Posts

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  May 28th, 2020

  Regulating the Arms Industry

  The international legal systems deployed to restrain the arms industry in the face of violations of human rights and humanitarian law are demonstrably weak. In certain areas, collective action has attempted to address this.
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  May 28th, 2020

  Interview with Ramón Linaza

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  May 27th, 2020

  Merkel and Macron

  Back in April, EU heads of state and government agreed a coronavirus rescue package worth over €500 billion for the countries hardest hit by the crisis. However, the support in this package only took the form of low-interest loans.
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  May 26th, 2020

  The Wards are Filling Up

  It began with a rather bizarre situation. Carlota Salomon, 26 years a doctor at the “José María Penna” hospital, Parque Patricios, Buenos Aires, had put on her elaborate protective clothing and approached her first coronavirus patient to draw blood. The doctor saw how the woman lying in her hospital bed was frightened by her astronaut’s gaze.
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  May 25th, 2020

  Call for Authors

  The RLS Brussels Office is issuing a call for authors for a report on European citizens' initiatives. This report should analyse the reasons for the failure of past citizens' initiatives and put forward proposals for alternative direct-democracy tools.
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  May 19th, 2020

  The Wind Commons

  Private interests are currently grabbing an enormous energy resource: wind. The transition away from fossil fuels, therefore, runs the risk of enriching elites – chiefly land owners, whose property rights extend upwards by Medieval principle.
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  May 8th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Dakar II

  A video recorded by the team of RLS Dakar Office.
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  May 7th, 2020

  Brazil in intensive care

  Brazilian democracy is on mechanical ventilation. While Covid-19 spreads through the country’s most impoverished areas, shamelessly exposing the bleak reality of its social inequality, president Jair Bolsonaro has decided to checkmate Brazil’s Judicial and Legislative branches.
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  May 7th, 2020

  Call for Offers

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  May 7th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Dakar

  Mamadou Mignane Diouf, Coordinator of Forum Social Sénégalais, reflects on the precarious situation of minority groups in Senegal.
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  May 6th, 2020

  Covid crisis, climate crisis – same struggle

  President Macron has acknowledged the link between Covid and the climate crisis, and the need for largescale measures in response. Emerging alliances demand that he move beyond lofty rhetoric, and that the French government take up the challenge of the socio-ecological transformation the moment demands.
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  May 6th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Madrid

  Marga Ferré, President of FEC and Member of the United Left Board, gives an update from Madrid, the hotspot for coronavirus in Spain.
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  May 5th, 2020

  1945 versus 1995, Europe versus the Balkans?

  How many times have you heard someone say "Europe has been at peace since 1945" or "There has been no war in Europe since 1945"? The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, which left over 130,000 people dead and created millions of displaced persons and refugees, are quickly forgotten (not to mention the war that has been under way in Eastern Ukraine since 2014). When challenged about this, people's response tends to be: "Oh well, obviously I was referring to the EU."
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  May 5th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Cluj

  Professor and activist Enikő Vincze reports from Romania.
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  May 4th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Benin

  Sam O. Ajufoh, Executive Director of Action For Community Development, reports from Nigeria.
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  May 1st, 2020

  The French Labour Movement on the Hot Seat

  From the pension reform attempt to the coronavirus crisis, the events of recent months have revealed a trade union movement that is weakened but still fighting hard to break with increasingly apparent 'neoliberal disorder'. Where does the French labour movement head from here?
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  Apr 30th, 2020

  The brutal side of the French Riviera

  Rights violations, detentions and pushbacks: a daily reality for migrants’ at the French-Italian border, where Europe’s weaknesses weigh heavily on people’s lives.
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  Apr 30th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Johannesburg

  Dr Amy Niang, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, reports from Johannesburg.
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  Apr 28th, 2020

  Solidarity in the countryside

  Here, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires blends into the countryside.152 years ago, the vice president that gave this Argentinian district its name, died during a cholera pandemic. Today, Covid-19 puts the world on alert, and the province of Buenos Aires on standby. Due to the national lockdown that was declared by president Alberto Fernández on 19 February and has since then been extended several times, the rural roads of Marcos Paz are empty, far and wide.
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  Apr 28th, 2020

  Corona Chronicles from Copenhagen

  Second video from Eva Milsted Enoksen after Denmark lifted some of its lockdown restrictions.