Joan Walsh, commenting in Salon on Hillary Clinton’s Senate hearing today notes that “Clinton stood up to the raging bulls with grace and fire of her own… After [which] she was lectured and hectored by guys who don’t quite measure up to her and never will.” Okay, so Salon is a liberal paper and one […]

By Pantelis Boukalas All those stereotypical expressions that recur in our speech probably once carried some actual meaning before losing it somewhere along the way. The value of these expressions was mostly undermined by overuse, which was in turn prompted by two apparently contradictory desires that in fact complement each other. On the one hand, […]

David Brooks writes in his New York Times column today that President Obama made a strong case for a “pragmatic and patriotic progressivism” in his second inaugural address yesterday. Where does leave the thoughtful independent, that purveyor of the center right and the center left? “During his first term, Obama was inhibited by his desire […]

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 […]

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 […]

Excerpts from a post yesterday on the Human Rights Watch site. “Partly hidden within [the] turmoil [of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis] is another crisis threatening to spin out of control – xenophobic violence against migrants and asylum seekers in Athens and elsewhere. Violence against people from Afghanistan and North and sub-Saharan Africa is alarmingly commonplace, […]

The editors of Kathimerini write in today’s online English edition that “The prime minister knows better than anyone else how difficult the job ahead is, and how many problems he has to deal with… he is making a gigantic effort to hold the country together even though he is dealing with a shattered public administration and […]

In a less than tongue-in-cheek account, Bloomberg’s Megan Greene recounts conversations she has had of late with former Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou in an attempt to make sense of what happened to the data stick containing the original version of the so-called “Lagarde list.” It seems that the latter had to cut his much desired […]

Nick Malkoutzis has a probing analysis of the circus act that is the current Greek Parliament in the English pages of Kathimerini. In this instance he writes about the debate this past Thursday over whom to investigate in the ongoing saga of the infamous “Lagarde list.” The debate turned into a finger pointing match between […]

By Byron Tau Voter trust in political information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media services is now on par with that in traditional news sources, according to a new survey shared with POLITICO. Recent years have seen candidates increasingly devoting time and resources to developing their social media presences, with President Barack Obama’s reelection […]

By Yannis Theocharis A light breeze of transformation stems to have started blowing silently in Greece. The younger generation has inspired a wave of voluntary initiatives and actions targeted at resolving collective problems in the last couple of years. The recent manifestations are numerous and exciting: voluntary-based events that encourage structured debate and spreading new […]

This just in from Fishbowl DC: After dropping out of the presidential election and a two season-long Republican bashing media tour, Jon Huntsman is ready to lead along with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The pair, along with Republican Strategist Mark McKinnon, are founders of “No Labels” a project aimed at fostering bipartisanship in Congress. Huntsman […]

By Nikos Konstandaras Our country bears many great wounds, which, over the years, brought us to the point of bankruptcy, ridicule and insecurity. But however great the problems which stem from the corruption and incompetence of our political elite and state machinery, from the chaos of the public sector, from the lack of national strategy, […]

By Ginger Gibson While continuing to identify as a Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday criticized the GOP for a series of racist attacks against President Barack Obama. “There’s also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What do I mean by […]

By Alexandros Petersen For many, the realities of life in pre-crisis Greece, now exposed to the world, conjure images of large-scale corruption and petty bribery more associated with the Middle East than Europe. In the Western and Northern European mind, not to mention many in North America, the question of whether Greece should have ever […]

By David Wisner I was interviewed on local TV some weeks back about possible ways out of the economic crisis that has gripped Greek society. Before closing out the interview the journalist asked me why, as a foreigner, I stay in Greece. I fumbled a little for an answer, having been caught off guard. Why […]

The European Commission has designated 2013 as the European Year of Citizens, to commemorate the creation of European citizenship 20 years ago. In an interview with Deutsche Welle today Justice and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding explained, “As Europeans, we have to hold on to our specific roots, and that’s exactly what we do. That should […]

The Dukakis Center hosted the inaugural Business  & Politics Forum in Thessaloniki last month. One of the speakers, Efi Stefopoulou of the General Secretariat of the Government, gave a standing room audience at the Elektra Palace Hotel a brilliant taste of what a truly competent public servant can do. Thankfully, she told her audience that […]

The Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington-based group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word “Republican” from its title and welcome center-right Democrats in 2013, Yahoo News has learned. The organization’s board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as “The […]

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 […]