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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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Call for Action! Solidarity with the Resistance Camp of Vulturilor str, Bucharest

NO to Housing Injustice! NO to Forced Evictions! NO to Racism and Police Brutality! Over 100 people living in a yard of houses on 50 Vulturilor Street, Bucharest, Romania, were forcefully evicted on Monday, September 15. The community has decided from the outset to protest and reclaim their rights. This fundamental right has been gravely […]

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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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Bosnia as the European Avant-Garde

Source: BalkanDiskurs.Com Bosnia-Herzegovina is “Yugoslavia in a nutshell.” Despite the fact that it went through the most brutal armed conflict in Europe since World War II, the country’s multiculturalism—albeit now tinged with horrific war memories—is at least three levels above Western multiculturalism. During one of my stays in Oslo, I concluded that Balkan people do […]

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Elections in an exhausted Bulgaria: another challenge on the European front

source: New Left Pesrpectives The pre-term elections in Bulgaria scheduled to take place in October come in the midst of a deep political crisis and social disarray. Bulgaria’s right oriented vote in the past two decades has cost the country low budget redistribution, non-existent public services and social destabilization. Thousands of Bulgarian workers commence on […]

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Rojava revolution: building autonomy in the Middle East

by Sardar Saadi on July 25, 2014 Kurdish rebels are establishing self-rule in war-torn Syria, resembling the Zapatista experience and providing a democratic alternative for the region. With the rise of jihadist groups in the Middle East, I find myself troubled with the question of how the politics of “insurgency” in this region has shifted […]

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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 […]