Hellenic Elections Election Central 2012 Rolling coverage by the team at the Dukakis Center of elections in Greece, France, and Serbia. Monday 23:34 No comment. Tuesday 01:05 Griechenland its unregierbar. Tuesday 00:27 Wealthy Frenchmen are taking their money and running. Maybe they will find some Greeks who left early to avoid the new taxes. Tuesday […]

Two very symptomatic editorials featured in the Sunday news, both tending to focus blame for Greece’s woes on specific elements in Greek society. In the first, an editorial in the New York Times by Kostas Vaxevanis, the editor who published a version of the so-called Lagrarde list with names of Greek citizens having large deposits […]

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras (ND) Administrative Reform and E-Governance Minister Antonis Manitakis (technocrat, Professor of Constitutional Law) Deputy Manoussos Voloudakis (ND) Agricultural Development and Food Minister Athanasios Tsaftaris (technocrat, Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding) Deputy Maximos Harakopoulos (ND) Defence Minister Panos Panagiotopoulos (ND) Deputy Panagiotis Karambelas (former Lieutenant General – Hellenic Army) Deputy Dimitrios Elefsiniotis (former Vice Admiral – Hellenic Navy, former Chief of […]

Hellenic Elections Greek Post-Election Coverage 2012 Rolling coverage of Greek parliamentary elections and their aftermath May 2012 Tuesday 00:08 A lot of tension today in the media and, one imagines, in Athens, Brussels, and in the markets. According to the Guardian’s live business blog, by the end of the day certain traders were already working […]

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 […]

We rarely equate paying taxes with citizenship these days, although it is certainly one of those old-fashioned obligations we associate with residing in a certain place. French actor Gerard Depardieu (by the grace of God born a Frenchman, has now been offered Russian citizenship (along with the Belgian citizenship he sought a short while back […]

According to the 7:26 PM GMT entry of the Guardian’s live blog on the situation in Cyprus, “The Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades announced plans by his government to appoint investigators ‘to find out where responsibility lies’ in relation to what has happened in the country over the past two weeks. In a television address in […]

From yesterday’s CNN, the following report that Senator Rand Paul will deliver the official Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address on February 12. “Tea party leaders are turning to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, to deliver their message following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, a speech that will […]

This weekly feature offers a glimpse of what is happening in and around Thessaloniki. Compiled by Laura Strieth. Thu 16th to Sun 19th May- 10th Thessaloniki Book Fair- The institution of the Thessaloniki Book Fair has established a dynamic presence the last 10 years and signals its new era by creating strong collaborations and international […]

          A striking scene from the Copacabana.  

By Krysta Kalachani Now on to the Macropolis site. I just read a couple of texts there. It is a pretty good effort to show an ecumenical picture (καθολική εικόνα) of Greece’s political, economical, and social life in the context of the crisis, and not only. It shows they have a few serious experts writing […]

A great story published in today’s Globe and Mail focuses on the driving forces behind Canada’s Idle No More movement. They call themselves an “indigenous rights revolution” aiming at honoring and fulfilling Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. The movement is the brainchild of four women, which, as Friesen writes, is “one of […]

Matthew O’Brien says in this month’s Atlantic, “No, the United States will never, ever turn into Greece.” What he means is that, contrary to the view of certain economists, the US will never “spend itself into bankruptcy.” According to the popular wisdom O’Brien seeks to debunk, “too much public debt makes markets nervous. Nervous markets […]

By Katinka Barysch The German idea of sending Athens a ‘budget commissioner’ was daft. Berlin itself could not tolerate such interference in its fiscal sovereignty (the constitutional court would never allow it). But to restrict such budgetary oversight to Greece alone would be disdainful and a political non-starter. The idea predictably caused outrage in Greece. […]

By Fotinie Efstratiadou A law pertaining to uninsured vehicles has recently been passed in the Greek Parliament and will enter into force on April 15, 2013.  The law concerns owners of vehicles that will be found to be uninsured through database cross examinations conducted by the National Information Systems of the Greek Ministry of Economy, […]

According to a poll published in Roll Call, 95% of members of the US House of Representatives say they get a sense of personal accomplishment from their work as legislators. 89% claim that they are performing an important public service. The sample was small, however: 194 House members were selected randomly, but only 25 responded. […]

By David Wisner A contestant in a British reality show called “The Apprentice” has indicated in an interview that there are certain types of children she will not allow her own kids to play with. For one, they need to have the right sort of name. “At the risk of sounding snobbish, I also favour […]

By Krysta Kalachani Who were the aganaktismenoi, the Greek indignados? They were mostly people who were not supporting strongly any ideology or party. They might have been coming from all parties and all ideologies, meaning that they could have voted for one party or another in the past, but the gatherings in Syntagma Square during the […]

By David Wisner Two public speeches this past week have turned as sharp a spotlight on the future of the EU and certain of its members states as have few events since 2009. First, the leader of Greece’s main opposition party Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, spoke and took questions at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, […]

Excerpts from an article in the Harvard Business Review by Michael G. Jacobides of the London Business School. “On the economic front, the government is trying its best to play up Greece’s ‘success story’: its return to stability, the achievement of a primary surplus, and the increasing interest of global investors such as John Paulson. […]