for athenians with their notional with the athenian the portrait of athenian one side and the other side the all the famous all of the athenians and i'm sure the if they cannot not not a three ounce going but a third of an ounce a tenth of an ounce of ten and a cent announces the coins of a tenth the size of this i want to emphasize of this it has the logo of athens if you go up razor its interests step one is to start circulating it parallel to the paper money that's right ok step two is the step two is that if the price of silver rises in drachmas because of a druckman devaluation then the treasury or those central bank gives it a higher value higher higher value and you can do that because it's only the way it's stamped out that's right out a number of value you're quite right ok step three step three now suppose the price of silver falls. the monetary value remains the same which is something that people have a hard time getting their minds wrapped around this because really this happened to the us. of the dog the half dollars the quarters and the dimes of the price of silver furrow

they tell me a whole is leading this government he did and he decided about it there is available athenian track and according to the letter he sent to president mahmoud abbas no change in his position and there will be nor the romantic developments in the israeli palestinian track but in the past advances on the israeli palestinian track were made when white when israeli governments were in power why do you think that it's of white when governments that have been able to effect change you know in the palestinian issue this is not true still there was no. withdrawal there was no agreement with any israeli government about the israeli palestinian plan. yet you are right seeing that the right. leader of the right wing. need was much more support to withdraw and but is netanyahu the right man to do show i consistent throughout your career you have expressed solidarity with israel's enemies and been highly critical of the israeli government but many israelis would argue that the freedom of speech you have here is not a freedom that you would have if you were critical of an arab government and

45,000 people i mentioned would be separated in different sections where the spartans would go, the atheniansld go. the greeks prefer to call themselves in the name of the city state, and this is the main reason why they began, to stop thinking as individual cities and start thinking more as the same nation. and they were the spartans, atheepians, different people from the colonies, and they were supporting their athletes. and it was a huge honor for each city to have as many winners as possible at a time. there was a famous man who was an olympic winner himself when he was young and came into the stadium old enough to not be able to run and compete, but he was participating. they both won, and just enough to go and hug them. one of the people from the audience stood up and started yelling at him, die, die, there is no point for you to live any longer. he wanted to show he had an incredible and high honor of life. >> well, as we move gradually towards the handover of the torch, handing the flame to the first torch bearer, who is a greek swimming champion, let's just get the thoughts of the bb

this is where, for 3,000 years, athenians gathered. while the acropolis was the center of ritual and ceremony, the agora was the beating heart of ancient athens. for some 800 years, starting in the 6th century b.c., this was the hub of commercial, political, and social life. visitors wander the remains of what was the city's principal shopping mall and administrative center. exploring the agora, it's fascinating to ponder the world of plato and aristotle and the age which laid the foundations for western thinking about economics, democracy, logic, and more. the stoa of attalos, from the 2nd century b.c., was rebuilt in modern times to house the agora's museum. with so little of the agora still standing, this reconstruction makes it easier to imagine the site in its original glory. crowds would gather in shady porticos like this to shop, socialize, or listen to the great philosophers of the age. in fact, socrates spent much of his life right here, preaching the virtues of nothing in excess and urging those around him to "know thyself."

the athenian fear of rising sparta that made war inevitable. we don't want the fear of an emerging china to make war inevitable. i think there are more opportunities than liabilities for us in the pacific. you referred all of our senior leadership say that we embrace a rising trend. -- you have heard all of our senior leadership say that we embrace a rising china. i was able to meet with my counterparts, and those relationships are slow and youthful, but they are positive. each service has a different kind of relationship with its particular service, but that is because we are trying to work it out. next week, or two weeks from now, i'm going to the shangri-la dialogue, and i'm hopeful that might chinese counterpart will be there. we'll talk openly and transparently about what to do in the pacific to both build these partners, and what those partnerships are intended to do. simply stated, they are intended to ensure stability and also intended to assure -- to make it clear we have some interest in navigation or commerce or access to which we in

short while ago with john psaropoulos, a freelance reporter who writes for the web site the new athenian and other news organizations. john psaropoulos, welcome. have all other alternatives been exhausted? will greece have to hold another national election after having one just over a weekgo? >> the party leaders and the pridenhaveome to the end of the constitutional road map. there are no other ways to delay a repeat election. the party leaders held three rounds of discussions amongst themselves. and then they held several rounds of discussions with the president. i think the president's deadline was may 17 when parliament would have had to convene with or without a government simply in order to dissolve itself. i think he didn't want to reach that point. it would have given a sense of utter futility to the democratic system. hereferred tdmit deat in forming a compromise this time around. i think the dynamics of why that compromise wasn't possible are quite clear. the radical left knows that it stands to make between 7 and 10 more points in terms of the popular vote and a repeat electio

a once-unthinkable return to the traditional drachma currency was on many athenians' minds. >> i prefer euro to drachma. >> the euro is for merkel, not for greeks. >> brown: whether the greeks stay with the euro may rest on the outcome of elections next month. they were mandated after voting this month failed to produce a government. here with me is zanny minton beddoes, the economics editor for the "economist" magazine. zanny, rathesuddenly the seems to be a lot ofanxiety, even fear. am i right? >> you're absolutely right. unfortunately the sense of crisis is back and i would even say the sense this whole euro project could fracture is back. >> brown: that serious? >> yeah, it's this serious. the end of last year, the end of 2011 we had a similar moment of real fear in global financial markets. then the european central bank came in and basically poured a trillion euros worth of liquidity into european banks and that calmed things in the beginning of this year for a couple months. it led the europeans to crow, in fact, that they sold their crisis but at that point it was an anesthetic

we have a democracy, not an athenian assembly. the way a representative democracy works is that we have to demand of our representatives to tell us what is going on to be accountable for their decisions. not just the campaign donors, but to the voters that have a say of putting them back in office or not. there was always some good rationale that presidents in the last 70 years could find for going outside the constitution and taking emergency state measures. emergency state measures like we have mentioned -- undeclared wars, presidential wars. fdr had an isolationist congress. as the executive, he sincerely and accurately saw the need to keep britain from going down for the nazi on -- onslaught. he chose not to visit congress and the public which had been in the shadows within isolationism. he thought he could handle it all in his presidential powers. he went a little bit astray. but the threat was real. but the motives were sincere and good. roosevelt did this in wartime, and this was common in wartime. abraham lincoln playing w

the ancient greek and non-without needing any share in the calls of athena or the imperatives of athenianialism. just as one may listen to mozart without any idea of feudalism, the whole concept of these may partially consistent as terminating between these things, religion asks us to do the opposite and preserve the ancient dread of prohibition. it is very often argued that religion must have some sort of potency and relevancy since it occurs so strongly at all times and in all places. many insist that religion is so much a part of our human or animal nature that it is actually an irrevocable. this, for what it's worth, is my own viewer. we are unlikely to cease gardens or inventing ceremonies to please them, for as long as we are afraid of death or the dark, and for as long as we persist in self-centeredness, that could be an empty stretch of time. however, it is just as certain that we shall continue to cast a skeptical and ironic and even witty i on what we, ourselves, have invented. if religion is innate in us, so is our government and our contempt for our own weakness. [applause] [a

no native americans ever had democratic government and tended have athenians filed democracy where all men could show up and participate but virginia house of burgesses were the first elected body wyche this. after they renamed it madison age 25 thought they stand for election but there's something about his personality. they had a tradition called treating. as in other colonies, in new york as in virginia if he showed up on voting day you show up at the polls, the sheriff would call you to come vote on voting day and if you did show up in virginia you could be fine. if you were eligible to vote and didn't you could be fined. imagine that. is that a good idea? not too sure about that. but anyway madison thought he could be elected to the house of delegates. they had this tradition of trading which was people would show up and the sheriff would ask you, mr. gutzman how the vote? there were no germans at that time. i vote for john randolph and randolph is sitting right there and shake your hand and say i will never forget it. the other guy is thinking i will never forget it. this is why

it was the athenian fear of rising sport that made war inevitable. i think that -- rising sparta that made war inevitable. we don't want the fear of an emerging china to make war inevitable. so we will avoid this trap. i think there are more opportunities than liabilities. you have heard all of our senior leaders said that we embrace china. in terms of partnerships, when i was chief of staff of the army, i was able to meet with my tla counterpart. those relationships are slow and their youthful, but they are positive. each service has a different kind of relationship, but that is because we return to work it out. two weeks from now, i will go to the shangri-la dialogue. i hope that my chinese counterpart will be there. and we will talk very openly and transparently about what we're trying to do in the pacific to both build these partners and what those partnerships are intended to do. it is simply to say that they are intended to ensure stability and also intended to assure -- make it clear that we have some interest in navigation and commerce and ac