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 […]
By Krysta “Keep Talking Greece” is one of the sites I have been following from time to time. Although they do not really say who is writing (this is not to their advantage), they seem to have a clear distinction btw the articles they repost and their own original opinion articles. They seem pretty serious […]
Americans look at the crisis in Europe and think they see “an underdeveloped version of the American polity,” that if European leaders only acted more like us, everything would be solved. This article by Russell A. Berman inspects that fallacy of logic and offers an informative run down of the euro crisis and Merkel’s budgetary […]
By Politis The third annual Philanthropic Bazaar (Bazaar Ευθύνης) took place this past weekend at the Thessaloniki Regency Casino. Some thirty non-profit charities and NGOs working with needy and handicapped children took part in the event, which also featured live music. children’s games, and food. The event was staffed by volunteers who are otherwise employed […]
By Kevin Featherstone Last week’s dramatic decision to close down Greece’s state broadcaster, ERT answers a question Greece’s political leaders – in and out of government – have lacked the will to confront for a generation. At one level, the move is gesture politics: a sudden, unilateral act intended to impress the Troika (the EU, […]
By Maria Kalogeroudi Elli Stai works for the public sector news channel which is essentially the voice of the leading political party. Apparently she would not dare to criticize Prime Messers Samaras and Papandreou. Blaming a party is unprofessional, no matter how right she is. However, criticizing and blaming are two different things. Golden Dawn […]
Surveying the panoply of contemporary European leaders, John Lloyd quips in Reuters, “All this grey almost makes you wish for Silvio Berlusconi to return, to lighten the mood.” “At times it seems that Europe, both in its national leaders and in the little-known men who are presidents of one EU institution or another, chooses obscurity […]
By Krysta Kalachani Maria Houkli has a point in her editorial on the closure of ERT in glimatikotika.gr Friday morning. But there can also be strong criticism to what she says. In my view the way that the government decided to close down ERT sends messages drawn from other political systems: the public or state […]
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By Alexander Besant The office of Greek app-maker Taxibeat is located in a modern building, surrounded by shuttered shops and streets with cracked pavement, in the upscale Kolonaki neighborhood in Athens. The contrast between the office and its surroundings is more than aesthetic—it’s the difference between where Greece is, a low-tech economy based on tourism […]
A picture says more than 1000 words, or so they say. And now, the news.
The World Naked Bike Ride will take place again in Thessaloniki on June 7 for the sixth consecutive year. Organizers are calling citizens to say STOP to indecent exposure of humans and to the pollution of the planet. The World Naked Bike Ride is a worldwide movement that supports the use of the bicycle as […]
By David Wisner The Globe and Mail ran a story yesterday about “would-be Canadian citizens” who are up in arms about the oath of allegiance they must swear to the British monarch prior to earning full rights as citizens of Canada. The Citizenship Act requires applicants for citizenship to swear or affirm they will be […]
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 […]
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 […]
“So what does it mean when a company institutionalizes altruism? It means more students are mentored and tutored, more afterschool programs funded, more books read, better grades and test scores, and more poor families helped.” — Julia Wade (Domus Kids)
By Ian Kehoe Back in 2008, while I was talking about the history of Thessaloniki to a group of university students I realised that many of them did not even know that there had been a major Jewish population in the city. I was surprised to say the least, given that Jewish people had been […]
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 […]
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 […]