Portside

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Syriza will not easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. The victory of Greece's left-wing Syriza Party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland. It is also a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the "troika" - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund.

Significant recovery has not arrived in the eurozone, and when it does, it will have been so long delayed that it will, in effect, be recovery denied, with a legacy of economic and political darkness across the European Union.

Pegida's so-called “extremism of the middle”: is an expression of the dominant capitalist ideology, with its legitimization of all forms of exclusion, being driven to its mostly extreme, racist form. The whole situation will get really dangerous when parts of the elites start to see this as a viable political option in order to preserve power.

Cologne Cathedral provost Norbert Feldhoff told N-TV that the move was meant to send the message to Pegida's anti-Muslim protesters that "You’re taking part in an action that, from its roots and also from speeches, one can see is Nazi-ist, racist and extremist. And you’re supporting people you really don’t want to support."

The “red-red-green” coalition has taken office in Thuringia, German -- having squeezed through to victory by one single wavering vote.

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Victor Grossman, an American who has lived in Berlin for more than sixty years, gives his reflections on the German Democratic Republic (GDR), responding to two recent posts by Portside.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the influence of the former German Democratic Republic is more than the united Germany wants to admit. In social policy areas such as health care, women in the workplace, education, youth football and recycling, the country has looked to the East.

For the very first time, the Left Party may lead a coalition -- by the narrowest of margins -- with the Social Democrats and Greens that governs a German state. But forming that coalition would require difficult compromise and reversals on the part of all the coalition partners.