Tag Archives: EU crisis

October 2, 2015

Window of opportunity. An interview with Yanis Varoufakis.

by Ilya Budraitskis  

Note from the LeftEast editors: On October 1 the former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varofakis gave his keynote speech at the 6th Moscow Biennale. Ilya Budraitskis briefly interviewed him for their website. This is a reprint of the interview from the Moscow Biennale’s website. Earlier you spoke about the window of opportunity to change the unfair rules of the game in the European Union that had opened for Greece in the beginning of this year. But by the end of the summer, after the Greek referendum, this “window” was closed. So, can you name some of the circumstances that “opened” and “closed ..

September 29, 2015

Call for Support: Hungarian Left-wing organizations demand adequate policies for the refugee crisis

by admin  

The crisis in Western Asia and North Africa keeps deepening. Neither the key North American and European actors in the one and a half decade-long armed conflict, nor their regional allies are willing to abandon the politics of brutal interventions, even if these are indefensible according to international law. The aim of maintaining political violence is clear: gaining control over the arms market, trade routes and sources of raw materials, most importantly oil. NATO and the great powers are responsible not only for aggravating the crisis, but for the civilian casualties of the armed conflicts and the millions of ..

September 25, 2015

The far-right as a counter-hegemonic bloc to neoliberalism? The case of Jobbik (II)

by Adam Fabry  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article has been adapted for LeftEast from the original in Eszmélet 105. Follow the link to read PART I: From right –wing movement to the third force in Hungarian politics: Jobbik’s ascendence 1999-2010 PART II: ‘National rejuvenation’ and ‘social justice’: the ideology and praxis of Jobbik The two main main ideological concepts informing Jobbik’s worldview and actions are ‘national rejuvenation’ and ‘social justice’. The former derives from the idea of an ‘organic nation’, built on Völkisch, Christian foundations and encompassing the historical b ..

September 23, 2015

#crossingnomore: “We have forgotten what it is like to feel safe”

by admin  

by Caoimhe Butterly, source facebook A few kilometres away from the small Serbian border town of Sid, a dirt track through corn and turnip fields serves as passage to tens of thousands of women, men and children seeking refuge and lives of more possibility. The unofficial border crossing between Serbia and Croatia is surrounded by sun-lit verdant fields, apple orchards in the distance and a calm that brings temporary respite to those who have been on the road for weeks or months. The threat of militarised borders and recent memory of dehumanising conditions along the way is temporarily kept at bay as those walkin ..

September 22, 2015

Looking through the fence: Hungary’s refugee psyche

by admin  

by Eszter Kovacs, source OpenDemocracy.Net While the Hungarian government uses a timeless mix of methods – fences, racism, police force, self-pity and tear gas amongst others – to argue against the right of people to flee war and attempt to gain sanctuary in Europe, we must remember it is not the only country doing so. Hungary’s attitude reflects the xenophobic rhetoric of the current British government. It takes lessons from Australia, a country that detains its asylum seekers in off-shore processing camps. Calling out eastern Europe for its “crisis of shame” deflects and belittles the inaction of wide ..

September 18, 2015

“It was an illusionary expectation that in Europe we would have some rights and would be treated fairly”

by admin  

Note from the LeftEast editors: this account by Caoimhe Butterly, currently in Belgrade, has been reprinted from facebook with the permission of the author. We spent last night in Belgrade’s main train station with families from Damascus, Aleppo and Deir al Zoor and a larger group of fellow travellers that they had befriended along the way. They (and we) had tried unsuccessfully to convince various hostels to rent them rooms and instead they slept on the benches and ground of the empty station. Shadia, a single mother of two young boys, stayed up chatting to us while her exhausted sons slept next to her. “Th ..

September 17, 2015

#crossingnomore: “We don’t want to drown no more!”

by Mathias Fiedler  

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been written by Mathias Fiedler, currently in Istanbul, for BorderMonitoring.Eu. The article is reprinted here with the permission of the author. We also insert a video which the Marxist website Marksist.Org has published (below) with the voices of the Syrian refugees at the Edirne bus terminal. It has been in planning for some time. While many people are trying to escape at Izmir and Bodrum via boat for quite a long time now. Especially in the warlike areas at the borders with Syria and Iraq, the pogroms against Kurdish civilians and hundreds of HDP offices ..

September 9, 2015

Things NOT Happening With Respect to the Refugee Crisis in Europe

by Jozsef Borocz  

source: J.Borocz’s blog GlobalSocialChange Here are the conversations that are NOT happening: The European Union is not giving any clear signals just what it actually wants the Schengen states most exposed to the refugee inflows–not only Hungary, but also Greece, Bulgaria and Italy–to do. It is completely obvious that, if anybody actually cares about alleviating the crisis, they would have had to have much more of a hands-on approach to this. By NOT doing this, the EU is cynically opening space for local strong men to build their political capital through anti-immigrant propaganda. Nobody asks w ..

August 31, 2015

The escalation of the refugee crisis and European imperialism. An interview with Vijay Prashad.

by admin  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This is a publication of two related materials. Below we repost the transcript of an interview of Vijay Prashad with Sharmini Peries from The Real News Network on the current escalation of the migrant crisis. As some of the ideas have been developed in Vijay’s recent work, among which this talk in Dublin kindly hosted by Irish development NGO Comhlamh, we also post the link to the audio recording of the talk.  The Real News: The International Organization for Migration says at least 2,400 people have died this year while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. ..

August 25, 2015

Jobbik agrees with the Migrant Solidarity network? (No, not really.)

by admin  

source: MigSzol.Com UPDATE: Since the writing of this article it has been reported that the German state has suspended Dublin deportations of Syrian refugees, even if they have their fingerprints and asylum claims in countries like Hungary. This is a great victory for the rights of refugees in Europe.  This also begs the question of why Syrians are now ‘privileged’ in this absurd system but not Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis and others fleeing brutal wars? Right extreme party Jobbik recently called on the Fidesz Party-led Hungarian govt to suspend the EU’s Dublin III Regulation. MigSzol [Migrant Solidarity ne ..