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Interview: Gilbert Achcar on the Russian military operation in Syria 

Ilya Budraitskis: It has been several days since the start of the Russian military operation in Syria and the goals and strategy of this operation are still unclear. The explanation coming from Russian officials is unclear. On one hand they put an anti-ISIS agenda as the main reason of the operation, and on the other […]

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Serbia: October 5th and the Student who Surpassed the Teacher

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article was originally published in Serbian at Mašina. Rs . It was translated into English for LeftEast by Vladimir Unkovski-Korica. The commemoration of the October 5th Revolution on its fifteenth anniversary has been reduced to a marginal event. One public meeting, several round tables and an equally small number of […]

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Turkey’s Tiananmen in Context

At 9:30 yesterday morning Turkish citizens opposed to their government’s war policies gathered at the Ankara Train Station for a demonstration organized by a broad alliance of organizations: the country’s two main oppositional labor unions (DISK and KESK), the national Chamber of Architects and Engineers (TMMOB), the Medical Association (Tabipler Birliği) and the June Movement […]

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15 years since the toppling of the Milošević regime and why the Left should celebrate it

It is 15 years to the day since the toppling of the Milošević regime. In Serbia there is much disillusionment with the results of the revolution. But here are some reasons to continue to celebrate it. First, as Lindsey German showed at the time in the article posted below, industrial workers were central to the uprising that […]

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Anti-militarisation protests in Japan. An interview with Chie Matsumoto.

On August 30, tens of thousands of people (120,000, according to organizers), protested outside the Japanese parliament against new military legislation that would allow the military to fight abroad. This would happen for the first time since World War II to Japanese troops. According to its constitution, Japan is barred from using force to resolve […]

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Window of opportunity. An interview with Yanis Varoufakis.

Note from the LeftEast editors: On October 1 the former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varofakis gave his keynote speech at the 6th Moscow Biennale. Ilya Budraitskis briefly interviewed him for their website. This is a reprint of the interview from the Moscow Biennale’s website. Earlier you spoke about the window of opportunity to change […]

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Mapping the Hungarian Left: parties and movements

By 2010, after eight years in government the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) had eroded the popularity to such an extent that MSZP lost 60% of its former voters (1.4 million people) and its traditional coalition partner, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) disappeared from the political map of Hungary. In parallel with the weakening […]

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Call for Support: Hungarian Left-wing organizations demand adequate policies for the refugee crisis

The crisis in Western Asia and North Africa keeps deepening. Neither the key North American and European actors in the one and a half decade-long armed conflict, nor their regional allies are willing to abandon the politics of brutal interventions, even if these are indefensible according to international law. The aim of maintaining political violence […]

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The Western Hypocrite at a Crossroads

“I’m obliged, unfortunately, to note that the word ‘hypocrite’ has been and will continue to be a fixture within the diplomatic lexicon,” Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced recently, while talking about Russia’s divergence from the West on the situation in Syria. It is hard to argue with the […]

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The far-right as a counter-hegemonic bloc to neoliberalism? The case of Jobbik (II)

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article has been adapted for LeftEast from the original in Eszmélet 105. Follow the link to read PART I: From right –wing movement to the third force in Hungarian politics: Jobbik’s ascendence 1999-2010 PART II: ‘National rejuvenation’ and ‘social justice’: the ideology and praxis of Jobbik The two main main ideological […]