A Story about an Anti-Fascist Motorbike Patrol Arguably, the so-called Greek crisis is not only linked to the deregulation of the economy, but with a wider social and political deregulation. In reference to the latter, the majority of the older political schemes collapse under the weight of their contradiction, with […]
Cyprus recently experienced the most dramatic collapse since the beginning of the Eurozone crisis, which continues to deepen three years after it began. Only a few weeks after the island’s presidential elections were decisively won by centre-right leader Nicos Anatasiades, the country is enduring nothing less than an economic siege. […]
“I don’t talk about the Party. Don’t want to. Sorry.” So read the text message from my sole contact with a Golden Dawn voter. The sender, a young man in his early twenties; the recipient, my friend who had loosely arranged a meeting in anticipation of my arrival in Athens. […]
What instantly captures the hearts of those brave enough to venture into the Venezuelan National Reserve, nestled in the Andes mountains, is the untamed beauty of the vegetation, the crystal waters of the rivers and their sumptuous cascades. Yet, scraping just below the surface of this idyllic scenario are the […]
The time was July 2012, almost a month after a second round of elections in Greece produced the Frankenstein-like coalition government, comprised of conservative right-wing New Democracy, faux-socialists PASOK and “left-wing” Democratic Left that was now running the crisis-stricken country. An hour outside Athens, in the town of Loutraki, strikers […]
‘Operation Pillar of Defense’, the latest sustained Israeli assault on Gaza with a headline-hitting name, lasted for eight days. The bombing from land, sea and air lasted from 14-21 November and killed 158 Palestinians, of which 103 were civilians (including 30 children). Meanwhile, six Israelis were killed by Palestinian factions. Israel […]
Nearly 300,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves due to the pressures of debt between 1995-2011. In the state of Maharashtra in 2006, 4453 people committed suicide. That’s around one every eight hours. At the time of writing, I receive word of another seven farmers who died over the course of […]
There is an uneasy calm in Northern Greece right now, with no sign yet of the harsh Balkan winter or the demonstrations against soaring fuel costs and taxes it will bring. I was last here two years ago, during the early days of the crisis – people were joking about ‘tin […]
September was billed as a turning point in the eurozone crisis, but after a week of mass anti-austerity protests in Spain, Portugal and Greece, the only thing I can take from this month is that politicians are still unable to stop the continent’s unrelenting decline into social turmoil. Despite the efforts […]
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of last year’s eight million strong Spanish indignados movement to the new paradigm of networked, technologically enabled protest. Most obviously, it provided the meme and the template for Occupy in its attempt (for better or worse) to form a pluralistic mass movement that said […]