Catégorie : Politics

… 10,000 farmers protest EU-imposed reforms in Athens [3 VIDEOS, PHOTOS] – Published on RT, Feb 13, 2016.

Thousands of Greek farmers set up a protest camp in central Athens to speak out against tax and pension reforms required by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Earlier, hundreds clashed with police at the Agriculture Ministry.   Continuer la lecture de « Greeks will have to become migrants [3 VIDEOS, PHOTOS] »

Published on INVERSE, by Ethan Jacobs, Feb 11, 2016.

Swiss citizens will decide whether they should receive over $2,500 a month for being Swiss.

Americans are so intensely and intimately familiar with the virtues and vices of representative democracy, it’s easy for us to forget that democracy has alternative forms. Switzerland is about to give us a valuable reminder. As U.S. presidential candidates regurgitate stump speeches in the lead up to Super Tuesday, the TK citizens of Europe’s famously neutral, famously TK mountain kingdom will put the idea of basic income to a vote. The Swiss are having a referendum on whether they should be paid for being Swiss.   Continuer la lecture de « Switzerland's Base Income Vote Turns Finance Reform Into a Democratic Spectacle »

Published on ZNet (first on TomDispatch),
by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Feb 11, 2016.

… The price tag for replacing the lead pipes that contaminated its drinking water, thanks to the corrosive toxins found in the Flint River, is now estimated at up to $1.5 billion. No one knows where that money will come from or when it will arrive. In the meantime, the cost to the children of Flint has been and will be incalculable. As little as a few specks of lead in the water children drink or in flakes of paint that come off the walls of old houses and are ingested can change the course of a life. Continuer la lecture de « Two, Three … Many Flints »

… to save EU from ‘disintegration’ [2 VIDEOS] – Published on RT, Feb 9, 2016.

• Democracy or disintegration are the EU’s only options, Greece’s ex-finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said before the official launch of a pan-European political movement he hopes will help tackle the nationalization of policies in the 28-member union.
• The “spectacular failure of the EU” to implement sound economic and refugee policies has tilted its members towards nationalism, the bike-riding former PM of Greece said on Tuesday, speaking to reporters at the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin.

Continuer la lecture de « Democratizing Europe: Varoufakis launches new movement »

Published on counterpunch, by DANIEL RAVENTÓS and JULIE WARK, Feb 5, 2016

In its 2015 report the World Economic Forum, aka the globe-grabbing business elite, pronounced from its opulent mountain fastness in Davos that, “Inequality is one of the key challenges of our time.” Paying $25,000 to attend this billionaires’ bash, and that’s after shelling out the compulsory $52,000 WEF membership fee, the said elite isn’t pronouncing on inequality out of any empathy for the poor and oppressed. This becomes perfectly clear on page 38 of the Global Risks Report 2016 where the reader is informed that inequality has consequences: … // Continuer la lecture de « We Can’t Afford These Billionaires »