Over the past few weeks, we have highlighted the need for the tech community to look outside its bubble at the European migrant crisis. Today, Mike Butcher, Editor-at-large of Techcrunch, has taken this a step further and launched “Techfugees” – a community for people in tech to share their responses to the crisis. Butcher has encouraged members of the Facebook group to share information on things like hackathons, events, projects and products. He also says it is a platform for solutions, not opinions, so off-topic posts will be removed. Speaking to TNW about where the idea came from, he said:…
The social and political openings produced by the Syriza phenomenon have been closed by Syriza itself. What, then, is the current state of the Greek political left with yet another national vote pending?
SYRIZA President Alexis Tsipras addresses supporters in Patras. Menelaos Mich/Demotix. All rights reserved.
MAIN FOCUS: Putin calls for cooperation with Assad | 17/09/2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin appealed once again to the international community on Wednesday to forge an alliance with the Assad regime to fight the IS in Syria. Some commentators urge the West to cooperate with the Syrian president, arguing that only he can stabilise the country. Others warn against an immoral alliance.
Athens should continue its “creative” dialogue with Moscow, Panagiotis Kouroumplis, former health minister in the Syriza-led government, told EurActiv Greece.
Three drivers of change have the potential to disrupt neoliberal hegemony: post-material longing, the logic of inclusive capitalism, and the emergence of secular spirituality.
Flickr/ Chris Beckett. Some rights reserved.
Talk of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘ties to Russia’ reveals how the media present us with false choices. There must be a space for criticising both austerity politics and Russian state aggression – and for international solidarity.
Only time will tell whether Corbyn can forge a new social democracy capable of overturning the realpolitik of neo-liberal austerity.
Flickr/David Holt. Some rights reserved.
Corbyn’s European context and the challenge to turn popularity into power
After barely making it on to the ballot paper, Jeremy Corbyn beats even Tony Blair’s 1994 record and gathers 59.5% support for leadership. Anti-establishment parties have been sprouting in Europe but the fairly unique aspect of Corbyn’s success is his rise within an old and established party. Much is made of his (self-proclaimed) socialism. Yet, it is more likely that Corbyn gathered support not because he is a socialist but in spite of being one. Getting elected as a leader was the easy bit; leading will be the truly tricky part unless Corbyn proves to be a political virtuoso – and the European left will be watching.
Photos emerging from the borders of Europe weave a new narrative around what it means to be vulnerable, to be a man, to say no to war and to be a refugee.
Three photographs of the refugee crisis unfurling at Europe’s borders have resonated particularly strongly with us from behind our tablets and TV screens as consumers of news, drawing empathetic gasps and a profound disquiet.
The radical left has grown from a few tiny bubbles into a network capable of winning the Labour leadership. To win the country, it must keep expanding.
There’s an article I’ve written about four times since the general election. It’s changed again and again as the future has showed up, looking as surprised as me. Each time, the examples I’ve given have been a little different. But each time, the core point has been the same. It goes something like this.
These justifications seem to be logically weak: the problem, however, is that they capture the imagination of large masses of people in Europe.
Syrian refugee in Voenna Rampa complex, Bulgaria, 2013. Demotix/Katya Yordanova.All rights reserved./Europe faces choices of which future generations will be either proud or deeply ashamed.
Fear pushes us to know the social and political determinations of refugees from a right-wing perspective (‘are they potential ISIS militants?’). But compassion works by blinding us to it.
More than 1000 refugees welcomed in Dortmund,Septemebr 6. Demotix/Felix Huesmann. All rights reserved.Perhaps it is only the most racist, right-wing groups who would refuse to share the pictures of Aylan Kurdi or not get moved by it to support the refugees’ bid to enter Europe.
The aunt of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose photograph shocked the world after his drowned body was found on a Turkish beach, calls on EU leaders to find a solution to the refugee crisis. Fatima Kurdi is seen speaking at a demonstration ahead of an emergency meeting of European interior ministers on Monday to deal with the unprecedented influx of migrants
Germany temporarily reintroduced controls at its border with Austria on the weekend. Left in the lurch by its European partners Berlin had no other alternative, some commentators complain. Others believe the step was aimed at bringing the Eastern European EU states into line.
Both governments and ordinary people should respond to the humanitarian crisis with a renewed sense of humanity.
Flickr/ Freedom House. Some rights reserved.
Thousands of people joined anti-refugee protests in three central European capitals on Saturday (12 September) after leaders from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia opposed an EU scheme to fix refugee quotas.
Jeremy Corbyn and George Osborne have combined to remind Europe that London is now fully embarked on a turbulent, quickfire negotiation with Brussels that may see Britons vote next year to quit the European Union.
Hundreds of taxis from across Europe jammed central Brussels on Wednesday (16 September) in protest against the driver-hailing app Uber, closing tunnels and disrupting commuters’ journeys.
The EU needs to start breaking down the ‘migration crisis’ to find an effective policy response
As the EU struggles to grapple with the largest movement of people since the Second World War, we unpick figures from Germany, which demonstrate there cannot be an EU one-size-fits all solution to this crisis. Encompassing multiple layers, and with competing national asylum policies to consider, the EU and its member states must begin to distinguish the component parts of the crisis in order to formulate more effective policy-strategies to address distinct challenges.
As thousands of refugees pour into Europe to escape the horrors of war, Eastern Europeans have revealed themselves to be intolerant, illiberal, xenophobic, and incapable of remembering the spirit of solidarity that carried them to freedom a quarter-century ago. The root cause is to be found in World War II and its aftermath.
Greens should applaud the Corbyn wave, not sneer as it passes.
Jeremy Corbyn has been elected Labour leader with a stonking great majority. He arrives with a vast mandate from a bigger membership than any UK party has had in the modern age. The political year which started with Scotland’s independence referendum has ended with an event perhaps just as extraordinary.
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