A nice article in today’s Deutsche Welle celebrates the tenth anniversary of the launch of WordPress, one of the main platforms for blogging world wide. “Over the last decade, WordPress transformed from a simple platform to write a blog into an online content management system used by multinational corporations to maintain their Internet presence. A […]

By Krysta Kalachani I have been following this website from time to time for a year or more, and particularly one of the contributors, Jerome Roos, who started writing when the Syntagma gatherings started taking place. Here is his bio, taken from the magazine’s web site: “Jérôme E. Roos is a PhD researcher in International […]

By David Wisner I have asked myself this question over and over. So have many of my acquaintances, from what I can gather. Indeed, I began this line of inquiry barely a year into Greece’s sovereign debt crisis. American that I am, I asked the question from the point of view of the tax payer […]

Την Τετάρτη, 20 Νοε 2013, στις 18.00, στην αίθουσα πολλαπλών χρήσεων του Δημαρχείου Θεσσαλονίκης το Πανελλήνιο Παρατηρητήριο Οργανώσεων της Κοινωνίας των Πολιτών και ο Ευρωπαϊκός Όμιλος Εδαφικής Συνεργασίας (ΕΟΕΣ) «ΕΥΞΕΙΝΗ ΠΟΛΗ – Δίκτυο Ευρωπαϊκών Πόλεων για τη Βιώσιμη Ανάπτυξη» με την υποστήριξη του Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης, οργανώνει την, ανοικτή σε όλους, «Πανελλήνια Πλατφόρμα Ενεργών Πολιτών». Η […]

Politis asked EU law expert Anna Maria Konsta for her comments on a recently published review of the Greek justice system compared to other EU member states. Here are her remarks. “Even if these data date back to 2010, they are still indicative of the inefficiency of the Greek judicial system. In Greece, it takes […]

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. […]

Parallaxi, a free-press magazine inThessaloniki who began the well known “ThessalonikiAllios” are organizing the 2nd annual effort to clean up the city ofThessaloniki. Thessaloniki Allios willbe reviving an area of Thessaloniki that has been left abandoned for a longtime, the coastline from Aretsous until Macedonia Airport. One mission will be to clean up the coastbehind […]

Political and economic liberalism have come under heavy and sustained attack as many countries struggle to find responses to the prevailing economic malaise. But for the staleness of much left-of-center political thinking, liberalism might be long dead and buried. Some in the UK think otherwise, however. Today’s Guardian has a nice clip with bits and […]

By Mark Lowen, BBC News, Athens It is rare for citizens to try to take their government to court, and even more so for a Western European government to be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. But that is what one group based near the Greek capital is now attempting. And […]

Politis is keen to understand how we talk about citizenship and politics. Our friends over at The Week have come up with this essential lexicography of early 21st-century Washington-speak. snollygoster — A politician who will go to any lengths to win public office, regardless of party affiliation or platform. dummymander — A gerrymandered district drawn […]

Participedia is an open global knowledge community for researchers and practitioners in the field of democratic innovation and public engagement. “We live in a world in which citizens of most countries are asking for greater involvement in collective decisions. Many governments, non-governmental organizations, and even some corporations are responding by experimenting with ways to increase public […]

By David Wisner “Phew, that was tough,” is the initial impression left behind by Nick Malkoutzis in his comment in the pages of today’s Kathimerini English edition. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, now. “And like that… poof, the crisis is gone. More bailout loans approved by the Eurogroup, a sovereign rating upgrade from Fitch, […]

Coursera has published this nifty learning map on their Facebook page. What does it represent? “Mindmaps, lecture notes, quiz cards are just a few ways that Courserians study and reinforce course material. Learn more about what these are and how you can utilize them based on your learning style.”How do you study, they ask? Might […]

America’s Very Own Golden Dawn By Francesca Kareivis As I am enrolled in several political science classes in my study abroad program, the issue of Golden Dawn has been brought up in discussion quite a bit. Many students and professors have referred to them as neo-Nazis and fascists.  I decided to do some research of […]

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 […]

“A growing body of experimental research is finding evidence suggesting that, to some degree, political inclinations and ideological leanings may be tied to innate factors like a person’s biology, physiology and genetics.” So reads the conclusion of a recent article in Politico. Politis has run stories like this for a couple months, now. It all […]

  “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” — Aristotle  

By Nikos Chrysoloras It is now official: Cyprus will pay a heavy toll for turning its economy into an offshore financial haven and allowing its banking sector to hyperinflate. But if the purpose of the dramatic eurozone all-nighters was not just to punish and make an example of the island, but to solve the issue, […]

By David Wisner A few months ago I filed my Greek tax return, as I have every year since 1995; just recently I payed the first installment of my remaining income tax obligation for 2012. This year, like last, I had to submit all the receipts I had amassed over the course of the calendar […]

By Krysta Kalachani Very good site! It seems that it will be fully working in a few days, it is very new. Really interesting though. They are trying to bring Corinth’s citizens together, to spot problems in the area and find solutions, or find opportunities worth pursuing, among their goals is to act as mediators […]