The FBI and other federal agencies coordinated with banks and local authorities in reacting to the Occupy Movement, which was put in the category of a domestic terrorist threat despite the group’s advocacy of nonviolence, Dennis J. Bernstein reports. From RT : By Dennis J. Bernstein and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard Newly obtained secret FBI documents show that the Feds treated the Occupy Movement as a criminal t ...

Consider it a mea culpa submerged in a deep pool of calculus and regression analysis: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist today acknowledged that the fund blew its forecasts for Greece and other European economies because it did not fully understand how government austerity efforts would undermine economic growth. The new and highly technical paper looks again at the issue of fiscal multipliers ...

THE first culprit of Greece’s biggest tax-evasion scandal in recent memory may not be a high-rolling tycoon but the former finance minister. In 2010 George Papaconstantinou, the chief negotiator of Greece’s first bail-out by the European Union and the IMF, took delivery from the French government of a computer disk with the names of some 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts. Mr Papaconstantinou should imme ...

Growers and shrinkers   The fastest growing and shrinking economies in 2013 MACAU will be the fastest growing economy this year, according to the latest estimates from our sister company, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Growth is expected to return to a faster pace as new casino projects are resumed and Chinese visitors (with rising wages) continue to raise gambling revenues. Mongolia, in second ...

By Jacob Devaney, Founder and Director, Culture Collective   What started as a murmur in early October from First Nations People in Canada in response to Bill C45 has become a movement that echoes the sentiments of people all over the world, a battle cry of love for the planet, "Idle No More." At first glance it might appear that this movement is isolated and doesn't effect you if you are not native or ...

By Stephanie Bodoni, Elisa Martinuzzi & Gabi Thesing The European Central Bank will be allowed to keep private files showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its debt after defeating the first court challenge using the bloc’s freedom of information rules. “Disclosure of those documents would have undermined the protection of the public interest so far as concerns the economic policy of the European U ...

Country faces year of destiny, with doubts about survival of government and of its eurozone membership as austerity bites In the three years that Greece has been engulfed by the drama of its debt, crises have come and gone. But the next 12 months are likely to be more critical yet with politicians and pundits predicting that 2013 will ultimately define whether Athens remains in the eurozone. For once, Greek ...

 contrainfo (a picture from last year’s solidarity demo) Last night a group of people went to make noise at the new location of the Schiphol deportation prison (Amsterdam). It is an international tradition on New Year’s Eve to go to the prisons to break the silence and isolation. In the new Schiphol prison ‘De Poort’ over 1,000 people will be locked up. Even more cells for a murderous system. Last night, re ...

 The New York times LONDON — Last month, the European Commission’s top economic official in Brussels, Olli Rehn, received an intriguing e-mail. Greece, under pressure from its European creditors, wanted to retire some of its debt by buying back its bonds at a deep discount to their face value. A senior executive at Deutsche Bank proposed that Europe take a tough negotiating stance toward private hedge funds ...

By Naomi Kresge   It was 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday when Greek Coast Guard Ensign Chrisafis Theofilos’s boat got a report of a migrant drowning off the coast of the island of Lesbos. [nggallery id=4] As dawn began to break, Theofilos sped south toward the man’s coordinates. His scheduled departure had already been delayed five hours by a broken radar system that headquarters in Athens hadn’t yet fixed. Th ...