My weekly Guardian column: The story from an Athens hospital beggared belief. In May a 54 year old man needed immediate heart surgery. He was unemployed and uninsured, a… common reality… for many Greek citizens since the economic crisis hit in 2008. The hospital initially refused to admit him, fearing they would never get paid, but the…
Showing all posts tagged Greece
The toxic Greek brew of racism, fascism and hatred of refugees
My weekly Guardian column: On a searing hot day last weekend I took the train an hour out of Athens to the Greek city of Corinth. There, one of the country’s largest detention centres sits behind high walls. It was the recent site of a mass hunger strike by asylum seekers, whose protest has now…
Talking about nation and identity in Greece
I’m currently in Greece working on a new book, out in 2015 with Verso Books on disaster capitalism (more details soon), and excited to announce this public event on 24th June with my friend and colleague (and bloody fine and successful writer), Christos Tsiolkas. It’s organised by the art/intellectual collective, the Athens-based Libby Saucer Foundation:…
Why there are growing corporate attacks on public broadcasting
My weekly Guardian column: The war on public broadcasters by corporate media is currently enjoying a resurgence. Britain’s Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has long loathed the BBC, accusing it of supporting “cultural marxism”. In a… 2007 lecture, he said the organisation attempted to undermine “the values of conservatism, with a small ”˜c’, which, I would…
Fighting the far-right is a duty for us all
My weekly Guardian column: It was a pitiful sight. In Brisbane last Friday, the far-right Australia First party… announced… that it would rally on the streets in solidarity with Greece’s neo-Nazi aligned political organisation, Golden Dawn.… In the end, less than 10 supporters arrived and faced off with around 200 unionists and members of the Antifa group shouting…
This isn’t democracy, no matter what IMF/EU/”sensible” capitalists tell you
Slavoj Žižek in the London Review of Books highlights issues that are covered in Left Turn, namely that so-called austerity is a disaster and vulture capitalism must be resisted: Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in…
Desperate Greece still needed to produce deadly weapons
Sigh (via The Independent): As Greece is forced by European leaders to abandon a referendum to allow the people the chance to vote on its latest bailout conditions, the country is preparing for yet another dose of austerity. The conditions of the next €130bn rescue package will be severe, yet there is an elephant in…
When mad privatisation came to Greece
The country may be economically screwed but this plan will benefit only a few corporations and rich people: The starting gun for one of the biggest fire-sales in western history was fired as Greek officials began appointing advisers for the country’s ambitious privatisation drive. “Our target is clear, and it is to generate €1.7bn from…