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The rise and fall of the Albanian migrant working force

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian online web portal Bilten.Org One of the main characteristics of Albania’s post-socialist history has been the big wave of migration to the West that has been undertaken by the workforce, especially to Greece and Italy where most Albanian migrants have worked for more than two decades. […]

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“Populism” against democracy or Europe against itself? Challenging conceptual orthodoxies

Giorgos Katsambekis (Originally published in the collective volume Populism, Political Ecology and the Balkans, Athens: Green Institute Greece, 2014, pp. 43-55) – source ΧΡΟΝΟΣ Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser introduce their recent volume, entitled Populism in Europe and the Americas, as follows: ‘One of the most used and abused terms inside and outside of […]

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The fight for socialism in Slovenia. An interview with Anej Korsika

Anej Korsika is a political scientist, a member of the Marxist think tank, Institute for Labour Studies in Ljubljana and a member of the socialist party Initiative for Democratic Socialism.     James Robertson is a historian of Yugoslavia, a member of the International Socialist Organization and of the editorial board of Left East.    […]

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The Presidental Election in Turkey: Winners and Losers

Note from LeftEast: Somewhat belatedly, we are presenting you with an analysis of the Turkish Presidential Election of August 10, 2014 produced by Turkey’s Movement for Permanent Revolution (SHD). The statement expresses the group’s strong support for Selahattin Demirtaş of the Peoples’ Democracy Party, who polled 9.6% in the election, and also critically assesses the […]

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Soma: the Aftermath of a Tragedy (a Report)

The 1980 military coup introduced neoliberalism to Turkey in the most assertive way. The spirit of the coup was crystallized in the words of leading businessman Halit Narin: “Up until now, we cried and the workers laughed. Now, it is our turn. We will laugh, and they will cry”. Halit Narin’s words proved quite accurate. […]

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Romanian-Israeli Arms Trade and Military Relations

During a recent visit to Israel, Romanian President Traian Basescu stressed that the Romanian-Israeli military cooperation has not been harmed by the tragic accident three and a half years ago in which six Israeli and one Romanian military lost their lives when their CH-53 Sikorsky helicopter crashed in Romania, probably due to weather conditions. It […]

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On the Juridical Offensive Against the Anti-Fascist Left in Serbia

a statement by Marks21 Just over a month ago, an activist of the Serbian socialist organization Marks21, Matija Medenica, received a letter from the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality. He was duly informed that, by appeal to that state institution, the protofascist organisation SS Dveri is trying to bring criminal charges and offence proceedings […]

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Dialogue between societies, not between authorities: a left activists’ view of the situation in Karabakh

by Zara Harutyunian and Anton Ivchenko, leftists and anti-war activists                   Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Serzh Sargsyan, President of Armenia   The end of July saw a flaring up of the simmering conflict around the unrecognized Nagono Karabakh republic. The confrontation between the militaries of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbajan, in the […]

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Ukraine: The Normality of War

“What’s abnormal is not the worst. What’s normal, for example, is world war.” (Franz Kafka) The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War takes place in a growing atmosphere of global conflict. The world seems to be once again teetering on the verge of catastrophe. A wave of violence is spreading around […]

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How Not to Debate: My Reply to Agon Hamza (Concluding Part 2 of the Kosovo polemic)

With special thanks to MC, a LeftEast reader   For a rounded view of the Kosovo Question It might be valuable, at this juncture, to go back to another key issue where there is a significant measure of agreement between my view and Hamza’s, even if Hamza is, much to my disappointment, so set on […]