Radio WIBG: Najla Mulhondi: Linking feminist struggles and the debt system

October 21, 2015 by Leave a Comment

 

Najla Mulhondi

At the plenary session of the summer university of the CADTM, Amina Amzil from Attac Morocco reminded the audience how the Structural Adjustment Programs SAPs have changed the development of emerging countries in the neoliberal global market and what it means for women.

SAPs are the austerity programs of the South. The World Bank with the FMI institutionalize the neoliberal measures of austerity in the “there is no alternative” dogma. The World Bank impeded any plans for development of public investments instead becoming an instrument of economic blackmail for developing countries disregarding human rights.

Amina Amzil explained that in Morocco 78% of the GDP is engulfed in the debt repayment, slimming budget for education and health care reducing public services. Women are particularly hit by these cuts. Still, 52% of women are illiterate compared to 33% of men. The World Bank ordered a drastic cut of 30% in public employment the traditional sector in which women find services and work. Now, women unemployment is higher in all sectors; in particular 25% of women with higher education diploma are unemployed while women constitute only 6.7% of higher education graduate. In addition, women suffer of lack of access to health care especially evident with a maternal mortality rate of 112/100000 one of the highest in the region. Finally, SAPs were completed with trade agreements that open the emerging countries to the rich countries rendering women vulnerable as perceived as docile and exploitable in informal sectors.

Being a member of the CADTM in Liege (Belgium), Najla Mulhondi would not miss its annual meeting.

For Najla, the agronomist, the public debt system meant globalization of agro-industry merchandize that works only because of the existence of inequalities. But this year, she said, she had to focus on the link between feminism and the public debt system. Realizing that inequalities are gendered, she attended the “feminist struggles” workshops of the CADTM.

We talked with her after the workshop moderated by Christine Vanden Daelen entitled “Some pedagogical tools to arm women against all kind of austerity.”

This workshop presented some educative tools for women, chiefly vulnerable women, to regain control over the neoliberal discourse and understand that they don’t owe anything on the contrary their work has been largely utilized for free. Najla makes the connection with the land grabbing and globalized markets that forced the farmers of the South to produce crops, roses etc, for the North.

In her interview in French, she mentioned the issue of “all these natural resources purloined from the South”, she said, “I don’t know how one/we will give back to the countries in the South, we’ll have to ponder.”

Clearly, in these unequal relationships feminist struggles bring about another solidarity to open what has been closed by this neoliberal order.

Listen to Najla who felt the need, “to spread this new openness.”

For a longer interview with Najla, in French:

(Photo Credit: 50-50 Magazine)

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Radio WIBG: Emilie Paumard: Women’s oppression and the debt work together

October 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Emilie Paumard

Emilie Paumard

Emilie Paumard opened the plenary session of the 4th summer University of the CADTM. She presented the debt crisis in only 12 minutes. She used cynical humor to explain how seven years ago in the North neoliberal capitalists realized that the subprime crisis was also an opportunity to dismantle social protections that had emerged in Europe over the past 50 years. These countries’ labor and sexual and reproductive laws went too far; they had to be put back in the ranks. They just had to rewrite history.

And so it came to pass.

It was not deregulation of the finance economy or financial derivatives products that caused the mess. It was the people, the women, the workers! They lived beyond their means, they should return to the “traditional” oppressive way of life! It was not 30 years of neoliberal politics!

Emilie explained that the experience of the South, ravaged by Structural Adjustment Programs, gave her the necessary insights into the system of debt and creditors to become active in the North. In addition, as a woman and as a lesbian woman, she is subjected to a system of oppressions and restrictions.

She sees the citizens’ debt audit as an important public tool that can be vector of grassroots organizing to lead to transformative initiatives. That is most needed to face this cynical and dreadful system that dispossesses the population of their rights.

The secretive functioning of the financial speculative market pulled apart necessary regulations to protect the public system. This allowed the derivative markets to become 10 times the world GDE while political discourse bragged about controlling the banks. Emilie

Paumard believes that the citizens’ debt audit allowed the oppressed population to comprehend and then organize the struggle against these opaque mechanisms that serve the neoliberal elite.

This is a feminist struggle. Now, listen to Emilie Paumard:

For a longer interview with Emilie, in French:

(Interview and photo by Brigitte Marti) (Video interview by Brigitte Marti and Marie–Hélène Le Ny at 50/50)

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Radio WIBG: Christine Vanden Daelen: Fighting the debt system is a feminist struggle!

September 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Christine Vanden Daelen

Christine Vanden Daelen

The CADTM summer university was articulated around five themes, one of which was Feminist Struggles. Christine Vanden Daelen was the coordinator of the workshops on feminist struggles in a time of debt and austerity.

According to Christine Vanden Daelen, debt is a dictatorial system over states, first in the South and now in the North, that oppresses populations. The system is supported by a network of international institutions that purport to work for the development of these states while imposing constraints and controls over their sovereignty.

For Christine, becoming aware of these mechanisms is key.

CADTM’s motto reads, “Create alternatives that free humanity from all forms of oppression: social, patriarchal, imperialist, racial…”

Christine Vanden Daelen joined the CADTM eight years ago after becoming aware that a social movement that intends to work against this system must have a feminist approach. The CADTM is also a feminist network as declared in its charter.

The structural adjustment programs in the South and the austerity measures in the North have impacted the most precarious populations. 70% of these populations are women. Women are the most dependent on social protection and public services, and so are the first ones to be dismantled by this system of debt. Thanks to work distribution, women comprise the vast majority of the public sector workers and the reproduction/care unpaid workers without which the society would be scrambling.

Christine says women have no debt to repay. It is the state that works in liaison with all the instigators and actors of the system of debt that should be paying them.

Let’s listen to Christine who launched with her colleagues a feminist audit of the debt:

For a longer interview with Christine, in French:

(Interview by Brigitte Marti) (Photo by Brigitte Marti) (Video interview by Brigitte Marti and Marie–Hélène Le Ny at 50 / 50)

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Radio WIBG: Lauren Tooker on student debt and women bearing the brunt

September 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment

At the CADTM Summer University, the workshop on private debt and resistance broached the system of private debt as debt that is forced on people as public debt is forced on States. The workshop covered micro lending in Morocco, mortgage loan based eviction in Spain, financialization processes in Eastern Europe, and student loans in the UK.

Lauren Tooker talked to us about the student loan crisis in the UK. In 2012 a reform swept the universities in the UK introducing an important increase in education fees. This reform came with a system of loans specially designed to create a source of profit at the expense of equality in education. With a student debt system, women and minorities are losing space and rights.

The United Kingdom is the first European Country that has followed the path of the United States in the direction of for-profit education. As the scandal of the student unfair loan system in the United States is becoming more visible, finally hitting the news, the UK students have decided to organize and take action. Lauren came to the CADTM to link their struggle to the anti debt movement in general.

Resistance comes with conscientization, building spaces and organizing. Listen to Lauren Tooker.

(Recording by Brigitte Marti) (Debt Strike image: The Guardian)

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Radio WIBG interview: Tijana Okic

September 14, 2015 by 1 Comment

 

Tijana Okic

Tijana Okic

(Editor’s note: Today we inaugurate Radio WIBG (Women In and Beyond the Global). Brigitte Marti interviews Bosnian feminist activist Tijana Okic.)

From the CADTM Europe Summer University: The second day offered many workshops to continue the exploration of “The debt in all its state” and moreover the resistance that is being organized around the world.

In Women in and Beyond the Global we look for the voices and analyses that the neoliberal establishment would like to smother. Tijana Okic is definitely a voice that does not want to be smothered. She talked to us about her feminist commitment against this fraudulent racket organized around the story of the debt. Listen to her inspiring and important Bosnian perspective and testimony.

 

 

Recording and photo  by Brigitte Marti

 

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Debt Over! A report from the Fourth CADTM Europe Summer University: Day One

September 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

For three days the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, CADTM, is hosting its summer university. The theme is that the Debt economy needs to be investigated, as neoliberal leaders assert that debt governs society as a whole, proving that debt has become a key tool of the neoliberal economy. The goal of the conference is to look at multiple phenomena through the prism of the debt economy.

The conference is organized around several “itineraries”: debt in the South, debt in the North, environmental debt, audit, and feminist fights.

The first day started with a plenary session entitled “ La dette dans tous ses etats” (Debt in all its states), a play on words suggesting the multifaceted aspect of this neoliberal instrument.

The first speaker gave a snapshot of the cynicism of the situation that demands the scam that allowed the financial crisis of the patriarchal neoliberal to become the public debt crisis and the responsibility of the public. They play, we pay. In Europe, the offensive started seven years ago, taking aim at the social rights brought about by decades of social struggles. The recent financial reform Projet Barnier that was formed at the European Commission was influenced and largely designed by over 1000 financial lobbyists with a budget of 300 Million Euros.

The next speakers revealed the intricacy of finance and domination of the oligarchs in the form of debt in Ukraine that led to the current crisis that is still killing people.

After that, Gilbert Lieben, the Secretary General of the Centrale Générale des Services Publics, a Belgian union for public services employees, gave an overview of the work that unions have to do to debunk the traps of the debt system. He reminded the audience that, at first, the unions did not realize the importance of the formation of the concept of debt in social struggles.

Then, Olivier de Schutter, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, exposed the connection between debt and farming as small farmers have been under siege since the agriculture sector has been open to free market deregulation.

CADTM spokesperson Eric Toussaint set the stage of the past and future stakes for the South in the debt economy. After listing several positive initiatives such as in Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, and, to some extent, Argentina, he warned the audience of the possible devastating consequences for the South of a change by the FEDS of the interest rates in this intricate global debt system. He emphasized that alternative are not only possible but necessary if we want to break all forms of oppressions.

Amina Amzil, from Attac Morocco, delineated the feminist struggle. She explained the double burden on women in Morocco, where the debt economy devours 78% of the GDP. In Morocco between reductions in public social services and in public employment, women are particularly impacted. Austerity policies increase and intensify precariousness for women who are more likely to be illiterate, dependent and victims of domestic violence. Debt is another means of oppression for women.

The CADTM has been involved in organizing citizen audit of public debts everywhere in the world. Its latest involvement in the audit of the Greek debt under the aegis of Zoe Kostantopoulou, the President of the Greek Parliament, has brought attention to the importance of a transparent process in public policy.

The afternoon workshop, “Arming women against all forms of austerity”, addressed this lack of transparency as central to the exploitation of women. The workshop invited us to organize more effectively. As Sonia Mitralias said, we need new ways to imagine a different future.

Debt is gendered and the response must integrate women in their entirety and diversity. The group created a five-module educational kit, from austerity to what to do. One of the modules, “Exploitation of women knows no crisis”, helps participants understand that the few gains in women’s rights are again under attack. The audience was large and diverse and passionate. I met women from Cameroon, Tunisia, Morocco, and elsewhere.

Women in Belgium organized a feminist audit of the debt in which they account the number of services women provide for free, from reproduction and care work to cheap labor. Their conclusion is simple: the state incurs the huge debt, not the women! They called their project “La Facture” (the invoice, or the bill). The State plays, the women pay and pay and pay.

The fight against the debt economy is transnational and gendered.

 

 

 

(Photo Credit 1: CADTM)

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In South Africa workers say NO to the dictatorship of debt

July 8, 2015 by 3 Comments

 

Jeffrey Haarhoff, Bulelani Mehlomakhulu, Angeline Arrison, Lisinda Bailey discuss the case

The dictatorship of debt takes many shapes, and Greece is not the only one to say NO! to predators this week. In a landmark case in South Africa, decided in the Western Cape High Court today, 15 low wage workers – cleaners, security guards, farm workers – took on the “micro loan” system of fast money, slow torture and death in life … and won!

Late last year, fifteen people in and around Stellenbosch, in the wine country of the Western Cape, approached the University of Stellenbosch’s Legal Aid Clinic, LAC, and asked for help. They explained that each had taken out a so-called micro loan, and found that at some point [a] the interest soared and [b] their salaries were “attached” by means of emolument attachment orders also known as EAOs or garnishee orders. While the fifteen basically wanted to get out of an impossible and unjust situation, the lawyers at LAC saw that the whole system was in violation of South Africa’s Constitution, and so, in November, they went to court.

As Lisinda Bailey, one of the applicants, explained, “I had to make monthly payments of R2,600 which was more than I can afford. As the only person working in my house, I struggled every month.” Angeline Arrison told a similar tale. Two years ago, she took out a loan of 2000 rand. Now half of her 4200 rand salary is seized every month, and she still owes and she still owes over 3000 rand. Others tell the same stories … and worse: already over indebted, trying to figure out how to organize and lighten the load, while retaining some semblance of dignity.

The fifteen also had the backing of Wendy Appelbaum, one of the wealthiest women on the African continent, a leading philanthropist and the owner of DeMorgenzon, a wine estate in Stellenbosch: “I became aware of the plight of one of my workers, from whom we were legally obliged to deduct most of his salary on behalf of loan sharks. I immediately addressed his circumstances, but discovered how widespread the abuse of garnishee orders had become. I was outraged and decided to intervene on behalf of the helpless and voiceless victims, and have played a convening and facilitating role.” Appelbaum took the fifteen to the Legal Aid Clinic.

The South African Human Rights Commission joined as a friend of the court, and has also taken up the public policy issue of garnishee orders. As SAHRC Commissioner Mohamed Shafie Ameermia explained, “We must knock on Parliament’s doors very seriously to say the house is on fire out there. We need to advocate and champion proper legislation, close the loopholes and gaps in the existing legislation so that at least poor people have the right to live decent lives.”

The fifteen – cleaners, security guards, farm and seasonal workers, evenly divided among women and men, uniformly vulnerable – and their lawyers argued that the credit providers and their lawyers obtained the orders illegally, often by going to distant courts, and that, further, the process was improper because the orders were issued by court clerks and not by magistrates or judges. For those who owed, there was no day in court in this process, only fog and mirrors.

Today, Western Cape High Court Judge Siraj Desai agreed: “The right of access to courts is fundamental to the rule of law in a constitutional state. The … respondents are obtaining judgments and EAOs against the applicants in courts far removed from their homes and places of work and in places which they could not hope to reach, the right to approach the courts was seriously jeopardised, if not effectively denied. This violation of the rights of debtors to access courts and enjoy the protection of the law was the product of the … respondents’ forum shopping for courts which would entertain their applications for judgments and the issuing of EAOs … This is the most disturbing feature of the debt collecting processes employed by the micro-lenders … The absence of judicial supervision and the consequences of the execution process infringes several of the debtors’ constitutional rights … The attachment of an excessive portion of a debtor’s earnings infringes on the right of the debtor and her family to dignity, as well as their rights to access to healthcare, food, education and housing.”

As Wendy Applebaum put it, “It’s a David and Goliath scenario here where their human rights and dignity have been taken away.” And David and Davida said NO! to predatory debt, to debt that consumes body and soul, to debt structures that crush human dignity, and today they won. From Syntagma Square to Stellenbosch, thus far it’s been a good week for the Great Refusal.

(Photo Credit: Masixole Feni / GroundUp.org.za)

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OXI! Greek women say NO to the Dictatorship of the Debt

July 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

 

For the last five years, Women In and Beyond the Global has maintained a series on Greek women, and women in Greece, during the ongoing `crisis’. These pieces have been written by Brigitte Marti, Sonia Mitralia, Dan Moshenberg. We’ve also provided translation for a video, Canaries in the Coalmine.

Given the weekend’s referendum, we thought it would be a good idea to put those pieces that focus exclusively on Greece together. The struggle continues!

Asylum-seeker Mandana Daneshnia and her daughter haunt democracy. Dan Moshenberg. October 24, 2010. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=710

We are all canaries in the coal mine. Brigitte Marti. December 4, 2013. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=6613

Deprivation in Greece … just an emotional issue??? Brigitte Marti. December 30, 2013. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=6670

Violence Against Women as a strategic weapon in a time of class war in Greece. Sonia Mitralia. January 3, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=6676

Women’s rights, labor rights did not cause the Greek mess. Brigitte Marti. February 2, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=7989

The urgency of an independent women’s movement against debt and austerity measures. Sonia Mitralia. February 4, 2014 http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=8146

In Greece, from debt to prison to death. Brigitte Marti. March 30, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=11293

In Athens, women cleaners reject austerity’s mess. Brigitte Marti. April 6, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=11785

The people do not celebrate Greece’s return to the debt market. Brigitte Marti. April 21, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=12642

Greek cleaning women demand an end to austerity. Dan Moshenberg. June 14 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=15727

Solidarity with Greek women cleaners against austerity! Brigitte Marti. July 7, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=15768

In Greece, austerity builds its own gulag. Dan Moshenberg. July 8, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=15772

Cleaners: A handful of women show the way! Sonia Mitralia. August 6, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=15831

The experiment continues, and we are all still canaries in the coal mine. Brigitte Marti. November 19, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=16064

A new beginning for Greece and for Europe starts today! Brigitte Marti. February 18, 2014. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=18325

Appeal to support the resisting Greek people and its Truth Commission on Public Debt. Sonia Mitralia. May 27, 2015 http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=18751

Across Europe women campaign against the Dictatorship of the Debt. Brigitte Marti. June 15, 2015. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=18866

In Greece, the women cleaners show the way! Brigitte Marti. June 25, 2015. http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=18914

#OXI! #GreeceIsTheWord!

 

 

(Photo Credit: Getty Images / Andreas Solaro)

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Across Europe women campaign against the Dictatorship of the Debt

June 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment

In March the European Forum for Alternatives met. With austerity measures imposed over the populations of Europe under the fabricated argument of the need to repay a fictitious public debt, the solidarity among Europeans is growing more organized, especially with the rise of major feminist and feminine voices in Greece and Spain.

Among the many speakers, Zoe Konstantopoulou, recently elected Speaker of the Vouli (Greek Parliament), presented the stakes for Europe as her country has been the theater of the most odious experimentation of European Structural Adjustment Programs, symbolized by austerity. As she said, the neoliberal order reigns in the EU and has created its own destructive weapon with the Troika. It wants to neutralize all opposition and diffuse its power based on debt anxiety.

The forum’s many workshops brought the voices of women who have fought for their rights, including Giorgia Ekonomou, one of the Greek Finance Ministry cleaners; the representatives of the hair cutters of the 57 bvd Sebastopol in Paris; and the hotel chambermaids who won recognition for their workers’ rights.

In her speech about the audit of the Greek debt, a true European issue, Zoe Konstantopoulou acknowledged these feminist battles as well as the brutal destruction of human rights that came as the result of the Troika memoranda. The battle against austerity measures is also a transnational feminist battle.

Regrettably, Zoe Konstantopoulou is the only woman that has a prominent position in Greece since the election of Syriza. Still, as Yorgos Mitralias of the Greek Committee Against the Debt told me, she was not supposed to exist and so is a gift fallen from heaven. She is the voice of reason for many. She wants to shatter corruption, especially financial corruption, while not losing the purpose of political representation as the means of defending the civil society with all its members. “In Greece, we have a systematic infringement on human rights, social rights, worker’s rights on democratic rule of law, on the welfare state,” declared Zoe Konstantopoulou when she was first elected to the parliament in 2012.

Last April in Rome, Zoe Konstantopoulou was keynote speaker at the conference of the European Union parliaments. She began by questioning the title of the session, “A discussion about the Continent of Fundamental Rights. A Europe of Freedom, Solidarity, and Security.” She said, “Is it a discussion about the past, the present, or the future? Is it a discussion about Europe as it used to be, as it is or as it should be? Is it a discussion about the whole of Europe or about part of it?” She remarked that Europe as expressed by its executives, banking and financial sectors, seems to have lost its way during the five last years. She questioned the emphasis on numerical and economic estimation that have been proven to be gross miscalculations, and she ranked competitiveness way below human rights in the European hierarchy.

Her speech addressed the dictatorship of debt: she explained that State debt, as a new European epidemic, is being used as a pretext but also as a tool to retreat the State from its responsibility vis-à-vis human rights and democratic rights. She sees State debt as an extortion mechanism and reminded her audience of the extraordinary trail of misery and death that austerity policies provoked.

Konstantopoulou also reaffirmed the importance of an uncorrupt parliament, a place where no forceful interventions should occur. Since 2005 the Greek parliament has been the theater of all kinds of violence with 800 pages of laws pushed by the Troika, targeting basic human rights, public services, and shielding financial crimes and tax evasion. Just recently a stand off with the Minister of the Interior Panoussis took place with the intrusion of police forces in the parliament that she condemned.

With her anticorruption stand, Zoe Konstantopoulou has become the target of all sorts of attacks including from members of her own government. According to Yorgos Mitralia, But the campaign against her is reaching a new level punctuated with sexist slurs. So far the support to Syriza and Alexis Tsipras’ government is strong with 65-70% approval rate. Although it is a critical moment with the audit of the debt in progress and the hard negotiations with the Eurogroup, Zoe’s initiatives are well supported by the people of Greece and even beyond Greece’s borders

Meawhile, in Spain, three prominent political positions have been won by progressive women in the last elections with the success of Manuela Carmena, the new mayor of Madrid, of Ada Colau in Barcelona, and of Monica Oltra in the Valencia region. All three got their votes for their strong stand against financial corruption, and for defending social consciousness, the only way to reduce the impact of neoliberal totalitarian austerity promises, begetting inequalities, the plague of women’s lives. The movement is growing and a new solidarity is forming in which women are playing a key role.

Zoe Konstantopoulou

(Lead Photo Credit: http://kaosenlared.net) (Photo Credit: http://www.european-left.org)

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Appeal to support the resisting Greek people and its Truth Commission on Public Debt

May 27, 2015 by Leave a Comment

 

APPEAL TO SUPPORT THE RESISTING GREEK PEOPLE and its TRUTH COMMISSION ON PUBLIC DEBT

FOR THE PEOPLES’ RIGHT TO AUDIT PUBLIC DEBT 

 To the people of Europe and the whole world!

To all the men and women who reject the politics of austerity and are not willing to pay a public debt which is strangling us and which was agreed to behind our backs and against our interests.

We signatories to this appeal stand by the Greek people who, through their vote at the election of 25th January 2015, became the first population in Europe and in the Northern hemisphere to have rejected the politics of austerity imposed to pay an alleged public debt which was negotiated by those on top without the people and against the people.  At the same time we consider that the setting up of the Greek Public Debt Truth Commission at the initiative of the president of the Greek Parliament constitutes a historic event, of crucial importance not only for the Greek people but also for the people of Europe and the whole world!

Indeed, the Truth Commission of the Greek Parliament, composed of volunteer citizens from across the globe, is destined to be emulated in other countries. First, because the debt problem is a scourge that plagues most of Europe and the world, and secondly because there are millions and millions of citizens who are rightly posing basic and fundamental questions about this debt:

“What happened to the money that made up this loan? What were the conditions attached to it? How much interest has been paid, at what rate? How much capital has been repaid? How was the debt allowed to accumulate without benefiting the people? Where did the capital go? What was it used for? How much was diverted, by whom, and how was this done?

“And also: Who took out this loan and in whose name? Who granted the loan and what was their role? How did the state become involved? By what decision, taken with what authorisation? How did private debts become ‘public’? Who set up such inappropriate schemes, who pushed in this direction, who profited from them? Were offences or crimes committed with this money? Why has penal civil, criminal and administrative responsibility not been established?”

All these questions will be subjected to rigorous analysis by the commission, which has an official mandate to “gather all information relevant to the emergence and disproportionate increase in public debt, and to subject the data to scientific scrutiny in order to determine what part of that debt can be identified as illegitimate and illegal, odious or unsustainable, during the period of the Memoranda, from May 2010 to January 2015 as well as in the preceding years. It must also publish precise information – which must be accessible to all citizens, provide the evidence to back up public declarations, raise awareness among the Greek population, the international community and international public opinion, and finally draw up arguments and demands calling for cancellation of the debt.

We consider that it is the most basic democratic right of every citizen to demand clear and precise answers to these questions. We also consider that refusal to reply constitutes a denial of democracy and transparency on the part of those at the top who invented and use the “debt-system” to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And even worse: we consider that by jealously keeping for themselves the monopoly right to decide the fate of society, those at the top deprive the overwhelming majority of citizens not only of their right to make decisions but above all of the right to take their destiny and the fate of humanity into their hands!

This is why we are launching the following urgent appeal to all citizens, social movements, ecological and feminist networks and movements, trade unions and political organizations that reject this ever less democratic and humane neo-liberal Europe: Show your solidarity with the Greek resistance by supporting in action the Greek Public Debt Truth Commission and its work in identifying that part of the Greek public debt which is illegal, illegitimate, odious and/or unsustainable.

Defend it against the outrageous attacks it has been subjected to from all those forces in Greece and the rest of the world who have an interest in keeping the truth about the “debt-system” hidden from view.

Actively take part in the citizen debt audits that are being developed throughout Europe and elsewhere.

Share your support and solidarity on your social networks, since this support and international solidarity is the only way to thwart the ruling powers’ plan to suffocate Greece and the people who are fighting against our common enemy: the politics of austerity and the debt that is strangling us!

We are confronted by an experienced adversary, united, well-coordinated, armed with extraordinary powers and absolutely determined to pursue its offensive against every one of us to the bitter end: we who constitute the overwhelming majority of our societies. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of resisting separately, each in his own corner. So let us unite our forces in a vast movement of solidarity with the Greek resistance and support for the Truth Commission of the Greek Parliament, multiplying such debt audit commissions everywhere where that is possible. Because the struggle of the Greek people is our struggle and their victory will be our victory. Our unity is our only strength

United we stand; divided we fall!

Click here GreekDebtTruthCommission.org to sign this Appeal

 

(Image Credit: Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt)

 

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