The Project on Government Oversight seeks to “provoke accountability” in the workings of the US Federal Government. About POGO Founded in 1981, POGO originally worked to expose outrageously overpriced military spending on items such as a $7,600 coffee maker and a $436 hammer. In 1990, after many successes reforming military spending, including a Pentagon spending […]
By Krysta Kalachani Exostis seems pretty interesting, a “place” where residents of Thessaloniki can find interesting cultural and other types of events. The good things that happen in the city, as they assert. I am not familiar with the site or the magazine (which I understood circulates as well), but it seems a good site […]
There has been a lot of talk of late about the future of higher education in Greece. The public universities might appear to some to be a microcosm of all of Greece, in which things are clearly falling apart. Lo and behold, the news is not all bad, however. As the author of a recent […]
Mark Mazower, the author of “Salonica, City of Ghosts,” was interviewed in Kathimerini this past weekend. Here is what he had to say about political extremism in Greece today: “The new and highly disturbing feature of the scene in Greece is obviously the rise of the far right. Its emergence forces us to confront the […]
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“There are two Rules of Holes in politics. The first rule is well known: ‘When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.’ The second rule is less well known: ‘When you stop digging, you are still in a hole.’” — Roger Simon
By David Wisner Last November the Dukakis Center hosted an international symposium on political reform in Greece. We brought in a wide variety of distinguished practitioners, scholars, and journalists to engage in a frank public conversation about how the Greece of tomorrow might appear. We gave equal time to students and young professionals, however, and […]
The Human Library does not consist of actual books but of people who are willing to share their stories and experiences with others, in order to fight prejudice and promote diversity. Human Library Greece was initiated in October 2009 in Athens by a group of volunteers, in collaboration with the global network of Human Libraries […]
By David Wisner Researchers Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson have prepared a paper in which they argue that an Internet search engine, not Google necessarily but “a future Google,” might be able to manipulate search results in such a way as to impact the outcome of an election. “In a controlled experiment,” they write, […]
By David Wisner I read Guy Dinmore’s characterization in today’s Financial Times of the members of the M5S party of Beppo Grillo elected to one or the other of the houses in the Italian Parliament with a sense of wonderment. “How coherent a unit his parliamentarians will prove to be remains an open question, notes Tommaso […]
“We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms and hold different views than the person beside us. But… we all share the same proud title. We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or our legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures […]
By David Wisner Anger and despair. The words do not do justice to the display of emotion I had just beheld. A lady in the flower of her years, seated in an auditorium, had just broken down into bitter tears of recrimination and fury as she absorbed some of the implications of the brilliant lecture […]
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, […]
Google and YouTube claim they can help teachers turn teenagers into better citizens. Watch the clip below to find out how.
By Krysta Kalachani Feministiki protovoulia. A number of women’s groups participate in this blog. They are serious and active in a number of worthy causes, with a focus on violence against women. The blog itself suffers from a lack of copy editing, however. In their most recent post they ask for a reply from Syriza […]
“To me, achieving a global classroom means using education to erase barriers between people of different cultures and backgrounds; it means giving people the opportunity to learn without the limits imposed by physical or socio-economic circumstances; and it means giving schools and instructors around the world the ability to transcend boundaries to bring high-quality education […]
By Dimitris Diamantis and David Wisner “So many candidates, so little time to choose,” reported one interlocutor to us in early May. How can one decide about new parties and about personalities that had until recently resided more or less in the margins of national politics? We have been asked several times how we would […]
By Kostas Vaxevanis Journalism is often either invested with magic powers or blamed for all that is wrong in the world. Both positions are wrong. Journalism is the way, lonely most of the times, of truth. Often colleagues discuss journalistic objectivity as a mausoleum where we kneel down. There is no objectivity. What matters is […]
By Maria Patsarika I read an article by Thanasis Skokos in Protagon yesterday about corruption. Actually, it is one of the many articles out there discussing the extent to which politicians who have misused power and public funds are now confronting justice and people’s outrage. Laying responsibilities on the financial side of things is a […]
In mid October Thessaloniki will be hosting the WOMEX World Music Expo. This is a great privilege for Thessaloniki as it will bring a lot of artists and great talents from around the world to Thessaloniki and it will also set up more production and music sales networks for the city. For those of you […]