August 26, 2015 -- New Cold War.org, posted by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Stephen F. Cohen, contributing editor to The Nation, was interviewed on the the John Batchelor Show, WABC radio in New York City. They discuss the news of a ceasefire agreement in eastern Ukraine for a cessation of hostilities beginning September 1, 2015, and the recent meeting in Berlin on August 24 of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's President François Hollande and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko.

Click HERE for more on 'East Germany'.

Review by John Green

August 26, 2015 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Anna Funder’s book Stasiland seems to have become the touchstone for anyone who wishes to find out about life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). It was given enormous publicity, has been translated into several languages and is one of the most quoted books of reference on the GDR. Its aim is to show how horrendous life in the GDR really was.

Funder visited the GDR once as a tourist in 1987 and then returned again in 1996 (six years after unification with the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany) and wrote her book. It is made up almost entirely of interviews with only three women who suffered under the GDR authorities, plus a former GDR rock star, a television presenter who was loyal to the state, as well as several shorter ones with former officers of the state security services.

Berlin November 1918: Workers and sailors join in revolutionary uprising.

The German Left and the Weimar Republic
By Ben Fowkes
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015
399 pages, US$28.

Review by John Riddell

By Dick Nichols, Barcelona

July 22, 2015 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- In a summing-up speech to the Greek parliament in the earlier hours of July 16, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said of the punitive July 12 funding deal accepted by Greece after negotiations with Eurozone leaders:

By Duroyan Fertl

July 17, 2015 -- Hintadupfing, submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by the author -- The promise of a peaceful integration of capitalist equals lies tattered on the floor of a negotiation room in Brussels. There, the SYRIZA-led Greek government finally succumbed to the blackmail, economic carpet-bombing and “mental water-boarding” of the institutions of European capitalism.

The final weeks of the debt negotiations culminating in a cynical political coup against Greece have laid bare the undemocratic, technocratic nature of the European Union (EU), which operates as a thieves’ kitchen to protect vested financial interests at an incalculable human cost.

Señoras y señores, estimados colegas,

En momentos como estos, debemos actuar y hablar con sinceridad institucional y coraje político. Debemos asumir la responsabilidad que recae en todos y cada uno de nosotros.

Debemos defender, de acuerdo a los dictados de nuestra conciencia, las causas justas y los derechos sagrados, inviolables y no negociables de nuestro pueblo y de nuestra sociedad. Debemos proteger el legado de aquellos que dieron sus vidas y su libertad para que hoy podamos vivir como personas libres. Debemos preservar la herencia de las nuevas generaciones y de las futuras, así como la de la civilización humana. También debemos preservar esos valores irrenunciables que definen y alientan nuestra existencia personal y colectiva.

Cómo elige y decide actuar cada persona puede variar y nadie tiene el derecho de trivializar las decisiones que se toman a partir de un juicio personal y existencial, para denigrarlas o explotarlas políticamente.

The following speech was delivered early in the morning of July 11, 2015, by Zoe Konstantopoulou, president of the Greek parliament, on the question of the government’s proposal to the creditor institutions. She voted "present", in effect an abstention. Translated by Nicholas Evangelos Levis for Analyze Greece. First published in Greek on left.gr, July 12, 2015. Posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Ladies and gentlemen,

At times like these we must act and speak with binding sincerity and political boldness. We must assume the responsibility that falls to each and every one of us.

Panagiotis Lafazanis.

By Panagiotis Lafazanis, minister of reconstruction of production, environment and energy.

April 29, 2015 -- CRASH magazine, translated by The Greek Analyst, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Panagiotis has been involved in negotiating with Russia for a gas pipeline to Greece. He is a member of SYRIZA's Left Platform grouping. The Greek version can be found on the website of the ministry, here.

To The Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921
edited and translated by John Riddell
Brill, Leiden & Boston, 2015
1299 pages, €399.00

April 12, 2015 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The following review by British socialist historian Ian Birchall introduces a major addition to our knowledge of the revolutionary movement of Lenin's time: John Riddell's To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921. Birchall's review is scheduled for publication in Revolutionary History, a journal with 43 published volumes.

The review is published here with kind permission of Revolutionary History and Ian Birchall. Riddell's latest volume, available only in Brill's library format at the moment, will be published in a popular, more inexpensive edition by Haymarket Books in February 2016.

For more on the Communist International, click HERE. Click for more by or about John Riddell.

Review by Ian Birchall

By Dick Nichols

The following talk -- “The Greek elections -- what next? SYRIZA and the fight against austerity” – was presented to the Department of Political Economy and the Australia-Greece Solidarity Campaign, March 10, 2015, at the University of Sydney’s New Law School. Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly’s and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona, and a member of the Australian Socialist Alliance. Nichols is currently touring Australia presenting an eyewitness account of the SYRIZA election victory.

March 12, 2015 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- What does SYRIZA’s victory means for politics in Europe, at both all-European and national levels? Both are closely intertwined, and since SYRIZA’s January 25, 2015, electoral victory there have been having increasingly rapid feedback effects.

By David Renton

March 7, 2015 -- Lives; Running, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Six weeks ago, when SYRIZA formed a coalition with the Independent Greeks (ANEL) the most common view among my friends was that this was SYRIZA’s first betrayal and that others would inevitably follow.

By Doug Enaa Greene

By Sean Sweeney

February 18, 2015 -- Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (USA), posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- During its first days in office, SYRIZA has taken actions that suggest it is willing to confront the European Union’s neoliberal approach to energy and to embark on a new course. New Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has also stated his government will restore collective bargaining agreements and stop 300,000 planned layoffs.

The SYRIZA government has said it will stop the proposed sell-off of the Public Power Corporation (PPC), which is 51% publicly owned but had been targeted for full-on privatisation in 2016. “We will halt immediately any privatisation of PPC”, energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis told Greek television a few hours before officially taking over his portfolio. “There will be a new PPC which will help considerably the restoration of the country’s productive activities”, he said.