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 ...

Pharmaceutical companies bend or withhold scientific data and lie about their drugs, in ways which endanger, harm or kill sick people, to make a profit. That is the shocking reality laid bare in Ben Goldacre’s new book, ‘Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients’. This is  a prime example of the way the profit motive rewarded by Capitalism stands in front of human progress. ...

Tonia Katerini of Syriza describes the social solidarity movement rising as Greeks struggle for survival. The first problem is that in Greece now we have 25 per cent unemployment, with youth unemployment reaching 58 per cent and unemployment in areas that used to be highly industrialised sometimes reaching 70-80 per cent. Many industries either close because we have very low consumption or, as in the case o ...

We are currently witnessing the collapse of the neoliberal project and yet, in the absence of a serious, purposeful democratic movement, it looks very much as if the combined forces of neoliberal capitalism are consolidating their hold on Western society. The last crisis, in the mid-seventies, was resolved only with Thatcher's election in 1979 and Ronald Reagan's a year later, and the launch of the neoliber ...

Special Report: Greece's triangle of power   By Stephen Grey and Dina Kyriakidou (Reuters) - In late 2011 the Greek finance minister made an impassioned plea for help to rescue his country from financial ruin. "We need a national collective effort: all of us have to carry the burden together," announced Evangelos Venizelos, who has since become leader of the socialist party PASOK. "We need something th ...

It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC ...

Montism after Monti and the constituent challenge for movements. by Francesco Raparelli http://www.dinamopress.it/news/italy-from-crisis-to-crisis   The scenario is very uncertain, yet it is worth to try and guess some developments. Uncertain, because the financial markets attack on Italian bonds has not fully unfolded yet. Within hours, we will hear how dramatically our yield spread over Germany has w ...

Na Duitsland heeft ook het Nederlandse kabinet besloten om patriotraketten te sturen naar Turks-Syrische grens. Samen met deze raketten zullen ook honderden Nederlandse militairen gestationeerd worden op Turks grondgebied.  Wij verzetten ons resoluut tegen de legering van Nederlandse troepen en patriotraketten in Turkije. Turkije en het Midden-Oosten hebben behoefte aan vrede en geen oorlog. De bevolking in ...

Doctors are left "playing God," having to choose which patient will get the costly treatment.   By Benoît Vitkine LE MONDE/Worldcrunch THESSALONIKI - It was in 2009 – what feels like ages ago now - that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that the Greek healthcare system was "rather efficient." Around that very same time, doctors in Thessaloniki successfully cured ...

(Reuters) - Greece has scored the worst ranking of all 27 European Union nations in a global league table of perceived official corruption, falling below ex-communist Bulgaria as public anger about graft soars during the country's crisis. The index on state sector corruption, published by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) on Wednesday, also showed other struggling euro zone countries ...