A new blatant intervention of the European Commission was triggered by the decision of the third Court of Appeal of Athens on August 1st, on the hearing of the former President of ELSTAT (Hellenic Statistical Authority), Andreas Georgiou, for repeated breach of duty. By Leonidas Vatikiotis   The provocative intervention of the European Commission (indication of their great discomfort over the decision ...

(scroll naar beneden voor Nederlands) Debt increased, public assets sold. The Greek and European elites make profits. In January 2017 the coalition government of SYRIZA and ANEL will be two years in power. During this time, in the Dutch media there has been an almost total silence about Greece, interrupted only by short references to the ongoing negotiations for the disbursement of the loan tranches. Silenc ...

Dijsselbloem, treed af als voorzitter van de Eurogroep! Door Dimitris Pavlopoulos, Arbeidssocioloog VU (scroll down for English) Hoe Dijsselbloem de Griekse economie ondermijnt Op 5 juli, de dag van het referendum in Griekenland, heeft de voorzitter van de Eurogroep en PvdA prominent, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, een brief gestuurd aan de leden van zijn partij. Naar mijn mening bevat de brief van dhr. Dijsselbloem ...

NO to austerity! YES to democracy! (scroll down for Greek) On July 5th, people in Greece are called to decide whether to agree or not with the inhuman austerity policies imposed by the Troika. Violating any written and unwritten rule of democracy, EU leaders such as Merkel, Juncker and Dijsselbloem blackmail the Greek people that by voting ΝΟ, they will face an unprecedented disaster. With this letter, we c ...

On the 5th of July the Greek citizens are invited to participate in a referendum in order to decide whether they accept Troika's proposal of new devastating cuts in return for a new debt funding package. In particular, the Troika demands a dramatic cut in pensions, an increase in indirect taxes and the total liberalization of the labour market. It is no surprise that since the announcement of the referendum ...

On Wednesday, February 11th, the negotiations between the Greek government and the Eurogroup began. The Greek government entered the negotiations by asserting a part of Greek people's demands who protested on the streets for years. They essentially ask for what goes without saying: the handling of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Greece. Such a handling can only be achieved by stopping the disastrous poli ...

We the people of Dam Square, we demand - the write off of the debt - the end of the austerity policies in Greece and in the Netherlands. We fight - so that we don't allow the banks to lead our lives - for the right of the people to make their own destiny. Venceremos ...

Putin’s muscle-flexing shows the role of states in matters of war and peace, writes Mark Mazower Is the state making a comeback? It can certainly look like it. Old-fashioned interstate conflicts are roiling the China Sea and Russia’s western borders. Inter-governmental meetings such as the last Apec conference and the Group of 20 leading economies in Sydney took on an unwonted urgency. More positively, it i ...

"The Depression Era project takes us past the age of happy endings. It navigates, with open-ended innocence, a world of deepening humanitarian crisis, ruin landscapes, insecurity, cracked democracy and an everyday culture of mediated hopelessness. A collective storytelling experiment emerges, connecting significant instants and documenting untold stories in a mosaic of images and texts. The Depression Era p ...

The Dutch media, the EU officials and the Greek government cheer about a supposed success of austerity policies in Greece. They present that after 4 harsh years, the economy is going back in track and that the state is now functional to support the people. Similar stories flood occasionally the media on other austerity-hit countries such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland. In the Netherlands, similar austerity ...