Month: February 2016

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Russian Truck Drivers on Strike

by Philippe Alcoy

Note of the LeftEast editors: this text was published in French on the 15th of December at Revolution Permanente 2015 and reposted in English by Left Voice two days later. LeftEast reprints the English translation with the permission of the author.

The Russian government seeks to impose a new tax, called “Platon,” that charges truckers for each kilometer they drive. In a sector where 80% are private trucks or tiny owners that hold two trucks at most, this new tax is perceived as a threat to living standards or even to their only means of survival.

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The Roma Business 160 years since the end of Roma slavery in Romania

AFP PHOTO DANIEL MIHAILESCU

Note from LeftEast editors: This article was originally published in Bilten on 22 February 2016.

On 20 February Romania celebrated 160 years since the official abolition of Roma slavery. In a typical Romanian way the event was, of course, surrounded by scandals and controversy. They are revealing insofar as they function as a symptom for the way Romanian society functions and for the very status of the Roma population.

A couple weeks ago Nicolae Păun and Mădălin Voicu – two Social-Democrat MPs of Roma origin – were accused of money laundering and embezzlement.

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Social unrest in Moldova: Expropiate the Mafia!

Note from LeftEast editors: We republish this text by Alexander Moldovan from marxist.com, where it was originally published on the 26th of January 2016. 

On the 20th of January, a new government in the Republic of Moldova was sworn in to the tune of mass protests outside of its Parliament buildings. Opposition figures claimed an attendance of 100,000 people in Grand National Assembly Square in the capital, Chisinau. Demonstrators clashed with police officers and ultimately broke into Parliament in an attempt to stop the swearing-in-ceremony of Pavel Filip of the Democratic Party as Prime Minister.

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Syria: The Stolen Revolution

Note from LeftEast editors: We re-publish this text from The Brooklyn Rail. The English version was translated from the French by Janet Koenig. This text was published in French in the journal CQFD Mensuel de critique et d’expérimentation sociales 136 (October 2015).

We met with Salma, Hani, Majd, Oussama, Abou Selma, activists infused with the values of anti-authoritarianism and direct democracy. Formerly from Damascus and the surrounding areas, notably Douma (the city of sad renown) and Yarmouk Camp, they are now living in Toulouse, Paris, and Beirut, where they have come to “catch their breath” and prepare for the next round of struggles.

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NO to transition 2.0: Social recomposition, Decolonisation and Transautonomism

This article was originally published as part of the Gazette of Political Art (GAP) #12 „In the Name of the Periphery. Decolonial theory and intervention in the Romanian context” December 2015, coordinated by Veda Popovici and Ovidiu Pop. It is the second out of a small series of materials from this issue, which LeftEast will present in English. The illustration was prepared for GAP by Alex Horghidan.

(translated from Romanian for LeftEast by Raluca Parvu)

In some of the biggest Spanish towns, the 2015 local elections have been won by women, and the left won in the top five biggest cities in Spain.

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The Eternal Hunt for the Red Man

from e-flux.com

The dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often argued that communism, buried a quarter of a century ago as living practice, has since acquired an afterlife in the form of a restlesscorpse, a remnant, a regurgitated survivor from the past, blighting the lives of new generations.

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An Austere Place of Refuge

Nations in their barbarous condition are impenetrable; they must be broken into…

Vico, The New Science, Book I, Axiom CII, proposition 303 (trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch)

On February 6, Europe witnessed what might be the boldest attempt to date to mobilize the continent’s masses against immigration and Islam. An international movement is emerging, uniting Europeans across borders—to call for the strengthening of the continent’s outer borders. The movement is overcoming old national hatred—but it is driven by a hatred that is international.

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From over here, in the periphery: a decolonial method for Romanian cultural and political discourses

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article was originally published as part of the Gazette of Political Art (GAP) #12 „In the Name of the Periphery. Decolonial theory and intervention in the Romanian context” December 2015, coordinated by Veda Popovici and Ovidiu Pop. It is the first out of a small series of materials from this issue, which LeftEast will present in English. The illustration was prepared for GAP by Alex Horghidan.

by Veda Popovici and Ovidiu Pop

(translated from Romanian for LeftEast by Raluca Parvu)

During the 18th century, philosophers from Western European kingdoms have elaborated a thought system that shifted the position of the North on the traditional knowledge axis.

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The Feminist, Democratic Leftists Our Military Is Obliterating

Why is the US helping to fight the Kurds? By Debbie BookchinTwitter

Right now, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is undertaking a massive assault on Kurdish communities in southeastern Turkey in an effort to wipe out the only truly democratic movement in the Middle East. In December, he unleashed a force of 10,000 soldiers, armed with tanks and mortars, who have cut water and electricity supplies, imposed draconian curfews, and razed buildings; they are following shoot-to-kill orders against local residents who venture from their homes to seek food, first aid, or alternative shelter.

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Beyond Moral Interpretations of the EU ‘Migration Crisis’: Hungary and the Global Economic Division of Labor

 

This article is a reflection in hindsight on the ‘summer of migration’ of 2015 in Europe, and the symbolic debates around the role of Hungary during those months. Historical events that have followed brought significant changes in the structural and political-ideological constellations we describe. However, as political-ideological treatments of the present crisis continue to mobilize moral values tied to particular positions within the global system, we hope a posthumous analysis of how moral stances are ascribed within a long-standing hierarchical global distribution of labor, hiding systemic interconnections, can also contribute to today’s debates.