A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Lessons from a shipwreck to a shipwrecked country
Posted April 25, 2014 by M P
By Maria Patsarika This is not an easy piece to write. The tragic April 2014 ferry accident in South Korea, better deserves a an expression of humble, silent sympathy with the mourning families. Watching the story unravel on the news these days, however, one image kept coming back: inside the gymnasium, where the relatives […]
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How Long Until Junta?
Posted January 30, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Bill Frezza. It is often said that to get a glimpse of our future we should study the lessons of the past. Or we can observe the fate of those marching a few steps ahead of us down a road we seem determined to travel. Take Greece. Long hailed as the birthplace of democracy, […]
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Are we all gypsies?
Posted October 30, 2013 by Politis
Politis invited regular contributors Krysta Kalachani and Maria Patsarika for their reaction to a recent commentary by Andreas Zamboukas in capital.gr entitled “The identity of being a gypsy,” in reference to the spate of media attention to the blond gypsy girl found by Greek authorities in a gypsy encampment in central Greece and erroneously believed […]
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Civic engagement in the digital age — a Pew report
Posted May 12, 2013 by Politis
Social networking sites have grown more important in recent years as a venue for political involvement, learning, and debate. Overall, 39% of all American adults took part in some sort of political activity on a social networking site during the 2012 campaign. This means that more Americans are now politically active on social networking sites […]
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Dukakis Lecture 3/20/13
Posted March 19, 2013 by Politis
The Michael and Kitty Dukakis Center for Public and Humanitarian Service Cordially invites you to attend A Dukakis Lecture Featuring Stan Draenos, sometime resident historian, Andreas G. Papandreou Foundation “Andreas Papandreou’s New Nationalism and Kennedy’s New Frontier: Greece in the Tangles of the Cold War” Wednesday, March 20, 5 PM ACT New Building Conference Room […]
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A culinary public service
Posted April 3, 2013 by M P
We all know that Ilias Mamalakis cooks delightfully… Imagine doing this in a prison and publishing a book about it. Cooking as public service.
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Greek Reporter exposes fake Greek products abroad
Posted January 27, 2013 by Politis
Saddening news from today’s Greek Reporter. “Shady businessmen and companies produce thousands of fake Greek products in China, the UK and the US causing tremendous financial losses to Greek exporters and domestic economy, reported the Panhellenic Exporters Association Jan. 24, adding that ‘disturbing phenomena of malicious trademark registration of well-known Greek companies have been recorded […]
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Do we want our politics to be nimble?
Posted August 3, 2014 by Politis
In an article published this past weekend on TechCrunch, Michael Papay and David Timby ask what politics cannot work at the swift pace that contemporary business, aided by developments in information technology, can. In this high political season (the 2014 mid-term elections) “there’s not much constructive debate,” they lament, “and political gridlock has become the […]
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The YouTube citizen
Posted September 8, 2013 by Politis
Google and YouTube claim they can help teachers turn teenagers into better citizens. Watch the clip below to find out how.
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Around the town: 14/02/13
Posted February 15, 2013 by laura
This weekly feature offers a glimpse of what is happening in and around Thessaloniki. Compiled by Laura Strieth. Now to Sun March 31st– The Telloglou Art Institute of Thessaloniki- will be exhibiting paintings, sculptures, and carvings from the private collection of the Telloglou family. Location: Telloglio Museum, Agiou Dimitriou 159A. Tues, Thur, Fri 10am-1pm, Wed […]
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The spirit of public service
Posted April 16, 2015 by DW
By David Wisner For EF For the better part of the past decade and a half I have been searching for ways to translate the concept and practice of public service, so commonplace throughout the United States, into the contemporary Greek reality. I learned early on that there is not a direct or literal translation […]
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I am a citizen
Posted November 5, 2016 by Politis
The team at Politis debated whether to share the video below on the blog. In the end consensus was reached that, yes, it was appropriate and worthwhile to do so. Seethe houghts of two of our number below, slightly edited and formatted for posting. I am in favor… after all it can change society’s […]
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Are we moving leftward?
Posted January 9, 2013 by Politis
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington-based group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word “Republican” from its title and welcome center-right Democrats in 2013, Yahoo News has learned. The organization’s board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as “The […]
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Second chance?
Posted February 24, 2013 by M P
By Maria Patsarika Is there a second chance for democracy, as Nikos Marantzidis claimed in Protagon last week? For one to be able to identify a positive orientation for populism in politics is a fresh, however risky, perspective on democratic renewal. When this is accompanied by concrete suggestions, however, the argument becomes even more robust […]
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Austerity cuts Greek household income 38%
Posted February 8, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Andy Dabilis “The severity of Greece’s crushing economic crisis and austerity measures demanded by international lenders has drastically cut the incomes of more than 90 percent of Greek households, with an average drop of 38 percent. The startling numbers that illustrated how bad the crisis is for most Greeks, apart from politicians, the rich […]
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Is there an EU education gap?
Posted May 8, 2013 by Politis
Anders Aslund, the author of a report on the root causes of the eurozone crisis published on the website of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues that “[t]he most overlooked common problem of the four Southern European countries—Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece—is that they are all hampered by little education and the poor quality […]
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53 seconds
Posted February 23, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Nikos Xydakis Last Sunday, during Spain’s biggest annual cinematic event, an actress from Catalonia walked onto the stage to receive the Goya Award from the Spanish Film Academy for best actress, marking the third major prize she has won in her career. Candela Pena, a Mediterranean brunette in her 40s who looks a little […]
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Center right, center left: How’d we do?
Posted February 5, 2013 by Politis
How’d we do? Not especially well if we give credence to the methodology of the recently published Pew Charitable Trusts’ Election Performance Index. Scores of near-systemic flaws were reported throughout the US in 2008 and again in 2010, giving rise to doubts about the integrity of the voting process across the country. Even states which […]
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United in grievance
Posted May 8, 2013 by DW
By Politis Is there a global explanation for the rise of so many disparate protest movements across the globe since 2008? John Kay thinks so in his column in today’s Financial Times. “The financial crisis of 2008 was a failure of both an economic system and a political system. The inability of democratic politics to […]
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Women and politics: new rules
Posted January 23, 2013 by Politis
Joan Walsh, commenting in Salon on Hillary Clinton’s Senate hearing today notes that “Clinton stood up to the raging bulls with grace and fire of her own… After [which] she was lectured and hectored by guys who don’t quite measure up to her and never will.” Okay, so Salon is a liberal paper and one […]