Portside

There's evidence some of it is illegal - and activists agree that Washington's colonial control over the island's economy helped create the crisis. We are urging members of Congress to put the people of Puerto Rico first and oppose H.R. 5278 as currently written, said SEIU 32BJ President Hector Figueroa. We need a real solution and Congress must get back to work immediately to provide a path forward that allows Puerto Rico to negotiate a feasible debt restructuring plan.

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Only a genuine social and democratic refounding of the eurozone, designed to encourage growth and employment, will be sufficient to counter the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe. We should put together a conference of eurozone nations on debt-just like those that were held in the postwar years, to the notable benefit of Germany. The objective would be to reduce public debt as a whole.

As the history of Puerto Rican migration to the US indicates, the seemingly distinct campaigns for immigrant rights and those for racial justice ought to be viewed as interdependent and complementary struggles. This may prove the key to creating a more just and sustainable approach to migration policy.

Puerto Rico is in crisis. But the crisis is not about how to pay Wall Street. It is about the impact of centuries-long economic devastation on the men, women, and children—especially children—that live in Puerto Rico. While failure to pay the banks and the vultures makes headlines in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the human misery caused by five centuries of colonialism does not.

A majority of Americans struggle daily to stay afloat on a sea of red ink, perpetually threatened by wave after wave of debt. This hasn't always been the case. The phenomenon can be traced back to 1978, when the US economy was sailing into dire straits.

The Hellenic Parliament established the Truth Committee on Public Debt mandating the investigation into the creation and growth of public debt, and the impact the conditionalities attached to the loans have had on the economy and the population. All the evidence we present shows Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt because the debt is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece

For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout.” Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further.

He may be leading us toward economic catastrophe.