Lefteast
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]
Note from the LeftEast editors: The following is an analysis by long-time Toronto-based anti-poverty organizer John Clarke, about the implications of a Corbyn victory as leader of the British Labour Party for the fight against austerity in both the UK and in Canada (where a social-democratic party with a new ‘third way’ leadership is slated to […]
Mattia Gallo: What are the reasons that led so many people to demonstrate in Beirut in recent days? How did the protests start? What are the claims, slogans, and demands of the people who took to the streets? Elias El Khazen: Since the end of July, protests have been occurring in Lebanon against the failure […]
Note from the LeftEast editors: this account by Caoimhe Butterly, currently in Belgrade, has been reprinted from facebook with the permission of the author. We spent last night in Belgrade’s main train station with families from Damascus, Aleppo and Deir al Zoor and a larger group of fellow travellers that they had befriended along the way. […]
This past weekend a stroll through a middle-class section of Turkey’s capital revealed nothing out of the ordinary besides a somewhat unusually high number of flags in store windows. Beneath the crescent and star against a blood-red background there appeared occasionally messages of grief for fallen soldiers and condemnations of “terror.” Terror is a good […]