Greek radical left Syriza prepares for power under Tsipras By Giorgos Christides Thessaloniki, Greece (BBC-news)

A large portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg hangs in the Thessaloniki office of Nikos Samanidis, a founder member of Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left, better known as Syriza.

With many Greeks exhausted by five years of recession, tax hikes and record unemployment rates, Syriza and its firebrand leader Alexis Tsipras are tipped to win the early elections that must be called, according to the Greek constitution, if parliament fails to elect a new head of state by 29 December.

"After decades on the defensive, the left is staging a comeback. Not just in Greece, but in Europe and Latin America as well," said Mr Samanidis, a top official of Syriza in the country's second city.

Alluring as it may prove to Greek voters, the prospect of a leftist party coming to power in Europe's most indebted country is rattling the markets and European capitals.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has warned parliamentarians that if they fail to elect a new president, Greece could risk a disastrous exit from the eurozone.

Syriza won the European elections in Greece in May and are still leading in the opinion polls

The Athens Stock Exchange posted its biggest drop on record on 9 December, while borrowing costs for Greece have skyrocketed amid the political uncertainty.

A number of senior European officials have urged voters to support the ruling coalition of conservatives and social democrats. "I wouldn't like extreme forces to come to power. I would prefer if known faces show up," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently told journalists, commenting on the chances of a general election in Greece.

'Still radical'

While Rosa Luxemburg may adorn its offices, Syriza is not the revolutionary force that her Spartacists represented in Germany a century ago.

As the party draws closer to real power, it has softened many of its sharp edges and tried to build bridges, even with City hedge funds. Syriza is vowing to keep Greece within the eurozone and has reassured creditors it will refrain from unilateral decisions on the debt issue.

A portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in Nikos Samanidis' office indicates Syriza's political leanings

Far from being destructive, Syriza's political proposals offer a reasonable way out of austerity and a chance to replace existing bailout laws with new ones, argues political economist Yanis Varoufakis.

"The first priority is renegotiating with creditors. Syriza needs to speak the language of truth about the continuing triple bankruptcy of the country - public debt, banks, private sector - something no Greek government has done so far. Then they need to table positions that the average German will find reasonable."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The top 10%, yes, they obviously do have reason to worry”

Nikos SamanidisSyriza founder member

But Syriza and its 40-year-old leader are still seen by many in the Greek and European establishment as unknown and potentially dangerous quantities.

Mr Tsipras has warned markets that they "will have to dance to the tune" of his government, while Syriza promises to boost public spending, reverse privatisations, increase salaries and pensions and repeal bailout laws liberalising the markets.

Nikos Samanidis emphasises that the prospect of power has not blunted the radical nature of the party, despite its meteoric rise from relative obscurity to frontrunner in little over two years.

"The rich, the elites, the markets, the super-rich, the top 10%, yes, they obviously do have reason to worry," he says.

"They will lose their privileges. Our voter base has expanded greatly, but the grassroots, radical nature of Syriza has been preserved thanks to the crisis. Our party has not and will not sever its ties with the streets, with the social movements it arose from."

Syriza was formed in 2004 as a coalition of groups and parties ranging from Maoists to greens. Before 2012 its electoral appeal had been of little consequence for Greece's political system, never exceeding 5% of the vote. It only became a unitary party in 2013.

But in 2012, in the apogee of the Greek crisis, Syriza took the political establishment by storm, polling close to 27% in the June general elections and eclipsing the social democrats to become the second-largest party in the country. In the European Parliament elections in May 2014, Syriza emerged victorious, polling close to 27% of the vote.

No fear

Colleagues see him as an ordinary, decent man while critics see him as arrogant

Mr Tsipras, the youngest political leader in Greece's history, was instrumental in transforming Syriza from an also-ran to a potential ruling party. Known for his rhetorical skills, his dislike of neckties and his good looks, Mr Tsipras rose to the leadership of Syriza in 2008 and was elected to parliament in 2009.

"The economic crisis and the collapse of traditional parties certainly helped Syriza grow its influence, but it was Alexis Tsipras who catapulted the party," says Christoforos Vernardakis, Professor of Political Science at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and founder of the public opinion survey company VPRC.

"This happened because Tsipras is young and knows no fear. He took a defensive left and turned it into a credible choice for government."

Despite his undoubted charisma, several Syriza members and officials who know Mr Tsipras personally describe him as "an everyday, decent person".

"With Alexis we go a long way back. We used to hang out and I can tell you he is a normal, decent guy. Even as a leader, he likes collective processes and decisions," said Mr Samanidis.

Critics, on the other hand, see Mr Tsipras as arrogant, inexperienced and power hungry - a maverick politician willing to sacrifice Greece to rise to power.

Long-time friend Nikos Karanikas rejects this description of Syriza's "comrade-president".

"Although it was clear from the start he was a leader, it took some encouragement from us for him to come forward and take the lead - he had no lust for power," said Mr Karanikas, a member of the political bureau of Syriza's largest constituent group, Synaspismos.

EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he would prefer Greece to maintain its political status quo

Tsipras, he argues, still lives in the middle class Athens neighbourhood of Kypseli, and cut his professional teeth while working as a civil engineer. He was one of the "700-euro generation" of youth who struggled to advance beyond the average Greek salary.

'Operation of terror'

Eager as they are for a historic victory for the left, Syriza officials are also prepared for a long struggle. "My generation has a chance now with Syriza to stop the disaster. We have no fear of governing," said Mr. Karanikas.

The party's first battle starts on Wednesday, in the first ballot of the parliamentary election for president.

Some analysts predict that renewed fears for Greece's future in the eurozone will convince enough MPs to vote for the government's presidential candidate; or, in the event of a general election, convince enough Greeks to turn the tide in favour of the ruling coalition.

Alexis Tsipras has denounced this tactic as an "operation of terror" by Prime Minister Samaras and European officials.

Some Greeks seem to believe the danger is real, with weekend polls showing that Syriza's lead has narrowed slightly.

But others, like Panagiotis Makridis, a waiter at a Greek coffee shop, are enraged by what they say is blatant scaremongering from the government, Brussels and European capitals.

"So Jean-Claude Juncker is telling me who to vote for? I didn't plan on voting Syriza, but now I just might."

It's Time to Start Paying Attention to Greece Again By Joe Weisenthal (http://www.businessweek.com/)

Photographer: Michael Debets/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Alexis Tsipras, the leader of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and current leader of the Greek Opposition, is pictured at the beginning of the protest march on Nov. 27, in Athens.

It’s been awhile since Greece was front-page news, so here’s a refresher: A few years ago, it looked as though Greece might be forced to leave the euro zone, as investors lost faith in the country’s ability to pay its debts. In late 2011, 10-year Greek bonds were trading with a yield around 35 percent. The crisis began to dissipate in the summer of 2012, when the center-right New Democracy party eked out the narrowest of election victories and cobbled together a coalition that agreed to a bailout under harsh terms. Since then financial markets have eased considerably, although the economy is still in the gutter.

Anyway, you might want to start paying attention again.

Greece may see elections early next year, and a new poll just out has the radical leftist Syriza party in first place by more than 3 percent. If Syriza takes power, the relative calm of Greek financial markets could be rocked.

STORY: Yasou: Greece Is Pulling Off an Amazing Recovery

So the question is, will Greece in fact hold an early election? It may depend on what happens in late February and early March, when the Greek parliament is set to vote on a new president. Current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party faces a massive task to keep his government together.

In an e-mail, analyst Lorcan Roche Kelly of Agenda Research explained what might go down:

“[Samaras's] coalition (of New Democracy and Pasok) controls 155 seats in the 300-seat parliament. In order to elect a president, he needs 180 votes in favour of his candidate (the president vote runs in three rounds, if 200 of the 300 MPs do not vote in favour of the candidate in the first two rounds, there is a third round where the majority is reduced to 180, there are 5 days between each round, so the whole process takes over a week. ie, it will be noisey)

“Samaras is 25 seats short of this target, and if he doesn’t get it, an election will be called.”

There are a lot of question marks about whether the current coalition can get to the 180 votes needed. It’s possible that by cajoling enough independent members of parliament, the coalition could get there and keep the government alive. But it will be extremely close, and they could come up short.

STORY: Greece Needs Debt Forgiveness

If an early election is called, and if the leftist Syriza party controls the government, watch out. Ostensibly, Syriza and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, want Greece to stay in the euro zone. But they’re dead set against the current bailout/austerity regime.

Then you’re looking at a potentially huge game of chicken. The European leaders who bailed out Greece will insist that current terms are not going to be renegotiated. The new government will insist that it wants to stay in the euro zone but that the arrangement must change. How that plays out is unpredictable, but it could easily be the major world story to watch early next spring.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Before there was money, there was debt

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. 

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

On Education (M. Bakunin)

Mikhail Bakunin 1869

On Education

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First Published: in L'Égalité, July 31, 1869;
Source: flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/egalite1.html.

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L’Égalité, July 31, 1869;

The first topic for consideration today is this: will it be feasible for the working masses to know complete emancipation as long as the education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete instruction? Does not the question answer itself? Is it not self-evident that of any two persons endowed by nature with roughly equivalent intelligence, one will have the edge - the one whose mind will have been broadened by learning and who, having the better grasped the inter- relationships of natural and social phenomena (what we might term the laws of nature and of society) will the more readily and more fully grasp the nature of his surroundings? And that this one will feel, let us say, a greater liberty and, in practical terms, show a greater aptitude and capability than his fellow? It is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of education and education and learning the only one to exist between two classes, would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men itself in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former labouring away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter?

Now we see why the bourgeois socialists demand only a little education for the people, a soupcon more than they currently receive; whereas we socialist democrats demand, on the people's behalf, complete and integral education, an education as full as the power of intellect today permits, So that, henceforth, there may not be any class over the workers by virtue of superior education and therefore able to dominate and exploit them. The bourgeois socialists want to see the retention of the class system each class, they contend, fulfilling a specific social function; one specialising, say, in learning, and the other in manual labour. We, on the other hand, seek the final and the utter abolition of classes; we seek a unification of society and equality of social and economic provision for every individual on this earth. The bourgeois socialists, whilst retaining the historic bases of the society of today, would like to see them become less stark, less harsh and more prettified. Whereas we should like to see their destruction. From which it follows that there can be no truce or compromise, let alone any coalition between the bourgeois socialists and us socialist democrats. But, I have heard it said and this is the argument most frequently raised against us and an argument which the dogmatists of every shade regard as irrefutable - it is impossible that the whole of mankind should devote itself to learning, for we should all die of starvation. Consequently while some study others must labour so that they can produce what we need to live - not just producing for their own needs, but also for those men who devote themselves exclusively to intellectual pursuits; aside from expanding the horizons of human knowledge, the discoveries of these intellectuals improve the condition of all human beings, without exception, when applied to industry, agriculture and, generally, to political and social life; agreed? And do not their artistic creations enhance the lives of every one of us?

No, not at all. And the greatest reproach which we can level against science and the arts is precisely that they do not distribute their favours and do not exercise their influence, except upon a tiny fragment of society, to the exclusion and, thus, to the detriment of the vast majority. Today one might say of the advances of science and of the arts, just what has already and so properly been said of the prodigious progress of industry, trade, credit, and, in a word, of the wealth of society in the most civilised countries of the modern world. That wealth is quite exclusive, and the tendency is for it to become more so each day, as it becomes concentrated into an ever shrinking number of hands, shunning the lower echelons of the middle class and the petite bourgeoisie, depressing them into the proletariat, so that the growth of this wealth is the direct cause behind the growing misery of the labouring masses. Thus the outcome is that the gulf which yawns between the privileged, contented minority and millions of workers who earn their keep by the strength of their arm yawns ever wider and that the happier the contented - who -exploit the people's labour become the more unhappy the workers become. One has only to look at the fabulous opulence of the aristocratic, financier, commercial and industrial clique in England and compare it with the miserable condition of the workers of the same country; one has only to re-read the so naive and heartrending letter lately penned by an intelligent and upright goldsmith of London, one Walter Dugan, who has just voluntarily taken poison along with his wife and their six children, simply as a means of escape from the degradation's of poverty and the torments of hunger (1) - and one will find oneself obliged to concede that the much vaunted civilisation means, in material terms, to the people, only oppression and ruination. And the same holds true for the modern advances of science and the arts. Huge strides, indeed, it is true But the greater the advances, the more they foster intellectual servitude and thus, in material terms, foster misery and inferiority as the lot of the people; for these advances merely widen the gulf which already separates the people's level of understanding from the levels of the privileged classes. From the point of view of natural capacity, the intelligence of the former is, today, obviously less stunted, less exercised, less sophisticated and less corrupted by the need to defend unjust interests, and is, consequently, naturally of greater potency than the brain power of the bourgeoisie: but, then again, the brain power of the bourgeois does have at its disposal the complete arsenal of science filled with weapons that are indeed formidable. It is very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he has none) but by dint of his education, an education denied the workingman but granted the fool because, while the fool was able to develop his foolishness scientifically in schools, the working man's labours were clothing, housing, feeding him and supplying his every need, his teachers and his books, everything necessary to his education.

Even within the bourgeois class, as we know only too well, the degree of learning imparted to each individual is not the same. There, too, there is a scale which is determined, not by the potential of the individual but by the amount of wealth of the social stratum to which he belongs by birth; for example, the instruction made available to the children of the lower petite bourgeoisie, whilst itself scarcely superior to that which workers manage to obtain for themselves, is next to nothing by comparison with the education that society makes readily available to the upper and middle bourgeoisie. What, then, do we find? The petite bourgeoisie, whose only attachment to the middle class is through a ridiculous vanity on the one hand, and its dependence upon the big capitalists on the other, finds itself most often in circumstances even more miserable and even more humiliating than those which afflict the proletariat. So when we talk of privileged classes, we never have in mind this poor petite bourgeoisie which, if it did but have a little more spirit and gumption, would not delay in joining forces with us to combat the big and medium bourgeoisie who crush it today no less than they crush the proletariat. And should society's current economic trends continue in the same direction for a further ten years (which we do, however, regard as impossible) we may yet see the bulk of the medium bourgeoisie tumble first of all into the current circumstances of the petite bourgeoisie only to slip a little later into the proletariat - as a result, of course, of this inevitable concentration of ownership into an ever smaller number of hands - the ineluctable consequences of which would be to partition society once and for all into a tiny, overweaningly opulent, educated, ruling minority and a vast majority of impoverished, ignorant, enslaved proletarians.

There is one fact which should make an impression upon every person of conscience, upon all who have at heart a concern for human dignity and justice; that is, for the liberty of each individual amid and through a setting of equality for all. That is the fact that all of the intelligentsia, all of the great applications of science to the purpose of industry, trade and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State, that timeless champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not once, have they brought any benefit to the masses of the people. We need only list the machines and every workingman and honest advocate of the emancipation of labour would accept the justice of what we say. By what power do the privileged classes maintain themselves today, with all their insolent smugness and iniquitous pleasures, in defiance of the all too legitimate outrage felt by the masses of the people? Is it by some power inherent in their persons? No - it is solely through the power of the State, in whose apparatus today their offspring hold, always, every key position (and even every lower and middle range position) excepting that of soldier and worker. And in this day and age what is it that constitutes the principle underlying the power of the State? Why, it is science. Yes, science - Science of government, science of administration and financial science; the science of fleecing the flocks of the people without their bleating too loudly and, when they start to bleat, the science of urging silence, patience and obedience upon them by means of a scientifically organised force: the science of deceiving and dividing the masses of the people and keeping them allays in a salutary ignorance lest they ever become able, by helping one another and pooling their efforts, to conjure up a power capable of overturning States; and, above all, military science with all its tried and tested weaponry, these formidable instruments of destruction which 'work wonders' (2): and lastly, the science of genius which has conjured up steamships, railways and telegraphy which, by turning every government into a hundred armed, a thousand armed Briareos (3), giving it the power to be, act and arrest everywhere at once - has brought about the most formidable political centralisation the world has ever witnessed.

Who, then, will deny that, without exception, all of the advances made by science have thus far brought nothing, save a boosting of the wealth of the privileged classes and of the power of the State, to the detriment of the well-being and liberty of the masses of the people, of the proletariat? But, we will hear the objection, do not the masses of the people profit by this also? Are they not much more civilised in this society of ours than they were in the societies of byegone centuries?

We shall reply to that with an observation borrowed from the noted German socialist, Lassalle. In measuring the progress made by the working masses, in terms of their political and social emancipation, one should not compare their intellectual state in this century with what it may have been in centuries gone by. Instead, one ought to consider whether, by comparison with some given time, the gap which then existed between the working masses and the privileged classes having been noted, the masses have progressed to the same extent as these privileged classes. For, if the progress made by both has been roughly equivalent, the intellectual gap which separates the masses from the privileged in today's world will be the same as it ever was; but if the proletariat has progressed further and more rapidly than the privileged, then the gap must necessarily have narrowed; but if, on the other hand, the worker's rate of progress has been slower and, consequently, less than that of a representative of the ruling classes over the same period, then that gap will have grown. The gulf which separates them will have increased and the man of privilege grown more powerful and the worker's circumstances more abject, more slave like than at the date one chose as the point of departure. If the two of us set off from two different points at the same time and you have a lead of one hundred paces over me and you move at a rate of sixty paces per minute, and I at only thirty paces per minute, then after one hour the distance which separates us will not be just over one hundred paces, but just over one thousand nine hundred paces.

That example gives a roughly accurate notion of the respective advances made by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Thus far the bourgeoisie has raced along the track of civilisation at a quicker rate than the proletariat, not because they are intellectually more powerful than the latter indeed one might properly argue the contrary case - but because the political and economic organisation of society has been such that, hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have enjoyed access to learning and science has existed only for them, and the proletariat has found itself doomed to a forced ignorance, so that if the proletariat has, nevertheless, made progress (and there is no denying it has) then that progress was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it. To sum up. In society as presently constituted, the advances of science have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the proletariat, just as the progress of industry and commerce have been at the root of its relative impoverishment. Thus, intellectual progress and material progress have contributed in equal measure towards the exacerbation of the slavery of the proletariat. Meaning what? Meaning that we have a duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we have a duty to reject and resist bourgeois wealth. And reject and resist them in this sense - that in destroying the social order which turns it into the preserve of one or of several classes, we must lay claim to it as the common inheritance of all the world.

Kurdish convoy heads to Syria to take on Islamic State BY DASHA AFANASIEVA AND ALEXANDER DZIADOSZ

(Reuters) - A convoy of peshmerga fighters from northern Iraqheaded across southeastern Turkey on Wednesday towards the Syrian town of Kobani to try to help fellow Kurds break an Islamic State siege which has defied U.S.-led air strikes.

Kobani, on the border with Turkey, has been under assault for more than a month and its fate has become a test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to combat the Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Weeks of air strikes on Islamic State positions around Kobani and the deaths of hundreds of their fighters have failed to break the siege. The Kurds and their international allies hope the arrival of the peshmerga, along with heavier weapons, can turn the tide.

The Kurdish fighters were given a heroes' welcome as their convoy of jeeps and flatbed trucks, some bearing heavy machineguns, snaked its way for around 400 km (250 miles) through Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast after crossing the border from northern Iraq.

The presence of Kurdish forces passing with government permission through a part of Turkey which has seen a three-decade insurgency by local Kurdish PKK militants was an extraordinary sight for many residents.

Villagers set bonfires, let off fireworks and chanted by the side of the road as the convoy passed. Thousands took to the streets of the border town of Suruc, descending on its tree-lined main square and spilling into side streets, some with faces painted in the colors of the Kurdish flag.

"All the Kurds are together. We want them to go and fight in Kobani and liberate it," said Issa Ahamd, an 18-year-old high school student among the almost 200,000 Syrian Kurds who have fled to Turkey since the assault on Kobani began.

An initial group of between 90 and 100 peshmerga fighters arrived by plane amid tight security in the nearby city of Sanliurfa early on Wednesday, according to Adham Basho, a member of the Syrian Kurdish National Council from Kobani.

Saleh Moslem, co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said the peshmerga were expected to bring heavy arms to Kobani - known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.

"It's mainly artillery, or anti-armor, anti-tank weapons," he said. The lightly armed Syrian Kurds have said such weaponry is crucial to driving back Islamic State insurgents, who have used armored vehicles and tanks in their assault.

Kurdistan's Minister of Peshmerga, Mustafa Sayyid Qader, told local media on Tuesday that no limits had been set to how long the forces would remain in Kobani. The Kurdistan Regional Government has said the fighters would not engage in direct combat in Kobani but rather provide artillery support.

RADICAL ISLAM

Islamic State has caused international alarm by capturing large expanses of Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" that erases borders between the two. Its fighters have slaughtered or driven away Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam.

Fighters from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's official affiliate in the Syrian civil war, have meanwhile seized territory from moderate rebels in recent days, expanding their control into one of the few areas of northern Syria not already held by hardline Islamists.

Nearly 10 million people have been displaced by Syria's war and close to 200,000 killed, according to the United Nations. A Syrian army helicopter dropped two barrel bombs on a displaced persons camp in the northern province of Idlib on Wednesday, killing many, camp residents said.

In Iraq, security forces said they had advanced to within 2 km (1.2 miles) of the city of Baiji on Wednesday in a new offensive to retake the country's biggest oil refinery that has been besieged since June by Islamic State.

Islamic State has threatened to massacre Kobani's defenders, triggering a call to arms from Kurds across the region.

The U.S. military conducted 14 air strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Eight of the raids destroyed Islamic State targets near Kobani, it said.

At least a dozen shells fired by Islamic State fighters fell on the town overnight as clashes with the main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the YPG, continued, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It said preparations were being made at a border gate which Islamic State fighters have repeatedly tried to capture before the arrival of the peshmerga, while YPG and Islamic State forces exchanged fire in gun battles on the southern edge of the town.

The Observatory also said 50 Syrian fighters had entered Kobani from Turkey with their weapons, though it was unclear which group they belonged to. Turkey has pushed for moderate Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad to join the battle against Islamic State in Kobani.

Rebel commander Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi said he had led 200 Free Syrian Army fighters into Kobani but there was no independent confirmation of this. The FSA describes dozens of armed groups fighting Assad but with little or no central command. It is widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents.

DELICATE PARTNERSHIP

The Iraqi Kurdish region's parliament voted last week to deploy some peshmerga forces to Syria and, under pressure from Western allies, Turkey agreed to let then cross its territory.

The United States and its allies in the coalition have made clear they do not plan to send troops to fight Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, but they need fighters on the ground to capitalize on their air strikes.

Syrian Kurds have called for the international community to provide them with heavier weapons and munitions and they have received an air drop from the United States.

But Turkey accuses Kurdish groups in Kobani of links to the militant PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which has fought the insurgency against the Turkish state and is regarded as a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.

That has complicated efforts to provide aid.

A Syrian Kurdish official said in Paris on Wednesday that France, which has taken part in air strikes in Iraq and given Iraqi peshmerga fighters weapons and training, had yet to fulfill a promise to give support to Kurds in Syria.

"France has said it was ready to help the Kurds, but we haven't been received by the French authorities. There has been no direct or indirect contact," Khaled Eissa, representative in France of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said.

French officials confirmed there had been no meetings in large part due to concern about historic links to the PKK.

Ankara fears Syria's Kurds will exploit the chaos by following their brethren in Iraq and seeking to carve out an independent state in northern Syria, emboldening PKK militants in Turkey and derailing a fragile peace process.

The stance has enraged Turkey’s own Kurdish minority, about a fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region. Kurds suspect Ankara, which has refused to send in its forces to relieve Kobani, would rather see Islamic State jihadists extend their territorial gains than allow Kurdish insurgents to consolidate local power.

(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Arbil, Omer Berberoglu and Sasa Kavic in Sanliurfa,Tom Perry in Beirut, John Irish in Paris; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgoodand David Stamp)

Europe’s sea of death for migrants is a result of war and escalating inequality -The Guardian

• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Thursday 9 October 2014

The carnage on our borders will only grow without a radical shift from an iniquitous and failed system

The International Organisation for Migration has recorded the deaths of 3.072 migrants trying to reach Europe so far in 2014. Illustration: Matt Kenyon

The Mediterranean has become Europe’s sea of death. More than 3,000 refugees and migrants have already been killed this year trying to escape war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and break into the continental fortress to the north. That is more than four times 2013’s grim tally and makes up three quarters of a new annual global death toll of migrants. By any reckoning, this is a humanitarian disaster on Europe’s borders: the direct result of a system that favours the free movement of cheap European labour over providing refuge for victims of conflagration and destitution on our periphery.

These are the Syrians, Palestinians, Eritreans and Libyans, many of them children, driven into the hands of people traffickers to be drowned in overcrowded fishing boats, or sold to corrupt officials as European coastguards patrol off the sun-soaked beaches. Since the beginning of the century, more than 22,000 are estimated to have lost their lives trying to reach Europe. The annual cull reached a climax last month when a boat carrying refugees and migrants from Egypt to Malta was rammed and sunk by traffickers after those on board refused to transfer to a smaller vessel. Five hundred people died.

One of them was an Egyptian 14-year-old who wanted to earn money to pay for his sick father’s treatment. Others had survived Israel’s summer onslaught on Gaza and used money given to rebuild their homes to escape the siege for good. Imagine the resources that would have been poured into the investigation if 500 white Europeans had been deliberately killed in the Mediterranean — far more, clearly, than the 298 who died in the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine two months earlier.

But when it comes to the Arab and African victims of Europe’s watery killing fields, the rich world establishment shrugs and moves on. At least the Argentinian Pope Francis visited Italy’s frontline island of Lampedusa off the north African coast soon after his election to call for a “reawakening of conscience” over the scandal.

This is, after all, only the most visible sharp end of the global north-south divide of wealth and poverty, the brutality of which puts migrants battling to stow away on ferries at Calais into perspective. In reality, the 3,072 migrants recorded by the International Organisation for Migration as killed trying to reach Europe is certainly an underestimate, as elsewhere in the world. Who records migrants’ deaths in the desert?

Across the world, perhaps 120,000 migrants have been killed since 2000. In Europe, the number of irregular migrants detected by the Italian authorities this year has been 112,000 — up threefold on 2013 — as the wars Europe has fought or fuelled on its doorstep, from Libya to the Levant, come home to roost.

But it’s not so different on the US-Mexican border or in sea-lanes between Indonesia and Australia, those two other frontlines between what used to be called the first and third worlds. In the past 15 years, at least 6,000 migrants have died trying to cross into the US, and 1,500 have perished on their journey to Australia.

The Australian government boasts that it has cut the death toll by interning or dumping migrants on impoverished states and turning back boats by force. That is the grim face of 21st-century global privilege up against the consequences of its actions in the rest of the world.

Given the escalating scale of global inequality, the only surprise is that migration pressures are not greater still. In the late 19th century average income in the richest countries was around five times that of the poorest. By the early years of this century, it was more than 18 times higher – in the US it is now around 25 times that of the poorest.

The champions of capitalist globalisation insisted that the power of global markets would change all that. But, if you strip out China – which has delivered the fastest growth and poverty reduction in history, albeit at high environmental and social cost, by ignoring the neoliberal Washington consensus – poverty and inequality has continued to grow between as well as within countries.

As the catechism of “free market” deregulation has been imposed across the world under “free trade” and “partnership” agreements and the destructive discipline of the IMF, World Bank and WTO, capital and resources have been sucked out of the developing world and tens of millions of people have been driven into urban poverty by corporate land grabs.

That is why the number living on less than $2 a day in sub-Saharan Africa has doubled since 1981 under the sway of rich world globalisation. Africa’s boom has been in resource exploitation, not in most people’s living standards. So it is hardly surprising that migration from the global south to high and middle-income countries has more or less tripled over the past half century.

Add the impact of multiple wars over the past two decades, sponsored or fuelled by rich world countries – from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Mali and Libya – and the pressures on Europe’s borders and off its coasts are not hard to understand.

Those wars have generated tens of millions of refugees, the large majority of whom end up in the developing world itself. Libya, which turned into a failed state courtesy of Nato intervention, is now the country of departure for many of the doomed migrant boats to Europe.

And the refugees from Gaza are escaping decades of Israeli war, occupation and siege, which has been armed and funded by the US and EU. Factor in the growing impact of climate change across the African Sahel region and already precarious populations on Europe’s borders, and today’s level of migration north could end up looking like a trickle.

The reality is that the economic model forced down our throats for a generation is not delivering for most of the world’s population, north or south.

If we are to avoid the crises it has already fostered from turning into something worse, there will need to be a break with it, a respite from western war-making and radical action to slash global carbon emissions. Any one of those changes would, of course, represent a seismic shift. But without them, the bloodletting on our borders can only grow.

The EU as a borrower

The European Commission is empowered by the EU Treaty to borrow from the international capital markets, on behalf of the European Union.

The EU has some EUR 57 billion in outstanding bonds. It has a liquid yield curve consisting of 19 benchmark issues of over EUR 1 billion maturing until 2042.

The EU currently has three loan programmes which are funded through bonds issued on the capital markets:

• The European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) exists to providesupport to any EU Member State, up to EUR 60 billion. It has been activated for Ireland for up to EUR 22.5 billion and for Portugal for up to EUR 26 billion.
• The Balance-of-payments programme (BOP) provides assistance  to non-euro area Member States up to EUR 50 billion (EUR 10.4 billion outstanding)
• Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) is a form of financial aid extended by the EU to partner countries. So far there is EUR 1.1 billion in bonds outstanding.

In addition, the European Commission manages the

• Package of pooled bilateral loans from euro area Member States to Greece; the package initially comprised a total of EUR 80 billion, which was finally lowered to EUR 52.9 billion.

A summary of CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (H.D.Thoreau) -Sparks Notes

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War.

 Thoreau begins his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoint. He contends that people's first obligation is to do what they believe is right and not to follow the law dictated by the majority. When a government is unjust, people should refuse to follow the law and distance themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote his life to eliminating evils from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in such evils. This includes not being a member of an unjust institution (like the government). Thoreau further argues that the United States fits his criteria for an unjust government, given its support of slavery and its practice of aggressive war.

Thoreau doubts the effectiveness of reform within the government, and he argues that voting and petitioning for change achieves little. He presents his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust government: In protest of slavery, Thoreau refused to pay taxes and spent a night in jail. But, more generally, he ideologically dissociated himself from the government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to participate in his institutions. According to Thoreau, this form of protest was preferable to advocating for reform from within government; he asserts that one cannot see government for what it is when one is working within it.

Civil Disobedience covers several topics, and Thoreau intersperses poetry and social commentary throughout. For purposes of clarity and readability, the essay has been divided into three sections here, though Thoreau himself made no such divisions.