Here's the full transcript of our interview with Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who has been President of Iceland since 1996, and announced last month he would be running for a fifth term. Keep reading to hear his thoughts on Iceland's recovery, and how a large financial sector can ruin the world. How has life in Iceland changed since the meltdown? It’s very difficult to give a short description of how life has ch ...

The new French president will have to make a decision about a European treaty that would demand still greater austerity. The choice will affect the future of France, and of Europe. Will the French elect a different president, but leave unresolved all the issues raised in the election of 2007? The French would welcome a change of government: because, apart from President Sarkozy’s egregious shortcomings — hi ...

Less than three years after the last food crisis peaked, prices—along with hunger and malnutrition—are up again. Don’t (only) blame nature. Just a few years after one major global food crisis, a new worldwide spike in agricultural commodity and food prices is generating both predictable and extraordinary fallout. The search for causes once again leads to a conjuncture of flawed policies–in trade, environmen ...

Alex Nunns reports from Athens on the human consequences of the austerity measures, and how they are being resisted. ‘Although Athens is not São Paulo, it is not any more a normal European capital,’ warns Yannis Almpanis, one of the organisers of a ‘solidarity mission’ of European social movements visiting Greece in late February. And he’s right. The consequences of the austerity programme can be felt on th ...

In the last decade, financiers have speculated billions of pounds in food, helping to make prices dearer and more volatile. Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world's poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push pric ...

Paolo Gerbaudo reports on the Routes of Europe conference in Florence, arguing that the Italian left must embrace the participatory democracy of the Indignados to achieve political purchase. The city of Florence is one of those privileged observation spots from which one can read the health of the Italian left and its international standing. Back in 2002 it was in this city that the first European Social Fo ...

The economics of the elite has as much to do with blind faith as rational argument, says Susan George, so our resistance has to reflect this fact. The Euromemo Group’s recent report is a particularly important and thorough analysis-cum-set of proposals to repair years of self-inflicted damage in the eurozone. Its voice, however welcome, is far from the only one in what has become a mighty chorus. Many respe ...

Hard Times Lift Greece’s Anti-Immigrant Fringe Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader of Golden Dawn, greeted voters this month in Megara, Greece. By RACHEL DONADIO and DIMITRIS BOUNIAS ATHENS — On a recent morning in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Papagou here, members of the Greek ultranationalist group Golden Dawn stood at an outdoor vegetable market campaigning for the coming national elections. “This ...

Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere. California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public higher education system in the world: "California State University officials announced plans to freeze enro ...

Trevor Evans outlines the basis for a progressive pan-European response to the euro crisis. The growth of private international financial institutions since the 1970s has seriously curtailed the ability of national governments to exercise democratic control over economic policy. This was vividly demonstrated early in the 1980s, when capital flight forced the French government to abandon its programme of pro ...