Terrorist attacks postponed the European Left’s “Plan B” summit from November to January. The meeting during the weekend of 23-24 January 2016 attracted more than 300 participants and a large number of media people. [This is a translation of my report from Paris and analysis of the options of the Left in our historical conjuncture, published in the weekly People’s News 4/2016].
Beyond Plan B and C: On the use of citizens’ initiative and referenda
After Syriza’s surrender in July 2015, the European left has been struck by an aporia. It is now widely believed, on the one hand, that the EU is undemocratic and non-reformable; and on the other hand, that the plan B, a withdrawal from the euro or the EU, would boost disintegration into nationalist and possibly hostile states. Is the Left, therefore, doomed to merely criticizing the latest austerity measures and attempts at narrowing down democracy, without being able to shape overall developments?
A comment on Harari’s Sapiens: On the geo-historical emergence of language and social complexity
Yuval Noah Harari is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind (2011 in Hebrew; and 2014 in English) has been an international bestseller and translated into 30 languages. It has been compared positively to the most famous works in global and big history and reviewed favourably in many of the best-known newspapers in the world. Some people even claim to have changed their worldview because of the book.
EU’s neighbourhood policy, Russia, and the conflict in Ukraine
Here is an amended and completed version of the talk I gave at the peace conference “The EU –Neighbourhood Policy in the Southern and Eastern Neighbourhood” on 11 December 2015, at the European parliament in Brussels. The event was organised by the GUE-NGL group.
