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Alexei Gaskarov: “If, in this country, the way to freedom runs through prison, we are ready to go”

Russian anti-fascist Alexei Gaskarov’s statement in court translated into English by the Russian Reader with an afterward by Gabriel Levy. The verdicts on the second group of defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case – brought against participants in the Russian protest movement of 2011-12 – will be announced on 18 August in Zamoskvoretsky Court in […]

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Lithuania: The Myth of the Passive Mass

“Not every recession-hit country in Europe is like wayward Greece, Portugal and Spain, amazingly Lithuanian unions went along with the government’s policies. There were no street riots a la Greece” -Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 2010   caption on a Mayday poster in Lithuania (on the left): “He who saws hunger, reaps anger.”   In the wake […]

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On the Possible Banning of the Communist Party of Ukraine and Its Meaning for Democracy and the Left

On July 24 the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament Oleksandr Turchynov announced the disbanding of the parliamentary group of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) over a ridiculous technicality. The court trial over CPU’s ban as a political party started the same day with the next session of the court scheduled for mid-August.  The CPU […]

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Abbott’s opportunism over MH17 stokes imperialist tensions

by Ian Rintoul solidarity.net.au 29.07.2014 The shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 over rebel held territory in eastern Ukraine is a terrible tragedy. It has cost 289 lives, including 37 Australian citizens and permanent residents. Sadly, six researchers and advocates attending the International AIDS conference in Melbourne were among the dead. The dead are […]

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The Real Face of Maidan: Statistics from Protests that Changed Ukraine

Results of protests, repressions and concessions monitoring by the Centre for Society Research (Kiev) On July 9th at a press conference in the UNIAN information agency, the Centre for Society Research presented the results of monitoring of protests, repression and concessions, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy, that took […]

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Peace-Fighters: Kirill Medvedev on the Need for a New Democratic Opposition

The need for a “third way,” one that is different from the rabid support for one of the sides in the Ukrainian crisis, a way about which several of have written in the last few months, is especially evident today, because it is the only chance to reconstitute the almost completely broken democratic opposition in […]

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Struggling Against Serbia’s New Labour Law (part 2)

The laws have been passed and the cards have been dealt: the new reform of the labour and pension laws which were so hastily proposed to parliament this January, have finally been adopted[i]. These “reforms” legitimize precarious work from the cradle to the grave: they do so, among else, by increasing and flexibilizing work hours, […]

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Neoliberal assault on working class rights in Serbia: Can the trade unions lead the struggle?

July 17th witnessed one of the largest social protests in Serbia since the beginning of the global financial crisis. Around 10000 people, mainly public sector workers, marched through the streets of Belgrade against the “economic reform legislative package” including the latest incarnation of the Labour law. This will, among other things, severely deregulate the labour […]

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Boeing 777: Between “Yes” and “No”

We can say with confidence that the tragedy of Boeing 777, which took the lives of 298 people, has brought the conflict in Eastern Ukraine to a principally new level. Now the main centers of power—Russia, the US, and the EU—must make themselves known and must take the responsibility for stopping the war or conversely—for […]

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Serbia: Independent cultural scene criticises new labour legislation

source: InSerbia News Organisations that are part of the independent cultural scene feel that the amendments to the laws on labour, pension and disability insurance, state asset sale and bankruptcy continue the practice of shifting the burden of the economic crisis to the shoulders of the largest, and often the most vulnerable, layers of the […]