The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
With the debt clock ticking, Greece is fast running out of money. The country has ordered all state bodies to place their cash reserves in the nation’s central bank, the Bank of Greece, as it struggles to stay afloat. Greece is supposed to receive the last installment of its bailout funds from European creditors, but the country’s new leftist, anti-austerity Syriza party has expressed concerns about its terms. The creditors are reportedly pressuring the country to restructure...
Frances Coppola -
The Greek deal on Friday achieved two things.
Firstly, it confused everybody. Not much seemed to have changed since the angry meetings of the beginning of the week, and yet all the protagonists seemed to emerge happy.
Secondly, it allowed everyone to preserve their previous opinions. People who thought that Germany should win, thought it had; people who thought that Greece should win, thought it had. People who wanted Greece to stay in the Euro, thought it would; while people who wanted...
Greg Palast -
Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that the new party of the Left, Syriza, won Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Greece.
Syriza won on the promise that it will cure Greece of leprosy.
Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony. That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.
The problem is, austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness. The...
Not since the 1930's has a far left party been in power in a European democracy. Comedian, author, activist, and presenter of The Trews, Russell Brand contends that Syriza's win at the polls in Greece this week is a victory for compassion and a strong rejection of the values of corporatism. Brand says that he finds it exciting that an anti-capitalist party is in power in Greece. “The reason I am excited about this is because Syriza are approaching capitalism from a completely...
Speaking about the historic victory of Greece’s anti-austerity party, Syriza, Leo Panitch, distinguished research professor at York University in Toronto says Syriza is a party of modern class struggle, in which not only the working class in the old sense, but more dynamically the new working class made up of knowledge workers, women and immigrants, are represented. Syriza is a party that embedded itself in social movements in the last decade, so it's a very different beast. Panitch...
Alexander O'Riordan -
This week Greece elected into power the left-wing political party, Syriza, headed by Alexis Tsipras, who led the party to victory on an anti-austerity ticket, thus rattling financial markets by raising the spectre of a Greek exit from the Eurozone and snubbing the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund troika of lenders to Greece. As it turns out, I happen to be in Brussels this week, the city where the EU has its headquarters. The word on the...
