A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Disrupt and occupy
Posted December 20, 2014 by DW
Start-ups are all the rage. Even the prestigious international politics journal Foreign Affairs agrees. Correspondingly, a debate has emerged on the precise value to the global economy of such business activity. Whither Greece and Europe? Since before the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece entrepreneurship and start-up activity has been on the rise […]
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En deuil
Posted January 8, 2015 by DW
Charlie est mort, vive Charlie.
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We don’t get to choose these things
Posted January 10, 2015 by DW
By David Wisner Armchair expert on the Greek sovereign debt crisis that I have portrayed myself to be, you can imagine my relative despondency having read Pavlos Eleftheriadis’ article on Greece’s oligarchs in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs. Reading Eleftheriadis’ account of recent Greek history, it appears that one should have given up the […]
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Who wants to …?
Posted January 25, 2015 by DW
Election day is nigh upon us. With this in mind, there are three dimensions to the question I have been thinking of asking: Who wants to run, who wants to vote, and who wants to govern. In May 2014 the Dukakis Center examined an apparent inflation in the number of candidates running for local and […]
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The mandate, and other democratic myths
Posted February 17, 2015 by DW
This past weekend the digital site of the French newspaper Le Monde ran an interesting story entitled, in translation, “The Greece that did not vote for Syriza.” I cannot say the piece was faultless, but Eliza Perrigueur, the author, did good research and presented an interesting view of the Greek elections for a francophone audience. […]
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Greek urban warriors
Posted February 26, 2015 by DW
The Michael and Kitty Dukakis Center for Public and Humanitarian Service and Ianos Bookstore Cordially invite you to a presentation of Greek Urban Warriors: resistance and terrorism 1967-2014 by John Brady Kiesling Athens: Lycabettus Press, 2014 Monday, March 2, 2015, 7 PM Ianos Bookstore, Aristotelous 7, Thessaloniki Moderator: David Wisner The event will take place […]
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That’s right, keep talking…
Posted March 4, 2015 by KK
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 […]
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This not a pipe
Posted March 12, 2015 by DW
On the TV news a few days ago Greek journalist Pavlos Tsimas suggested that the Greek government and several other EU member states, especially Germany, were engaged in a war of words. The next day Bloomberg said what Tsimas could not, or would not, alluding to a “Greek alternative reality,” a “twilight zone.” No less […]
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Here’s to your health
Posted April 14, 2015 by DW
I recently found myself obliged to spend some time in a public hospital. Aside from the obvious benefits to my health, it was a most revealing experience. Ihave no complaints about my treatment. The rather negative opinion I had formed previously about this particular hospital, based largely on the impression of utter chaos and lack […]
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The spirit of public service
Posted April 16, 2015 by DW
By David Wisner For EF For the better part of the past decade and a half I have been searching for ways to translate the concept and practice of public service, so commonplace throughout the United States, into the contemporary Greek reality. I learned early on that there is not a direct or literal translation […]
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LOL Greece
Posted May 6, 2015 by KK
By Krysta I took a look at an article in LOL Greece a few weeks ago. I was a bit busy at the time and this guy’s articles are huge! I think this website is pretty decent, if not more than that. The articles this guy writes are pretty balanced, he seems to be giving […]
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Can do: entrepreneurship and public service
Posted May 18, 2015 by DW
Prepared remarks by David Wisner for a round table on The Greek Startup Scene: bubble or future,” Thessaloniki Science Festival, May 15, 2015. Thank you, Michalis Stangos, for inviting me to speak on your panel. For the benefit of our audience this evening, the Dukakis Center and the Anatolia Business School hosted the Second Business […]
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Analyzing Greece
Posted May 18, 2015 by KK
By Krysta Analyze Greece is a decent left-wing analysis of the current situation in Greece. They are not hiding what they are, they state that they are on the left and they stand on their left background to bring forward reports, articles, interviews, etc. They report in English and they actually have a large team […]
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Why serve?
Posted June 7, 2015 by DW
By David Wisner I confess. I am a Europeanist and a self-conscious product of what we call the Western tradition. I dreamed as a teenager of studying in Florence, the Florence of the Italian Renaissance. I later came of age intellectually during five fabulous years spent in Paris. I established a name for myself as […]
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Shedia
Posted June 12, 2015 by KK
I have been going through Shedia’s website recently. Shedia is a street paper part of the International Network of Street Papers. It is a very well organized website now, compared to the last time I had checked it which I think it was almost a year ago (maybe even more). I have been buying this […]
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Dualing rallies: whose democracy?
Posted June 19, 2015 by KK
By Krysta Editor’s note: Krysta Kalachani has been a regular contributor to Politis from Athens since 2010. She attended anti-memorandum rallies in downtown Athens throughout the summer of 2011 — despite managing two companies — and has a particular interest in the development in Greece of alternative media. Here Krysta reflects on some of the […]
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Yes? No? Vote, and stay engaged
Posted July 3, 2015 by DW
We have an expression in the US. “Vote early and often.” Lest you think I am encouraging you to commit voter fraud, I actually have something else in mind. If you vote when young you are likely to continue to want to vote whenever you have the opportunity. Make it a habit. Just look at […]
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Now comes the hard part
Posted July 15, 2015 by DW
It was in the wee hours between November 4-5, 2008. The news was filtering in that Barack Obama had defeated John McCain in the US Presidential election. If you were a Republican, and had experienced George W. Bush’s historic reelection in 2004, you were crestfallen. Congressional Republicans had just been routed again to make matters […]
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Giving up the ghost
Posted July 26, 2015 by DW
It was a metaphor that was not uncommon in earlier moments of the crisis, that of Greece as a patient on life support. The notion of a sick man of Europe has a long pedigree after all. It has come back with a vengeance now, most recently in the form of a commentary by Maria […]
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The Sacrifice of Iphigenia
Posted August 19, 2015 by DW
Last year I published a Kindle e-book on the Greek sovereign debt crisis. I wanted to understand, and explain to non-Greek readers, why Greeks behaved as they had during the crisis, and why they might have acted other than an American readership might have anticipated. I framed the story I told as a contemporary version […]