Revolutions tend to occur in waves, triggered by the aftermath of wars, like the world wars, or by revolutions in leading countries, like the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848. In the last generation, there have been four regional waves of revolution. With the end of the Cold War, communist regimes were swept from power from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, surviving only in a few countries including China, North Korea and Cuba. Unable to justify themselves with the pretense of fighting communism, military dictatorships were swept away in Latin America. Then the Arab Spring triggered a wave of populist if not necessarily democratic revolutions against autocracies in North Africa and the Middle East.

Are we seeing a new wave of revolutionary politics in the heartland of the industrial West? Although governments are not being violently overthrown in Europe, political systems are being destabilized by the rise of anti-system movements opposed to the major establishment parties. In Greece, the leftist Syriza party and the far-right Golden Dawn have sapped power from the political center. The most recent Italian election was dominated by anti-system candidates, including Silvio Berlusconi and the comedian Beppe Grillo.

Continue Reading...

"The system's profile as an offshore financial center is unlikely to survive this crisis," Moody's senior credit officer Sarah Carlson said. "The potentially irreparable damage to the country's current drivers of economic growth leaves its ability to sustain its current debt highly in doubt."

The crisis had negative implications for the credit ratings of the region's countries. Moody's Investors' Service says Cyprus will still be at risk of default for a "prolonged period" and possibly a euro zone exit. "Even if negotiations are successful and Cyprus remains within the euro area," the service said in a Monday statement, "policy makers' recent decisions raise the risk of deposit outflows, capital flight, increased bank and sovereign-funding costs and broader financial market dislocation."

Continue Reading...

Istavrioglou reportedly walked out with the painting in June 2012. "It was almost surreal how this theft was committed," said District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr. "A thief is accused of putting a valuable Salvador Dali drawing into a shopping bag in the middle of the afternoon, in full view of surveillance cameras."

Istavrioglou, whose handprints were on the painting, sent it back to New York after seeing surveillance images. Police caught him thanks to a previous shoplifting incident and were able to match his fingerprints to those in the system. An investigator posing as art gallery owner was then able to lure him back to New York under the premise of hiring him as a consultant.

Although he has pleaded not guilty, during the questioning, Istavrioglou said that "he knew the theft would catch up with him and wants to make [the] situation right".

Continue Reading...

First off, “stabilizing the debt” means to stop the debt ratio—debt/GDP—from rising (where “debt” means debt held by the public—that’s what matters for all that follows).  For our debt to grow more slowly than our GDP, our deficits don’t have to be zero, but they do have to be below 3% of GDP.*  Why is that a good thing?

Well, in fact, it’s not always a good thing.  In times of crisis—recessions, depressions, war—the ratio goes up for good reasons.   Our borrowing temporarily outpaces our growth in order to offset some disaster.

Continue Reading...

Everything from police and tax agency headquarters in Athens to some of the world's most beautiful beaches are now open for investment at bargain basement prices as the government struggles to raise capital.

Take Afandou, a beach on the island of Rhodes. It could be yours for about $85 million.

Selling it could help this country recover from economic catastrophe. But that's not how locals see it.

Elisa Malliaraki, 29, who owns a pharmacy in Rhodes' medieval town, says losing public access would be "tragic."

“We already can’t access many of the beaches on the island since there huge hotel units informally block our way,” she said.

Beach access may seem minor compared to the enormous burdens facing the Greeks. Their ailing economy is barely staying afloat on rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Continue Reading...

“Forecasters significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal consolidation,” Blanchard and co-author Daniel Leigh, a fund economist, wrote in a paper on growth forecast errors. The authors essentially admit that they failed to consider important factors about how regions might react to austerity in times of financial crisis when they advised IMF austerity policy.

Continue Reading...

You may have heard this refrain. You may have even sung it yourself. So let's look at this question for a moment: Are atheists subjected to real discrimination?

It's certainly true that, in the United States, while atheists do experience real discrimination, it's typically not as severe as, say, racism or misogyny. Or rather, since I don't think comparing discriminations is usually all that useful: Anti-atheist discrimination takes different forms. It's not like the systematic economic apartheid African-Americans experience, or the systematic enforcement of rigid gender roles women experience. It takes other forms: such as social ostracism; bullying in schools; public schools denying atheist students the right to form clubs; religious proselytizing promoted by the government; widespread perceptions of atheists as untrustworthy; businesses denying equal access to atheists and atheist organizations; government promotion of religion in social service programs; government promotion of religion in the military. And it's true that atheists have significant legal protection in the United States: people sometimes break those laws, and those laws aren't always enforced, but we do have these laws, and they do help.

Continue Reading...

And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the 17-member group at a time of austerity and high unemployment, the recession is forecast to deepen, and make the debt crisis - which has been calmer of late - even more difficult to handle.

Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.

The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is technically in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

The eurozone economy shrank at annual rate of 0.2 percent during the July-September quarter, according to calculations by Capital Economics.

"The eurozone economy will continue its decline in Q4 and probably well into 2013 too - a good backdrop for another debt crisis," said Michael Taylor, an economist at Lombard Street Research.

Continue Reading...

The rate reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was up from an upwardly revised 11.5 percent in August. In total, 18.49 million people were out of work in the eurozone in September, up 146,000 on the previous month, the biggest increase in three months.

While the eurozone's unemployment rate has been rising steadily for the past year as the economy struggled with a financial crisis and government spending cuts, the United States has seen its equivalent rate fall to 7.8 percent. The latest U.S. figures are due Friday.

With the eurozone economy fading, most economists think unemployment will keep increasing over the coming months and that the deteriorating economic picture will soon spook investors again after a brief hiatus.

"Financial markets have calmed somewhat, but we expect that the deteriorating economy will soon enough lead to more crisis headlines," said Tim Ohlenburg, senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Continue Reading...

ATHENS, Greece –  Hundreds of youths pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble Thursday as yet another Greek anti-austerity demonstration descended into violence, less than a month after more intense clashes broke out during a similar protest.

Authorities said around 70,000 protesters took to the street in two separate demonstrations in Athens during the country's second general strike in a month as workers across the country walked off the job to protest new austerity measures the government is negotiating with Greece's international creditors.

A 65-year-old protester suffered a fatal heart attack during the demonstration but efforts to revive him failed. The organizers of the protest march he participated in said the man had fallen ill before any rioting had broken out.

The measures for 2013-14, worth €13.5 billion ($17.7 billion), aim to prevent the country from going bankrupt and potentially having to leave the 17-nation eurozone.

Riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades in the capital's Syntagma Square outside Parliament as protesters scattered during the clashes, which continued on and off for about an hour. Another general strike in late September had also seen limited, but much more intense, clashes between protesters and police.

Four demonstrators were injured after being hit by police, volunteer paramedics said. The Health Ministry said two of the protesters were treated in hospital and that their injuries were not serious.

Hundreds of police had been deployed in the Greek capital ahead of the demonstration, as such protests often turn violent. Police said about 50 people were detained Thursday.

A similar demonstration by about 17,000 people in the northern city of Thessaloniki ended peacefully.

Thursday's strike was timed to coincide with a European Union summit in Brussels later in the day, at which Greece's economic fate will likely feature large.

The strike grounded flights, shut down public services, closed schools, hospitals and shops and hampered public transport in the capital. Taxi drivers joined in for nine hours, while a three-hour work stoppage by air traffic controllers led to flight cancellations. Islands were left cut off as ferries stayed in ports.

Athens has seen hundreds of anti-austerity protests over the past three years, since Greece revealed it had been misreporting its public finance figures. With confidence ravaged and austerity demanded, the country has sunk into a deep economic recession that has many of the same hallmarks of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"We are sinking in a swamp of recession and it's getting worse," said Dimitris Asimakopoulos, head of the GSEVEE small business and industry association. "180,000 businesses are on the brink and 70,000 of them are expected to close in the next few months."

Higher taxes expected to be levied in the new austerity program will destroy many of the struggling businesses that have managed to weather three years of the crisis so far, he said.

"In 2011, only 20 percent of businesses were profitable. So these new tax measures present small businesses with a choice: Dodge taxes or close your shop."

The country is surviving with the help of two massive international bailouts worth a total €240 billion ($315 billion). To secure them, it has committed to drastic spending cuts, tax hikes and reforms, all with the aim of getting the state coffers back under some sort of control.

But while significantly reducing the country's annual borrowing, the measures have made the recession worse. By the end of next year, the Greek economy is expected to be around a quarter of the size it was in 2008. And with one in four workers out of a job, Greece has, along with Spain, the highest unemployment rate in the 27-nation European Union.

The country's four-month-old coalition government is negotiating a new austerity package with debt inspectors from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. The idea is to save €11 billion ($14.4 billion) in spending — largely on pensions and health care — and raise an extra €2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) through taxes.

After more than a month and a half of arguing, a deal seems close. On Wednesday, representatives from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, said there was agreement on "most of the core measures needed to restore the momentum of reform" and that the rest of the issues should be resolved in coming days.

Greece is also seeking a two-year extension to its economic recovery program, due to end in 2014. Without the extension, it would need to take €18 billion worth of measures instead of the €13.5 it is currently negotiating.

Athens hopes to get the next loan installment around mid-November. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the country will run out of cash by the end of that month, meaning Greece would most likely have to default on its debt and potentially end its membership of the euro currency.

___

Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, and Elena Becatoros and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed.

Continue Reading...

The episode aired on the NET channel and according to BBC, it "removed the scene to comply with parental guidance viewing rules." The channel says the full episode broadcasted early morning on Tuesday.

"The love affair between the two men... was not censored," said Costas Spyropoulos, managing director of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation. "The kiss was not shown because of the time the programme was broadcast and the corresponding parental guidance warnings," he added.

The BBC reports that "viewers complained about the edit on social networking sites" and the country's main opposition party called it "an obvious case of censorship," describing it as "an extreme act of homophobia and discrimination which ... we cannot characterize as unprecedented."

The irony wasn't lost on everyone:

[embedtweet id="258525811357913089"]

Continue Reading...

More than 7,000 police were on hand in Athens, cordoning off parks and other sections of city to keep demonstrators away from the German leader, who will hold talks with conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

As a helicopters buzzed overhead, thousands of protesters, chanting "History is written by the disobedient" gathered peacefully in front of Greek parliament, while one group of demonstrators burned a Swastika and threw it onto a police barrier.

"I have no doubt that (Merkel) has good intentions, and wants to help, but that won't solve Europe's problem," retired teacher Irini Kourdaki said.

Merkel will meet with Samaras and was also due to hold talks with President Karolos Papoulias before flying back out of the country.

Continue Reading...

The lanky, bespectacled 23-year-old trekked through rough terrain, sometimes with nothing but sugar water to sustain him during the two-month journey. He reached his destination when he crossed the muddy Evros River dividing Turkey from Greece.

Or so he believed. “I thought I’d find a better life,” he said in central Athens. “You can enter Europe, but you can’t really enter.”

Jama is one of hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed into Greece only to find themselves confronted by a dismal intersection of two unfolding crises. A decade of catastrophic economic decline and political upheaval together with Greece's role as the prime gateway to the European Union are helping fuel a wave of racism and violence.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

And to give these forces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism, - between these two points of influence moves our world.

Today as well — arguably to the greatest extent since the Enlightenment — the camps of religion and culture view each other with a deepening mutual distrust.

Continue Reading...

Riot police used tear gas and pepper spray against several hundred demonstrators after the violence broke out near the country's parliament. Protesters also set fire to trees in the National Gardens and used hammers to smash paving stones and marble panels to use as missiles against the riot police.

About 50,000 people joined the union-organized march in central Athens on Wednesday, held during a general strike against new austerity measures planned in the crisis-hit country. The action, the first large-scale walk-out since the country's coalition government was formed in June, closed schools and disrupted flights and most services.

Everyone from shopkeepers and pharmacists to teachers, customs workers and car mechanics joined the demonstration, seen as a test of public tolerance for more hardship after two years of harsh spending cuts and tax hikes.

"People, fight, they're drinking your blood," protesters chanted as they banged drums.

Continue Reading...

The Twitter account, @YourAnonNews, often used to make announcements for the hacker collective, first publicly posted the phone number connected to the fascist group's Queens-based office and invited followers to "give them a warm welcome to the neighborhood."

A follow up tweet asserted, in characteristically playful parlance, that the hackers had disabled Golden Dawn's New York chapter website:

[embedtweet id="250360345842032640"]

Indeed, emails from Salon readers following up on our Monday story about the office's opening confirm that Golden Dawn's website was temporarily down. As of this writing, the site is once again running, but is missing much of the content available before the reported hack.

Continue Reading...

According to Golden Dawn New York's website (which prominently features the group's Swastika-like symbol):

The Golden Dawn New York Chapter stands in support of the ideas and goals of the Golden Dawn Party in Greece, who received over 400,000 popular votes in the 2012 elections and currently has 18 representatives in the Greek parliament.

The Golden Dawn is the only political party in Greece that unapologetically stands for the sovereignty, security, and dignity of the Greek people.

The party intends to reverse decades of unlimited third world immigration which has brought crime, unemployment, disease and possibly terrorism to the once peaceful Greek cities.

Continue Reading...

But in words that would have pleased Samaras, she said Germany wants Greece to remain in the euro zone. She said she wants to end a dispute between Greek and German politicians who question Greece’s ability to see reform through and have called for it to be kicked out of the euro zone.

“I am deeply convinced that the new government under the leadership of Prime Minister Samaras will do what it takes to solve the problem in Greece,” Merkel said in what was seen as a rebuke to hard-line members of her own coalition. She added that she wanted to help Greece see “the light at the end of the tunnel."

Continue Reading...