UnHerd: The heat is on for Greece

The election marks the first time Greeks will go to the polls since the height of the financial crisis in 2015. This was when fears that the country might tumble out of the Eurozone, and – though an unlikely scenario – the European Union, caused political and financial tremors from Brussels to Washington. [...]

The domestic implications of this are clear. As journalist Yiannis Baboulias, tells me: “Politically, Greece has moved from the anti-austerity financial-based narratives and conflict of the past decade to a political space in which culture wars now dominate.” [...]

Now, New Democracy has continued the populist trend, but from the other extreme, with a scattergun deployment of hard-Right tropes regarding migrants and LGBTQ issues. And as far as they are concerned, Syriza are hardcore communists who will turn Greece into Venezuela.[...]

But most alarming of all is New Democracy’s virulent opposition to the June 2018 Prespa Agreement – the treaty that saw North Macedonia change its name in return for Greece dropping objections to the country’s NATO accession.

read the article

Reuters: Size matters: France deflates EU enlargement aspirations

Frustrated at fellow leaders’ inability to agree on who should hold the top EU jobs shaping policy for more than half a billion citizens, Macron on Monday gave a testy “non” to others joining the club for now. [...]

North Macedonia and Albania would be the first victims of Macron’s pique if he follows through - after their desire for membership talks was already waylayed by more than a year.

An ardent Europhile whose party came second to the far-right in May’s European elections, Macron said Europe’s prestige was at stake if the bloc was constantly held hostage by minority groups, with tough decisions needed on issues ranging from climate change to migration. [...]

Enlargement requires unanimity, meaning Macron would have power of veto. The Netherlands also sided with France when the pair first unexpectedly blocked the start of EU talks for Albania and North Macedonia in June, 2018.

read the article

Politico: Is Putin Losing the Trust of Russians?

Every year, Russian President Vladimir Putin stars in a big show, an hours-long televised question-and-answer marathon in which the president hears the people’s complaints, promises to tackle their problems and explains his views on a wide range of subjects. With more than a million questions submitted, organizers can choose carefully. But there was a hitch with this year’s annual extravaganza. On Thursday, somehow, the wrong questions got on the air—like one that flashed on the screen, “Only one question: When will you go away?” [...]

Putin remains firmly in command, without an imminent threat to his rule. But recent events now suggest a possible tipping point: On a number of fronts, at home and abroad, Putin has faced embarrassing failures, and the population, disenchanted, has lost trust in him, becoming restless enough to challenge his authority boldly. At the very least, this is a trying time for the Russian president. Retrospectively, we may find that it marked the end of his peak power—the results of which would surely reverberate across the world. [...]

Meanwhile, the Russian economy, though out of recession, is barely growing. The economic boom that fueled Putin’s popularity faded after oil prices collapsed years ago. Living standards are falling, and the government’s efforts to curb expenses have sparked a furious reaction. Ever since last year’s move to raise the retirement age to just below the life expectancy of the average Russian man, Russians have been protesting with more fervor. Anti-corruption activists, despite repeated arrests, find their message resonating with protesters too. It’s easier to tolerate the sight of Putin’s friends becoming billionaires when your life is improving. Not now. While Putin’s bold moves across Russia’s borders once boosted Russians’ sense of patriotism, the cost of foreign adventures is taking a toll on family budgets. [...]

The economic stagnation is eroding Putin’s once-stratospheric approval ratings. The leader who strode bare-chested across Siberia is now trusted by just 31.7 percent of Russians, according to state pollster VTsIOM, down from more than 71 percent in 2015, after the Crimea invasion. (After that 31.7 percent was reported earlier this year, the Kremlin demanded an explanation. The pollster revised its methodology, and the poll leapt back to 72 percent.) Putin’s approval rating, a slightly different measure, remains at 60 percent—respectable but sharply lower than his near-90 percent a few years ago.

read the article

The Guardian: Tsipras faces fight to stay in power after EU elections mauling Inbox x

After suffering an unexpectedly heavy defeat at home, Tsipras’s Syriza party was also resoundingly rebuffed by diaspora Greeks, it emerged on Thursday. With 100% of the vote counted, the country’s interior ministry reported that 33.9% had cast ballots in favour of the centre-right New Democracy party in contrast to 15.3% for Syriza. [...]

Asked why the electorate seemed bent on punishing the ruling party he responded: “It’s a little bit of everything; what has happened to the middle class, the [strictures of] bailout oversight, their style in power, a know-all approach and general over-assuredness.”

Diaspora Greeks from America to Australia, who also participated in the European poll, are believed to have been particularly negatively swayed by perceived concessions over Macedonia: in exchange for the neighbouring country agreeing to change its name, the leftist government recognised a Macedonian language and ethnicity which has left many enraged. Although applauded internationally, the name-change deal was aggressively derided by the conservatives as part of concerted efforts to appeal to nationalist voters globally. [...]

“One of the biggest reasons for Syriza’s defeat is the middle class,” said Kaki Balli, editor of the Sunday Avgi paper which reflects Syriza’s views. “Greece, unlike other European countries, has always had a lot of class mobility. Given that every Greek wants to belong to the middle class they have been lured by the promise of less taxation and those are promises that New Democracy is making.”

read the article

Politico: Macedonia’s historic name change leaves deep scars

Eighty-one lawmakers narrowly passed the amendments to the constitution after three days of intense negotiations. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev needed a two-thirds majority, or 80 of the country’s 120 MPs, to ratify the deal he made back in June with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Greece has blocked Macedonia’s membership of both NATO and the EU since the early 1990s, arguing that the name infringes culturally and territorially on its own region called Macedonia. [...]

Leaders from NATO and EU member states offered congratulations. NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, hailed the “important contribution to a stable and prosperous region” in a statement on Twitter. EU commissioner for enlargement, Johannes Hahn, tweeted that Friday was “a day that made history!” Hahn said he hopes it “creates a positive dynamic for reconciliation in the whole western Balkan region.” [...]

But concern has grown in recent weeks that the ugly road to the two-thirds majority could carry costs further down the line. Nationalist opposition party the VMRO-DPMNE boycotted the vote, claiming the new name threatens Macedonian identity. They also accused Zaev of using “blackmail and threats” to push it through. [...]

Florian Bieber, professor of Southeast European history and politics at the University of Graz, said the struggle over the name change reflected the realities of political dynamics across the region. “It shows the fundamental dilemma of trying to resolve such an important political dispute. What price is it worth paying in terms of doing a deal which is not exactly transparent, but which in a certain way achieves the ratification?” he asked.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: By Any Other Name

For Macedonians, the name dispute has always been central to political life. But what is perhaps not so widely discussed, even when the issue reaches international news, is Greece’s power as a member of the EU and NATO to veto Macedonia’s membership in these organizations. Many Macedonians who see membership in the West’s major international organizations as a path to prosperity thus see Greece as the major obstacle faced, notwithstanding austerity-hit Greece’s otherwise weak position within the EU order. Indeed, this issue has been exploited by right-wing parties and nationalist movements in both countries. [...]

Macedonian elections usually have relatively high turnout — in the last vote, some 66 percent. Yet if last Sunday’s referendum saw a decisive 94 percent victory for Yes, only 37 percent of voters actually turned out. As always, a part of the population was simply indifferent and didn’t vote, but what was noteworthy in this case was an effective boycott campaign, driven by multiple different forces. Most important was that a large part of the right-wing electorate didn’t vote, also thanks to a boycott campaign premised on the need to defend the country’s national identity. At the same time, a much smaller group of left-wing forces, such as those from the party Levica (The Left) opposed the deal because of their anti-imperialism and opposition to NATO. [...]

It was largely nationalist forces that drove the boycott campaign. Their strategy was to render the referendum illegitimate through low turnout, rather than any attempt to mobilize a “No” vote. Especially visible was the #Бојкотирам (“I boycott”) movement, which declared itself “an anonymous decentralized group without a leader” and equated Macedonian identity with the defense of its current name. Tellingly of its politics, its website also features an image of alt-right meme Pepe the Frog. The real size and influence of this movement is, however, debatable. Similarly, while international media made inevitable comments about “Russian interference” in the referendum — as displayed by the “I boycott” position advanced by Janko Bachev and his newly founded United Macedonia party, which has openly vaunted its pro-Russian stance — both the scale of the boycott and the longstanding nature of this dispute point to multiple internal reasons for the surprise vote.

read the article

Al Jazeera: Greek PM Tsipras survives no confidence vote over Macedonia deal

The coalition's junior partner - the Independent Greeks (ANEL), a right-wing party - says it opposes the deal but only one of its MPs backed the censure motion in parliament. Panos Kammenos, leader of ANEL and defence minister, subsequently kicked the lawmaker out of the party.

The motion was brought by the conservative New Democracy party which accused the government of making too many concessions over the agreement which will eventually see the small country -  which declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 - renamed the Republic of North Macedonia. [...]

"It not only includes a compound name with a geographic qualifier, used erga omnes, but also sets as a condition a change of the constitutional name by which the country has been recognised by 140 countries. It includes a constitutional change to eradicate every irredentist term in their constitution," Tsipras pointed out. [...]

In Skopje, there has also been a heavy backlash against the agreement, with the president declaring his refusal to sign off on the deal. The agreement must clear the hurdles of parliamentary ratification, a referendum in September and a constitutional amendment. 

read the article

Al Jazeera: Calls for coup, firing squads: Greek far right angry at name deal

Nikos Voutsis, a member of the ruling Syriza party and president of the Greek parliament, on Friday called for an emergency meeting to temporarily ban the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party from parliament.  [...]

"The extremists of Golden Dawn are threatening democracy and threatening their political adversaries, saying that they want their heads," Kiritsis told Al Jazeera, explaining that Barbarousis's remarks are part of a broader wave of far-right "incitement to violence". [...]

On Wednesday, Ilias Zagoreos, the head of Athens's First-Instance Prosecutor's office, ordered the investigation into potential incitement to commit a crime and other infractions by a right-wing tabloid.

The move came after the tabloid, Makeleio, published an edition with a front-page image depicting the prime minister, president and foreign minister being executed by a firing squad for supposedly "selling out" Greece's exclusive right to the name 'Macedonia'.  

read the article

Politico: Macedonia name deal is only end of beginning

Broadly speaking, there are two camps in the EU debate. One, led by France and the Netherlands, argues the bloc should focus on reforming itself after Brexit before considering new members. These countries also worry that inviting in countries from the Balkans, with its legacy of war and deep-seated problems of organized crime and corruption, would be a gift to populist opponents of the EU in next year’s European Parliament election. [...]

The pro-enlargement camp includes top European Commission officials, senior German politicians, and governments from Central and Eastern Europe. They argue the EU must keep Balkan countries in its orbit to counter increased influence in its southern backyard from rival powers. [...]

The deal is meant to finally resolve a 27-year-old dispute, which began when Macedonia seceded from the disintegrating communist Yugoslavia. Greece asserted that the new country’s name implied a claim on a region of northern Greece of the same name and also falsely laid claim to ancient Greek culture. Athens vowed to block Skopje from joining the EU and NATO until the dispute was settled. [...]

Macedonian President Ivanov could block the deal if it gets through parliament. Although he would in theory be compelled to approve it if lawmakers backed it for a second time, he could nevertheless still withhold his signature.

read the article

statista: The worst countries to be gay in Europe

The latest edition of ILGA Europe's Rainbow List has found that Malta, Belgium and Norway are the most LGBTI-friendly countries in Europe. The annual review ranks 49 European countries on a scale from 0 percent to 100 percent. Those closer to 0 percent are considered worst for gross violations of human rights and discrimination while the other end of the scale respects human rights and full equality.

LGBTI people planning a trip are best advised to avoid Turkey, Armenia and Azerbeijan. The latter is rock-bottom of the ranking with 4.70 percent. Russia, host of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, also scores poorly on the list with 10.90 percent.

see the map

Politico: 5 takeaways from EU’s big Balkan get-together

But French President Emmanuel Macron struck a skeptical note, insisting the EU should first focus on reforming itself before embarking on any more enlargement adventures. And a boycott by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the presence of Kosovo, which Madrid and four other EU capitals do not recognize, was a reminder of other divisions over the region.  [...]

Some leaders went further than the official text. Angela Merkel, who has emerged as a champion of the western Balkans, talked about “a clear membership perspective” and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz spoke about progress on the countries’ “path into the European Union.” But Macron preferred to talk about “anchoring” the western Balkans to Europe.[...]

Asked what she thought of the 2025 goal, Merkel was blunt. “I don’t think anything of this target date,” she told a news conference. “Membership must be based on factual progress. It’s not about a time horizon, it’s about what’s been achieved — on rule of law, on fighting corruption and other conditions such as border disputes.”

read the article

Bloomberg: Tsipras Fights on All Fronts as Greece Is Back in the Spotlight

“The worst problem for Tsipras, for the government, but also for Greece is the evolving ‘rogueness’ of Turkey,” said Aristides Hatzis, a professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Diminishing American influence on the region is a destabilizing factor and the stakes are very high,” Hatzis said, adding that Greece is not a primary concern for Turkey, but a part of an overall plan by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to establish hegemony in the region. [...]

While “the possibility of deliberate escalation is relatively low,” there is increased concern of an accidental trigger event between the two countries, said Thanos Dokos, director-general of the Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Greek and Turkish military ships and aircraft have always operated in close proximity, but the Turkish armed forces have been stripped of experienced officers following the 2016 coup attempt and shrinking U.S., EU and NATO influence over Ankara make outside mediation less certain in the event of an incident, he said. [...]

Any wavering of internal support could put Tsipras’s thin parliamentary majority at risk ahead of national elections scheduled for next year, a grave concern at a moment when the main opposition party, New Democracy, is leading in the polls.

read the article

The Calvert Journal: Take me home

To start with, we look for the keys in our surroundings, in the architecture of the cities which remember further back than we do. In the course of our lives, we walk miles through vast monumental spaces and imposing tower block estates, and rest in the shadows of curved modernist buildings and megalomaniac monuments. The aesthetic of these locations has been widely commodified and exoticised, but they’re much more than a backdrop — they shape the way we think, feel, breathe and remember. They also teach us how to move on. In the new world, the city is open to interpretation, invention and change. In their project Wake Up Nights, photographers Max von Gumppenberg and Patrick Bienert document contemporary Kiev going through subtle yet incredible transformation. In following the city’s burgeoning rave movement and a tightly-knit community of local creatives, they explore disused factories and river banks, graffiti-covered skateparks and hectic streets, idyllic countryside and the intimacy of flats in the early hours of the after-party. Wake Up Nights is a tender love letter to the city. 

The study of unique architectural settings is one of the main preoccupations of the new generation of photographers from eastern Europe. At the same time, the visual narrative they construct goes much further than just documentation. It’s not about capturing the existing space, but about contributing to the ever-shifting character of the environment. In her project Disco Polo, Paulina Korobkiewicz studies the urban aesthetics of eastern Poland after 1989, focusing on the peculiar signs of its transition to global capitalism. Plastic palm trees make streets into a globalist non-place. A patchwork of colourful advertising and pastel shades over tower block architecture illustrates the contemporary collision of influences from East and West. [...]

At the same time, in these pictures the sense of locality doesn’t always dominate over broader artistic experiment. Based in Moscow, photographer Masha Demianova incorporates cinematic influences and the iconography of classical art to create a completely dislocated visual space. Through her lens we travel to dark lakes and poppy-coloured fields, places forged by ancient myths, and, most importantly, the inner space she shares with her subjects. Demianova is also one of the pioneers of female gaze photography in Russia, challenging prevailing representations of female sexuality and desire. [...]

The dimension of space, however, is not the only category the new generation of image-makers take on in their work. Time is another preoccupation, the future much more than the past. Portraiture serves as a way of understanding global history and the rise of new national identities. Hassan Kurbanbaev’s project Tashkent Youth was partly inspired by Uzbekistan’s 25th anniversary of independence — he documented the generation that has come to adulthood over the course of this past quarter century. For them, he points out, the Soviet Union is no more than distant history.  

read the article and see the photos

Al Jazeera: Tens of thousands of Greeks protest Macedonia's name

Hundreds of busses transported demonstrators from across the country for the "Macedonia is Greek" demonstration. Tens of thousands assembled in the city centre with organisers claiming more than one million people would take to the streets. [...]

The demonstration comes two weeks after an estimated 300,000 people gathered in the northern coastal city of Thessaloniki to voice their opposition to the negotiations. [...]

As that rally came to a close, anarchist counter-demonstrators clashed with police, and far-right protesters lit an anarchist squat on fire.

Assailants later vandalised a Holocaust monument.  [...]

In Skopje, former prime minister Nikola Gruevski oversaw a programme to erect statues of Alexander the Great, and name highways, buildings, sports venues and the country's international airport after Greece's historical heroes.

Current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has expressed his willingness to rename the sites and bring down the monuments that have sparked outrage in Greece. [...]

For its part, Golden Dawn leaders have accused the Syriza-led government of national betrayal. On Saturday night, party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos urged a crowd of 600 supporters to topple "the anti-Greek government".

read the article

WonderWhy: Macedonia Naming Controversy

 In this video I attempted to explain the incredibly complex and surprisingly controversial topic of the naming dispute between Greece, and the country that wished to call itself the "Republic of Macedonia", claiming that the name implies territorial ambitions upon its region, also called Macedonia.

I look at the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, where the name comes from and briefly look at the history of the Balkans and how we arrived at this situation, which became an issue in 1991 when the country declared its independence. More than a quarter of a century later and this dispute remains unsolved. 

Slate: Back to Square One

Following the ratification of the treaty, with the closure of the Macedonian border in northern Greece, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an estimated 50,000 refugees and migrants from the MENA region became stranded in Greece. Because Macedonia, Albania and other Balkan countries are not part of the EU, they are not required to abide by the EU policy of open borders. They effectively serve as a buffer, blocking refugees progress from member state Greece to the rest of the EU.  [...]

With the Greek–Macedonian border to the north tightly sealed, however, the only way to leave the country was to go via illegal means—people smugglers—either by land or air. Refugees who could afford to spend upward of $3,600 per person, for a fake passport and visa, went by air. Those who couldn’t afford this expense, or who had large families, went by land along the Balkan route, the cost of which was usually half, though the risk usually doubled. [...]

For women traveling alone, oftentimes smugglers pose the greatest threats, asking for sexual favors in return for safe passage to another country. Many women are left with no choice as prices have become so high. [...]

Throughout 2016 and 2017, Oxfam interviewed hundreds of refugees and migrants who were attempting to traverse the Balkans on their way to central and northern Europe. What they found was that “rather than being places of safety, countries on the Western Balkan route have failed to offer protection or due process to many new arrivals.”

read the article

Political Critique: European Union LGBT activism in the Western Balkans: a regional fight for rights

One of the fundamental conditions for a gay and lesbian movement to emerge in the region was the decriminalization of homosexuality, which first occurred in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina, in 1977, as part of wider legal reforms in Yugoslavia. [...]

The first notable LGBT activism in the region was organized in Ljubljana in April 1984, when the students’ cultural center, SKUC Forum, put on the Magnus Festival that included films, exhibitions of gay publishing, and lectures and discussions on gay culture. Later that year, a group called Magnus, which embraced both gay men and lesbian women, was constituted as a section of the SKUC Forum, becoming the first LGBT group in the region. [...]

“When the war started some women backed away for personal reasons, some because of the wartime conditions,” Pamukovic said. “It just wasn’t possible to pursue that kind of political activism.” [...]

EU mechanisms that have been used in the precession phase such as insistence on reformed legislation have also been accused of putting form before substance, as once a country has joined the EU the rights of LGBTI persons are left to the whims of its government.

read the article

Politico: Bosnia’s Serb Republic leader: No breakaway vote next year

Many politicians, diplomats and analysts believe an independence declaration by the Serb Republic would trigger a new conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and more violence elsewhere in the Balkans as other ethnic groups attempt to redraw national borders. International officials have repeatedly warned Serb Republic leaders against secession, making clear it would be regarded as illegal and would not be recognized by Western powers. [...]

Dodik made clear, however, that he was not taking the prospect of secession off the table. “Whether some of the forthcoming years will raise that issue, we’ll see, I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m sure that we are following that path — the path to independence.” [...]

The possibility of the Serb Republic seceding is one of several challenges to stability in the Balkans, along with continued disputes between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and Serb leaders in Belgrade, disputes over the rights of Albanians in Macedonia, and allegations of Russian attempts to foment trouble in Montenegro. [...]

Surveys suggest that the majority of the entity’s population favors independence, which some see as a precursor to union with Serbia.

Banja Luka already has the feel of the capital city of a small country, with public institutions lining boulevards, monuments to war dead in the parks, and the Serb Republic’s flag — similar in appearance to Serbia’s — widely on display. Bosnian national flags and symbols are far less common.

read the article 

Al Jazeera: What is happening in Macedonia?

You rarely get to hear about Macedonia, but in the Balkans, it is something of a bellwether. A decade ago, it set an example of a multiethnic democracy - fragile and dysfunctional, to be sure, yet somehow keeping afloat and gravitating towards the European Union and NATO. More recently, however, it morphed into a one-party state, a replica of Viktor Orban's Hungary with a Balkan twist - a combination of old-fashioned clientelism and kitsch nationalism. [...]

Led by Nikola Gruevski, a one-time technocrat who turned into a populist in the mould of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Viktor Orban, VMRO-DPMNE has been in charge for more than a decade. Marred by high-level and pervasive state capture, their rule came under attack in 2015 when Zaev produced incriminating tapes implicating Gruevski and his close entourage, including family members, of abuse of power on a grand scale. After a wave of protests, Macedonian parties agreed under EU mediation to hold early elections and set up a special prosecutor to investigate the tapes. [...]

But the Macedonian President George Ivanov, elected on a VMRO-DPMNE ticket, refuses to hand the mandate to the Social Democrats. The justification for breaking the constitution is the threat of SDSM "Albanianising" Macedonia. The real reason: Gruevski does not want to be in opposition. 

read the article 

CodePen: 3D Map Visualizations with the 2015 unemployed rate in Europe,

see the map