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Debt, Rents and Homelessness: Housing Policies in Postsocialist Romania

On September 16, 2014, about 30 people protested in front of the Bucharest City Hall. They demanded to be offered a housing after they had been forcefully evicted a day before from their houses on 50 Vulturilor Street, in the 3rd District of the Romanian capital. They also asked the municipality to stop the speculative […]

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General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina – What Changed after the February Protests?

February 2014 proved to be a turning point post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Massive protests spread throughout the country resulting in mass violence and the formation of citizens’ assemblies called plenums. One crucial demand the plenums had all over the country was the establishment of an expert government, which would feature non-partisan, expert and incorruptible […]

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How a Bulgarian teacher made the news… for all the wrong reasons

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian online web portal Bilten.Org  On the 15th of September 2014, the first day of school in Bulgaria, a photograph of a third grade Bulgarian teacher, Silviya Zubeva, taken by a parent, was leaked through 9gag[i], with versions appearing later in Bulgarian, English, and German. The picture, […]

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Islamists, Kemalists, and Kurds: will the Kobani crisis force a realignment?

Over the last two days in Turkey, twenty-two people have died protesting the “Islamic State’s” assault on the predominantly Kurdish Syrian city of Kobani.  One died of a wound to the head from a tear gas canister, the others from bullet wounds.  Some shots were fired by police, others by members of far-right organizations.  In […]

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Operation Mos Maiorum // European crackdown on undocumented migrants

source: Bleri Lleshi’s WordPress Blog On the 13th of October, a large-scale European police operation starts that targets undocumented migrants. Yet another criminalization of people on the run. It has become a tradition. Each time a country receives the presidency of the EU, it launches a large-scale action against migrants. Coincidence or not, with Latin […]

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Apoliticism and Solidarity: Local Activism in Russia

Two years ago, the fair election protests were one of the most popular topics in the Russian media. But today they have been largely forgotten, and the nation’s attention is focused elsewhere. Meanwhile, arrests of Russian activists continue as before – activists who were, nevertheless, preparing for city-wide and municipal elections on September 14th, 2014. […]

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Bulgaria: Work of mass destruction

Source: New Left Perspectives On 1st of October the village of Gorni Lom in Northwestern Bulgaria was shaken by a huge explosion in a run-down arms disposal factory. This seems to be amongst the worst of a rising trend of industrial accidents in the country’s recent history. Fifteen people lost their lives in Gorni Lom. […]

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The Criminalisation of Environmental Activism in Europe

When the chief of Romanian Intelligence (SRI) declared last autumn that ‘eco-anarchist elements’ infiltrated the Roșia Montana protests, very few people took this statement seriously. The general attitude has been to dismiss the statement as being paranoid at best, and ludicrous at worst. However, when a few months later, the protest area in Pungești became […]

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Without vision of social change, Bulgarian politics is returning back to Boyko Borisov

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian online web portal Bilten.Org The upcoming elections in Bulgaria in the beginning of October are the second early ones in the course of just one year. They mark a next stage of an intense political crisis taking place since the middle of 2012. The crisis started […]

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Macedonia: tax haven – and workers’ hell

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian online web portal Bilten.Org Macedonia has leading positions in many regional, European, even world rankings. For example, in the last Global Competitiveness Report 2014 – 2015 published by World Economic Forum, Macedonia is ranked first among 144 countries in the category ‘lowest total tax rate for […]