Lefteast
On October 13th, in Biriuliovo, a district in the south of Moscow, a series of events took place that are still the talk of most Russian media. Several thousand local residents and radical right activists held a spontaneous rally demanding “an end to illegal immigration and ethnic crime.” Soon afterwards, hundreds of the rally’s participants broke into and vandalized a neighboring fruit and vegetable warehouse, the biggest one in Russia and a major employer of migrant labor.
On October 21st in Munich, Germany a group of about 30 Bulgarian migrants were pushed into a backyard by 20 police officers from the Financial Police (Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit [FSK]). The incident took place in the neighborhood around the Central Train Station, where many try to find work as daylaborers, pushed to do so at street corners because of strict regulations to the “labor market.” About two hours of intimidation began. People’s names were written down in lists.
„There is no alternative to Europe“ – is «la pensée unique« that dominates political life in the ex-Yugoslavia. As with the idea of a transition to the market, Europe is considered to be a destination that is to be still to be reached, a community of peace and prosperity. In fact, as we will show, we have been »in Europe« now for over four decades and we remain exactly where we started – a dependency of the European empire.
The fate of Africa and of the refugees coming from there is still as embarrassing to supposedly “Christian“ and “humanistic“ Europe as ever. Last week, another “refugee disaster happened“ off the coast of the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. As usual when African refugees drown or get stranded in the Mediterranean on their way to Europe, the event was called a “disaster” and “crisis,” as if it was an inevitable disaster caused by forces of nature that fatefully reached Lampedusa (and Europe).
Abstract
In this paper, I analyze the content and practice of law enforcement in the domain of tenants’ protection in Warsaw to draw lessons from Polish examples on the strategy for housing activism in the postcommunist context. The local public administration is quite weak, as it has limited financial and human resources capacities, which undermines the usefulness of concentration on legislation and rights because these two elements are not automatically implemented and enforced. The insufficient control measures within public administration need to be supplemented by external pressures and monitoring.
Serbia is officially bankrupt. We cannot, so Aleksandar Vučić, First Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, claims, keep spending more than we earn “or we will swallow ourselves whole”. The fault, so goes the story, lies in the economic policy pursued over the past 13 years since the fall of the Milošević regime by all previous governments. This is the justification for the austerity and reform measures finally announced on 8th October. In fact, we will argue, the coming wave of austerity is not a break with but represents an intensification of the neo-liberal economic regime.
The Austrian elections effectively brought no changes. Basically, everything ended up as before, with the Social Democrats (SD) winning with 26.8% of the vote and the conservative Peoples’ Party (PP) and the right wing Freedom Party (FP) ending up second and third (with 24% and 20.5% respectively). The Green Party (GP) finished a disappointing fourth, only gaining 2% at the ballot boxes. New in parliament is the small but successful NEOS (New Austria Party), essentially a younger splinter from the PP.
International mass media has welcomed the arrests and jailing of the leadership of the Golden Dawn fascist political party represented in Greek Parliament. The majority of the Greek population, including the one million immigrants, has approved this move as well.
Without a doubt, Golden Dawn was and is a fascist organization of the worst kind, attacking and murdering immigrants, promoting ultra-nationalism and clearly, as per latest investigation results, responsible also for the murder of the Greek anti-fascist, Pavlos Fyssas.
For over a month tens of thousands of people took the streets in the major cities of Romania. They protested against the project of an opencast mine in Roșia Montana, a small mining town located in the Apuseni Mountains. In the making for almost 15 years, the project is mired in controversy. Not only that the development of the project points to a complicity between state officials and the corporation but, perhaps more importantly, the scale of the ecological impact is beyond grasp.
