A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Tax cheat sheet
Posted March 13, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Andy Dabilis After hostile reaction, the Greek government said it would not go ahead with plans to give tax cheats an 80 percent discount on fines they would have to pay for breaking the law, including some 2,062 people with $1.95 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts, the so-called Lagarde List, that has created […]
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Fascists go to school
Posted March 13, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Damian Mac Con Uladh The growth in popularity of Golden Dawn in the country’s secondary schools and the wider problem of how to deal with fascism in the classroom is the subject of a conference at Athens University that starts on Wednesday. Over 20 university historians, social scientists and a psychoanalysist specialising in youth […]
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Citizen discontent in Bulgaria
Posted March 13, 2013 by pdcadmin
Mass protests of Bulgarians forced the last government to resign. A new caretaker government now has to prepare early parliamentary elections on May 12. But many Bulgarians have lost faith in politics altogether. Unrelated as the cases may be, self-immolations have become a mark of the ongoing mass protests in Bulgaria: on Wednesday (13.03.2013), a […]
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Greek radicalism in context
Posted March 15, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Scott Stewart In last week’s Geopolitical Weekly, George Friedman discussed how the global financial crisis has caused a global unemployment crisis and how Europe has become the epicenter of that crisis. He also noted that rampant unemployment will give way to a political crisis as austerity measures galvanize radical political parties opposed to the […]
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Around the town: 14/3/13
Posted March 15, 2013 by laura
This weekly feature offers a glimpse of what is happening in and around Thessaloniki. Compiled by Laura Strieth. Thu 14th to Sun17th March – Slava’s Snowshow- The multi-award winning international sensation, Slava’s Snowshow, will be performing in Thessaloniki. Experience a joyous dream-like world which will touch both your heart and funny bone, culminating in a […]
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Tribalism and postpartisanship: competing visions of the state of nature?
Posted March 15, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner These are interesting times for the analysis of European politics, from a hung Parliament in the UK, to the rise and fall of the Pirate Party in Germany, to the triumph of M5S in Italy, to the surge of Golden Dawn in Greece. What does it mean? Perhaps there will be a […]
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Una fatsa (una faccia)? Is Italy headed toward a “Greek-style” crisis?
Posted March 15, 2013 by KK
By Krista Kalachani I just found a small gap to write a couple of things about what is happening in Italy. If you checked the newspapers in Italy this week, apart from the Pope’s election which is probably the most important news story of the week, one of the things that has been circulating is […]
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Saying of the day: 3/15/13
Posted March 15, 2013 by Politis
“Neither right nor left, but above (and beyond).” — Tiziana Ciprini (M5S MP)
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Would you pass? Citizenship tests in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US
Posted March 16, 2013 by Politis
What does one need to know to be eligible for citizenship in a country not of one’s origin? Take Greece, for instance. According to the site Living in Greece, “For foreigners of no Greek origin who have long-term residency in Greece… [m]arriage to a Greek citizen does not automatically grant citizenship or a Greek passport […]
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Could this work in Greece?
Posted March 17, 2013 by Politis
The Project on Government Oversight seeks to “provoke accountability” in the workings of the US Federal Government. About POGO Founded in 1981, POGO originally worked to expose outrageously overpriced military spending on items such as a $7,600 coffee maker and a $436 hammer. In 1990, after many successes reforming military spending, including a Pentagon spending […]
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What makes a [good] citizen?
Posted March 17, 2013 by MK
By Maria Patsarika What makes a citizen? I wonder, reading Matthew Engel’s article“UK citizenship tests: why we need them.” Does a certificate personify all attributes of citizenship in all its complexity? During the seven years that I spent in the UK the prospect of coming back home (to Greece) kept at bay the anxiety of […]
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Saying of the day: 3/18/13
Posted March 18, 2013 by Politis
“If you make people’s lives better they will pay you for it — bottom line.” — Rob Markey
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A manifesto from Personal Democracy Media
Posted March 18, 2013 by Politis
Herewith the manifesto from Personal Democracy Media, conceived as a “hub for the conversation already underway between political practitioners and technologists, as well as anyone invigorated by the potential of all this to open up the process and engage more people in all the things that we can and must do together as citizens.” […]
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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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Center right, center right
Posted March 19, 2013 by Politis
We all know the two rules of business, according to which 1) the boss is always right, and 2) if the boss is wrong, see rule number one. In American politics it would appear that the Republican Party has replaced the boss. Bloomberg has been investigating the phenomenon in US electoral politics according to which […]
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Saying of the day: 3/19/13
Posted March 19, 2013 by Politis
“If we cannot come up the €5.8bn in a few days then I think we will go to the Cyprus pound. That will be the end of Cyprus in the Eurozone.” — Marios Mavrides
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Oversight of Cyprus banks: how it should work
Posted March 20, 2013 by Politis
Clive Crook has this to say about the proposed legislation to tax depositors in Cyprus, an idea he labels as “stupid.” “You want bank bondholders to be concerned about the safety of their investment, so that they exert some discipline over the banks, and you want small depositors to rest easy about the safety of […]
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Gloomy news about our citizenship values
Posted March 20, 2013 by MK
By Maria Patsarika A lot of gloominess in Asteris Houliaras’ note in Protagon this morning. The piece purports to offer analysis of a table representing “Attitudes to being rich.” The empirical evidence supports the feeling of gloom: Greeks have one of the lowest “mutual trust” indicators among western societies and active citizenship ratio in relation […]
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Around the town: 21/3/13
Posted March 21, 2013 by laura
This weekly feature offers a glimpse of what is happening in and around Thessaloniki. Compiled by Laura Strieth. Thu 21st March- Milo-Z Live- He calls his music “Razzamofunk”, a combination of Rock, Rap, Jazz, Blues and Funk. Inspired by the music he grew up with in New York City’s Lower East Side, Milo-Z’s music has […]
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Public sector reform, US style
Posted March 21, 2013 by Politis
Throughout Europe there has been an emphasis on public sector reform as the counterpart to austerity economics. In most cases, including Greece, little has been achieved. Paul Light of the Wagner School, NYU, makes a compelling case that the time is ripe in the US federal government for reform, now that sequester-imposed austerity has set […]