A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Announcing CTY Greece
Posted May 16, 2013 by Politis
Helping strengthen civil society in Greece.
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315 charts on poverty and inequality
Posted May 15, 2013 by Politis
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has just released data on poverty and inequality for all OECD mamber states in the form of some 315 charts, including one interactive chart on income distribution and poverty.
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World Press Freedom Day
Posted May 15, 2013 by Politis
“Living in silence is not living, in any corner of the planet. Living and remaining silent about how the corrupt, crime and impunity continue to take ahold of my country is also to die. Without freedom of expression, justice and democracy are not possible.” — Anabel Hernández, Mexican investigative journalist living under 24 hour police […]
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The new sick man of Europe
Posted May 14, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner “The European Union is the new sick man of Europe. The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.” So read the opening lines of a new report […]
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Available since this morning! Monopoly money for Europe!
Posted May 14, 2013 by MK
By Maria Kalogeroudi This is the new 5 euro bill. The old one is still acceptable and can be used for trade. We still do not know when it will be considered invalid, but announcements will be made. Includes new and more amplified evidence of authenticity. The watermark and hologram present the portrait of Europe, […]
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Right, left, and Nixonian
Posted May 14, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner “No one,” writes David Hawkings in his blog in today’s Roll Call, “expected Obama would get to a second term and find his legislative agenda suddenly frozen in the face of a bipartisan wave of comparisons to Richard Nixon.” This is precisely what has happened right, left, and center after the revelations […]
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Saying of the day: 5/13/13
Posted May 13, 2013 by Politis
“I learned… that writing is play. So is reading. They are things you do to enjoy yourself. I found out that I enjoyed writing, and I could do it for hours on end, for my own amusement, rather than for any assignment or to get a good grade.” — Elias Kulukundis
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Tomb of the anonymous revolutionary
Posted May 13, 2013 by Politis
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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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Engaged learning in the Academy
Posted May 12, 2013 by Politis
Advocates of engaged learning in higher education through programs such as internships, cooperative education, and service-learning make strong claims for its value to students, colleges, and communities. But many mainstream academics either ignore or reject those claims, favoring more conventional forms of curriculum and teaching. Drawing on ethnographies of scores of student-interns and many years […]
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She faces the music
Posted May 12, 2013 by M P
By Maria Patsarika “She faces the music” – I can’t think of a better way to express my own thoughts about Kiki Dimoula, a great (the greatest?) poet of our times, and the uproar that her apparently xenophobic public comments caused. My inital reaction was surprise and disappointment in her. Greek intellectuals appear perplexed, lacking […]
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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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Digital actions for vigilante justice
Posted May 11, 2013 by Politis
Bit and pieces below from an essay by Nicco Mele in Salon on Anonymous and the threats of hacking to contemporary security. “Anonymous, untraceable private networks—the kind that can be built by technology like FabFi or Tor—are called ‘darknets,’ literally networks that exist in the shadows of the Internet. They are increasingly easy to build, […]
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Saying of the day: 5/10/13
Posted May 11, 2013 by Politis
“Unlike in Greece, corruption is not a way of life in Spain. Most Spaniards go about their daily business without ever paying a bribe. But experts say that the concentration of power in the hands of regional and municipal officials and their ties to the local savings banks created ideal conditions for corruption in […]
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Skateboard civil society
Posted May 11, 2013 by Politis
By Politis A wonderful story here by Sam Jones in last Friday’s Guardian about a group of skateboarders in Britain who have organized themselves to preserve their skateboard park. So called “Long Live Southbank,” the effort is focused on gaining recognition of an undercroft of the central London arts complex as village green, a community […]
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Lustration and the Arab spring
Posted May 8, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner The Dukakis Center hosted well-known Greek blogger Kostas Kallergis in April for a talk on lustration as a means of dealing with corruption in Greek politics. Hearkening back to attempts in various countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the 1990s to deal with their former communist past, Kallergis concluded that the […]
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The European family
Posted May 8, 2013 by Politis
This post comes courtesy of Politis reader Maria Tsouri. “Europeans have common ancestors, as shown in research on the DNA of Europeans from England to the Balkans published by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The investigation showed that the differences go back only tens of generations and genetic affinities are greater than scientists […]
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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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Participedia
Posted May 8, 2013 by Politis
Participedia is an open global knowledge community for researchers and practitioners in the field of democratic innovation and public engagement. “We live in a world in which citizens of most countries are asking for greater involvement in collective decisions. Many governments, non-governmental organizations, and even some corporations are responding by experimenting with ways to increase public […]
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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 […]