In BBC Paul Mason’s report published a few days ago, the notorious Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros declares ‘We are at war with domestic and international bankers’ (3:08 Mason’s report http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841) Sure, Panagiotaros likes to imagine himself as a righteous warrior, but truth falls closer to the fact that he is a mercenary, and after looking between the lines one can understand ...

Exactly one year ago, the EU agreed to several extreme measures to combat the ongoing economic crisis, to mixed results. But despite its unique economic distress, Greece shows no sign of cutting back its considerable military budget. ­A year ago to the day, EU leaders met to tackle debt troubles that German Chancellor Angela Merkel described as Europe’s worst economic crisis since the end of WWII. The EU sp ...

By Augustine Zenakos: 425.000 Greek voters sided with a neonazi political party in the last election. Though Golden Dawn is implicated in a surge of violent attacks, and while its views range from the ridiculous to the downright racist, its popularity is rising by the day. What exactly is Golden Dawn, where does it come from, what is its true nature? What is the extent of their relationship to the police? A ...

A new letter was sent today signed by more than 20 organizations that belong to the European Water Movement to Commissioner Olli Rehn and the European Commission after the very late response of his directorate (over a year!) on their first letter. Our concerns are shamelessly confirmed since in this text, it is clearly stated that the Commission policy is indeed to impose the privatization of water services ...

Greece's far-right party, Golden Dawn, won 18 parliamentary seats in the June election with a campaign openly hostile to illegal immigrants and there are now allegations that some Greek police are supporting the party. "There is already civil war," says Ilias Panagiotaros. If so, the shop he owns is set to do a roaring trade. It sells camouflage gear, police riot gloves, face masks and T-shirts extolling fo ...

Athens (Reuters) - The governor of the Bank of Greece was given a severance payment of 3.4 million euros when he left his former employer, a major bank that he now regulates, documents seen by Reuters show. George Provopoulos was awarded the sum when he stepped down as vice-chairman of Piraeus Bank to become governor of Greece's central bank and a member of the board of the European Central Bank in 2008. Th ...

‘Negative growth’ is a well-known oxymoron, but the Director of the Europe Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has taken redefinition to a wholly new level. In an interview with IMF Survey Magazine, Reza Moghadam says that since starting to follow the orders of the Troika (IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank), Ireland has “seen modest growth.” ...

Tomorrow, Tuesday 9 October when German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be arriving in Greece, Athens will look like an occupied city in which martial law is in force. In the wider area of the city centre, demonstrations are not allowed, traffic and public transport is banned and the subway is closed. Even schools located in this area are informally ordered to remain closed. We as Greeks living in the Netherl ...

Instead of an analysis of what kind of "austerity measures" and in whose favor, the troika and its vassals in the Greek government have been preparing, I'll just show you a table of taxes before and after the new tax system, a part of the latest austerity package, is implemented, by income category. This is income tax only, it does not include social security taxes... The really fun part is at the bottom of ...

No wonder the protesters are back. They are angry at the backdoor rewriting of the social contract Ha-Joon Chang   Rioters beat a policeman during a rally against government austerity measures in Athens. Photograph: John Kolesidis/REUTERS Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those count ...