Copyright: Hellenic CEPOL Unit on line
Greece has been part of the CEPOL network since it began in 2001. The Hellenic CEPOL office was initially founded in 2001, as part of the Department of Training Studies of the Police Academy. Read more
Ioannis Kolovos
(RIEAS Editor, Illegal Immigration Newsletter)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
On January 23rd 237 illegal immigrants, escorted by extreme leftists, boarded on a ship from Chania, Crete to Piraeus and from there they traveled to Athens city center where they occupied the building of the Athens University Law School. Their demand was that of amnesty for all illegal immigrants living currently in Greece. Such a demand – if met – would have contravened the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum but, more importantly, would have been a suicidal own-goal. It would apply to hundreds of thousands of people (moderate estimates talk of 470,000 but illegal immigrants in Greece may well be twice as many, or even more) and it would once again send a signal to all countries in the world that Greece still is ‘soft touch’ on immigration and that if someone, somehow makes it in the country and stays in long enough, he/she will be legalized sooner or later.
Aya Burweila
(RIEAS Senior Analyst)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
After twenty-two years of exile and within sixteen days since President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Rashid Al-Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist Ennahdha movement returned to Tunisia on Sunday, January 30th.
Chanting verses from the Qur’an, over 1,000 supporters appeared in Tunisia’s international airport to greet him.
However, they were not the only ones waiting for him.
Though overshadowed by Al-Ghannouchi’s supporters, a group of 20 to 30 women concerned with the future of Tunisia’s civil society formed a counterprotest, holding signs that read "No to Terrorism" and "Welcome Free Tunisians."[i]
Dr. George Vardangalos
(Electrical and Computer Engineer, IT Consultant, EPIS Ltd)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
Introduction
Last year, especially after February 2010, we were reading numerous articles describing the severe economic crisis in Greece, articles that were front-page news in the world mass media in most cases. But the “process” that led to the Greek economic crisis was not new, as it was firstly described in detail in some papers or internet media just in 2009. Read more
Aya Burweila
(RIEAS Senior Analyst)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
Even though the right to a legal secession requires a U.N. Security Council resolution or the bilateral agreement of both parties,[i] with the support of the United States and its various European allies, the Muslim-Albanian province of Kosovo seceded from the Republic of Serbia on February 17, 2008 and unilaterally declared its independence.
Dr Joseph Fitsanakis
(Department of History and Political Science, King College, USA and Senior Editor at intelNews.org.)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
Note: Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis has written this original article specifically for RIEAS.
The WikiLeaks cablegate revelations appear to be subsiding in the new year, and so is the public debate about their meaning and consequences. And yet, as calmer moods prevail, now is the appropriate time to probe the WikiLeaks phenomenon. To do so constructively, it is necessary to move beyond a mere political assessment of WikiLeaks. The question of whether the website, its founder, and its hundreds of volunteers, are criminals, heroes, terrorists, or dissidents, cannot even begin to be answered until WikiLeaks is understood, first and foremost. By ‘understood’, I don’t mean empathize. I mean comprehending WikiLeaks as an ideological paradigm, a technological vehicle reflective of the personal philosophies of its members, but also representative of a much wider sociotechnical trend.