Fighting Golden Dawn, Women in Iran, Palestine's Problems, Unifying Africa, Spain's Dilemma, Confronting G20, More On the Yellow Vests
Youth for Africa, MST Leader on Brazil Elections, Prashad on China, French Communists Debate, Movements Meet in Colombia, Indonesia Cops Bust Anti-World Bank Meeting
Total Shutdown in South Africa; Euro Left and Migration; Activism Under Duterte; Argentina vs IMF; Reproductive Rights Victories; Young Activists Go Electoral
Greece's former finance minister under the radical Syriza government offers a revealing tell-all about modern capitalism through his battles over Greece’s debt with the “Troika”: the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB), and eventually with his own prime minister.
The world is being split into two halves: the U.S. dollar orbit, and countries that the U.S. cannot control and whose officials are not on the U.S. payroll, so to speak.
While the international media focused on the official meetings, no news outlets outside of Latin America have mentioned the Plataforma Alternativa conference — a parallel three-day meeting organized under the theme “Belying the ‘Peruvian Miracle.’” More than 1,200 people attended Plataforma Alternativa’s conference. Participants represented dozens of organizations and diverse countries.
In upcoming votes for the European Union's most indebted countries, the left will have to battle both the forces of austerity and a resurgent xenophobic right. The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. The response of the EU is massive cutbacks in government spending, widespread layoffs, and double-digit tax hikes on consumers.
The EU's belt-tightening measures are cutting holes in Europe's social-safety net. Austerity as an economic strategy is more than just throwing a scare into countries that, exhausted by years of cutbacks and high unemployment, are thinking of changing course. It's laying the groundwork for the triumph of multinational corporate capitalism - undermining the social contract between labor and capital that's characterized much of Europe for the past two generations.
The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece's Surrender - as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets (and in red). Read and weep.
Economic assistance under the Marshall plan was important to both countries, but it was the granting of debt relief that made a difference to the Germans. After World War II, Germany not only received direct transfers of money - aid through the Marshall plan. Far more important than the $1.4bn was the granting of debt relief at the London conference of 1953.
Spread the word