Fail to understand what’s going on in Greece right now means missing a complete view of the Europe (and the world) we live in. Coming out two years after Debtocracy, this documentary goes beyond Greece showing the process of investment, debt formation and savage privatisation from a global perspective. And Catastroika analyses how we have come to a neoliberal society and where responsibilities lie, not forg ...

Tuesday, May 22nd saw the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Between 250,000 and 350,000 youth and workers came out onto the streets of Montreal and openly defied the emergency law that requires police approval of protest routes eight hours in advance. A widely publicized “official route” was broken; the crowd turned away, following an unannounced path. The crowd was enormous, and easily ...

Solidarity actions are organised across Europe asking the Irish to vote NO for all Europeans in their referendum on the austerity treaty.   Ireland stands as the only country of the 25 signatories to the EU fiscal treaty that will subject the treaty to a referendum. On 31 May, Irish citizens will have the chance to determine their future--to say NO to permanent austerity through a rejection of the treaty. F ...

A protest camp set up by refugees facing deportation to countries such as Iraq and Somalia has swelled to more than 300 members. Immigration minister Gerd Leers has warned that the situation in Ter Apel cannot be sustained long-term. The camp outside the detention centre in Ter Apel, in the northern province of Groningen, is mainly populated by Iraqis who have been ordered to return to their homeland becaus ...

It's the inescapable question: would Greece now be better off outside the eurozone than inside? There are powerful and plausible arguments both ways. Those who answer in the negative point out that Athens is still, despite years of massive cuts, spending more than it takes in tax revenues. This means that if the country were to default on its debts and leave the eurozone tomorrow, it would have to impose br ...

The threat of a Greek exit The escalating Greek crisis leaves Ireland and Portugal, in particular, ever more vulnerable   THE deep uncertainty over what will happen next in Greece unnerved financial markets. On May 7th the euro touched its lowest value against the dollar since January while in Athens the stockmarket fell by 7% and bank stocks by 13%. Greek bonds also took a hit, with the yield on the t ...

In order to affirm its loyalty to Europe, the Irish political elite has decided that it is best not to pay too much attention to European reality. "Austerity" may be, as Joseph Stiglitz argued recently, "Europe's man-made disaster", yet the coalition government of Fine Gael and Labour has gambled on positioning Ireland as the poster child for Frankfurt and Berlin's extended experiment in disaster denial. Th ...

The main message of the elections of May 6 is the denouncement of the austerity measures and their main supporters. The parties of the previous governmental coalition PASOK (socialists) and Nea Dimokratia (conservatives) that support the memoranda and the harsh austerity policies suffered huge losses. In particular, they lost about 3.000.000 votes and received together 32% of the total votes. This is a dram ...

Hey you nimble dreamers, occupiers, believers, Last May 15, a hundred thousand indignados in Spain seized the squares across their nation, held people’s assemblies and catalyzed a global tactical shift that birthed Occupy Wall Street four months later. Our movement outflanked governments everywhere with a thousand encampments in large part because no one was prepared for Occupy’s magic combination of Spain’ ...

One year ago in Spain, resignation was transformed into indignation and we took to the streets when nobody expected it. The message was clear, "We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers". The unprecedented success of a democratic demonstration without any support from political parties, unions and the media inspired a group of brave people to sit at a square in the center of Madrid to decide ...