By John Lloyd The rich are always with us, and we’ll have more of them soon. A report last week from Boston Consulting Group shows that the global millionaire population is some 13.8 million. That is twice the size of Switzerland, which is, incidentally, where many of them have parked much of their wealth. More […]
“Wherever you go, there you are.” — Ben Bernanke
The eight networks member of the Civil Society Contact Group, a cross-sectoral coalition of NGO actors, are organizing the first Citizen’s Summit taking place in Brussels from 24 June 13.00 to 25 June 14.00 2013. The event will bring together for the first time professionals, practitioners and activists from across the different sectors of culture, development, […]
By David Wisner Excerpts below from a post by Andrew Rosenthal in yesterday’s New York Times about the youth vote in the 2012 US Presidential election. The interesting thing is that Republican youth groups were heavily involved in producing the initial report. I wonder what the results would be if Greek youth expressed themselves systematically […]
If you are reading these lines, you are very weird. You’re spending spare time considering arguments about politics, which most people don’t bother to do. — Ezra Klein
By Krysta Kalachani Here is a lovely little article full of irony and mockery. Just the way to start my day. The staff at To Kolouri dare to mock members of Golden Dawn in New York City, pointing out that they have committed suicide after they realized that New York is not Greek and that […]
By David Wisner In light of the 2013 edition of the Thessaloniki naked bike ride scheduled for this Saturday, the folks at the blog “Diary of a cyclist” have assembled a collection of photos of central points in the city from moments in the first half of the 20th century and then again more recently. […]
Crisis maps: an innovative way to measure the very real threat to civil society posed by violent attacks on migrants in Athens. Users are invited to submit reports here.
“Like the Spartans, Thebans, and Thespians at the Pass of Thermopylae, the Greeks were sacrificed to buy time for the alliance.” — Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
By Krysta Kalachani I was surfing online today, looking to book tickets to see the opera on Tuesday, and I came across this story about unemployed citizens given the opportunity to attend the general rehearsal of Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” for free yesterday at the Atticus Theater. Good news, right? “In this crisis, at the very least,” […]
Political and economic liberalism have come under heavy and sustained attack as many countries struggle to find responses to the prevailing economic malaise. But for the staleness of much left-of-center political thinking, liberalism might be long dead and buried. Some in the UK think otherwise, however. Today’s Guardian has a nice clip with bits and […]
“When police attack peaceful protesters, when protesters attack property, everyone loses.” — Livy Merchant
The British think tank Demos has put this short video out arguing the merits of allowing 16 and 17 year-old citizens the right to vote in Scotland.
By David Wisner I read in Simon Johnson’s column in Bloomberg last week (later picked up by Kathimerini English edition) an interesting critique of the performance of the EU in the unfolding of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis. One of Johnson’s main points is as follows. “Greece came to the IMF in 2010 later than it […]
Living in Europe today is akin to being a subject in some latter day Holy Roman Empire, that “political commonwealth under which the Germans lived for many hundreds of years.” So says Brendan Simms of Cambridge University in today’s New York Times. While the Empire lasted nearly a thousand years, however, the comparison is not […]
By David Wisner As luck would have it, I happened to log on to Facebook today just around the time that two transplanted Athenian acquaintances commented on news reports announcing the imminent closure and restructuring of the Greek public broadcasting service ERT. The one, a retired diplomat who hobnobs with foreign investors and rails day […]
By Kostas Kallergis The Greek government spokesman announced some minutes ago, all of a sudden, that the Greek Radio & Television will stop broadcasting as of tonight, midnight. In a pretentiously sturdy press conference he explained the reasons why the government came to this crazy decision. Simos Kedikoglou gave the public a long list of […]
By Krysta Kalachani “But two stories this week reminded me that media freedom is not just an issue beyond our borders, but also something we must defend here in the EU.” A small but interesting text from Vice President of the EU Commision Neelie Kroes, writing about Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, who was tried once […]
“Culture is like marmalade. The closer you get to the bottom of the jar the more you try to spread what’s left.” — Anonymous (Paris, 1968)
By Kostas A. Lavdas The news is plain and simple. The Greek government has shut down the public broadcaster ERT, calling it a “haven of waste.” While all 2,500 employees would be sacked, the government says they would be paid compensation and would be able to apply for work when the corporation relaunches as a […]