MARIA KATSOUNAKI

A Parliament of followers

“Who is hiding behind the hashtag?” “Your MP is the one posting this vulgar content.” “Here is what was written on Facebook five or six years ago.” All three of these phrases, along with several variations, were uttered many times in Parliament on Wednesday.

An issue or a spectacle?

“The rapist and the rape do not have an ideological hue and belong to no party. We do not care about [the rapist’s] political identity,” Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said.

14.02.2021 / 00:52

Greek National Theater in the meat grinder

In his recent speech in Parliament on the education reform bill, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that “nowhere in the world do we see scenes like those at our universities, where … professors beaten and girls raped.”

06.02.2021 / 23:13

Museums and the essence

“The General Assembly of the Association of Greek Archaeologists has unanimously rejected the conversion of state-run museums into legal entities governed by public law (NPDD), for ideological, legal, political and practical reasons.”

24.01.2021 / 00:11

The tyranny of ‘no to everything’

Policing. The use of the word alone makes understanding difficult. At best, it makes one grimace; at worst, it triggers the mental “repository” of the civil war, rich in unclassified material, and its post-war continuation under an authoritarian state.

16.01.2021 / 21:33

Path to the podium and to catharsis

Posts full of “bravos” and “respect” flooded the internet. As a four-time Olympian, Sofia Bekatorou is used to praise. This time, however, the praise was not about her sailing prowess.

09.01.2021 / 22:29

No effort, just envy

It would be ridiculous if it were not horrifying. What we saw was neither a metamorphosis nor an embodiment of the sarcastic and very popular quote often attributed to Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

14.12.2020 / 13:50

Virus thrives in ‘closed circuits’

One of the biggest challenges posed by the pandemic is that we cannot classify every section of the population that is responsible for spreading Covid-19.

29.11.2020 / 08:42

The parrot is dead

There’s a famous Monty Python sketch from the early 1970s about an argument between a pet shop keeper and a customer complaining about the dead parrot he recently purchased. The classic comedy sketch could also loosely serve as a comment on the pedantry of bureaucracy.

31.10.2020 / 23:22

Aftershocks

Earthquakes occur both inside and out. The second ones just happen. The first are long-lasting, and have no scale of measurement. It is these inner, mental vibrations that give rhythm to our day and shape the reality that surrounds us.