LefteastGavin Rae is a sociologist from Poland. He is author of the book ‘Poland’s Return to Capitalism’ and runs the blog Beyond the Transition: beyondthetransition.blogspot.com
Note by the LeftEast editors: this article has been reprinted from the blog of Gavin Rae, Beyond the Transition, with the author’s permission. The Amended Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, passed by the Polish parliament on 26 January, has caused a huge political domestic and international storm (the full English language text of […]
The refugee crisis continues to dominate European politics. By the beginning of August, almost 118,000 refugees had already entered the European Union via the Mediterranean Sea this year, with an additional estimated 2,400 of them losing their lives on the journey.[i] The continuation of western-instigated wars in the region, political destabilisation, terrorism, poverty and climate […]
“What’s abnormal is not the worst. What’s normal, for example, is world war.” (Franz Kafka) The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War takes place in a growing atmosphere of global conflict. The world seems to be once again teetering on the verge of catastrophe. A wave of violence is spreading around […]
The 2014 European elections have confirmed a number of trends in Polish politics. These include a general disillusionment with the political establishment; the dominance of the right in party politics and the weakness of the left in countering this right-wing hegemony. It is hard for any party to claim victory in an election where over […]