Racism is directly related to the economic crisis and the situation gets worse as social cuts progress. If for capitalists, the crisis is a creative destruction, how con we describe the destruction of social services, a youth forced to unnecessarily go abroad, pension cuts, immigration pursued and crammed in detention camps, the exclusion of the disadvantaged or the new burdens imposed on women…? Sigue leyendo
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 or from the social left. Sigue leyendo
Desperate people queuing for food or stone and Molotov cocktail wars against asphyxiating gas. These are some of the most common images that come from Greece. But reality is kaleidoscopic and changes depending on where you look.
On the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki you can breathe some normality, but while businesses in the center are mostly open, in the suburbs signs “for rent” are everywhere. Urban furniture that suffered the brunt of the latest demonstration or simply the passing of time has not been repaired. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has no longer cleaning service. In the suburbs of Attica rubbish piles up because it is not collected every day. “The cuts”, they say. The majority of the population seems to be in shock. But there are also many that feed a swarm of citizen initiatives. Sigue leyendo
Bankruptcy of states – that has long been seen as a faraway problem of the so-called Developing World (the Global South). Today it is not far away at all but directly in front of our own doors. An economic emergency as a consequence of over-indebtedness threatens the very existence of the European monetary union. On-going social and political devastation in the crisis-ridden countries threatens the social fabrics of those countries. Germany, however, seems to stand apart as a relatively successful and flourishing economy. However, this has not always been the case. Sigue leyendo
The combined effect of a crisis of overproduction in the real estate sector in the U.S., as well as the banking and financial crisis of great magnitude produced the economic and social disaster. The banking and financial crisis was itself caused by the deregulation of the financial sector launched by the successive governments in the U.S. and Europe starting from the widespread introduction of neo-liberal policies in the 1980s. This deregulation allowed large banks and major insurance companies to develop derivatives and structured products that are powerful weapons of mass destruction. These bombs began to explode in 2007 and the explosions are not yet over. The current crisis is clearly a major crisis of the capitalist system. The current governments benefit from it, since they can apply shock therapy. The policies they are developing will prolong and aggravate the crisis. Sigue leyendo
International Citizen Audit Network (ICAN) Meeting.
February 15th-18th Thessaloniki / February 19th-22nd Athens (Greece)
The International Citizen Audit Network (ICAN) holds its third meeting in Thessaloniki from February 15th to 18th 2013, with the participation of activists against debt and austerity measures from Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium, the UK and Greece. ICAN brings together, from April 2012 and under the slogan «We don’t owe! We won’t pay!», movements and networks in different European and North African countries fighting austerity measures and debt problems through Citizen Debt audits.
Strike Debt on Fifth Avenue for Global Noise Demo. (Photo: Marisa Holmes)
In the US and Europe, the movement of squares has responded to attacks on the social good by debt resistance and direct democracy. In assemblies, mic checks and self-organization, they demonstrated that another world is possible. Now the movement is articulating full-scale resistance. Sigue leyendo
Press release, 28 January by CADTM:
http://cadtm.org/EFTA-court-dismisses-Icesave
It is with some satisfaction that CADTM learns of the decision by the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) |1| court to dismiss all the complaints brought by the Netherlands and the UK against Iceland in the Icesave case. |2|
The judgement clearly states that it is not the responsibility of the parent nation of a banking company to cover the costs of the guarantees to their banking system, and the safety net structure must be financed by the banks themselves. This implicitly confirms that the normal liquidation process, as applied to ’Landsbanki’ (Icesave’s mother company) is quite correct when a bank, even too big to fail, has greater liabilities than assets. Which would be the case of most of the big European banks if the toxic assets on their balance sheets were counted at their real value. Sigue leyendo
