Month: December 2015

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Russia’s 2015: The Year of the Downward Spiral

Note from LeftEast editors: The original OpenLeft.ru editorial on the main tendencies in Russia in 2015 has been translated by Sean Guillory on Sean’s Russia Blog .

The system Putin built wants to appear unchanging: it is based on “stability”, that is, the illusion that there is no alternative to its policies and authority. Analysts’ numerous apocalyptic prophecies signalling the impending collapse are the flip-side to “stability.” This past year has witnessed the end to “stability,” but the collapse has not occurred.

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The case of the Macedonian Telekom: An entangled web of international political and business corruption

Deutsche Telekom AG corporate headquarters, Bonn

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.  One of the foundational myths used to assess the political climate in the Balkans juxtaposes a western, genuine capitalism to a primitive balkan kind. Corruption lies at the core of this distinction. The story of the Macedonian telecommunication market not only unmasks the misconceptions underlying that myth, but also points to the crucial role played by international corruption in the workings of the ‘free market’.

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Fighting Traffickers or Migrants?

Bulgaria/Turkey border www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Corina Tulbure analyses the business of trafficking migrants which has come as a response to the fortification of Europe and the infringement of their rights to political asylum and International protection supposedly guaranteed by EU regulations. 

The focus on fighting migrant traffickers reveals the lack of an asylum policy on an EU level and a policy of persecution against migrants.

“Behind you is death. In front of you, the sea: a new life or death. It is your choice”, said a Turkish trafficker to Basel.

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The Kurdish Self-Governance Movement in Turkey’s South East: an Interview with Haydar Darici

For the past year, foreign coverage of Turkey has been focused on spectacular events: elections, terrorist acts, shooting down of Russian planes, and other geopolitical gambles. Throughout this period, however, a quiet revolution had been taking place in the Kurdish Southeast of the country in the form of the self-governance movement, which the Turkish state in the last weeks has been violently trying to suppress as part of its war with the PKK. In an interview, Lefteast asks Haydar Darici what autonomy looks like.

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Albania: Tens of thousands march against the government

Photo: Revolution Permanente

Last week almost 50,000 people demonstrated in Tirana, the capital of Albania, against the socialist government of Prime Minister Edi Rama. The protest was organised by the right-wing opposition Democratic Party and demanded the resignation of the government. The strength of the demonstration, together with the current student movement against neoliberal reforms, expresses a growing social discontent against the political caste which has been in power for 25 years. Left Voice interviewed Redi Muçi, reader at the Polytechnic University of Tirana and a militant in the student movement Për Universitetin.

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VIDEO: TalkReal in Madrid: Beyond the Ballot Box

Demonstrators shout slogans as they hold flags, placards and a banner during the "March for Change" planned by left-wing party Podemos that emerged out of the "Indignants" movement, in Madrid on January 31, 2015. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Madrid today in support of a call for change from new anti-austerity party Podemos, a week after Greece elected its ally Syriza. AFP PHOTO/ GERARD JULIEN (Photo credit should read GERARD JULIEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Note from the LeftEast editors: following the first show of TalkReal on the Greek Crisis, European Aleternatives’ Lorenzo Marsili and the team of TalkReal explore the situation with the upcoming Spanish general elections. Together with ROARmag and OpenDemocracy, LeftEast publishes the talk as a kindred web portal to the TalkReal initiative.

From the indignados and 15M to housing struggles and municipalismo, Spain has been at the forefront of some of the most inspiring and effective social movements of recent years.

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Inside “the Dirty Deal” between Turkey and the EU

Turkey’s border with Syria is not the only border region in the country where people are dying[1]. Along the so-called “green border” of the European Union the last few years have witnessed a rising tide of migrants forced back into Turkey, mostly by European police forces. Today, Europe’s politicians are using Turkey as a gatekeeper. This is an old strategy, and has been ineffective so far. Europe has not been putting up the funds needed to enforce it, even if the EU has been investing in Turkish border technologies and camp facilities for some time.

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Call for Action: World Day of Migrants on December 18th

The summer of 2015 has come and gone. Through the movement of millions of people claiming their right to safety, and of the work of thousands of locals supporting them, EU borders have been shaken. But as winter sets in, fleeing conditions on all routes have degraded. Borders have regained power – through barbwires, criminalisation and militarisation. The events and decisions of this summer, and those of the winter upon us, will bear consequences for decades to come.

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Zhanoazen, Kazakhstan: Who Ordered the Killings and Tortures?

by Gabriel Levy, on peopleandnature.wordpress.com (December 13, 2015)

Who ordered police to shoot down oil workers demonstrating for fair living standards? Who organised the torture of activists in police cells?

Four years after police killed at least 16 demonstrators and injured 60 more in the oil city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan, trade unionists and human rights campaigners are demanding answers.

They will spell out their calls for justice again on Wednesday this week, the fourth anniversary of the massacre, on 16 December 2011.

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Can the dead be resurrected? The impossibility of politicizing mainstream parties in Albania

Photo: Për Universitetin

Jeremy Corbyn’s conquest of the Labor leadership position and the advancement of Bernie Sanders in the Democrats’ race to the White House show that there can be still life in the atrophied bodies of the once-called social-democracies of the West. What’s interesting politically about these outsiders from the Left is their capacity to embody grass-root new social movement while using the remnants of organized trade-unionism and rank and file party members. But what are the odds that something similar might happen to the Albanian mainstream parties?