The strategic question is posed, whether the Left asks it or not On the eve of the last campaigning weekend before the historic Greek general election you would be forgiven for thinking that the public mood must be febrile to the point of convulsion. A friend from Beirut PMed me to ask, “It must be […]
14 Jan
Comments Off on Dispatch from Athens #6: Know them by their infomercials
By their infomercials, ye shall know them There is state funding of political parties in Greece, with public funds apportioned according to the share of vote at the previous general election. There are also, as in the US, political adverts on commercial television. That’s in addition to the legal requirement on channels to carry the […]
13 Jan
Comments Off on Dispatch from Athens #5: Bread, education, freedom…and roses
Bread, education, freedom…and roses too The impotence of the old political order in Athens found perfect expression this week in an eccentric intervention by the centre-left mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis. The decline of other social democratic figures more firmly associated with the parties of disrepute has made him a fairly prominent figure. So was […]
12 Jan
The ruins of the centre Left With Syriza still firmly ahead in the opinion polls (there are a lot of them) some attention is falling on the parties of the centre and centre Left (there are a lot of them, too). It’s not because they are important in themselves. They are significant only insofar as Syriza falls […]
11 Jan
Comments Off on Dispatch from Athens #3: Fear meets a movement of hope
When fear meets a movement of hope The Sunday papers still matter in Greece. More so, in fact, than before the crisis. A vicious circle of declining readerships, falling advertising revenue and disinvestment in journalism has left the daily papers as poorly produced and read as they are paginated. The once world-class Eleftherotypia has bitten […]
10 Jan
The Right: cornered, but fighting for its life There are a lot of significant elections in Europe this year — including Britain’s general election in May. Tomorrow’s “Republican march” of national unity in Paris has morphed into a display of “European solidarity” — or, spelling it out more accurately, of solidarity between European political leaders facing angry […]
09 Jan
Athens 2015 – the party is not over Greece has been the European country hardest hit by the global crisis unleashed following the financial crash of 2008. It is also the Eurozone state upon which the most devastating austerity measures have been imposed by the troika of the European Union, the European Central Bank and […]
09 Jan
Comments Off on Left Flank exclusive: Daily reports on Greece’s election
In a imaginative venture of practical solidarity Philosophy Football are funding Left Flank’s KEVIN OVENDEN to go to Greece and report on Syriza’s campaign exclusively for us in Australia — alongside other radical media outlets in the USA and Great Britain. Here Kevin explains the significance of the 25.01.2014 General Election. For the first time in more […]
02 Jan
This is the third part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos. [i] The first part looked at how the new organisations drew on the inspiration and power of the 15-M (“Indignados”) movement. The second part critically examined the Podemos leadership’s deployment of radical populist strategy. In the third part Luke Stobart examines […]
29 Dec
Abbott has to perform well as prime minister next year, not just to preserve his leadership and give the Coalition a chance of re-election but also to restore public faith in the political class and Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy. The year 2015 has to see a restoration of political stability in the national interest. […]
17 Jan
Comments Off on Dispatch from Athens #7: The strategic question is posed