France: “The Gilets Jaunes have blown up the old political categories”
France’s neoliberal order trembles as the yellow vest revolt shatters established political conventions. The new terrain presents both dangers and opportunities.
Articles by Jérôme Roos
Ten Years On, The Crisis of Global Capitalism Never Really Ended
Source: Roar Magazine
With inequality on the rise, global debt higher than ever and international tensions intensifying, the political backlash to the crash of 2008 has only just begun.
This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the once-mighty US investment bank whose dramatic bankruptcy on September 15, 2008 unleashed the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. A decade on, we commonly hear the complaint that little has changed since then: the banks are still too big to fail, finance continues to dominate productive activity, and ordinary households are yet to feel the impact of a sluggish economic recovery in their pockets. But this perceived continuity, while certainly valid, is only part of the story. In reality, a lot has changed over the past 10 years – much of it, unfortunately, for the worse.
Trump’s victory speaks to a crumbling liberal order
Source: Roar Magazine
Only a reinvigorated left and radical-democratic movements can clear away the ruins of the political establishment and defeat the proto-fascist right.
A political earthquake has just ripped through the world. There can be no doubt that Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections marks a historic breaking point for American politics and the liberal international order established in the wake of World War II. Things simply won’t be the same after this. And yet it’s crucial to remind ourselves that this moment has been a long time in the making.
Don’t make refugees pay for the terror they’re fleeing
Shutting down borders and blaming Muslim immigrants for the Paris attacks would give ISIS precisely the type of “civilizational conflict” it craves.
The recovery of a Syrian passport at the site of one of the Paris terror attacks has the European press and the continent’s right-wing politicians in an uproar.
The document, found near the remains of one of the suicide bombers, had been registered by Greek authorities on the island of Leros on October 3, 2015, leading to speculation that some of the assailants may have been jihadists traveling from the Syrian battlefields to Europe posing as refugees.
Barcelona Election Puts Social Movements in control of the city
Source: TeleSUR English
On Sunday, people across Spain took to the polls for this year’s highly anticipated municipal and regional elections. The outcome of the vote has ended up shaking the status quo, catapulting a host of social activists and citizens’ organizations onto the political scene, and exploding a whole new set of opportunities for the country’s grassroots movements as they explore innovative new ways to negotiate the precarious balance between resisting austerity and reclaiming the commons while retaining a commitment to direct democracy.
Why does Greece not simply default?
Source: TeleSUR English
History has shown that countries that refuse to pay their debts fall harder but recover faster than those that do not. So why does Greece’s left-led government not simply get it over with?
As the Greek debt drama finally comes to a head these weeks, with the Syriza-led government quietly warning the U.S. Treasury Secretary and the chief of the International Monetary Fund that its last-remaining cash reserves are now all but depleted and the government will not be paying the Fund if it does not receive an infusion of new cash before early June, a critical question arises: why do the radical leftists not simply get it over with and declare a default on the outstanding debt? What do they care about their creditors?