Connexions Resource Centre
Focus on Europe

Recent & Selected Articles

  1. This is a small sampling of articles related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as Europe, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.
  1. The Entry of a New German Left Party Shakes up the Country (January 25, 2024)
    Launched by Sahra Wagenknecht and her allies, a new left party is proposing a different direction for Germany.
  2. Karriere mit links (November 8, 2023)
  3. Germany's position in America's New World Order (November 2, 2022)
    Discusses the American New Cold War and the creation of two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. Germany finds itself in the midst of this fracture, and is being convinced by the US that it requires American protection.
  4. France Stuck in the Extreme Center (April 27, 2022)
    After years of neoliberalism, French politics that venture outside the conformist centre's unshakable loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance are now dangerously 'extreme.'
  5. America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century (March 28, 2022)
    The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine's neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime was aimed at (and has succeeded in) forcing a showdown in response to America's fear that it is losing its economic and political hold on its NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites. These countries have seen major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.
  6. The West's Hands in Ukraine as Bloody as Putin's (March 11, 2022)
    There is a discursive nervous tic all over social media at the moment, including from prominent journalists such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot. The demand is that everyone not only "condemn" Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, but do so without qualification.
  7. Russia-Ukraine Resources: History, context and analysis of the crisis (February 28, 2022)
    Articles and interviews examining the context and background of the 2022 crisis.
  8. Chronicle of a War Foretold (February 25, 2022)
  9. Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This (February 25, 2022)
    Analysts and diplomats have been saying since the 1990s that NATO expansion would eventually spark a conflict in Eastern Europe.
  10. In Ukraine, 'No One Hears That There Is a Diplomatic Solution' (February 24, 2022)
  11. What Is the Difference Between Kosovo & Donbass? (February 23, 2022)
    When the corporate media push for war, one of their main weapons is propaganda by omission. In the case of the recent crisis in Ukraine, Western journalists have omitted key context about the expansion of NATO since the end of the Cold War, as well as US support for the Maidan coup in 2014. A third and crucial case of propaganda by omission relates to the integration of neo-Nazis into the Ukrainian armed forces If the corporate media reported more critically about Western support for the neo-Nazi-infested Ukrainian security services, and how these forces function as a front-line proxy of US foreign policy, public support for war might be reduced and military budgets called into greater question.
    As recent coverage demonstrates, one way of resolving this issue is by not mentioning the inconvenient matter of Ukrainian neo-Nazis altogether.
  12. Europe's Political Turmoil and the Rise of the Far Right (November 1, 2018)
    A look at the recent rise of far-right governments all over Europe and the failure of the left to effectively counter this.
  13. The Crisis of Social Democracy: From Norway to Europe (February 20, 2018)
    With social democratic parties in Europe suffering poor election results and significant setbacks, this article puts the current crisis in historical context, and how resolution and success will depend on more radical solutions.
  14. Hollowing out democracy and law (November 5, 2017)
    The recent actions of the Catalan government are not those of politicians respecting democracy. The reaction of the Madrid government, which criminalize political dissent, are equally disturbing.
  15. The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left - Book review (September 7, 2017)
    A book review of The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left by author Helena Sheehan.
  16. Podemos, Catalonia and the workers' movement in the Spanish state (August 29, 2017)
    Following a long period of electoral upheaval and failure of the left, it is argued that the two key areas where the Spanish ruling class could have been confronted was through the workers' movement and the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, both of which were not sufficiently addressed by the Podemos campaign.
  17. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 2, 2016 (July 2, 2016)
    Brexit, the British vote to leave the European Union, has thrown the political elites into turmoil and confusion. The referendum was supposed to be a safe political manoeuvre, a way to produce an appearance of democratic legitimacy for the profoundly undemocratic structures of the EU. The gambit turned out to be a spectacular miscalculation, as millions of people turned out to express their opposition to a state of affairs that is leaving the majority worse off while enriching a small minority. This issue of Other Voices looks at the Brexit referendum, elite loathing for democracy, and the related attempt to get rid of Labour's leftwing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
  18. Greece is sold off and sold out (July 1, 2016)
    A recent study has concluded that privatisation in Europe has undermined wage structures, made working conditions worse and increased income inequality; nowhere is this exemplified more than in Greece.
  19. Brexit and the Diseased Liberal Mind (June 26, 2016)
    The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The anger is pathological -- and helps to shed light on why a majority of Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
  20. A Blow for Peace and Democracy (June 24, 2016)
    The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.
  21. On the Uprisings in France (April 22, 2016)
    At the beginning of March 2016, France's now ultra-liberal Socialist Party (PS) government officially revealed a labour reforms bill whose objective was to promote the competitiveness of businesses operating in France. The bill, commonly referred to as the El Khomri (the country's Labour Minister) law, was instantly perceived by most leftist factions as a fundamental attack on workers rights and a downright sabotage of the French Labour Code ("Code du Travail"), considered one of Europe's most progressive. The law allows for companies to reach "agreements" with its staff over working conditions without the need to negotiate with trade unions, subjecting workers to employers' arbitrary decisions (in regards to longer hours and lower overtime pay) without any legal protection. It also facilitates mass sackings and individual lay-offs by relaxing French law's constraint on firing and hiring, and casts aside the sacrosanct 35-hour work week in favour of a lengthened, more "flexible" one.
  22. Revolutionary Greece (August 10, 2015)
    The small town of Distomo is just 150 kilometers from Athens, positioned in the heart of Greece, literally squeezed between two great world heritage sites: Delphi, the cradle of the European democracy, and a stunning Byzantine monastery of Hossios Luckas. But Distomo is much more than some picturesque village surrounded by mountains and history.
  23. Greece: Was, and Is There, an Alternative? (August 7, 2015)
    Addresses three major aspects of the Greek crisis of 2015: the debate over strategy and program within and around Syriza and how that was reflected in the months since the January election; the prospects for a recovery and revitalization of the Greek left in the coming period; and some promising initial reactions to the Greek events in the European left.
  24. Will the Greek elections strengthen the hands of the Global South? (January 27, 2015)
    The endorsement of a leftist party is a vote against global lenders imposing governance prescriptions on countries in crisis. If Greece successfully pushes back against its lenders, it will open the door to countries of the Global South to restructure their relationships with lenders such as the World Bank and IMF.
  25. Land concentration, land grabbing and people's struggles in Europe (January 2, 2015)
    The hidden scandal of how a few big private business entities have gained control of ever-greater areas of European land. How these land elites have been actively supported by a huge injection of public funds -- at a time when all other public funding is being subjected to massive cuts.
  26. Regime Change in Ukraine and the IMF's Bitter "Economic Medicine" (March 24, 2014)
    In the days following the Ukraine coup d’Etat of February 23, 2014, leading to the ousting of a duly elected president, Wall Street and the IMF -- in liaison with the US Treasury and the European Commission in Brussels -- had already set the stage for the outright takeover of Ukraine's monetary system.
  27. Masking Tragedy in Ukraine (February 20, 2014)
    It is no secret that Barack Obama is one of the supreme illusionists of modern times. The disconnect between his words and his deeds is so profound as to be almost sublime, far surpassing the crude obfuscations of the Bush-Cheney gang.
  28. Bosnia's Magnificent Uprising (February 13, 2014)
    Beginning in February 2014, mass protests led by workers, students, and other citizens, have rocked most major industrial cities in Bosnia. Whatever the current uprising is or is not, it is the largest mass outbreak of unalloyed class struggle revolt, untouched by nationalist poison, that we have seen in Bosnia since it was ripped to bits by Serbian and Croatian nationalists.
  29. Ukraine's Protest Movement (February 12, 2014)
    A conversation about the necessity and possibility of a "Left Sector" and its struggle for hegemony in the 2013-2014 Ukrainian protests is important not only in the contemporary Ukrainian context, but also for the future.
  30. Ukraine: what's going on, and what does it mean? (December 3, 2013)
    Some thoughts on the protests happening in Ukraine. Things are not completely what they may seem.
  31. From mobilisation to resistance: Portugal's struggle against austerity (April 10, 2013)
    Portugal has been subjected to increasingly harsh austerity policies that have led the country into a recession of historic proportions, the result being mass impoverishment.
  32. The Radical Left in Europe (2013)
    An attempt to understand what unites the organisations of the new left and the nature of its radicalism.
  33. A comment on Greece and Syriza (October 9, 2012)
    This analysis is a rebuke to the notion that there is nothing between the far left and social democracy. That diagnosis may have been appropriate in the period of revolutionary growth beginning in 1968. This period, marked by the long-term decomposition of once dominant social democratic parties, is quite different.
  34. Greece: Syriza Shines a Light (July 30, 2012)
    Like a swan moving forward with relaxed confidence while paddling furiously beneath the surface, Syriza, the radical left coalition that could become the next government of Greece, is facing enormous challenges calmly but with intensifed activity.
  35. Burdened with Debt Reloaded: The Politics ofr Devaluation (June 3, 2012)
    A series of defensive and sectional struggles at workplaces in the private sector reveal that the Greek industrial capital has already taken advantage of the new institutional framework of the “state of emergency” now ruling in Greece to prop up its profitability or just transfer its own debts and losses onto the workers.
  36. The March 29 Strike Against Labor Law Reform in Spain (June 3, 2012)
    The general strike of March 29, although it mobilized a good part of the population, apparently took place with more pain than glory. Once the day of the strike was over, everything seemed to continue as before: namely, the continuation of an aggressive policy against the wage-labor population, in an economic context characterized by recession.
  37. The November 2011 General Elections in Spain: Indignation Trapped in the Ballot Box (January 15, 2012)
    The “outrage” expressed in the Spanish streets, deflated after the electoral ritual, is confronted with the limitations of the movement’s citizen-based abstractions (electoral reform, the affirmation of democracy, denouncing corruption, etc.) when confronted with the reality ( labor reform, social cuts) imposed by capital and its democratically elected administrators. Or, perhaps, indignation has completed its cycle and we are at the beginning.
  38. France: The NPA in Crisis (January 1, 2012)
    France's new Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) is in crisis. While only two years ago many on the international left talked about the NPA as one of the brightest lights on an otherwise dim revolutionary horizon, today the Party is hemorrhaging members and struggling to stay afloat.
  39. Destroying Estonia (October 24, 2011)
    Many economists and financial press writers mimic children on amusement park rides. They think their austerity policies are “steering” their vehicle rather than being guided by underlying structural forces.
  40. Fury Mounts Among Greek People (October 24, 2011)
    Nobody trusts the government or the opposition because people blame them for starting the crisis in the first place.
  41. The Myth of Greek Profligacy (October 24, 2011)
    The top 20 per cent of the income distribution in Greece pay virtually no taxes at all, the product of a corrupt bargain reached during the days of the junta between the military and Greece’s wealthiest plutocrats. No wonder there is a fiscal crisis.
  42. Report from Spain: On the May 15th Movement (August 2, 2011)
    A brief account of the culmination of the “May 15th movement” in Barcelona in 2011.
  43. The Revolt of the Aganaktismeni (June 13, 2011)
    The 'Outraged' movement is getting more and more rooted among lower classes against a Greek society that has been shaped by 25 years of total domination of a cynical, nationalist, racist and individualist neoliberal ideology that turned everything into commodities.
  44. Greece: The Crisis Continues (March 1, 2011)
    What's happened in Greece after the explosive strikes and street protests that erupted over the terms of the European bailout in 2010?
  45. Why the Swedish Left Lost (September 22, 2010)
    Analysts and political leaders on the left focus on how the right wing's lies go unfiltered by the establishment mass media. The media bias theory has some plausibility but the limit to the media-bias argument is that the extremist Sweden Democrats largely faced a media blackout but still managed to be one of the biggest winners in the electoral system.
  46. A Report on Recent Struggles in Greece (June 19, 2010)
    In periods of crisis, such as the current period of overaccumulation crisis, capitalists use the politics of 'public debt' in order to devise new ways to intensify exploitation. In contrast with capitalist upturns when the private debt is increased, downturns are characterized by the increase of the 'public debt.'
  47. The Greeks Get It (May 24, 2010)
    Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare: the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
  48. The Heresy Of The Greeks Offers Hope (May 24, 2010)
    Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such.
  49. The People v. the Bankers (May 11, 2010)
    The Greek "bailout" is actually a bailout of the international banks.
  50. Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe? (October 2, 2009)
    With over 12 percent of the vote, the Left Party became Germany's fourth strongest, just ahead of the Greens. This was a promising score, considering the way the mildly left Left Party has been ostracized by media and the political class as though it were a reincarnation of the Bolsheviks. For the media, a party calling for a minimum wage and a pullout from Afghanistan is the "hard left" not fit to be associated with. The SPD and the Greens stressed that they would never consider a coalition with such disreputable folk.
  51. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Danish (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Danish, and from English to other languages.
  52. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Dutch (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Dutch, and from English to other languages.
  53. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Finnish (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Finnish, and from English to other languages.
  54. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to French (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to French, and from English to other languages
  55. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to German (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to German, and from English to other languages.
  56. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Italian (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Italian, and from English to other languages.
  57. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Norwegian (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Norwegian, and from English to other languages.
  58. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Polish (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Polish, and from English to other languages.
  59. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Portuguese (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Portuguese, and from English to other languages.
  60. Volunteer Translators Wanted English to Spanish (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Spanish, and from English to other languages.
  61. Volunteer Translators Wanted - English to Swedish (September 4, 2009)
    Connexions, an independent non-profit research organization and information clearinghouse based in Toronto, Canada, seeks volunteer translators to translate articles, and terms in our subject index, from English to Swedish, and from English to other languages.
  62. Confronting fears of Eurabia (July 20, 2009)
    Growing anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments have been fueled by statistics that claim to show that countries such as Germany and France will have Muslim majority populations by the turn of the century.
  63. On the Question of Revolutionary Organization: the Case of the NPA in France (May 3, 2009)
    The challenge of creating an anti-bureaucratic, democratic revolutionary socialist party.
  64. Shadow Boxing (2009)
    Multiculturalists and clash of civilization warriors both start with the question: "Can Europe be the same with different people in it?." They give different answers. But the question itself is the problem. It assumes that minority communities are homogenous wholes whose members will forever be attached to the cultures, faiths, beliefs and values of their forebears.
  65. Class Struggle in the Unemployment Capital of Europe: Lower Andalucia, 1995-96 (1996)
  66. Feminist Resistance in Serbia (1995)
    Describes the conditions and factors influencing women’s lives in Serbia in 1995, and the ways women have organised to resist violence and assist one another.
  67. Victims of the European revolutions (1991)
    European gypsy communities have historically been, and remain, the most marginalized social group.
  68. Post-Modernism Meets the IMF: The Case of Poland (1990)
    The historical experience of Stalinism has delayed by decades, perhaps generations, the maturation of the historical project, first elaborated by Marx, of a positive supercession of the formal juridical universality of "civil", or bourgeois society, and the commodity status of labor power in that society upon which it rests. Nothing illustrates the weight of the albatross of Stalinism better than Polish society in the past decade.

Selected Websites and Organizations

  1. This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with education and children in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as Europe, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.


Books, Films and Periodicals

  1. This is a small sampling of books related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more books and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as Europe, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.

  1. Die Selbstgerechten
    Author: Wagenknecht, Sahra
    Wagenknecht grenzt die traditionellen Linken, zu denen sie heute zum Beispiel Jeremy Corbyn und Jean-Luc Mélenchon zählt und die vor allem von der Arbeiterschicht unterstützt worden sei, von den Lifestyle-Linken ab, die das öffentliche Bild der gesellschaftlichen Linken heute dominieren und die vor allem bei der akademischen Mittelschicht Anklang finden würden. Die Lifestyle-Linken würden zwar für Diversität, Antirassismus, eine lockere Einwanderungspolitik und gegen den Klimawandel eintreten, sich aber im Gegenzug kaum mehr für Klassenpolitik interessieren. Ihre Ziele würden sie auch nicht mehr durch Umverteilung von Vermögen erreichen wollen, sondern durch "Fragen des Lebensstils, der Konsumgewohnheiten und der moralischen Haltungsnoten."


Learning from our History

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Resources for Activists

The Connexions Calendar - An event calendar for activists. Submit your events for free here.

Media Names & Numbers - A comprehensive directory of Canada’s print and broadcast media. .

Sources - A membership-based service that enables journalists to find spokespersons and story ideas, and which simultaneously enables organizations to raise their profile by reaching the media and the public with their message.

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Publicity and Media Relations - A short introduction to media relations strategies.

Grassroots Media Relations - A media relations guide for activist groups.

Socialism gateway - A gateway to resources about socialism, socialist history, and socialist ideas.

Marxism gateway - A gateway to resources about Marxism.