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Smartphones and the European flag: the new Hungarian demonstrations for democracy

Part 1. Events

On 25 October, tens of thousands in Budapest marched against the government’s new proposal to introduce a 0,5 EUR/1GB tax on internet data traffic. After organizers officially closed the event, protesters moved on to the headquarters of the ruling party, Fidesz, brought down part of the fence, threw old computer parts at the building breaking windows, and put an EU flag on the balcony. Protestors announced another demonstration in 48 hours in case the internet tax was not revoked.

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Petition to the American Historical Association RE: Gaza, Islamic University’s Oral History Center (deadline 31 October 2014)

Note from the editors: Many of our readers have probably encountered Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) initiatives through the Western European and North American academic associations of which we are a part. We would like to bring to your attention one such initiative addressed specifically to those of you who are members of the American Historical Association that calls for an end to collaboration with Israeli academic institutions as a principled response to this summer’s attack on Gaza and the destruction of Islamic University’s Oral History Center.

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“More of the same”: Elections without choice in Romania

This article is published in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian web-portal Bilten.Org

It is customary for people to complain that they have no real choice to vote for in electoral contests. No candidate is really much different from the other. They are so similar that it makes no sense to choose since there is no real choice involved. This is exactly the case of the Romanian Presidential Elections due to be held this year on November 2nd.

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“What ought to be looking into the heart of the beast.” Interview with Don Kalb on the old and new Left in Eastern Europe (1).

source Platzforma

Interview with Don Kalb, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Central European University (Budapest), May 2014 (Butuceni village, R. of Moldova, ReSET summer school)

Patricipants: Don Kalb, Petru Negură, Alex Voronovici, Andrei Cuşco

Petru Negură: To start the discussion, I wonder about the socialist and communist parties in the post-socialist countries, whether these parties still may be considered as left-wing parties, in the classical sense of the term…

Don Kalb: No, that would be a nonsensical use of the term Left.

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“What is playing itself out in Ukraine now is the clash of two opposed imperial agendas”. An interview with Gonzalo Pozo.

Source: Interview by Yuriy Dergunov, Commons: Journal of Social Criticism

In the post-Soviet space the very notion of geopolitics is associated with ultra-conservative, right-wing political discourses (Aleksandr Dugin’s example is prominent here), so in our progressive circles geopolitics is widely regarded as a pseudo-science. Your idea of Marxist geopolitics would probably seem paradoxical to majority of our readers. So, why geopolitics (and not simply IR or GPE), and how should a distinctively Marxist geopolitics look like?

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“Bulgaria has still not reached the bottom”. An interview with Mariya Ivancheva.

This interview was taken by Ioanna Drosou from the Greek newspaper Epohi and the original version in Greek is available here.

How would you comment on the result of the elections?

The results of the election are no big surprise for anyone. As some political commentators, myself included, predicted already in February 2013, when Boyko Borissov and GERB’s cabinet resigned, he was resigning in order to secure his return. His resignation occurred after days of violent protests caused by an increase of electricity prices, which resulted in the self-immolation of seven Bulgarians in the winter of 2013 (almost double by now), and many more casualties due to indebtedness and hopelessness among a growing number of the population.

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The Western Left Should Not Repeat the Mistake Ukrainian Protesters Did on Maidan

Source: Socialist Worker, Ireland

The protesters that started gathering on Kyiv’s main square (‘maidan’) almost ten months ago were driven by a certain kind of ‘occidentalism’ (if I may introduce this term by analogy with orientalism). Europe, which stood as an epitome of Occident for them, presented a generalized image of Ukraine relieved from all evils: corruption, poverty, economic backwardness. However, this vacuous image formed by the desires of the protesting masses, was filled by the content provided by political passions of groups, organizations and parties that struggled to dominate the protest.

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“We need to support forms of liberation struggle unconditionally”. An interview on Syria with Joseph Daher.

Note from the LeftEast editors: The following interview was conducted with the Syrian revolutionary Joseph Daher by Italian journalist and activist Mattia Gallo. It provides an important perspective on the current Western intervention in Iraq and Syria that has been excluded from much of the mainstream media reporting of this conflict. We acknowledge that the views expressed here concern a conflict that has lasted over three years and has been especially divisive for the Left in both the Middle East and Europe.

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Debt, Rents and Homelessness: Housing Policies in Postsocialist Romania

On September 16, 2014, about 30 people protested in front of the Bucharest City Hall. They demanded to be offered a housing after they had been forcefully evicted a day before from their houses on 50 Vulturilor Street, in the 3rd District of the Romanian capital. They also asked the municipality to stop the speculative and shady real estate developments in the city center, which led to their situation. The demand to see the mayor Sorin Oprescu came no fruition.

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Bulgarians rise up against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and shale gas

Source: Solidarna Bulgaria

Thousands of Europeans in 400 cities across the EU protested against the power of corporations on the European Day of Action to stop TTIP, CETA & TiSA.

Hundreds of Bulgarians in 8 cities participated in the pan-European protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Protesters gathered at 4 p.m. at the “Patriarch Evtimii” monument (known as “The Priest”) under slogans such as “No to the power of corporations/corporatocracy”, “No to market democracy”, “Stop TTIP” and “Shale gas – not for us”.