Economics

Whilst the blame game about the UK riots rages in the national and international Media and the State uses the opportunity to get more draconian, punitive and discriminatory, we must keep an eye on the structural changes that the neoliberal agenda is introducing, even as we speak about those changes being the root of the problem.

Expensive studies prepared by prestigious organisations come now to say that the “physical” trading in human beings is the third most profitable “illicit” business after drug and arms trafficking.

Bryan Farrell, a New York based writer and contributor to wagingnonviolence.org gives his view on the English riots and what MLK might make of it all, “It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.”

Credit Rating Agencies are at it again. If the hole in the real economy, the one in which real people live, created by the virtual economy, where the speculators live, aka “rescuing the Banks during the subprime crisis”, were not big enough, Standard and Poor, has “downgraded” the US Credit Rating sending the world economy into a deeper hole. So who are they?

The World Trade Organization member countries are moving towards the Eighth Ministerial Conference in Doha next December, again with no concrete results, even on issues relating to least-developed Countries (LDCs), recognized by the member countries’ ambassadors in the informal meeting of last July 26.

It is necessary to reflect on the possible ways out of the entire crisis in which our society is submerging. The excessive power of financial capital, the widespread debt and enormous concentration of wealth is something which the nation state, captured and blackmailed by that power, is unable to confront.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take a firm stand vis-a-vis Greece bleeding financial crisis, she was surly aware that black economy accounts as high as one-third of Greek GNP, that tax invasion amounts to 20 billion dollars a year, and that corruption is rooted everywhere, at all levels, particularly among political parties.

In addition to generating a series of environmental, social and cultural problems and making a quick buck under the protection of the Global Financal Institutions and local governments, mining companies, and as in the case of Barrick Gold on the borders of Latin American countries, have replaced the different roles and responsibilities of National States

THIS IS NOT A DEBT IT IS A FRAUD!

We, the indignant at the Bastille, in Paris, declare our solidarity with the general strike to be held June 30th in the UK against proposed austerity plans.

Athens has succumbed to the onslaught of the God of the Market, more powerful even than the Gods of Mount Olympus. Despite the 48 hour strike and the thousands of demonstrators surrounding Parliament, within the building they voted by a majority of 155 to 138 in favour of the plans for measures that will create a debt of the Greek people three times its Gross Domestic Product.