A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Exostis
Posted October 11, 2013 by KK
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 […]
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The importance of being earnest
Posted June 11, 2013 by KK
By Krysta Kalachani “But two stories this week reminded me that media freedom is not just an issue beyond our borders, but also something we must defend here in the EU.” A small but interesting text from Vice President of the EU Commision Neelie Kroes, writing about Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, who was tried once […]
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Greeks seek austerity trial at The Hague
Posted April 25, 2012 by PR
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 […]
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Mirrors of democracy: “Black mirror,” S01E01
Posted March 30, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Maria Mavrommati The first episode of British Channel 4′s mini-series Black Mirror (2011) explores the nature of modern democracy in the most colorful ways. The dominance of image (with “image” meaning both a visual representation of something and a popular conception of someone), television language and conventional understanding of the essence of truth and […]
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Defining public service in a post-democratic age
Posted September 20, 2016 by Politis
By Jacey McCowan University of Texas at San Antonio American College of Thessaloniki From the Editor: Jacey McCowan spent the Spring 2015 semester as a study abroad student at ACT and an intern at the Dukakis Center, where she took part in the ongoing research project «Public Service in the 21st Century.» The following is […]
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Saying of the day: 6/9/13
Posted June 9, 2013 by Politis
“When police attack peaceful protesters, when protesters attack property, everyone loses.” — Livy Merchant
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Public sector reform, US style
Posted March 21, 2013 by Politis
Throughout Europe there has been an emphasis on public sector reform as the counterpart to austerity economics. In most cases, including Greece, little has been achieved. Paul Light of the Wagner School, NYU, makes a compelling case that the time is ripe in the US federal government for reform, now that sequester-imposed austerity has set […]
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The new global populism
Posted April 5, 2013 by pdcadmin
By John Judis ‘Something is happening and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?’ Bob Dylan sang. Mr. Jones was the typical suburban ‘square,’ and the ‘something’ that was happening was the sudden explosion of the new left and the counter-culture during the Sixties. Something extraordinary is happening now in European and […]
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Saying of the day: 3/29/13
Posted March 29, 2013 by Politis
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith
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Why has there been no revolution?
Posted November 14, 2013 by DW
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 […]
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Indymedia: a different sort of public service
Posted January 25, 2013 by KK
Indymedia. The website is on the Politechnic’s server, or at least was in the past. From time to time the people that write there are accused of being anarchists. Whoever likes can write on the website. They started as independent media and often there have been efforts to shut them down… Sometimes they were actually […]
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Lessons from a shipwreck to a shipwrecked country
Posted April 25, 2014 by M P
By Maria Patsarika This is not an easy piece to write. The tragic April 2014 ferry accident in South Korea, better deserves a an expression of humble, silent sympathy with the mourning families. Watching the story unravel on the news these days, however, one image kept coming back: inside the gymnasium, where the relatives […]
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Fascists go to school
Posted March 13, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Damian Mac Con Uladh The growth in popularity of Golden Dawn in the country’s secondary schools and the wider problem of how to deal with fascism in the classroom is the subject of a conference at Athens University that starts on Wednesday. Over 20 university historians, social scientists and a psychoanalysist specialising in youth […]
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What is needed now
Posted June 4, 2012 by pdcadmin
By Marten van Heuven The author is a retired senior US diplomat with extensive experience in European affairs. He contributed this note in response to an invitation by Politis for thoughts on the trans-Atlantic dimensions of the crisis in Greece and the eurozone. I find the situation in Greece and in Europe unsettling, in part […]
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Unemployment: this is no joke
Posted April 2, 2013 by Politis
This is, unfortunately, not an April fools joke. “Greece’s record 27 unemployment rate – which some analysts said could soon hit 30 percent – could even undermine the government if social unrest increases because 60 percent of the jobless have been out of work for more than a year and have no benefits,” according to […]
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@#$% democracy
Posted September 23, 2015 by DW
I first saw this illustration on Facebook early this past Monday morning, after I had read initial accounts in the Greek press on voter turnout in the September 20 general election. My first reflex was maybe to share it with awi tty caption. To be truthful, I experienced an odd combination of emotions when I […]
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The new sick man of Europe
Posted May 14, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner “The European Union is the new sick man of Europe. The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.” So read the opening lines of a new report […]
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Journalists in jail
Posted March 22, 2013 by pdcadmin
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 […]
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The new conventional wisdom on Cyprus?
Posted March 26, 2013 by Politis
The papers were full of analysis on the heels of the EU-Cyprus agreement Monday. Not surprisingly, after some of the hyperbole, there came reflection. The deal, it appears to some, was not as bad as it might have been, and not as bad as it has been made to appear. Hugo Dixon writes in Reuters, […]
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NGOs and learning the ways of the world
Posted March 30, 2014 by KK
By Krysta This story is a little old already, but I am reading about the Greek ngos. I have two experiences of how ngos and think tanks work in Greece… dyed “blue” or “green” or whatever color pays… not the unbiased work I thought they would be doing, but I guess it was part of […]