Lefteast
By the beginning of the Cretan War in 1650, Ulcinj had become a significant trading post for Christian slaves. These slaves were brought to Ulcinj after being captured by local pirates on the shores of Italy and Dalmatia, but also from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Ulcinj had gradually displaced Herzeg Novi, which had served as the main point for the purchase of slaves during the 16th century, as the principle destination for slaves on the Adriatic coast.
The trial of Savvas Michael-Matsas, General Secretary of the EEK (Workers’ Revolutionary Party), and of Konstantinos Moutzouris, former Rector of the National Technical University of Athens, took place on 3-4 September 2013. The lawsuit was submitted by the Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ Party on 8 May 2009 and was promoted by the Greek ‘democratic’ State and its judiciary following Golden Dawn’s entry into Greece’s parliament in June 2013. The trial had enormous repercussions, producing outrage both domestically and internationally.
Germany has gone to the polls and has given the Conservative alliance between Chancellor Merkel’s CDU and Bavarian Prime Minister Seehofer’s regional sister party CSU a whopping majority; but for the German right as a whole it is a Pyrrhic victory. The electorate has in essence voted against the incumbent „black-yellow“ (i.e. Conservative-bourgeois) coalition and for a more left-leaning coalition, i.e. a „black-red“ coalition of Merkel’s Conservative party with the Social Democrats (SPD) or a „black-green“ one, i.e.
The blog Fent és lent [Above and below] began as a platform for the left-wing, patriotic movement 4K!. While it has since made itself independent from 4K!, it retains close links with the movement. Its contributors comment on national and international politics, as well as urban topics. The idea is to change Hungarian society on the local level and re-establish a sense of community. The blog is now one of the largest in the country. Balázs Szőllőssy stands in a blue-and-white-striped circus wagon behind the bar of Valyo Part and presses juice from oranges.
A little over a week ago, activists from a local neighborhood association had something unprecedented to celebrate in Estonia’s capital. Local residents, media and city officials were among the hundred or so who showed up to the event, which would have formerly belonged only to politicians, as members of Telliskivi Selts cut the ribbon and declared a new street open.
What was special about this street, located in one of the city’s central districts, is that pedestrians and cyclists have more space than cars.
It’s been more than a year (since the national elections of 2012) that an openly fascist – neonazi – nationalist organization, Golden Dawn, has risen to the status of a parliamentary party in Greece. Golden Dawn is represented by leftover supporters of the military junta, encompassing admirers of the Nazis, even descendants, natural or ideological, of their collaborators during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
Golden Dawn was formed some years after the fall of the military junta but actually first tried to regain some social support during the early 1990s, at a time of a renaissance of nationalist ideals on the occasion of the debate over the naming of the neighbouring Federal Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as it became an independent state.
by Simina Guga and Vlad Petri
I opened my eyes and saw several women sleeping on the floor around me. I went out in the courtyard where the noise made by the airplanes and car engines was even louder. Everyone was asleep. I was in Syria, probably the most devastated country in the world at this time and the place in which only very few people still want to wake up in July 2013. After two years and four months of civil war, there is nothing left here.
On September 11, another activist of libertarian student union “Direct Action” was attacked by three masked neo-Nazi. The attack happened in Kyiv in a public place in the city centre. Three thugs approached the activist and asked if he was gay. Then the two offenders started beating him, while the third one was video recording the attack. The activist fainted and a passerby who witnessed the attack called ambulance and police.
1) The parties of the ruling coalition, BSP and DPS, are the parties that most vehemently opposed the Gerb regime. BSP was the only consistent opposition in both ideology and practice, throughout the 2009-13 period. And since January 2013, DPS came out with the most vociferous critique so far against Boiko Borisov dubbing him a “dictator” and “threat for democracy”. A member of the Party of European Socialists (with its party chairman Sergei Stanishev being also European socialists’ president), BSP has been recently moving slowly towards a more Keynesian, anti-austerity ideology, although the centrist Oresharski government doesn’t fully subscribe to it.
As the civil war in Syria has unfolded over the last two and half years while I’ve been teaching general humanities courses in Ankara, the one question I’ve heard most often from students cued into the conflict is, “what business does America have in Syria?” It is an interesting question that, oddly, has not gotten the press it deserves. Our media has instead focused on a debate over the ramifications of various potential actions and inactions, treating Syria’s civil war as a case study for a seminar in consequentialist ethics.
