False Dilemmas: A Critical Guide to the Euro Zone Crisis
With Syriza expected to win in the Greek elections this weekend, the public debate around the European crisis has been reignited, and it will soon get feverish. This is a great opportunity for us to disseminate radical analysis about the crisis, and help unravel the mainstream story. For all interested and involved in anti-austerity…
Euro-Crisis Report Links Bailouts and Austerity To Fascism’s Rise Across Europe
[Published on Occupy.com] Across Europe human rights, due process and democracy are eroding. On the surface, this seems most evident in the continent’s electoral lurch in May toward parties of the far-right – especially Greece’s Golden Dawn, which secured the third most votes while demonstrating open Nazi affiliation. The far-right’s rise connects directly, of course, with escalating conditions…
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The anniversary of broken promises
5 years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the beginning of the worst economic crisis in decades, the EU has not delivered on promises of strong regulation of the financial sector. A swift overhaul is needed. Together with other organisations (full list at the end), CEO has signed the statement below. The 15th of…
Cyprus is paying a painful price for bowing to international capital
Photograph: Getty Images By Tim Jones, source Newstatesman.com Being controlled by global financial interests does not benefit ordinary people, their economy or democracy, writes the Jubilee Debt Campaign’s Tim Jones. A small country is being brought to its knees by a huge banking system which has recklessly been lent money from overseas. Controls on money leaving…
#Greece: Crisis, Democracy, and the Euro
Source: http://ilesxi.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/crisis-democracy-and-the-euro/ Τhree years after submitting to the Troika Memorandum, Greece is falling apart. GDP has contracted more than 21% according to IMF calculations, and it is expected to dive another 6% in 2013. Never in world economic history, since statistics began, was such a fall of production recorded without being preceded by a war…
« Austerity Tour » : Notre démocratie contre leur austérité ! [Fr]
For A European Spring, Bruxelles, 13 Mars 2013 par Myriam Bourgy (Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde – Belgium) Dans le cadre des mobilisations européennes « for a european spring » |1|, le quartier européen de Bruxelles a accueilli plus de 80 touristes peu ordinaires. De manière festive et cynique, ces derniers ont effectué un…
Debt and Democracy in #Greece
Post by Emma Avilés, Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD Bcn) The policies carried out are not going to get us out of the crisis. The psychological climate in Greece is of despair, disappointment and anger, they are in shock. People seek practical and individual solutions to systemic problems; such is the case of Debt. What…
Greece reinvents itself with the crisis through self-managed Networks
Post by Emma Avilés, Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD Bcn) Confronting the failed State and the collapse of the Welfare System, the Greeks have begun to organise, fuelling the grassroots movement that softens the effects of the cuts and resists them. These networks arise of necessity, not ideology; many of their participants are non-political…
The future is emerging
Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign UK In the centre of Athens, the depth of the crisis can now be measured by the number of homeless people sitting and sleeping on every block. These are the victims of the financiers and politicians of Europe; the ‘collateral damage’, as they are undoubtedly seen, of the policies of austerity.…
The Terrifying Rise of the Far-Right
Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign UK High school teacher Costas was late for a meeting we’d planned because a student of immigrant parents had been abused by two Greek students with a history of racist activities. “This sort of thing is new” he explained to us. “Of course we had some incidents before, but now…
Life and Debt in Thessaloniki
Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign UK We met three people today who summed up the depth of the crisis being experienced by Greek people, but also the courageous attempts to build a new, more democratic society. I had to pinch myself to remember I was in Europe, the stories are so familiar – but from…
Ski slopes of debt in Spain
Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign UK Last week a former businessman told me with great conviction that the Spanish people had ‘lived beyond their means’. Tonight’s meeting showed just who has lived beyond their means. Iolanda Fresnillo from the Spanish Debt Audit Platform (PACD) told us some incredible stories about her country’s Public Private Partnerships –…