South Africa on
Thursday. Greece’s 2-1 victory
was its first ever in the World
Cup finals and came just five
days after a 2-0 defeat to South
Korea, which led to the team
and coach Otto Rehhagel being
heavily criticized. Prior to
Thursday’s match Greece had
played a total of four matches
in the World Cup finals, three of
them in the USA in 1994, and
had lost all of them without
scoring a goal. The win means
that the national team has a
chance of qualifying for the last
16 of the tournament.
Rehhagel’s men face Group B
leaders Argentina on Tuesday
knowing that a win or even a
draw could be enough to see
[AFP]
them through. Page 12
American dream
Eminent Greeks
From US Senator Olympia
Snowe to author George
Pelecanos and popular
actress Melina
Kanakaredes, today’s
leading Greek Americans
are the subject of a new
publication featuring their Soccer diet TV dinners Mademoiselle Raraou
biographies along with To keep energy levels up during the Pavlos Matesis’s coruscating story
portraits by young World Cup, combine tasty finger set in Greece during the occupation
photographer Maria food with an ice-cold glass of and after the war is recounted by an
Yanna. Page 15 domestic beer. Page 26 unforgettable narrator. Page 16
Collective Blitz Theater meets film in ‘Cinemascope,’ a captivating show by an experimental ensemble Page 22

International
Views from the institutions
Leadership & Journalism
at ACS Athens
Peace and coexistence
in the Middle East
through the eyes of
students
A CS Athens students traveled for six
days to Israel and Palestine on May
23-27, motivated by the overwhelming re-
sponse of the community to a mini-docu-
mentary on the Israeli/Palestinian struggle pro-
duced on 2009 in cooperation with News-
coop, a media organization based in the US.
Dr. Stefanos Gialamas, president of ACS
Athens, and Mr John Papadakis, director of
Communications, Technology & Enroll-
ment and a student advisor for the project,
accompanied four students, two of which had
participated in the production of the docu-
mentary. Eleventh-graders Zacharo Giala-
mas, Thornbern Alexander Klingert, Ilyana
Kotinis and Anastasi Sharp visited schools
and universities in the Israeli and Palestinian
Education in Greece
ACS – American Community Schools of Athens
territories, talked to local students
about their lives, their view of the con-
flict, their hopes and expectations for
the future, and collected more than 15
hours’ worth of video material and
1,500 photographs for the creation of
a follow-up documentary/journal. The
new production will be ready during
the 2010-11 school year, as part of the
new Leadership & Journalism program of
ACS Athens.
Some of the places the ACS Athens group
visited included: Al Quds University in East
Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem, the
Holocaust History Memorial – Yad VaShem,
Qurtuba School in Hebron, the Evangelical
Lutheran School in Beit Sahour, a Lutheran
School in Talitha Kumi and a Jewish Ortho-
dox School in West Jerusalem. The group
also had the chance to tour many of the cul-
tural and religious monuments in Jerusalem
and experience the multi-cultural and mul-
ti-religious mosaic of modern Israel, while they
visited the city of Jericho, the so-called most
ancient city of the world, and the Dead Sea,
a lake lying at the lowest point on earth (1,300
meters below sea level).
SPONSORED SECTION
A group photo of our students
together with the students they
visited at the Orthodox Jewish
School in West Jerusalem.
Students met with Dr. Gershon Baskin and
Mr. Hanna Siniora (co-directors of the Israeli-
Palestinian Center for Research and Infor-
mation IPCRI) – discussing the perspectives
for negotiations and the peace process as
it stands now and the importance of
Jerusalem in the negotiations. IPCRI is a joint
institution of Israelis and Palestinians dedi-
cated to the resolution of the Israeli-Pales-
tinian conflict on the basis of “two-states for
two peoples” solution. Dr. Baskin – who con-
tributes weekly political op-eds to the
Jerusalem Post – holds an MA and a Ph.D.
Our students together with
elementary and high school students
from Al Qurtuba Palestinian school
in Hebron.
in International Affairs and has long been ac-
tive in the peace Israeli-Arab peace process.
Mr. Siniora, a distinguished writer and pub-
lisher, is Chairman of East Jerusalem Devel-
opment Corporation and a Member of the
Palestinian National Council (PNC).
Students had a rare opportunity to meet
with Mr. Yitzhak Frankenthal, an orthodox
Jewish businessman, who has focused his
energies on public activities aiming to foster
reconciliation, tolerance and peace, after his
son was kidnapped and killed by Hamas in
1994. Mr. Frankenthal established the “Par-
ents Circle - Families Forum” - an or-
ganization of over 500 bereaved Is-
raeli and Palestinian families sharing
a common sentiment: “If we, who
have lost our dear ones, do not
seek revenge and hatred but recon-
ciliation - so can anyone.” Lately Mr.
Frankenthal has created the Arik In-
stitute for Reconciliation Tolerance &
Peace, named after his son.
During all meetings, ACS Athens students
admitted gaining tremendous insight and
perspective on one of the most contested,
researched and debated issues of human
history. Walking through the narrow corridors
of the old city of Jerusalem, visiting ancient
proto-Christian and Byzantine churches, and
local Jewish monuments like the Tomb of
King David, the group took advantage of this
rare opportunity that their voluntary school
program offered as creativity met critical think-
ing and the thirst for learning.
For more information, pictures
and to view the documentary
(www.vimeo.com/9064384), you may
visit ACS Athens website at
www.acs.gr.