Lefteast
Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten. One of the foundational myths used to assess the political climate in the Balkans juxtaposes a western, genuine capitalism to a primitive balkan kind. Corruption lies at the core of this distinction. The story of the Macedonian telecommunication market not […]
Corina Tulbure analyses the business of trafficking migrants which has come as a response to the fortification of Europe and the infringement of their rights to political asylum and International protection supposedly guaranteed by EU regulations. The focus on fighting migrant traffickers reveals the lack of an asylum policy on an EU level and a policy of persecution against […]
For the past year, foreign coverage of Turkey has been focused on spectacular events: elections, terrorist acts, shooting down of Russian planes, and other geopolitical gambles. Throughout this period, however, a quiet revolution had been taking place in the Kurdish Southeast of the country in the form of the self-governance movement, which the Turkish state […]
Last week almost 50,000 people demonstrated in Tirana, the capital of Albania, against the socialist government of Prime Minister Edi Rama. The protest was organised by the right-wing opposition Democratic Party and demanded the resignation of the government. The strength of the demonstration, together with the current student movement against neoliberal reforms, expresses a growing […]
Note from the LeftEast editors: following the first show of TalkReal on the Greek Crisis, European Aleternatives’ Lorenzo Marsili and the team of TalkReal explore the situation with the upcoming Spanish general elections. Together with ROARmag and OpenDemocracy, LeftEast publishes the talk as a kindred web portal to the TalkReal initiative. From the indignados and 15M to […]
Turkey’s border with Syria is not the only border region in the country where people are dying[1]. Along the so-called “green border” of the European Union the last few years have witnessed a rising tide of migrants forced back into Turkey, mostly by European police forces. Today, Europe’s politicians are using Turkey as a gatekeeper. […]
The summer of 2015 has come and gone. Through the movement of millions of people claiming their right to safety, and of the work of thousands of locals supporting them, EU borders have been shaken. But as winter sets in, fleeing conditions on all routes have degraded. Borders have regained power – through barbwires, criminalisation and militarisation. The […]
by Gabriel Levy, on peopleandnature.wordpress.com (December 13, 2015) Who ordered police to shoot down oil workers demonstrating for fair living standards? Who organised the torture of activists in police cells? Four years after police killed at least 16 demonstrators and injured 60 more in the oil city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan, trade unionists and human […]
Jeremy Corbyn’s conquest of the Labor leadership position and the advancement of Bernie Sanders in the Democrats’ race to the White House show that there can be still life in the atrophied bodies of the once-called social-democracies of the West. What’s interesting politically about these outsiders from the Left is their capacity to embody grass-root […]
by Nikolai Ovchinnikov from openDemocracy, Dec. 9, 2015 Truckers across Russia have descended on Moscow to protest a new freight tax which will threaten their livelihood. Vladimir shares his story of life behind the wheel. Since mid-November, Russia’s long distance truckers have been protesting against a new freight tax on trucks over 12 tonnes. The […]