Lefteast
Editors’ note: this article has also been published on Stephen Shenfield’s blog.
On January 7, 2015, I was watching the TV channel Rossiya-24. They were talking about the terrorist act that had just taken place at the editorial office of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. They were broadcasting the first interviews with famous people, who were giving their interpretation of the tragedy and its causes.
So who were those people who first explained to Russians what had happened?
Source: Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung
This years’ CSW (59th in a row) was represented by revisiting and celebrating The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) what without any doubt influenced the framing of the whole conference in the context of «20 years after the Beijing.» Just to remind ourselves quickly the Beijing Declaration was the «can do» result of advocates for women’s rights from around the world who came together to network and lobby «to develop a framework of comprehensive commitments promising to change the lives of women and girls everywhere», as it is underlined in the UN’s Introduction in Handbook 2015.
The Global Day of Action on the 18th of April marked one of the biggest global protests in years. There were 734 protest events around the globe, including Asia and Africa. What precipitated this wave was a new generation of free-trade agreements being negotiated right now, potentially affecting the whole system of global trade.
In Europe, two agreements in particular are the main target of protest: CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) between the EU and Canada and TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) between the EU and USA.
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist studying social protests in Ukraine. He is the deputy director of the Center for Social and Labor Research, a member of the editorial board of Commons: Journal for Social Criticism and LeftEast web-magazine, and a lecturer at the Department of Sociology in the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Interview by Javier Morales.
Javier Morales (JM): How do you think that the Ukrainian society is assessing the consequences of the Euromaidan revolution?
Note from editors: This article has been translated from the Serbo-Croatian web portal Bilten.Org. Late on Thursday night, near the city of Veles in Macedonia, at least 14 refugees were run over and killed by a train. News agencies have reported that they were fleeing war torn countries, such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. The driver of the fast international train, said that when he noticed the group of 50-100 people it was already too late to be able to pull over.
Thousands of pupils, students and teachers marched today across the country, in a renewed challenge to governmental education policies. Organised by the High School Plenum, the protest comes two months after the Student Plenum declared victory against reforms in Higher Education on the 24th of February, 3 months after the students’ first march on the 17th of November.
“For the first time in the history of Macedonia, but also the region, students and professors will participate directly in the process of devising a law which affects them”, the Student Plenum exclaimed.
Note from the LeftEast editors: this article by Daniel Johnson was originally published on Jacobin.
Already a country hostile to workers, Turkey has now effectively banned the strike. For a moment in May 2014, following a mine explosion that killed 301 coal miners in the western Turkish city of Soma, international attention was focused on the plight of the country’s workers. But that spotlight soon shifted, and though the Turkish government finally ratified an international agreement on mine safety late last month, hopes of substantially reforming labor policy in the “New Turkey” have been authoritatively dashed.
Note from the LeftEast editors: this article is re-published from balkinfo.com.
Tuzla, 16 April 2015: “We, the workers of the Tuzla-based detergent factory DITA, have been fighting a wave of corrupt privatization, exploitation and asset stripping that is destroying the industry of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For over two years now, we have guarded our factory around the clock to prevent the removal of machinery and assets.
The process of privatisation of DITA was carried out in collaboration with corrupt politicians, judiciary and banks, which failed to carry out due diligence, and provided toxic loans to the new owners – money that never reached the factory.
Note from the LeftEast editors: this article (by Tsvetelina Hristova & Svetlin Vesselinov) is published in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian web portal Bilten.Org. In the first month of 2015 the new Bulgarian government led by GERB (Citizens for European development of Bulgaria) announced that it was going to start negotiations for reducing the price of the electricity provided by the two big private thermal power plants – Maritsa Iztok 1 and 3.
The government is initiating a financial audit in the hope to find inaccuracies and breaches of the Public procurement Law that will allow it to revisit the privatisation contracts with the two companies.
Note from the LeftEast editors: “Where is the line between us?: cautionary tales from now” was the title of the 3rd Garage international conference which brought to Moscow practitioners and thinkers from the fields of art, history, and sociology to examine the evolving positions toward the East/West axis in a post-socialist world. The speakers revisited selected regional histories since 1989 to show how our understanding of the past can change and develop through the lens of present circumstances, and vice versa.
