Economie

Report

Poor Poles count on right-wing politics for social protection

21 June 2016 -

Common families increase the power of populist, nationalist anti-immigration parties in Europe. This is clear in the southeast of Poland, where undeclared work and emigration are survival mechanisms to escape unemployment, low wages and insecure working conditions. Pieter Stockmans travelled through “Poland B” for two weeks.

Opinion

Source of Panama Papers speaks: 'The Revolution Will Be Digitized'

6 May 2016 -

The source behind the 11 million files that made the Panama Papers possible, sent a manifest to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. ‘Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over. The debate over its sudden acceleration has raged for years, with politicians, academics and activists alike he ...

Analysis

‘The Greek state has nothing to gain but environmental cost from the investment’

21 April 2016 -

The Greek mining company Hellas Gold pays both the police of the Halkidiki region and private security guards to secure a large gold mine in northern Greece. That does not scare off local residents to oppose a project that they believe will ruin their environment and future.

Analysis

Greek goldrush shows that Panamapapers are tip of the iceberg

20 April 2016 -

Greece is rich, if you just add up the billions which the gold is worth in Greek soil. Yet hospitals close, TB and malaria come back, malnutrition spreads, pensions halved, wages fell by a quarter and there is no work for half of the youth. Can a Greek gold rush create jobs and get the country out of the doldrums?

Opinion

Tax Evasion Is A Violation Of Human Rights

15 April 2016 -

This week, Tine Destrooper, Managing Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University, followed the #PanamaPapers articles with the same indignation as millions of people worldwide. According to her, the contribution of tax avoidance and tax evasion to the violation of the most vulnerable people’s human rights ...

Visual

#PanamaPapers: The Power Players

3 April 2016 -

This interactive produced by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) explores the stories behind the use of offshore companies of politicians and their relatives and associates — more than 100 in all. Among them are 12 current or former country leaders and 33 other politicians and public officials with direct connecti ...

News

From A No-Go Zone To A Shopping District; It’s Possible!

29 March 2016 -

Politicians are usually adamant when it comes to unreported employment. They consider the ‘informal’ economy a free zone for tax evaders, or worse, criminals. However, that is not necessarily the case. The South African port city of Durban went for a different approach altogether: they decided to give legal security to street traders (a ...

Video

Saskia Sassen: 'We must become innovators'

14 March 2015 -

The current capitalist system is not fueled by money and consumption, instead it is fueled by financial speculation, according to Saskia Sassen, one of the top US political scientists. The current situation leaves us with dead land, dead water, and the massive expulsion of the common man. But it also offers us plenty of opportunities to start worki ...

Opinion

‘Basic Income is the answer to technological developments’

13 March 2015 -

Increasingly, intelligent computers are taking over more and more intellectual jobs hitherto considered “safe” from automation, author Tom Kenis argues. Where will it end? Kenis points to a basic guaranteed income as a way forward.

Interview

Donor darling Mozambique goes to vote with gas bonanza in mind

15 October 2014 -

Today Mozambicans will cast their votes in general multi-party elections, for the fifth time after the ending of its civil war in 1992. Once a donor darling, this lusophone country in the South-East of Africa has recently discovered massive gas and oil fields up North. Still the exit out of poverty is not looming round the corner. An interview with ...

Analysis

Indonesia: An archipelago of opportunities

1 May 2014 -

Indonesia has been living in the shadow of the Asian giants China and India. From now on, though, the Southeast-Asian nation has the ambition to become one of the emerging powers of the 21th century on it's own merits. With 250 million inhabitants, an expected economic growth of 5.7 percent this year and a gross domestic product of more than a tril ...

News

Experiments in democracy

12 February 2014 -

China’s free market is doing fine, thank you. A free market without a free market in ideas, otherwise known as democracy, works. Some Western politicians seem to think that, simply by mimicking that system, they will be able to compete with the Chinese on an equal footing. Both premise and conclusion are flawed.