A new stage in the attacks on the European working class

[Steven Gaal]

Ten French employees of telecoms giant Orange have committed suicide so far this year for reasons 'explicitly related' to their jobs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584300/Ten-French-employees-telecoms-giant-Orange-committed-suicide-far-year-reasons-explicitly-related-jobs.htm

• Ten people at French telecoms firm commit suicide in three months
• Report says all of the deaths were ‘explicitly related to work’ at Orange
• Staff have complained about 'bullying culture' at Orange France

Ten people working for one of Europe's largest telecom firms in France have committed suicide in the past three months for reasons ‘explicitly related’ to their jobs, it emerged today.

Orange France, a company also present in the UK, is notorious for its tough approach to customer services as well as their employees.

Staff working in call centres have previously complained about a 'bullying culture' and the firm, including having to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

[Steven Gaal]

UK continues mass experiment in human despair

http://rt.com/op-edge/britain-public-spending-budget-005/

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has confirmed that the Tory-led government's policies to cut public spending are set to continue, but the food banks don't lie.

Prior to delivering his 2014 budget to the country via the chancellor’s annual budget speech to parliament earlier this week, Osborne waited patiently while the prime minister and the leader of the opposition entered into the ritual pre-budget speech exchange.

Tributes were paid by both men to former Labour MP and government minister, Tony Benn. Benn, it should be noted, was the most hated man in Britain at one time, reviled by the Tories, the British establishment, and the leadership of his own party. The tributes that have been paid to him in response to his recent death would suggest that the political class in Britain is either suffering collective memory loss or is riddled with rank hypocrisy.

This pre-budget speech exchange then moved onto recent events in Crimea. Ed Miliband assured the prime minister that he will have Labour’s support for the toughest possible action against Russia over the decision by the Crimean people to secede from Ukraine and apply to join the Russian Federation, asking Cameron if he favors suspending Russia from the G8. The prime minister assured the Labour leader and the House that he will discuss it with Britain’s allies, but that they should consider banning Russia from the G8 permanently as punishment for its role in the Crimean events.

The House cheered its approval and you knew by now that you were bearing witness to a political class in Britain that exists in a parallel universe.

Next up was Chancellor George Osborne to outline the government’s budget for 2014-15. It only took him a couple of minutes to confirm that the mass experiment in human despair which the Tory-led coalition government describes as an economic policy is set to continue.

Osborne began his speech with the boast that “If you are a maker, a doer or a saver, this is a budget for you.” He then went on to regale the House with various statistics to support the government’s assertion that Britain’s economic recovery is headed in the right direction as a result of the austerity measures they have implemented since coming to office in 2010. The chancellor then confirmed that cuts to public spending will continue.

Food banks don’t lie. Their proliferation over the term of the current government confirmation that Britain in 2014 is a nation in which poverty, destitution, and the inevitable despair which follows on from those maladies is worse than at any time since the Second World War.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the social spectrum, recent figures released by the charity Oxfam reveal that the five richest families in Britain share more wealth between them than the poorest 20 percent of the population – around 12.6 million people.

Never mind taking a penny off a pint of beer, as the chancellor announced in his budget speech, the sheer extent of inequality in Britain in the 21st century is a travesty, the fruits of three decades of neoliberal orthodoxy that shows no sign of abating even in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.

The response of the government – whose front bench consists predominately of millionaires educated at Eton and other elite schools in England – to the recession has been to wage an all-out assault against the poor, especially the unemployed, who have seen savage cuts to their benefits in addition to a tightening of the conditions attached to their provision.

In a classic example of divide et impera – divide and rule – the government has succeeded in turning the low waged against the unwaged, the able bodied against the disabled, and everybody against immigrants. Meanwhile, the City of London has felt no pain and continues to reward itself with outlandish bonuses, despite its responsibility for the financial crash which caused the economic crisis, a consequence of the greed and recklessness that has and continues to underpin its drive for short term profit at the expense of long term stability and sustainability.

The chancellor’s announcement that growth is expected to outperform previous expectations – moving from 2.4 percent to 2.7 percent - tells us little apart from the fact that international demand for high-end London properties remains buoyant and that the City of London remains one of the world’s premier financial hubs, attractive to investors seeking a regulation and tax-friendly environment in which to do business.

The housing crisis that has bedeviled the country for decades, and which successive governments have failed to tackle, has led to an ever-burgeoning housing benefit bill as private landlords have cashed in at taxpayers’ expense. Placing a cap on housing benefit rather than on the amount of rent landlords can charge tells us whose side the present government is on.

One of the main planks of this government’s economic strategy has been to keep interest rates down, benefitting borrowers, especially homeowners with mortgage repayments constituting the bulk of their monthly outgoings. Suffering in the process has been the nation’s savers and those dependent on the value of investments, such as pensioners. Both the aforementioned demographics are more likely to be Tory voters, which is why they have been rewarded by Osborne with measures designed to increase the threshold at which pensions contributions are taxed and make it easier for savers to move money around without being penalized.

Lost in this direction of travel in favor of the nation’s savers is that the British economy is still laboring due to a lack of spending. What the nation requires are measures designed to put money in people’s pockets, necessitating more government investment in order to offset the lack of investment on the part of the private sector, which continues to sit on a giant cash surplus. Back in January the government’s own Office for National Statistics (ONS) put the amount of said surplus at 334 billion pounds. This is an investment strike by any other name, which the government is responding to with measure after measure – tax cuts, tax breaks, subsidies, below-inflation pay rises across the public sector, thereby acting as a brake on pay in the private sector - designed to bribe them to end it.

Ultimately, the chancellor’s 2014 budget merely confirms that Britain is a country where socialism for the rich is being paid for with austerity for the poor.

Karl Marx, lying in his grave at London’s Highgate Cemetery, could never have seen that one coming.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

‘Fiscal bomb’: Around 45% of UK graduates cannot pay back student loans

http://www.blacklistednews.com/%E2%80%98Fiscal_bomb%E2%80%99%3A_Around_45%25_of_UK_graduates_cannot_pay_back_student_loans/33943/0/38/38/Y/M.html

[Steven Gaal]

Spanish 'Anti-Austerity' Protesters "Sick Of This System They Call Democracy"

"I'm here to fight for my children's future," exclaims one father as Spaniards rallied in Madrid against poverty and EU-imposed austerity. As Reuters reports, the largely peaceful protest later marred by violent clashes in which police fired rubber bullets. The so-called "Dignity Marches" brought hundreds of thousands to the capital with banners making it clear what their feelings about record 26% unemployment were - "Bread, jobs and housing for everyone" and "Corruption and robbery, Spain's trademark." One protester summed up the people's views of the government, "I'm sick of this system they call democracy... I want things to change."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-23/spanish-anti-austerity-protesters-sick-system-they-call-democracy LINK

[John Dolva]

"I'm sick of this system they call democracy... I want things to change."

That's an important point in political consciousness. It is at that point it is important to not be swayed by fascism which is fundamentally anti democratic. I'm sure that most of the poor working class activists in spain is sufficiently class conscious and politically educated to be aware of that but given the fundamental destructiveness of fascism and its appeal at these moments to minority sectors (lumpen) plus the point at which sectors of capital recognise the value to them of chaos let alone having anti progressive elements dominating dialogue and therefore back these groupings it is important to understand such a seemingly anti-democracy sentiment as presented by the media who also fundamentally support the system that cause these un-rests and not group far left and far right together as a threat to democracy but rather recognise the fundamental PRO democracy underpinning of socialism that calls for an inclusive grass roots democracy that demands and gets action by democratically elected officials on a day by day basis rather than the once every few years glimpse at an opportunity to guide proceedings. I think it is this that people are sick of. They demand a government of, by and for the people, not for corporations. For good, not for profit. Ethics.

[Steven Gaal]

"I'm sick of this system they call democracy..." above Spanish citizen quote. + IF its false bad choice vs false bad choice ,I AGREE !! (Gaal)+

Edward Snowden and Europe’s pseudo-left

15 February 2014 wsws.org

The European Parliament this week killed an amendment calling for National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden to be granted asylum in Europe and opposing his “prosecution, extradition or rendition by third parties.” The action underscores that there is no constituency within the ruling elite internationally that defends democratic rights.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee approved a 60-page draft report on mass surveillance from which Snowden’s name had been excised. But it was only due to the heroic efforts of Snowden that the world became aware of the mass spying operations against hundreds of millions of people in Europe, the United States and the rest of the world being conducted by the NSA, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the secret services of other major powers.

The report was commissioned last year amid a wave of hypocritical denunciations of the US by European governments over the revelations leaked by Snowden. The sole concern of the European political establishment was not the dire implications for democratic rights posed by mass state surveillance, but the fact that the US was seeking political and commercial advantage, which impinged on the economic and geo-political interests of the major European powers.

The European governments are absolutely at one with the maintenance of a vast surveillance operation directed at monitoring every activity of people the world over, including the more than 700 million Europeans.

The draft report to the European Parliament by British Labourite Claude Moraes does not call for an end to state surveillance, only its “reform”. It is “vital that transatlantic cooperation in counter-terrorism continues,” the draft asserts, adding that the European Parliament “is ready actively to engage in a dialogue with US counterparts.”

In short, the European Union and its constituent governments want access to the information gathered by the US along with some sort of assurance that the NSA will observe a measure of political decorum when it comes to spying on such figures as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

What is more, Snowden has revealed that France and Germany have similar systems of mass surveillance, which differ from Britain’s GCHQ spying network only in the degree to which they have access to information gathered by the NSA. Britain, as part of the “Five Eyes” (US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), has special access. Germany and France want a similar arrangement to supplement their own surveillance operations.

The US has used every diplomatic and political means in its arsenal to deny Snowden his democratic rights, insisting that any European Parliament report contain no criticism of US spying. Last year, US Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat from Connecticut), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, pointed out in Brussels that the US surveillance was carried out “largely in coordination with your countries’ intelligence services.”

Events have also refuted the claims of the various parties of the European United Left-Nordic Green Left within the European Parliament to be opponents of state spying and defenders of Snowden and other whistle-blowers. The group encompasses Stalinist, former social democratic and pseudo-left formations including Die Linke (Left Party) of Germany, the Left Party of Jean Luc Melenchon and the French Communist Party, Syriza of Greece, the Spanish Communist Party-led Izquierda Unida (United Left), and Communist Refoundation of Italy.

The president of the group is Gabi Zimmer of Die Linke. In a press release, Zimmer said the group “welcome the adoption of this [European Parliament] report” because it was “in effect admitting that this spying and surveillance actually took place, instead of just being suspected.”

The “down side,” she continued, was that “there was no real discussion about the abuse of anti-terrorism laws based on false assumptions, nothing about offering asylum to Snowden, no demand to put an end to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and no real revision of the overall security architecture today, with the blurring of lines between internal and external security, police and intelligence.”

Here, the victimization of Snowden, including death threats from US intelligence officials, is little more than an afterthought or bargaining chip to be traded in return for empty phrases about “reforming” totalitarian spying operations.

In a similar vein, last October, after Snowden’s revelations that European leaders, including Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, had been spied on by the US, the vice president of the more narrow Party of the European Left group, Maite Mola of the Communist Party of Spain, spoke up to defend the interests of the European elite. She said, “It is time that Europe, with a single, clear and forceful voice, asks for responsibilities to the United States for spying upon millions of European citizens and the EU heads of states and presidents. It’s also time to rethink commercial, military, and police treaties, including NATO, with a country that has spied on 35 world leaders.”

Zimmer and Mola speak as bourgeois politicians, for whom Snowden’s fate is of no consequence.

The caveats placed on welcoming the EU report merely echo the concerns of sections of Europe’s ruling elite—over the impact of the TTIP on European industry and support for a more orderly approach to domestic and overseas surveillance and policing operations. In this way, the pseudo-left organizations provide political cover for the openly right-wing parties, such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Socialist Party of France and Britain’s Labour Party, whose votes enabled the defeat of the amendment calling for Snowden’s rights to be protected.

The complicity of the pseudo-left in Snowden’s persecution dovetails with their hostility to any campaign in defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Some of the most insidious attacks on Assange have come from these organizations, which backed his extradition to Sweden on the basis of trumped-up allegations of rape.

The British Socialist Workers Party published an August 2012 article headlined “Julian Assange must face rape charges,” knowing full well that no charges had actually been laid against Assange and that extradition to Sweden would only be a stepping stone to transfer to the United States to face charges of espionage for having exposed American war crimes.

The pseudo-left groups are apologists for reaction and defenders of the interests of European imperialism. Over a protracted period, they have been incorporated into the structures of the capitalist state, to which they have innumerable political and personal connections. Christine Buchholz, a leading member of Die Linke and the Marx 21 group, represents the Left Party in the defence committee of the German parliament.

The working class is the only social and political force that can take forward a defence of democratic rights.

The threats against the life of Snowden by figures in the US political and intelligence establishment and ongoing attempts to railroad Assange into prison must be met with mass opposition. This requires a movement that links the defence of democratic rights with socialist opposition to the capitalist system, which is giving rise to police state dictatorship as it destroys the conditions of life for billions of people around the world.

Robert Stevens

Edited March 26, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

LAST 24 hours of Austerity News......no matter how bad it is, Austerity measures dont end ...

1000s hold anti-austerity demo in Athens

Press TV‎ - 22 hours ago

Lawmakers are expected to approve the bill required by the country's troika of international lenders -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank ...

French government quits after poll loss

Morning Star Online‎ - 3 hours ago

Left-wing political leaders blamed Mr Hollande's austerity for the devastating election ... his submission to European austerity policies have produced a disaster.

François Hollande picks a government of 'combat' after disaster at ... Telegraph.co.uk
A bold move The Economist (blog)
Sacré Bleu! Hollande Humiliated Fox Business
GlobalPost - Wall Street Journal

Political apathy: the trademark of youths in advanced European ...

Open Democracy‎ - 1 hour ago

At the same time, enthusiasm for European construction has hit rock bottom. ... Groups of young Europeans mobilising against austerity in various countries are ...

Nigel Farage's relationship with Russian media comes under scrutiny

The Guardian‎ - 15 minutes ago

Chris Bryant, the former Labour Europe minister, said: "One of the most ... conducted against a backdrop of footage of police suppressing anti-austerity riots.

Observers worry that the success of France's far-right National Front ...

Deutsche Welle‎ - 2 hours ago

Take a moment to think about it: in France, one of the EU founding states, here is a ... Front: globalization, the immigrants, "German" austerity policies in Europe.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Urging ‘New Path Forward,’ Tens of Thousands Demand End to EU Austerity

Protest in Brussels challenges policies that have “caused a mounting social and economic crisis”

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/urging-new-path-forward-tens-thousands-demand-end-eu-austerity/

Edited April 5, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Demonstrations around Britain on anniversary of bedroom tax

http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/37869/Demonstrations+around+Britain+on+anniversary+of+bedroom+tax

[Steven Gaal]

Has the Working Class Really Accepted Austerity?

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/working-class-really-accepted-austerity/

=========================================================

Suren Moodliar
RINF Alternative News

David Graeber answers the provocative title question affirmatively in a recent Guardian op-ed, “Caring too much. That’s the curse of the working classes” (3/26/2014). The result of this excessive caring is “that the basic logic of austerity has been accepted by almost everyone.” So while others may consider solidarity to be a virtue, Graeber believes that it is “the rope from which [the working] class is currently suspended.” This marks something of a shift from his position on caring articulated in his magisterial historical survey, Debt: the First 5,000 Years, where he observes that the “non-industrious poor spent [time] with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, [thereby] probably improving the world more than we acknowledge.”

Where “caring” prefigures the new society in Debt, it seems to anchor us to an austere present in the Guardian op-ed. If Debt was about the strange alchemy transmuting love into debt, this op-ed is about how caring becomes austerity – a Gordian knot if ever there was one! Fortunately, his austerity claims fail on several levels; the op-ed’s premise, that the working class accepts austerity is a shaky, largely false one. Further, even if we accept that the working class cares, it does not mean that caring predisposes one to austerity.

Does the working class accept austerity?

It is easy to make this a fuzzy kind of question, after all, what is “acceptance” and how do you measure it? Nonetheless, pretty uncontroversial polling data show that working people are concerned about budget deficits. But the same polling routinely shows that they support policies that run contrary to the logic of austerity; today about 73% of the US public support raising the minimum wage. Interestingly, this has been pretty consistent over the decades. Back in 1995, Bill Clinton had 79% support for hiking the minimum wage and for defending “entitlements”. Even where the public accepts the need for budget cuts, they are increasingly focused on reducing the spending that supports the powerful (rejecting tax cuts for the rich, weapons spending, etc.). Evidence for similar sentiments can be marshalled from around the world. The French, for example, originally elected François Hollande based on his anti-austerity platform. On its abandonment, the same voters either stayed home or turned to the right. To be sure there are a number of well-worn critiques of polling straight out of freshman sociology textbooks. However the consistency of these kinds of results—across different political contexts, countries and generations—and election outcomes are hard to refute. The opinions surfaced exist in spite of overwhelming media coverage and propaganda designed to produce just the opposite results. This speaks to the resilience of working class solidarity and more to a rejection of austerity – even after decades of withering assaults.

Maybe Graeber has higher expectations for what constitutes rejection. He echoes the question of the wealthy: “What I can’t understand is, why people aren’t rioting in the streets?” If this is the question, the reply is fairly straightforward: “Do not for one moment mistake the current absence of riots for acceptance of your order.” The absence of open revolt is not the same as acceptance. Maybe working people are demanding something more from their organic intellectuals, anarchist agitators, union bureaucrats and wannabe vanguards in order that they may yet act upon their rejection of austerity. Certainly, the Graeber of Debt seems to think that effort needs to be made to imagine alternatives, “We cling to what exists because we can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.” (Debt, page 382)

Caring Work = Caring Class?

Let’s think about Graeber’s claim that working people are more caring because the majority of them do caring work. “Human beings are projects of mutual creation,” Graeber writes, “Most of the work we do is on each other.” As a result, workers “care more about their friends, families and communities. In aggregate, at least, they’re just fundamentally nicer.” Okay, it’s a bit condescending. But is it true that because we work with/on other people, we are more caring?

This is a seductive hypothesis. However, it seems to ignore the actual work process and how people encounter one another in their highly constrained capitalist work places. At a micro-sociological level, it is not clear that the interaction between a service worker and their client is a human-to-human interaction – instead it involves two highly alienated forms interacting – e.g. a fast-food worker processing a long line of lunch time orders. Here the customer appears before the worker for a few seconds to confirm an order and make payment – even this may be automated so as to radically reduce any human, “mutually creating” interaction between the two.

Over the decades, a great deal of sociological work suggesting that working with/on people may be just as alienating as working on objects – calling into question Graeber’s hypothesis about caring work. Arlie Hochschild (The Managed Heart: The Commercialisation of Human Feeling [2012, 1983]) drew on C. Wright Mills’ insight from White Collar, that salespeople sell their personalities. Hochschild took this insight further to examine the “the active emotional labor involved in the selling.” Her findings include the observation that emotional labor involves hiding and suppressing “inappropriate” emotions. As a result, Hochschild came to recognize that, “Beneath the difference between physical and emotional labor there lies a similarity in the possible cost of doing the work: the worker can become estranged or alienated from an aspect of self-either the body or the margins of the soul-that is used to do the work.”

In this sense, it is hard to see why the labor should make us more caring. Indeed the opposite may be true as the emotional worker experiences dissonance between the work demands and their own reactions or underlying feelings. By the end of her book, we realize that emotional labor has its costs, including “numbness,” decreased empathy and its own sense of grievance. Intervening research has revealed that the work is complex and its operation across different work situations and managerial regimes suggests many different kinds of outcomes. Just as hard physical work may build muscles, it may also be debilitating. So too may be the case for emotional labor.

A recent doctoral thesis suggests that emotional labor may provide its own rewards in some circumstances. In another work, Emotional Labor: Putting the Service in Public Service, authors Mary E. Guy, Meredith A. Newman, Sharon H. Mastracci, quote one worker, “On a lot of days there are sometimes when you when you feel like you might want to explode… but then what comes to mind is that I am a professional…” Does this emotional restraint lead to acceptance austerity? Perhaps, but Graeber’s assertion does not find ready support in the literature.

Of course, Hochschild (in another essay) also deepened our understanding about emotional labor and also about the gender and transnational dimensions to this labor process: “Just as the market value of primary produce keeps the Third World low in the community of nations, so the low market value of care keeps the status of women who do it—and ultimately, all women—low.” She went onto analyze the importation of “pre-capitalist” love (from the Global South) into post-modern caring situations in the United States. All of this suggests the complex character of emotional labor… and also provides for other questions to be asked: for example, immigrant and people-of-color workers in the caring and hospitality industries, including home care workers, have been among the most militant of workers and swelled the ranks of the service workers’ unions in the United States (see for example, the actions by home care workers). Similarly, nurses and teachers whose work, above all else, is emotional labor, have been particularly prominent in labor challenges to austerity and cutbacks across the United States. So much for caring work generating acceptance of austerity!

Graeber teases out further inferences from his caring hypothesis. In the modest space offered by the op-ed medium, he suggests that we can understand nationalism and anti-immigrant politics (“manufactured abstractions”) as a redirection of this caring impulse. These too can be subject to sociological interrogation and the results will be ambiguous at best. For example, as David Roediger long ago observed in Wages of Whiteness, hegemonic political identities, German-Americaness in his case, are defined less by positive caring for an imagined German heritage and more by anti-black sentiments. Rather than caring, these identities seem to express aggression!

Although we have shown (1) that evidence for workers’ support for austerity is hardly unambiguous and (2) that emotional labor does not necessarily lead to greater caring, there is a more fundamental problem with the inferences Graeber draws from emotional labor. As a serious thinker, he recognizes this. If, as Graeber says, caring work has always existed, why didn’t it produce the same hypothesized demobilizing results in the past? At the end of the essay, Graeber gives us the answer by introducing another argument. Here he concedes that “we are seeing the effects of a relentless war against the very idea of working-class politics or working-class community…” This is too true. But then this observation is quite a different one from his thesis that we care too much; its subject matter is found in political institutions while the caring work thesis emerges from a potted industrial psychology. The lesson? Let’s get beyond attributing political outcomes (consent to austerity) to alleged psychological predispositions (caring) and start the hard work of experimenting with and developing organizational forms equal to the tasks of the day.

Suren Moodliar serves as Director of Global Policy Programs on the Democracy Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet. He is also a coordinator of encuentro5 and Mass. Global Action.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[John Dolva]

imo That is the kind of contribution to the discussion that helps to understand the dynamics at play. Many articles recently similarly recognise the destructive nature of free market economics on humans and human relations. In the end every human is driven to become an economic unit engaged in production of fiat profit and assumes the role of the debt slave or mediator of credit flow. Empathy seems to be a casualty. I'm not surprised at the number of people voicing concern about the increasing convergence of psychopathy and rewarded market leadership modus.

_________________

here's an op ed of a trip through parts of Ukraine.

.

Voices of Ukraine: 'Kiev, people are not cattle!'

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries.

Get short URL

Published time: April 11, 2014 14:00

Tags

Politics, Protest, Russia, Security, Ukraine

I doubt where the official numbers come from, those that say that Ukraine is evenly divided between those who support the West, and those who feel their identity is closely linked with Russia.

Maybe this might be the case in western Ukraine, in Lvov, or even in the capital, Kiev. But western Ukraine has only a few key cities. The majority of people in this country of around 44 million are concentrated in the south, east and southeast, around the enormous industrial and mining centers of Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Krivoi Rog.

There is Odessa in the south, and Kharkov, “the second capital,” in the east. And people in all those parts of the country mainly speak Russian. And they see, what has recently happened in Kiev as an unceremonious coup, orchestrated and supported by the West.

Collapse

The car is negotiating a bumpy four-lane highway between Kiev and Odessa. There are three of us on board – my translator, Dmitry from the Liva.com site, a driver and me. Having left Kiev in the morning, we are literally flying at 160 kilometers an hour toward Odessa.

Earlier, the driver had told me: “We either keep to the speed limit, or just keep a stack of 100 hryvna notes (about $9), so we can bribe our way if the police stop us.”

The wide fields of Ukraine, formerly known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, look depressingly unkempt. Some are burned.

“What are they growing here?” I ask.

Nobody knows, but both of my friends agree that almost everything in Ukraine is now collapsing, after the decomposition of the USSR, and this includes both industry and agriculture. The roads are not an exception, either.

“They only built facades during the last decades,” explains Dmitry. “The core, the essence had been constructed in the Soviet era. And now everything is crumbling.”

Before reaching Odessa we leave the highway and drive northeast, toward Moldova and its small separatist enclave, called Transdnistria.

There, the river Kuchurgan separates the Ukrainian town of Kuchurgan and the Transnistrian city of Pervomaisc.

I see no Russian tanks at Pervomaisc, no artillery. There is absolutely no military movement whatsoever, despite the countless Western mass media reports testifying (in abstract terms) to the contrary.

I cross the bridge on foot and ask the Transnistrian border guard whether he has recently seen any foreign correspondents arriving from the United States or the European Union, attempting to cross the border and verify the facts. He gives me a bewildered look.

I watch beautiful white birds resting on the surface of the river, and then I return to Ukraine.

There, two ladies who run the ‘Camelot Bar’ served us the most delicious Russo/Ukrainian feast of an enormous borshch soup and pelmeni.

A Russian television station blasts away, and the two women cannot stop talking; they are frank, proud, and fearless. I turn on my film camera, but they don’t mind.

“Look what is happening in Kiev,” exclaims Alexandra Tsyganskaya, the owner of the restaurant. “The US and the West were planning this; preparing this, for months, perhaps years! Now people in Ukraine are so scared, most of them are only whispering. They are petrified. There is such tension everywhere, that all it would take is to light a match and everything will explode.”

Her friend, Evgenia Chernova, agrees: “In Odessa, Russian-speaking people get arrested, and they are taken all the way to Kiev. The same is happening in Kharkov, in Donetsk, and elsewhere. They call it freedom of speech! All Russian television channels are banned. What you see here is broadcasted from across the border. They treat people like cattle. But our people are not used to this: they will rebel, they will resist! And if they push them to the edge, it will be terrible!”

Both women definitely agree on one thing: “We say, ‘Don’t provoke Russia!’ It is a great nation, our historical ally. It has been helping us for decades.”

And the same words in Odessa are even written on huge banners: “Kiev, people are not cattle!”

Odessa, that architectural jewel, an enormous southern port, is now relatively quiet, but tense. I speak to the manager of the historic and magnificently restored Hotel Bristol, but she is very careful in choosing her words. I mention Western involvement in the coup, or in the ‘revolution’ as many in Kiev and in the West call it, but she simply nods, neutrally.

The city is subdued, as well as those famous Potemkin Steps: Renowned for one of the most memorable scenes in world cinema that of, the silent film ‘Battleship Potemkin’ directed in 1925 by Sergey Eisenstein.

As Helen Grace once wrote: “The Odessa steps massacre in the film condenses the suppression that actually occurred in the city into one dramatized incident, and this remains one of the most powerful images of political violence ever realized.”

One only hopes that Odessa never again falls victim to unbridled political cruelty, such as was visited on the people by the feudal, oppressive right-wing Tsarist regime, at the beginning of the 20th century!

Demographic disaster

A babushka looks exhausted and subdued. She is slowly digging into dark earth, all alone, clearly abandoned.

I spotted some dilapidated houses in the village that we had passed just a few minutes earlier, and I asked the driver to make a U-turn, but he clearly did not see any urgency and continued to drive on: “You will see many villages like this,” he explained. Dmitry confirmed: “Such villages are all over Ukraine. There are thousands of them; literally, you see them whenever you leave the main roads.”

This one, this village, is called Efremovka, and the name of the grandmother is Lyubov Mikhailovna.

We are somewhere between the cities of Nikolayev and Krivoi Rog.

All around us are the ruins of agricultural estates, of small factories, and houses that used to belong to farmers. Wires are missing from electric poles, and everything appears to be static, like in a horror science-fiction film. Only Lyubov Mikhailovna is digging, stubbornly.

I ask her how she is managing to survive, and she replies that she is not managing at all.

“How could one survive here on only 1,000 hryvnas per month ($80)?” she laments. “We are enduring only on what we grow here: cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes…”

I ask her about the ruins of houses, all around this area, and she nods for a while, and only then begins speaking:

“People abandoned their homes and their villages, because there are no jobs. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the entire Ukraine has been falling apart… People are leaving and they are dying. Young people try to go abroad…. The government is not even supplying us with gas and drinking water, anymore. We have to use the local well, but the water is contaminated by fertilizers – it is not clean…”

“Was it better before?” I ask.

“How can you even ask? During the Soviet Union everything was better, much better! We all had jobs and there were decent salaries, pensions… We had all that we needed,” she answers.

Looking around me, I quickly recall that Ukraine is an absolute demographic disaster: even according to official statistics and censuses, the number of people living in this country fell from 48,457,102 in 2001 to 44,573,205 in 2013. Years after its “independence,” and especially those between 1999 and 2001, are often described as one of the worst demographic crises in modern world history. In 1991 the population of Ukraine was over 51.6 million!

Only those countries that are devastated by brutal civil wars are experiencing similar population decline.

‘What are they fighting for?’

Krivoi Rog, or Kryvyi Rih as it is known in the Ukrainian language, is arguably the most important steel manufacturing city in Eastern Europe, and a large globally important, metallurgical center for what is known as the Kryvbas iron-ore mining region.

Here Krivorozhstal, one of the most important steel factories in the world, saw outrageous corruption scandals during its first wave of privatization. During the second privatization in 2005, the mammoth factory was taken over by the Indian multinational giant, Mittal Steel (which paid $4.81 billion), and was renamed Arcelor Mittal Kryvyi Rih. Since then, production has declined significantly, and thousands of workers were unceremoniously fired.

According to the Arcelor Mittal Factbooks (2007 and 2008), steel production decreased from 8.1 million tons in 2007, to 6.2 million tons in 2008. In 2011, the workforce decreased from 55,000 to 37,000 people, and the management is still hoping that even more dramatic job cuts (down to 15,000) can be negotiated.

By late afternoon, we arrived at the main gate of the factory. Hundreds of people were walking by; most of them looking exhausted, discouraged and unwilling to engage in any conversation.

Some shouted anti-coup slogans, but did not want to give their names or go on the record.

Finally, a group of tough-looking steelworkers stop, and begin to discuss the situation at the factory with us, passionately:

“Do you realize how little we earn here? People at this plant, depending on their rank, bring home only some $180, $260, or at most some $450 a month. Across the border, in Russia, in the city of Chelyabinsk, the salaries are three to four times higher!”

His friend is totally wound up and he screams: “We are ready! We will go! People are reaching the limit!”

It is hard to get any political sense from the group, but it is clear that opinions are divided: while some want more foreign investment, others are demanding immediate nationalization. They have absolutely no disputes with Russia, but some support the coup in Kiev, while others are against it.

It is clear that, more than ideology; these people want some practical improvement in their own lives and in the life of their city.

“All we have heard for the past 20 years is that things will improve,” explains the first steel worker. “But look what is happening in reality. Mittal periodically fails to pay what is due. For instance, I am supposed to get 5,700 hryvnas a month, but I get less than 5,000. And the technology at the plant is old, outdated. The profits that Mittal is making – at least if some of it would stay here, in Ukraine, and go to the building of the roads or improving the water supplies… But they take everything out of the country.”

The next day, in Kharkov, Sergei Kirichuk, leader of the left-wing Borotba (Struggle) movement, told me:

“People all over the world are fighting against the so-called “free market,” but in Ukraine, to bring it here, was the main reason for the ‘revolution.’ It is really hard to believe.”

State of war

The border between Ukraine and Russia, near the town of Zhuravlevka, between Ukrainian Kharkov and the Russian city of Belgorod, is quiet. Good weather, wide fields and an almost flat landscape, guarantee good visibility for several kilometers. On the 28 of March, when Western and Ukrainian mass media were shouting about an enormous Russian military force right at the border, I only saw a few frustrated birds and an apparently unmanned watch tower.

The traffic at the border was light, but it was flowing – and several passenger cars were crossing from the Russian side to Ukraine.

What I saw, however, were several Ukrainian tanks along the M-20/E-105 highway, just a stone’s throw away from the border. There were tanks and armored vehicles, and quite a substantial movement of Ukrainian soldiers.

An old Soviet Zaporozhets car with Ukrainian license plates, carrying an entire family apparently from Russia, stopped right next to one of the tanks. A man, his wife and their two children began shouting something at the soldiers. The family laughed for a while, and then their ancient sedan slowly took off toward Kharkov.

The local press was, however, not as amusing.

“State of War!” shouted the headline in the Kyiv Post. “We lifted up to the sky 100 jet fighters, in order to scare Moscow,” declared the Today newspaper.

Democracy

The reality on the ground differed sharply from the ‘fairytales’, paid for and propagated by Western mass media outlets and by the ‘free Ukrainian press’.

In the east in Kharkov, Soviet banners flew in the wind, next to many Russian flags. Thousands of people gathered in front of the giant statue of Lenin on those windy days of March 28-29.

There were fiery speeches and ovations. The outraged crowd met the proclamations that the Western powers had instigated the “fascist coup” in Kiev, with loud shouts of “Russia, Russia!”

Old women, Communist leaders, and my friend Sergei Kirichuk, the left-wing leader of Borotba, as well as people from international solidarity organizations, made fiery speeches. Apparently, the government in Kiev had already begun to cut the few social benefits that were left, including free medical assistance. Several hospitals were poised to close down soon.

People were ready to fight; to defend themselves against those hated neo-liberal policies, for which (or against which) none of them had been allowed to vote for.

“In Crimea, people voted, overwhelmingly, to return to Russia,” said Aleksey, a student. “But the West calls it unconstitutional and undemocratic. In Ukraine itself, the democratically-elected government has been overthrown and policies that nobody really wants are being pushed down our throats. And… this is called democracy!”

In an apartment of the Borotba movement, a young leader and history student, Irina Drazman, spoke about the way the West has destroyed Ukraine. She reminded me of a Chilean student leader and now an MP – Ms. Camila Vallejo. Irina is only 20, but coherent and as sharp as a razor.

“There is great nostalgia for the Soviet Union,” she says. “If only it could be reshaped and the concept improved, most of the people in Ukraine would be happy to be part of it again.”

And that is exactly what the West is trying to prevent: A powerful and united country, one which can defend the interest of its people.

Standing in front of a police cordon in Kharkov, Aleksandr Oleinik, a Ukrainian political analyst, says: “The essence of what is now happening is based on the doctrine of the United States, which has one major goal: To wipe out from the globe, first the Soviet Union, and then Russia, regardless of its form; whether socialist or capitalist… As is well known, these goals were already defined in the early 1980s, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his report to the US State Department, titled: “Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest.”

Playing Ukrainian game

For the West, what is happening in Ukraine may be a game; a geopolitical game. The same game it is playing in Venezuela, in Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba and China, to name just a few places. Victory would be the total domination of the planet.

Those lives of regular people, of those billions of “peons,” matter nothing.

In Kiev’s Maidan, the main square where the “revolution” or the coup took place, right-wing groupings are hanging around, aimlessly. Some men and women are frustrated. Many even feel that they were fooled.

Thousands were paid to participate in what was thought would bring at least some social justice. But the interim government began taking its dictates, almost immediately: from the United States, from European Union and from the institutions such as IMF and World Bank.

Now thousands of disgruntled ‘revolutionaries’ feel frustrated. Instead of saving the country, they sold out all their ideals, and betrayed their own people. And their own lives went from bad to worse.

The tension is growing and Ukraine is on the edge. There is serious internal drift – inside the right-wing movements, especially after several recent political assassinations. There is growing tension, even confrontation, between conservative, oppressive forces and those progressive ones. There is tension between Russian speakers and those who are insisting on purely the Ukrainian language being used all over the country.

There are political assassinations; there is fear and uncertainty about the future.

There is increasing a negative role being played by the religions, from Protestant to Orthodox.

Nobody knows what will follow the coup. Confusion and frustration, as well as social collapse, may well cause a brutal civil war.

[Steven Gaal]

Tens of thousands in France, Italy protest austerity measures

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By Kumaran Ira WSW.org
14 April 2014

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On Saturday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in France and in Italy, protesting the social-democratic governments’ austerity measures and pro-market labour reforms.

The Paris demonstration. Banner: "No to austerity policies"

The protest in Rome, attended by tens of thousands of people, ended in violence as police attacked protesters. The police used tear gas and baton-charged demonstrators. There were dozens of lighter injuries among police and protesters, and at least six arrests, police said.

In France, the protest was called by the unions and their pseudo-left supporters, the New Anti-capitalist Party and the Left Front, a coalition of the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Left Party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In the rally, Alexis Tsipras, the chairman of the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), marched alongside Pierre Laurent of the PCF, Mélenchon and NPA spokesman Olivier Besancenot. Tsipras is the European Left (EL) candidate for the Presidency for the European Commission in the European elections.

Turnout at the Paris protest was around 25,000 people, according to police estimates, though the PCF claimed 100,000 participated. Several other protests were also called in other French cities, including a protest of 1,600 in Marseille.

The protest in Paris. Banner: "Capitalists cost too much, let's give it back to them an eye for an eye."

In Paris, protesters carried banners criticizing austerity measures being carried out by the Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande. Banners read, “Enough, Hollande,” “If you’re left-wing, you tax the financial sector,” “If you’re left-wing, you help the workers,” or “If you’re left-wing, Europe means people first.”

The relatively low turnout for the rally in Paris, despite deep opposition to the social agenda of the EU and of France’s PS government, reflects deepening popular disillusionment and anger with the reactionary politics of the European pseudo-left. The rally drew largely on the membership and periphery of the pseudo-left parties and had the air of a family festival.

A banner in the Paris protest says, "PS equals pseudo-socialist"

The Left Front and the NPA play a similar role to their counterpart, Syriza, which helped the “troika”—the European Commission, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank—impose devastating austerity measures on the Greek working class. While making tactical criticisms of EU policy, Syriza did everything to block social opposition and tacitly backed the crushing of strikes against austerity. This allowed the “troika” to cut wages by 30 percent or more and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.

As for the PS, after a humiliating defeat in the March municipal election that saw a significant victory for the neo-fascist National Front (FN), it is shifting further to the right, vowing to intensify austerity and making law-and-order appeals to the FN. The government is planning to slash €50 billion in yearly public spending under Hollande’s so-called “Responsibility Pact.”

The sharp turn to the right reflects the disintegration of bourgeois “left” politics in France and Europe as a whole. Workers’ deep social opposition to these reactionary policies finds no expression in the reactionary politics of the protest organisers, the NPA and Left Front, however, which are key allies of the PS and supporters of the EU.

Their empty opposition to Hollande is a political fraud. The NPA and the Left Front supported Hollande against right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy during the 2012 presidential elections, working to promote illusions in the PS. While acknowledging that Hollande would carry out austerity policies, they claimed that the PS could be pressured to adopt left-wing policies. These claims have proven completely bankrupt.

After the rally, the Left Front and the NPA cynically claimed that they would not allow the PS to carry out austerity measures. Besancenot said, “The message is clear, Manuel Valls is starting out with a first protest, and it’s important because this means a new political scenario is opening.”

Mélenchon said, “This is a message sent to the government… There is a left in this country, and it is unacceptable for it to be usurped to carry out a right-wing economic policy.”

Such remarks are a backhanded acknowledgement of the widespread sentiment in the population that there is no political left in France, and that the PS and its allies, including the Left Front and the NPA, are indifferent or hostile to workers’ interests.

The verbal opposition of Mélenchon and Besancenot to the PS offers nothing to workers seeking to fight EU-dictated austerity measures, however. They are mere political shadows of the PS itself. Their aim in calling this protest is to subordinate the working class to the reactionary agenda of the EU and the PS government, blocking a politically independent movement of the working class against the capitalist ruling elite.

The protest in Rome was called against rising housing costs, unemployment and labour market reforms amid a slowdown of the Italian economy. Protesters denounced the social-democratic Democratic Party (PD) government of Matteo Renzi, who is planning to reform labour rules to make it easier for companies to hire and fire employees.

Renzi was brought to power after his predecessor Enrico Letta failed to carry out economic reforms demanded by the European Union. Renzi has pledged that his government will enact economic reforms quickly, slashing public spending.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

^{Cause of Suicide: Austeriy}

New study finds direct link between Greek austerity cuts and increase in male suicides

Sarah Lazare
RINF Alternative News

As governments across the world slash public goods in the name of austerity, a new study finds that such measures in Greece directly correspond with a rise in suicides among males.

Entitled The Impact of Fiscal Austerity on Suicide: On the Empirics of a Modern Greek Tragedy, the study was published in April by University of Portsmouth researchers in the journalSocial Science and Medicine.

The torrent of austerity measures following the 2008 global recession led to an increase in male suicides. According to the findings, between 2009 and 2010, 551 men in Greece took their lives “solely due to fiscal austerity.”

Researchers found that every one percent cut in public spending corresponded with a 0.43 percent increase in suicides among men in Greece.

Men between the ages of 45 and 89 are at the highest risk of austerity-caused suicide, the researchers found.

Sarah writes for Common Dreams.

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/cause-suicide-austerity/

Edited April 21, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

see // http://www.irr.org.uk/news/establishing-a-framework-for-understanding-the-rise-of-fascism/

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Establishing a framework for understanding the rise of fascism

April 24, 2014 — Review

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Written by Liz Fekete

A review of a report on the extent of Golden Dawn’s penetration of the Greek state.

An excellent free downloadable report published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is not only an essential primer for understanding the parliamentary rise of the neo-nazi criminal organisation Golden Dawn (GD), but a much-needed corrective to academic fashions that see the far Right as emblematic of extremist tendencies on the margins of society. Mapping ultra-Right extremism, xenophobia and racism within the Greek state apparatus is written by five of Greece’s most serious academic and legal experts. As its title suggests, the aim of the report is to provide an explanation of why, until moves to criminalise and dismantle it were instigated in September 2013, GD was so successful in penetrating the state apparatus, particularly the police and the military. Its conclusion that GD reflects a convergence of affinities and affiliations at both the periphery and centre of Greek society is one that needs to be absorbed by all those studying and challenging fascism in other European contexts.

The centrality of the state in bolstering GD ideas

Divided into five chapters and running to nearly 100 pages, Mapping ultra-Right extremism is more like a book than a report. It draws on the deep knowledge of its authors and provides a history of the relationship between GD and the police, judiciary, military and church. At first glance, it might seem odd to include a chapter on the Orthodox Church of Greece. But the Greek Constitution states that ‘the prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ’, and priests are public servants paid by the government. This in itself makes the Orthodox Church worthy of consideration as part of the state apparatus. But historically, the Orthodox Church co-operated with fascism and dictatorship and never underwent a political cleansing during the transition to democracy. Today, its anti-Communist ideology, its deep hatred of Islam, its crusading anti-homosexual stance, has led it to bolster neo-nazism by ‘disguising’ its ideology as ‘religiously right’.

Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist rapper murdered by Golden Dawn member Pavlos Roupakias

After the murder of the anti-fascist Pavlos Fyssas on 17 September 2013, the New Democracy/Pasok government moved swiftly to dismantle GD. The myth took hold that the Greek state acted out of disgust at the young left-wing musician’s death. But the authors are sceptical, as the criminal activities of GD – including the murder of at least one Pakistani migrant – were well known prior to this. Could it be that the government moved to save itself?

Anti-democratic tendencies within the state

The chapter on the military by Dimosthenis Papadatos-Anagnostopoulos gives us pause to doubt the government’s self-serving narrative. The day before the murder of Pavlos, the Special Forces Reserve Officers Community announced online its intent to stage a coup d’état on 28 September 2013. It was on that day that the leader of GD, Nikos Michaloliakos MP, and four of its MPs were arrested, and investigations started into claims that key military camps had been used as training sites for GD, with the army’s connivance. Up until this point, the official line was that there were only ‘droplets’ of support for GD in the military and police. Suddenly the Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, who had previously threatened to sue the Guardian when it raised accusations of official tolerance of GD and the police torture of anti-fascists, was leading the hunt for the Nazi murderers.

As the chapter on the police makes clear, there was far, far more than mere ‘droplets’ of support for GD amongst the police and the military. What had taken place within the Hellenic Police was a deep-seated systematic ‘intrusion and infiltration’ by GD. This had first come to public attention in 2001, when an internal police document was leaked showing that the police had used GD, posing as ‘indignant citizens’, to beat up left-wing demonstrators at the annual rally commemorating over twenty students murdered during the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising against the Greek military junta. (There is a long history of the Greek state employing criminal fraternities to act as informants and provocateurs, and to beat up students and Leftists). In fact, the government could only dismantle the neo-nazi party after first purging the police of GD sympathisers. A week after Pavlos Fyssas’ assassination the government announced the resignation of some of the country’s leading police officers, while others were simply replaced or relocated (including the head of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit, the head of the Division of Weapons and Explosives and officers from the rapid support unit, DELTA). As one GD MP stated at the moment of his arrest, ‘They dismantled the whole of the police and the NIS [National Intelligence Service] in order to arrest us.’

Dimitris Christopoulos, who also edited the report, has done a great job in documenting GD’s infiltration of the police, unearthing the wider undemocratic trends in policing behind the current known facts. Christopoulos shows how the authoritarian mentality of the police and their engagement in methods of covert policing and practices such as torture, associated with the two dictatorships, have now resurfaced in response to immigration. For the Border Guard and the Special Guard, recently created, poorly educated and badly trained units whose numbers and powers are constantly growing, immigrants replaced Communists as the greatest threat facing the nation. And another new corps was created, in central Athens: the infamous DELTA squad, made up of police officers who had served in the army special force. Initially formed to crack down on attacks on property by anarchists, it soon gained a reputation for acting with ‘excessive cruelty’ towards left-wing demonstrators, and for attacking migrants. And it was in this ‘poorly educated squad that the ultra-right snake found a suitable environment to lay its eggs’.

The centrality of the judiciary in perpetuating GD

Racial violence is given a more thorough treatment in the chapter by Clio Papapantoleon which focuses on the failures of the judiciary. A number of outrageous judicial decisions are charted, starting with the decision to acquit GD MP Elias Kasidiaris of charges arising from his assaulting and punching two female MPs during a live television show. Judges declared his innocence on the legally water-tight ground that ‘both the defendant and his organisation condemn violence’. The chapter contrasts the courts’ upholding of the blasphemy laws against artists with its failure to use incitement provisions against a number of GD MPs.

Protest by religious groups and Golden Dawn against the performance of Corpus Christi in Athens in 2012

Over several weeks in 2012, the police and prosecution service looked the other way while the Chytirio Theatre in Athens came under siege from rioting ‘religious citizens’, clergymen and GD members who threatened to kill actors performing in the play Corpus Christi, finally beating them up and causing substantial damage to the theatre. In the end, the Athens prosecutor did take decisive action – prosecuting the actors and producers of the play (including the director, choreographer and lightning technicians) for malicious blasphemy and defamation of religion! (Seemingly as an afterthought, one GD MP was singled out for prosecution.) Case after case shows bias within the judiciary, with a lenient approach to GD crimes. One reads this chapter on the judiciary in a mood of angry disbelief. As the authors rightly state, an ethnocentric approach to the law in Greece is reproducing the culture of the ultra-Right and establishing it as the normative horizon (i.e. the common view of what is just) of the Greek political community.

Wider lessons

For the authors, ‘the Greek ultra-right symptom is nothing but an extreme version of the European symptom’. The burning question they ask, was ‘the impunity granted to Nazi violence a product of tolerance due to affiliation or of distance due to fear’, is one that they have attempted to answer through deep study of the wider political culture. In the UK context we need to learn from the report’s methodology. For instance, we could take a long hard look at the Crown Prosecution Service to see what role it has played in the growth of the EDL. Those who believe that the situation in the UK has nothing in common with Greece should ask themselves this question: Why is it that Tommy Robinson is currently languishing in Woodhill Prison, not for systematic acts of incitement and intimidation of Muslim neighbourhoods across the UK over a span of six years, but for a £160,000 mortgage fraud?

RELATED LINKS

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

Download the report here

[Steven Gaal]

Any talk of economic recovery is pure fiction

published by Tom Sullivan on Mon, 2014-04-28 19:56

We're just importing more people from crisis-hit southern Europe into low-paying jobs or precarious underpaid self-employment.

Down is up. Sick is healthy. The RMS Titanic is seaworthy. Topsy-turvy logic is a speciality of the austerity brigade, and here they come dishing up a third helping. First, in 2010-11, they pledged that making historic cuts amid a global slump would definitely, absolutely secure a strong recovery. Then things went predictably belly-up, forcing Cameron and Osborne to dump their deficit-reduction plans and the eurocrats to make more bailouts. Yet these reversals were, naturally, "sticking to the course". Now things don't look quite as awful as they did a couple of years ago – and this somehow gets chalked up as a miraculous rebound.

Only a prude would expect their politicians not to exaggerate. But getting to such upside-down conclusions requires more than that: it requires fictionalising and even lying. Let's have a look at two examples from the past few days, one in Britain the other in Greece.

see link :Source and full piece: The Guardian, 28 April 2014