The Pondiki cartoon
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The Pondiki cartoon is an episode from John Kiriakou's Athens posting, told on the DeProgram programme in September 2025 as an aside during a discussion of American ambassadors to Greece.

The paper

Kiriakou introduces it by name and translation: "there used to be, there may still be, a newspaper called Pondiki, which means little mouse, and it was a left-wing satirical newspaper." Offered the French comparison, he agreed the two might be "sister papers."

The image

The subject was the sitting American ambassador. "They had a photoshopped picture once of a nude Ambassador Burns on his hands and knees with a dog collar on."

The second figure was a Greek minister Kiriakou makes clear he disliked, "the minister of education, Vaso Papandreou, who I never liked. I never could stand her", depicted with the leash in one hand: "She has a whip and she's beating him on his naked butt with a whip while she's got him by the dog collar."

The protest, and the desks

The ambassador took it up formally. "He was so angry he lodged an official protest." Kiriakou's view of that is unsympathetic: "It's like, dude, it's a satirical newspaper. What, you never heard of freedom of speech and freedom of the press?"

The reaction inside the mission ran the other way. "So we all went out and bought these newspapers. It was the back cover of the paper that day, and all of us taped them up in front of our desks."

The display was safe because of an access restriction Kiriakou states and then immediately qualifies. "He didn't have access to the station because he was the ambassador. He's not a station employee. So he never saw it."

The qualification is the standard one he applies to any such reference: "and I'm not confirming or denying the existence of a station in Athens. I'm just saying, of course..."

Burns

Kiriakou's dim view of the ambassador is not confined to the cartoon. Listing the succession of American envoys to Athens, he says Greece has had "a long string of popular ambassadors going back to, and not including, Nicholas Burns," and adds that the dislike was not only local: "even those of us who worked for Nick Burns hated Nick Burns."

He returned to him a second time when assessing a later appointment, saying of the incoming ambassador that "we could have done worse. We could have had Nick Burns come back, God forbid."

See also

- Kimberly Guilfoyle In Athens
- Kiriakou's Athens house
- John Kiriakou
- The Greek Orthodox Church
