Left organizations from all over Europe met in Barcelona to draw up a plan to battle the forces of austerity.
Europe Gets up off the Mat to Battle Austerity
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Angela Merkel
The Greek Earthquake
Syriza will not easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning.
Conn Hallinan’s 2014 “Are You Serious?” Awards
Each year Conn Hallinan presents awards to individuals, companies and governments that make following the news a daily adventure.
Mistaking Omniscience for Omnipotence
No one knows what a major state would be like if it radically cut back its intelligence services–but based on the recent American record, it’s hard to imagine we could be anything but better off.
NSA and TMI
To: John Brennan, Langley HQ From: Operative 650, undisclosed location Re: Memo XP1476 Greetings from the tropics! I apologize for not writing to you earlier. As you probably know, if you have my file in front of you, I wrote to your predecessors with various modest...
The Merkel Phone Tap: Obama as “Unilateral” in His Own Way as Bush?
While some would argue that the United States and its allies routinely spy each other, it’s one thing to bug the Germany embassy in Washington, but another to tap into the phone of the leader of the country, as well as other officials. As we recently posted, spying by...
Surveillance on Merkel’s Phone Demands a Scapegoat
As you have no doubt heard by now, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was informed by German intelligence that her phone was subjected to American surveillance. Predictably she reacted badly and called President Obama himself to ream him out. At the New York Times,...
Letter From Sofia: Old Tanks and Modern Mayhem
The military museum in Bulgaria's sprawling capital city consists of a tiny building and a huge outdoor display of weapons that look as if they had been wheeled in fresh from the battlefields and parked, higgledy piggledy: mountain howitzers that shelled Turks in 1912...
Germany Votes and Austerity Reigns–For Now
Europe's most powerful nation has voted. On September 22nd, the people of Germany granted Angela Merkel a huge victory, awarding her center-right party nearly 50 percent of the seats in the federal parliament, the Bundestag. Although Merkel’s victory was a foregone...
Explaining the Cyprus Shakedown
In June 2012, the Cypriot government requested a bailout after its two largest banks took massive losses—around 1.6 billion euros—on Greek government bond write-downs. In order to remain solvent, it was determined that Cyprus needed 17 billion euros in assistance. What Cypriots got was a government claim on their own private bank accounts.