July 11, 1995. Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic enters Srebrenica, a UN-protected Muslim enclave. He turns to the camera of the Serbian television channel and makes a patriotic declaration: «Here we are in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. On the eve of yet another great Serb holiday. We present…

We often argue that politicians do not address the real issues, that they spend their time sparring and forming alliances, and that, overall, strong stances are lacking from politics. This is true – sometimes. Except that often when politicians do state their positions, no one pays attention,…

There’s a military joke that did the rounds a few years ago. An officer sent a scout to spy on enemy troops. He returned panting and reported, «There are 503 soldiers coming this way.» «How could you possibly count them?» asked the officer. «There were three in front and about 500 behind,» the…

When the Greek people gave their mandate for reforms in 2004, the government failed to take action. Now, in 2007, after Greeks voted more conservatively, the government has started visibly regressing. The first sign of this retrogression is the withdrawal of a controversial sixth-grade history…

Statements made by New Democracy party members on Sunday night show a common interpretation of the election results: Greeks voted for ND because the prime minister is constantly thinking about reforms. He doesn’t necessarily go ahead with them, but he’s thinking about them. And the new mandate is…

It may seem strange, but the biggest arguments over books seem to be taking place in the country with the lowest rate of book readership in the Western world. Surely there is no other country where the prime minister speaks out about a chapter in a primary school textbook. Similarly there is no…

OK, so everything is evidently back to normal: Supporters of different political parties are taking bus trips up and down the country to attend mass rallies; flags and banners adorn our streets and squares; the government is offering handouts in a bid to keep former supporters happy, and to…

The worst thing is that we will probably not learn anything from this disaster. We will continue to search for arsonists or for anarchists as more fires burn forests and more people die. We will condemn arsonists, the system, our «criminal society» in order to shirk our responsibilities. But…

The new leaflet issued by the Transport and Communications Ministry specifically for women motorists is not only awfully sexist – it is makeshift and sloppy, both in concept and execution. The first question that springs to mind is: Why should authorities issue a leaflet specifically for women…

He appears on our television screens wearing a hood, looking like a medieval Franciscan monk. In fact, he even talks like Girolamo Savonarola: «There won’t be any fish left in the sea. The rain forests and clean air will be a thing of the past. The polar ice caps will be gone, oceans will rise,…

Certainly a simple proportional electoral system would free many voters from the grip of the two major political parties, enabling them to pick a party more suited to their own world views. The two major parties have become nothing but alliances of ideas and people and their cadres struggle with…

If we want to get to the root of all the ills of the past few days, we need only consider our national maxim: «Something will get us out of this mess.» This is what goes through our minds every time we are faced with seemingly impossible situations, whether these relate to the economy or the…

It is unclear exactly what the criteria were in the recent competition for the selection of the «new seven wonders of the world» – an online poll that attracted such worldwide interest. Was it the size of the monuments that influenced the vote? Was it how imposing those monuments were deemed to…

One cannot really criticize the government’s decision to cut short the hours worked by civil servants over the past few days. In fact, some have praised the initiative. In view of the current state of the Greek civil service, the less it operates, the better. That way, at least it spends less…

The presumption of innocence until proven guilty applies everywhere. No democratic country withholds the names of those facing prosecution because everyone knows that it is one thing to be charged with something and quite another to be convicted. The principle according to which any citizen is…

Every time the issue of the arbitrariness of the police comes to the fore again, we learn new and interesting things. For example, when a special guard fired his service weapon into the air to warn off aggressive protesters earlier this year, we discovered that the Aegean Ministry – which he had…

The score of last Saturday’s soccer game between the Greek and Turkish national teams, which upset so many people here in Greece, was not something to be ashamed of. It is the nature of soccer, and other games, to sometimes bring us joy and sometimes sorrow. What was shameful was the way that our…

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. The occasion revived the memory of the brutal human rights violations that have been carried out over these four years in the name of fighting international terrorism.

Opposition PASOK leader George Papandreou was right in his recent criticism of the electronic media and the distortion of political and social developments to which it often resorts. But, to be fair, he was only half right.

The protest against the education bill in Athens last Thursday was marred by a regrettable incident. A police officer fired his gun into the air to disperse a group of protesters who had been causing damage to the Ministry of the Aegean. But what was worse than the actual firing of the shot was…