"I hope that politicians will pay greater attention to the people who work as unlicensed labour – the thousands of caregivers, help personnel, child caregivers. The relations between foreign workers and bosses are unequal and demands for labour contracts will never be fulfilled without political will. It is necessary both for the legalisation of our work and for accessible services for the ill and children." Continue reading → 
I was waiting for Yanis Varoufakis seated in an old Hamburg cafe while outside everything had turned gray. A light mist blanketed the roofs, trees, cars and the occasional passerby. It was the perfect day for snowfall although the weather forecast had given no hope for it. Inside the lights were on, the cafe packed and the conversations loud. The waiters maneuvered skillfully through the room, collecting half-eaten plates of food, under the strict surveillance of the headwaiter that although seemingly busy managed to look as bored as could be. Judith Meyer finally called. “We are at the front door”, she said. ..
Note from LeftEast editors: Last week, Macedonia’s Parliament approved a constitutional amendment to change the country’s name to the Republic of North Macedonia. Under the agreement, the country’s language will be called Macedonian and its people known as Macedonians/citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia. The new name will be used both internationally and bilaterally, so that even the 140 or more countries that recognise the name Macedonia will also have to adopt North Macedonia. In Macedonian, the name is Severna Makedonija. While mainstream media have described this vote as “histori ..
Concerning the recent developments in the Balkans, DEA and the Red Network state the following: The background to understand recent events is the initiative of USA-NATO and the EU to impose a new “stability” and control to the region, by establishing an immediate connection of all the countries with the major imperialist organizations. The timeframe that has already been announced (the EU Summit in Sofia at the end of May and the NATO Summit at the end of June) highlights that they are moving in a fast pace to address the difficulties that Western imperialism is facing in the Middle East, and the turn of Turk ..
The ongoing negotiations between the Greek and the Macedonian government on the issue of the “name” of the Republic of Macedonia have sparked a nationalist backlash in Greece- it manifested itself in two mass nationalist rallies, the first in Thessaloniki on January 21st (which ended with the burning down of the Libertaria Squat) and the second in Athens on February 4th. We approached comrades from both Greece and Macedonia, and asked them about the response of the radical left to this situation, but also the possibilities that it might open for future common struggles against neoliberal capitalism.
Panagiotis Sotiris is a writer and activist living in Athens. He is a member of Left Recomposition (Aristeri Anasynthesi, ARAN), an organization of the Greek Radical Left and also of Popular Unity, which is a left-wing front in Greece. LeftEast: It is interesting to think if, to what extent and how the left in each country has influenced the left in the other. The Greek left has had a formative impact on the Macedonian left- has the (development of the) Macedonian (new) left in any way influenced the Greek left? Is that so, and if yes, how is this influence reflected in your conversations, strategies and ways ..
Alek Atevik is working in Skopje. He is an editor of Nova iskra and a member of Marxist Organization Crveni. He is a founding member of Levica, where he is a coordinator of Program Sector Foreign policy, Defense and Security. LE1: It is interesting to think if, to what extent and how the left in each country has influenced the left in the other. The Greek left has had a formative impact on the Macedonian left- how, if at all, has the fall from grace of Syriza impacted on the Macedonian left? Is that so, and if yes, how is this influence reflected in your conversations, strategies and ways of organising? Alek At ..
Images, notes, and quotes on and around the No Border encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016 (rendered in the light of anarchist illegalism). by Ernest Larsen Continued from Part II 10) Lesson in the Powers of Negativity There were many signs like the one above around the Aristotle University campus during the encampment. I have a black tee shirt with white lettering: NO PHOTOS PLEASE. Whenever I saw one of those signs I wished I had brought it with me. As it has been at all the demos we’ve participated in in Thessaloniki (and elsewhere in Greece), the use of cameras was an issue at all the No Border events and ..
Images, notes, and quotes on and around the No Border encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016 (rendered in the light of anarchist illegalism). by Ernest Larsen Continued from part 1. 4) The anti-nationalist No Border network attacks the problematic of the illegal concretely and actively, its primary slogan affirming the implied double negative: no person is illegal. The European Union’s famously and falsely open borders continue to provide for the No Border network the con-testing ground of neoliberal ideology, the crux of which is that Capital is absolutely free to move but Labor can never be allowed that right/ ..
Images, Notes, and Quotes on and around the NO BORDER encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016. This three-part series was first published in E-flux conversations. We publish it with E-flux’s permission. graffiti on window of abandoned store in Thessaloniki, July 2016 Flipping a Coin is less an essay than a narrative construction, an indeterminate, deliberately ramshackle form, built up of quotes, long and short, a variety of digital images and photomontages, appropriated texts, anecdotes, personal history, reports, shards of literary, historical and political analysis, interviews, memories ..
The Sutjeska and Bijeljina monuments appear to stand for two profoundly divergent worlds, one symbolizing the cosmopolitan and antifascist past of socialist Yugoslavia, the other embodying the hyper-nationalist and segregationist present of post-Yugoslav states. Yet both monuments were made by the same sculptor. A ..
