The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats are the clear winners of the German elections on Sunday, September 22, with a result of 41.6%. Backed by relatively good economic figures for the German Republic, Merkel has capitalized on the widespread impression that she has led Germany through the crisis and defends German interests abroad.
However, the opposition, consisting of the social democratic SPD, the socialist Left Party, and the Green Party, now have a slight parliamentary majority....
John Feffer -
The GDR Museum in Berlin is actually two museums in one. And these two parts, both devoted to everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, subtly contradict one another. That might not have been the intention of the museum founders. But this tension actually captures the ambiguities of East Germany and the ambivalence that many Germans feel today about the erstwhile communist state.
The experience inside the main part of the museum is quite interactive. You can put on headphones and...
Pepe Escobar -
History will register his plane struck by lightning on the way to Berlin, no fancy kisses, and asparagus with veal schnitzel on the menu. This is the way the eurozone ends (or begins again); not with a bang, but a ... lightning strike. Merkollande - the new European power couple drama interpreted by French Socialist President Francois Hollande and German Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel - is a go.
Trillions of bytes already speculate whether former President Nicolas Sarkozy...
Walden Bello -
Germany towers over Europe like a colossus. Its economy is the biggest in the European Union, accounting for 20 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. While most of Europe’s economies are stagnating, Germany’s will have grown by some 2.9 percent in 2011. It boasts the lowest unemployment rate, 5.5 percent, of Europe’s major economies, compared to those of France (9.5 percent), the United Kingdom (8.3 percent), and Italy (8.1 percent).
In many ways, Germany...
The problem in Europe has very little to do with Greece says Dr. Heiner Flassbeck (Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD), it has much more to do with Germany, he contends, that deviated substantially from the inflation target set by the European Economic and Monetary Union.
The root of the Eurozone crisis is not a violation of rules of fiscal discipline or of different degrees of public debt in the Eurozone, the core of the crisis is the divergence of wage...
Leonard Gentle -
First they came for Papandreou - and I didn't speak out because I thought the Greeks are just lazy tax-dodgers.
Then they came for Berlusconi - and I didn't speak out because I thought he was just a racist and sexist old roué.
Then they came for Zuma - and I didn't speak out because he can’t apply his mind, and he’s still running the show.
Then they took away my vote - and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Some may feel that it may be a stretching it...
