South Europe

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that his goal in Syria was to end the rule of Bashar Assad has caused consternation in the Kremlin, with officials saying it contradicted previous assurances and was out of sync with Moscow’s take on the situation.

The surge in right-wing and anti-establishment sentiments as a result of failed neo-liberal policies in Europe is likely to lead to collapse of the EU in “a tragic development,” prominent American linguist, scholar and activist Noam Chomsky told RT.

BEFORE American voters—especially white, male, rural and older ones—carried Donald Trump to victory in America’s presidential election, aggrieved British voters with a similar profile voted to leave the European Union. Equally surly voters in France have been flocking to Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front for months; she is tipped to make the run-off in next year’s presidential election. Alternative for Germany, an anti-immigrant party, is picking up support ahead of a federal election in Germany, also in 2017.

This election is great news. A lesson in democracy. In Trump's program, there are such theses as putting an end to wars and the export of democracy around the whole world, revising NATO and the UN’s roles, and pursuing friendly relations with Russia. Great attention is also paid to what is happening in the United States: the war against illegal immigration and the introduction of proportional taxation (a flat tax).

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF recently published its report on the response of the organization to the European crisis. The analysis focuses on the performance of the IMF in the context of the programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. It provides a valuable insight into the conflicts within the IMF itself, and especially between the executive board of the organization and its management and staff.

By essentially denying the principle of popular sovereignty, it is also denying the principle of national sovereignty, the (relatively) independent character of the Greek state. Greece occupies a strategic place in the Eastern Mediterranean, on the route connecting Russia with the Mediterranean and Western Europe with the Middle East. Its independence was never completely tolerated by the British and then the American empires. Greeks were also suspected of leaning towards Russians, or at least this was the argument justifying the innumerable Western interventions in this country.

The location of the third European No-Euro-Forum itself, Chianciano Terme in Tuscany, can be considered symbolic for the urgent need of an exit strategy to leave the corset of the currency union: during the 80ties it was a prosperous small town with it’s hot springs and hundreds of hotels where workers and pensioners spent their spa stays, financed from a

Despite the persistent effort of the Greek Media to present the report issued by the Independent Evaluation Office on July 8, which examines the contribution of the IMF on the “rescue” plan of three countries (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) as a “public apology”, the facts belie them.

Six ans après le déclenchement de la grande crise financiere et économique de 2008-09, aucune des causes fondamentales qui l’ont provoquée n’a été combattue....