Athens LIKE many Greeks caught in the maelstrom of the economic crisis, my wife and I live a day-to-day existence. Since the newspaper where I worked for 23 years (my wife for 17) went out of circulation in December of 2011, we have both been unemployed. Neither of us have received a paycheck in 18 months, as our newspaper stopped paying us five months before it closed. With unemployment for journalists at ...

Today, the government once again called for the requisition of workers in strike. This time it was the turn of the seamen that are struggling against the abolishment of their collective employment agreement and other regulations that protect their working rights. The new legislation of the government leads to layoffs and further wage cuts. Despite the requisition the union of the seamen just decided the con ...

In a special investigation, Nathalie Savaricas reveals the tactics used to recruit children to its far-right political beliefs http://www.independent.co.uk   On a recent Thursday night, seven teenage boys in the central Greek city of Larissa decided to have what they described as “fun”. Armed with rocks and wooden batons, the group of 15-year-olds attacked the shop of a Pakistani resident. His son was ...

  It’s worth recalling in the light of my last post what the White House had to say about offshoring of profits in 2009. In that year they said: Nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by U.S. corporations in 2003 came from just three small, low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Ireland. That then was the most recent data. The Netherlands objected to the line that they were a tax ha ...

A description of a lazy and corrupted nation that does not recognise the sacrifices made by the Germans and an unrest caused by anarchists against whom only fascists can fight back.. This picture would justify a coup, right? Now we can all agree that they did it to themselves and they deserve it, right? A scandalous analysis by Huffington Post. Comment by ReINFORM ------------------------------------------- ...

"To the Greek workers in the public transport The trade union Advakabo of the Amsterdam public transport group (GVB) wants to express its support and solidarity to your resistance against the salary cuts and the impending dismissal that you are about to face, if you continue with the planned strikes. We, as members of the trade union in the public sector, also fight in our country against austerity measures ...

Rebloged from http://truth-out.org When the global financial system crumbled over four years ago, Iceland played host to one of the most dramatic economic collapses in modern history. Its three largest banks were unable to refinance debt roughly ten times the size of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), causing one of the world's wealthiest nations to limp with hat in hand to the International Moneta ...

  Workers and employees of Athens metro, urban train and the tram are facing wage cuts for the 4rth time in the last 2 years. Their salaries have been already reduced up to 45%. Now, the government wants to abolish their collective labor agreements that provide the minimum salaries for their particular sector and apply a payroll, common for all civil workers instead. The workers want to defend their co ...

Above: Greek authorities recently raided and shut down the Villa Amalia squat in Athens as part of a campaign to restore ‘order’.   Seen on http://www.nytexaminer.com/ By Costas Panayotakis: In an article that reports on a number of bombings in Greece in recent weeks, Liz Alderman presents contrasting interpretations of these developments and what precipitated them but, in subtle ways, ends up acting a ...

http://www.zerohedge.com Authored by Martin Lueck of UBS, Cyprus is the euro area’s third-smallest economy in GDP terms (larger only than Malta and Estonia, but likely to be outgrown by the latter this year), accounting for less than 0.2% of the region’s output. Yet, we believe it is big enough to cause trouble. The country urgently needs external funding and applied for an EU/IMF/ECB (in short: troika) pro ...