SearchUser loginNavigationCreate new accountTeam AgonistEditor in Chief: Steve Hynd ThoughtfulGlobalTimelyMixed Bag of Candy: Corner: Brian Downing's Picks: Numerian's Numbers: Who's onlineThere are currently 0 users and 500 guests online.
Syndicate |
Paul Krugman on Euro Rescue Efforts 'Right Now, We Need Expansion'The interview was conducted by Martin Hesse and Thomas Schulz | May 24 Tina May 23, 2012 - 11:45pm
login to post comments |
![]() Low turnout, fraud row mar Serb presidential voteAleksandar Vasovic & Matt Robinson | Belgrade | May 20 Voter apathy and accusations of fraud marred a presidential run-off in Serbia on Sunday, where pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic is vying with rightist Tomislav Nikolic for the right to lead the nation into talks on joining the EU. Seven hours after polls opened, just 23.2 percent of the 6.7 million Serbs eligible to vote had done so. Tadic began the day as the frontrunner, but analysts have said a low turnout might favour Nikolic, whose supporters are considered more disciplined voters. Twice elected president since 2004, Tadic, 54, was part of the reformist bloc that ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 after a decade of war and isolation during the collapse of Yugoslavia. Under Tadic, Serbia in March became an official candidate for EU membership, but there is deep frustration among Serbs over the grinding transition from socialism to capitalism and an economic slowdown that has driven unemployment up to 24 percent. Nikolic, 60, was an ultranationalist ally of Milosevic when Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999. But, since losing to Tadic in 2008, he has tried to rebrand himself as a pro-European conservative, accusing his opponent of presiding over a creeping culture of elitism. Tina May 20, 2012 - 12:27pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Balkans )
20,000 march at Frankfurt Occupy protest rallyBerlin | May 19 The protesters peacefully filled the city center of continental Europe's biggest financial hub on a warm and pleasant afternoon, said Frankfurt police spokesman Ruediger Regis. He said 20,000 people were there, while organizers put the number at 25,000. Raja May 19, 2012 - 10:21pm
Gazprom Hopes to Build Second Baltic Sea PipelineFrank Dohmen & Alexander Jung | May 19 Tina May 19, 2012 - 10:45am
login to post comments |
![]() Angela Merkel caught in referendum row with GreeceConal Urquhart | May 19 Greek politicians reacted angrily, but Merkel's aides insisted she had not suggested a referendum during a telephone call on Friday with the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias. The Greek government's spokesman, Dimitris Tsiodras, said: "[Merkel] relayed to the president thoughts about holding a referendum in parallel with the elections on the question whether Greek citizens wish to remain in the eurozone." A German government spokesman rejected the idea that Merkel had proposed a referendum. "This is false and we completely dismiss this," he said. Some commentators suggested that the misunderstanding was due to an error in translation. One said that Merkel had said that the 17 June elections in Greece would be like a referendum on the country's membership of the euro. But Greek politicians criticised Merkel's perceived interference in Greek affairs. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the leftwing Syriza party that wants to renegotiate Greece's bailout by the EU and the IMF, said: "Ms Merkel is used to addressing Greece's political leaders as if the country was a protectorate." Tina May 19, 2012 - 8:59am
login to post comments |
![]() ( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Hollande sticks to Afghan pledge in Obama talksWashington | May 19 Hollande met President Barack Obama for the first time since taking office three days ago, ahead of a testing weekend of international summits, with G8 leaders at Camp David and NATO chiefs at a 61-nation gathering in Chicago. "I recalled to President Obama that I had made a promise to withdraw our combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2012," Hollande said, as the two leaders spoke to reporters in the Oval Office. "I also stipulated that there would still be support in another form," Hollande said, adding that the French withdrawal would be done in consultation with French allies in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Obama did not dispute Hollande's position, but stressed that NATO states must sustain their commitment to help "Afghans build security and continue down the path of development." Washington is currently soliciting funding from its allies to ensure training and financing for Afghan armed forces after NATO combat troops leave - which it estimates could cost around $4 billion a year. Apart from Afghanistan, both sides sought common ground, with Obama styling the partners as complimentary as cheeseburgers and French fries, though alarm over the euro zone tempered Hollande's visit. Tina May 18, 2012 - 3:13pm
login to post comments |
![]() Back to the ballot box: Greeks to vote again in June after talks on forming new govt failAthens | May 15 The Athens Stock Exchange plunged on the news, diving 4.86 percent minutes after the announcement before recovering somewhat. The May 6 election left no party with enough votes for a majority in parliament and repeated efforts over nine days to cobble together a coalition government proved fruitless. Raja May 15, 2012 - 10:59am
( categories: AgonistWire | Balkans )
Tens of Thousands Protest Austerity in 80 Spanish CitiesRaphael Minder | Madrid | May 13 Over all, protesters gathered in about 80 Spanish cities, but again, one of the biggest turnouts was in Puerta del Sol, the Madrid square that almost a year ago became the center of a nationwide, youth-led movement seeking to overhaul Spain’s political parties and other traditional institutions. About 40,000 people gathered in the square on Saturday evening, while a similar number of protesters rallied in a square in Barcelona. Raja May 14, 2012 - 6:57pm
Germans say NO to austerity - Curtain falling on Merkel's long Con
Merkel's party humiliated by shock election defeat "Angela Merkel's ruling conservatives suffered a humiliating defeat in key elections in Germany's most populous state yesterday when voters rejected her party's austerity policies and handed a resounding victory to her pro-growth Social Democratic Party opponents. "Ms Merkel's Christian Democrats were shell-shocked by the devastating result they returned in the poll in North Rhine Westphalia, which has a total population of 18 million. Exit polls showed that they secured a mere 25.5 per cent of the vote – their worst performance ever in the state. Michael Collins May 14, 2012 - 5:15am
( categories: Europe Minus UK )
Banks prepare for the return of the drachmaDouwe Miedema & Sarah White | London | May 11 From the end of the Soviet Union - which spawned currencies such as the Estonian Kroon and the Kazakh Tenge - to the introduction of the euro, they have had plenty of practice in preparing their systems to cope with change. Planning behind the scenes has been underway since Europe's debt crisis erupted in Greece in 2009, said U.S.-based Hartmut Grossman of ICS Risk Advisors who works with Wall Street banks. "A lot of the firms, particularly in Europe and also here, have been looking at that for a long time," said Grossman, who added that the latest Greek political crisis had brought matters "to a little bit of a head". "But there really has been contingency planning at all of the financial institutions for that to happen ... Greece leaving the euro zone is not a new idea," he said. Tina May 11, 2012 - 2:56pm
login to post comments |
![]() French election: Sarkozy and Hollande keep silenceMay 5 nymole May 5, 2012 - 12:20pm
Angela Merkel plans Euro 2012 boycott if Yulia Tymoshenko kept in jailKonstantin von Hammerstein, Christian Neef and Ralf Neukirch | Apr 30
That will show them! Of course if she really cared about human rights she would pull the team out and would have also pulled the German teams out of the Bahrain grand Prix Tina April 30, 2012 - 5:05pm
login to post comments |
![]() Sarkozy to sue over Gaddafi claimApr 30 In six days' time, he faces Socialist Francois Hollande in the second round of the presidential election. The Mediapart site has published a 2006 document signed by former head of Libyan intelligence Moussa Koussa proposing up to 50m euros in funding. Mr Sarkozy called it a "crude forgery" and Mr Koussa said it was a fake. "Do you think that with all that I'd done to Mr Gaddafi, he'd have made me a bank transfer? Why not a signed cheque?" he told France 2 TV on Monday. The allegation that Col Muammar Gaddafi had offered illegal funding for Mr Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign first surfaced in March 2011 when the late Libyan leader's son, Saif al-Islam, said he was ready to reveal all the details. Tina April 30, 2012 - 9:44am
( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Dutch Government OK's Publication of H5N1 StudyMartin Enserink | Amsterdam | Apr 27 The license "is in my inbox," says Fouchier. "Now we can move on." The decision by Henk Bleker, minister for agriculture and foreign trade, was announced this afternoon in a press release (Dutch) posted on the ministry's Web site. It comes 4 days after a closed meeting in The Hague, where government officials discussed the risks and benefits of the research with an international group of scientists and security experts. ** Secret Briefing Helped Sway H5N1 Flu Papers Decision Tina April 28, 2012 - 12:49pm
login to post comments |
![]() Breivik slam on 'Rainbow' song an insult too far for NorwegiansValeria Criscione | Apr 26
The man behind last summer’s twin terror attacks said in court testimony last week that the Norwegian song by Lillebjørn Nilsen, based on US folksinger Pete Seeger’s original version “My Rainbow Race” in 1967, was an example of how Norwegian schools function as an “indoctrination camp” for “cultural Marxism and multiculturalism.” Mr. Breivik, a self-described militant nationalist, blames his bombing of government buildings in Oslo and shooting rampage at Utøya island on the ruling Labor party for promoting multiculturalism with its lenient immigration policies and allowing mass immigration to undermine Norwegian society. Tina April 26, 2012 - 12:58pm
login to post comments |
![]() ( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Change? Or Sarkozy again? French vote in presidential electionTony Cross | Paris | April 22 “I voted for change and I also voted against Nicolas Sarkozy,” says Christine, a voter in Champigny-sur-Marne, a working-class town on the outskirts of Paris. She likes the left’s ideas on jobs and small businesses but judges many of hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s policies “totally unrealistic”. Raja April 22, 2012 - 2:11pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Czechs stage mass rally in protest against governmentPrague | April 21 Police estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 workers, students and pensioners marched through the capital on Saturday to rally in Wenceslas Square. Chanting and whistling, the crowd held banners reading "Away with the government" and "Stop thieves". Raja April 21, 2012 - 5:27pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
German 'hypocrisy' over Greek military spending has critics up in armsHelena Smith | Athens | Apr 19 Former defence minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos has been charged with accepting an €8m bribe from German company Ferrostaal. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP When it came to his turn to address the leader, he instinctively popped the question that many in Greece have wanted to ask. "After running through all the reasons why austerity wasn't working in my country I brought up the issue of defence expenditure. Was it right, I asked, that our government makes so many weapons purchases from Germany when it obviously couldn't afford such deals and was slashing wages and pensions?" Merkel's reaction was instant. "She immediately said: 'But we never asked you to spend so much of your GDP on defence,'" Panagopoulos recalled. "And then she mentioned the issue of outstanding payments on submarines she said Germany had been owed for over a decade." Greek profligacy may be blamed for triggering the debt crisis that now threatens to tear the eurozone apart, but if there is one area where Berlin is less excoriating of state largesse it is in Athens's extravagant taste for arms. Behind the frequent exhortations that Greece rein in spending after living "beyond its means" – admonishments made most loudly by Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble – there is another reality that paints Germany in a less than flattering light, according to MPs, military experts, economists and scholars. "If there is one country that has benefited from the huge amounts Greece spends on defence it is Germany," said Dimitris Papadimoulis, an MP with the Coalition of the Radical Left party. Tina April 20, 2012 - 11:57am
login to post comments |
![]() Hunting For WWII DudsAndrew Curry | Würzburg, Germany | Apr 9 A small German firm offers a unique service to the country's construction industry: It uses historical British and American aerial photography from World War II air strikes to determine the location of unexploded bombs. Thousands of tons of bombs still lie in the soil and the duds are becoming more dangerous. In 1938, German General Werner von Fritsch made a prediction. "The military with the best photo reconnaissance," he said, "will win the next war." Barely six years later, he was proven correct. Between 1940 and 1944, 2.7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Germany and occupied Europe by British and American bombers. Each bombing raid was guided by extensive analysis of aerial photography that was cutting-edge for its time. The effect of each raid was measured by yet more aerial photos. More than 70 years after the first bombs fell, those photos are being used with increasing frequency to heal the wartime damage that still lingers, hidden under the city streets and open fields of modern Germany. Using images from vast wartime archives in Britain and the United States, German authorities and private companies locate buried, unexploded bombs and avert the risk that construction workers set them off accidentally during building projects. Tina April 9, 2012 - 7:57pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Austerity Plan Decapitates Greek Cultural HeritageApostoli Fotiadis | Athens | Apr 9 Despina Koutsouba, president of the Association of Greek Archaeologists (SEA), says treasure dating back to the Classical, Hellenistic and Byzantine periods has disappeared from the museum, including "a golden ring stamp, copper sculptures from the eighth century BC, coins and clay vases". The burglaries in the National and Municipal Galleries during February, as well as the armed robbery at the Museum in Olympia on Mar. 5, have exposed weaknesses in the protection of cultural heritage sites around the country, made worse by the so-called austerity programme that is slashing all national public service budgets. To add insult to injury, the Greek Minister of Culture has decided to cut funding for museum security by 20 percent. According to a new law, the Greek government is also planning personnel cuts of 30-50 percent at the Ministry of Culture. Tina April 9, 2012 - 7:40pm
login to post comments |
![]() Greek clashes after pensioner suicideAthens | April 4 The man, named in the Greek media as 77-year-old Dimitris Christoulas, killed himself in the city's busy Syntagma Square on Wednesday morning. In a suicide note reported by Greek media, he accused the government of reducing his pension to nothing. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the square outside parliament on Wednesday evening, the scene of many large protests in recent months. Violence erupted, with petrol bombs hurled at police, who fired tear gas in response. Raja April 5, 2012 - 12:35am
Thousands march for regional langue d'oc in ToulouseToulouse, France | March 31 Green presidential candidate Eva Joly and MEP José Bové joined the demonstrators, as did the Socialists Senate president Jean-Pierre Bel and Toulouse mayor Pierre Cohen. “In many places regional languages are threatened,” Joly said, calling for them to be taught in junior schools. Raja April 2, 2012 - 11:14pm
German National Railway Fears Flood of LawsuitsApr 2 Tina April 2, 2012 - 9:40pm
login to post comments |
![]() ( categories: AgonistWire | Europe Minus UK )
Merkel Braces for Possible Sarkozy Election DefeatFlorian Gathmann & Stefan Simons | Mar 31 Tina March 31, 2012 - 10:34pm
login to post comments |
![]() Spain leader vows hard line as hundreds of thousands protest austerityAndrés Cala | Madrid | March 29 “We can’t take this anymore,” says Eva Cañamares, a station manager in Madrid’s subway system. Her 11 and 9-year old children were passing out union flags beside her in the central Puerta del Sol plaza, where tens of thousands chanted against government economic policies. “I’m here for my children. They are taking away all our rights and this also affects them,” Mrs. Cañamares says, echoing the strike’s slogans. “They want to do away with everything.… The government just wants to take away everything and not even negotiate." Raja March 29, 2012 - 5:46pm
|
![]() Premium AdvertisingAgonist Page on FaceBookAgonist Facebook Activity |