Lefteast
The several days spent in the atmosphere of the Sofia political protests predictably led me to compare them to the Russian experience of 2011-2012. Despite the significant contextual differences, these two movements could be seen as part of а single—but to an even greater degree—a potential East European protest wave. As such, its analysis and […]
Perhaps one of the most common jokes that are circulating lately in Bulgaria is the one that depicts emigration as the most relevant escape from the politico-economic crisis. The joke goes something like this: Question: “What are the possible exits out of the crisis?” Answer: “Terminal 1 and Terminal 2” Author: Christo Komarnitski. Source: (http://www.ideyazabulgaria.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4264:-2013-&catid=55:karikaturi&Itemid=107). […]
Mary N. Taylor I’ve just come back to New York from Sofia, Bulgaria, where there have been daily protests gatherings and marches, punctuated by chants of “step down” and, less frequently, yet consistently, “red garbage” and “mafia out of parliament”, accompanied by the sound of a three whistle march step. A general assembly has met […]
Since mid-June, public spaces of downtown Sofia have been constantly in use by protesters against the current Bulgarian government. In this short paper, I offer a critical geographical reading of how these daily demonstrations have been orchestrated in the urban milieu, and how these performances strengthen, or in some cases weaken political and economic claims […]
Maryia Ivanceva in The Guardian about the Bulgarian protests.
The debates concerning the present and future of China—an “emerging” power—always leave me unconvinced. Some argue that China has chosen, once and for all, the “capitalist road” and intends even to accelerate its integration into contemporary capitalist globalization. They are quite pleased with this and hope only that this “return to normality” (capitalism being the […]
Since 2010, Orbán Viktor’s government symbolically announced an anticolonial war against Western capital. At the same time, it carried out major transformations in the 1989 system of political democracy, and started a campaign of economic centralization. Due to these, Hungary came under the spotlight of international discussions, as a model impersonating the fate of democracy […]
Thursday, June 13, Ankara I am waiting through an intense thunderstorm outside, periodically reading facebook posts from my students gathered in Ankara’s Kuğulu (Swan) Park, which has been the capital’s version of Istanbul’s Gezi Park, and from some at Gezi Park itself. Erdoğan has announced that “this will be over within 24 hours” and has […]
Interviewers: Raia Apostolova and Mathias Fiedler On June 22 a group of migrants declared a hunger strike in Munich, Germany. The strike struck at the heart of the European Empire which in the last decades has been the source of the migration policies responsible for the production and further reinforcement of the European Apartheid […]
The agreement on the ‘normalisation of relations’ signed by the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia has been praised by almost everyone as a ‘historical agreement’. And indeed it is historic – but apparently for completely different reasons than those the EU and other bureaucrats praise it for. From the EU’s gaze and […]