A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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The non-amendable phenomenon of regulatory amendments
Posted April 9, 2012 by pdcadmin
By Panagiotis Karkatsoulis Politis wanted to post the names of those ministers who recently tried to amend legislation agreed to by the Greek government in exchange for the next tranche of aid from the Troika. When we could not find what we wanted online, we approached internationally renowned expert Panagiotis Karkatsoulis, who responded as follows. […]
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The injustice of the Greek justice system
Posted April 2, 2013 by Politis
Politis asked EU law expert Anna Maria Konsta for her comments on a recently published review of the Greek justice system compared to other EU member states. Here are her remarks. “Even if these data date back to 2010, they are still indicative of the inefficiency of the Greek judicial system. In Greece, it takes […]
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The mandate, and other democratic myths
Posted February 17, 2015 by DW
This past weekend the digital site of the French newspaper Le Monde ran an interesting story entitled, in translation, “The Greece that did not vote for Syriza.” I cannot say the piece was faultless, but Eliza Perrigueur, the author, did good research and presented an interesting view of the Greek elections for a francophone audience. […]
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Tomb of the anonymous revolutionary
Posted May 13, 2013 by Politis
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Women win the right to vote in Greece
Posted May 28, 2013 by Politis
The right to vote for and stand as candidate in legislative and municipal elections for women was secured on 28 May, 1952, through law 2159, which gave women equal rights to men. Women did not vote in the elections of November of that year, however, because the electoral rolls had not been yet been brought […]
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Nextdoor: a Facebook for your neighborhood
Posted April 1, 2013 by Politis
Alexia Tsotsis has written an engaging review in TechCrunch of the neighborhood social media service Nextdoor. The platform is a de facto neighborhood support group among subscribers. Nextdoor now serves some 10,000 neighborhoods and roughly 1 million households, and has a very savvy matrix for developing a local network to its optimal level. Users explain […]
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So many candidates
Posted June 15, 2012 by DW
By Dimitris Diamantis and David Wisner “So many candidates, so little time to choose,” reported one interlocutor to us in early May. How can one decide about new parties and about personalities that had until recently resided more or less in the margins of national politics? We have been asked several times how we would […]
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Love and death
Posted May 8, 2013 by Politis
Photographer Taslima Akhter on a photograph she took at a collapsed factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “I have been asked many questions about the photograph of the couple embracing in the aftermath of the collapse. I have tried desperately, but have yet to find any clues about them. I don’t know who they are or what […]
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Things are not so bad… except in Greece (canned laughter)
Posted March 5, 2013 by Politis
A lead editorial by Gideon Rachman in today’s Financial Times tends to dismiss the gloomy scenarios shooting out of Europe in the aftermath of the Italian general election last week. Are we headed toward a reprise of the European 1930s, when political extremism on both right and left was a prelude to war of one sort […]
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Why are our legislatures unresponsive?
Posted May 29, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner We often have the sense that politics is not working, yet conceivably it is working all too well, if what we expect from politicians is that they will prioritize getting elected and then getting reelected. Robert Kaiser has a keen perspective on what has happened in the US federal government, and one […]
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Public service is a calling — even when the government is shut down
Posted October 13, 2013 by Politis
Excerpts from an opinion piece in this past Saturday’s Washington Post by Ann Marie Oliva, director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Special Needs Assistance Programs. “The past two weeks have made me ask myself two fundamental questions: What does public service really mean, and what is my responsibility when I […]
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One crook for another
Posted February 28, 2013 by Politis
This one’s rich. According to todays Chicagoland blog in the Chicago Tribune, “Republican voters are suggesting the 2nd Congressional District replace one felon with another after picking ex-convict Paul McKinley as the candidate to run for the seat recently ceded by former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.” Jackson pleaded guilty last week to misusing campaign […]
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Open the doors/where are the people?
Posted April 3, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner Growing up my friends and I used to play a small game with our hands. We would start with our hands clasped, thumbs aligned, index fingers erect. “Here is the church/here is the steeple/open the doors/where are the people?” We would then interlock our fingers and perform the same series of steps: […]
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Criminal matters
Posted October 30, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner There has been a lot of talk recently, both in Greece and in the US, about criminal behavior at the highest levels of political life. In the US, one party has allegedly sought to blackmail and extort the government in the recent standoff over the shut down of the federal government. Here […]
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Football activism
Posted June 23, 2013 by DW
A striking scene from the Copacabana.
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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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ROAR Magazine
Posted May 29, 2013 by KK
By Krysta Kalachani I have been following this website from time to time for a year or more, and particularly one of the contributors, Jerome Roos, who started writing when the Syntagma gatherings started taking place. Here is his bio, taken from the magazine’s web site: “Jérôme E. Roos is a PhD researcher in International […]
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Armed revolution… or democracy?
Posted May 11, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship We were struck this week by one response to our broadcast last week on gun violence and the Newtown school killings. A visitor to the website wrote, “It is interesting to me that Bill Moyers, who every week describes the massive levels of corruption in our government… [and] the […]
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…making more of a difference than anybody in government could possibly make
Posted October 9, 2013 by Politis
Politis has posted a lot lately on the potential impact of IT companies like Google on politics. George Packer has an excellent article just out in the New Yorker which examines the question in some detail. Many IT engineers and researchers, while apolitical at face value, have a deeply embedded belief in the social utility […]