It’s been less than 12 months since the last federal Budget, yet it seems like an eternity since Clive Palmer managed to break through the Right-Left partisanship that usually accompanies post-Budget discussion. This was the apex of Palmer’s influence on politics, a world away from the report in today’s Fairfax newspapers that then PUP senator […]
13 Apr
Two hostile intersecting axes are forming against the Syriza-led government in Athens. Together they comprise an increasingly cohered effort to destabilise and defeat the government, to usurp the democratically expressed hope of the Greek people to break from the iron cage of austerity. The first axis, from without, has been evident since before the 20 […]
12 Apr
The Purge While on a visit in China, I have learned the habit of regularly checking the news for announcements of yet another corruption investigation by the government. Until recently, corruption involving Party or government officials had been treated as a politically explosive scandal, which the government preferred the public not to see. But now […]
31 Mar
“Hope is coming. Europe is changing. Greece is going forward.” Two months into Syriza taking office after the historic victory of the Left at the polls on 25 January, dare we hope for a breach in the iron cage of austerity? Is hope even alive? My answer is an unequivocal “yes”. That’s not down to […]
28 Mar
KEVIN OVENDEN writes from Athens on continuing moves to re-legitimise the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn on the eve of their trial as a criminal organisation, and responds to voices that have tacitly defended some of the perturbing concessions to chauvinism coming from within the new Greek government. Following his essay is some background on the legal […]
23 Mar
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KEVIN OVENDEN wrote this report from Athens just after Saturday’s anti-racist day of action there. I’ve not seen the centre of Athens so black since August of 2012 and the massive protest against the onset of the Xenios Zeus anti-immigrant police sweeps. Not the black of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. Its party colour gives rise […]
20 Mar
PHIL BUTLAND, Berlin (with the input of KEVIN OVENDEN, Athens) reflects on the Blockupy protest in Frankfurt this week and whether we are at a “Prague moment” opening up a new sequence of anti-capitalist and international mobilisations Just four days ago, I* was reporting with hope about a few hundred people demonstrating in Berlin for Greece […]
12 Mar
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Within a year of its creation, Podemos became the main opposition party in Spain. Analyses of its rapid rise have centred on its unorthodox and ambitious political approach and the different forms of participatory democracy practised (however imperfectly). Less has been said about the relation between the Podemos phenomenon and the Spanish context of major […]
12 Mar
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KEVIN OVENDEN returns to Athens for the first in a new series of posts at Left Flank. It is worth reading in full yesterday’s speech by Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras on the incendiary issue of German war reparations to Greece. The issue was not resolved upon the unification of the German state in 1990 […]
04 Mar
The intervention of SYRIZA MP and Speaker of the House Zoi Konstantopoulou during the first (and so far sole) session of the Greek Parliament sent a chill through the country’s anti-fascist movement. The Speaker proposed the postponement of the parliamentary sitting because the District Attorney had not given permission to the MPs of Golden Dawn […]
18 Apr
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