Tag: Greater Middle East

Greater Middle East
Turkey

Turkey: hundreds of refugees deported to Syria

KyrgyzstanThe State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan reported the detention of former prime minister Mukhammedkalyi Abylgaziev on charges of corruption and illegal enrichment. The State Committee alleges that during his tenure as prime minister, Abylgaziev violated the law by signing a government decree providing Kumtor Gold Company additional territories for geological exploration and gold mining. Consequently, the total area of the mine doubled, contravening a previous decree banning the expansion of the mine so as to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Issyk-Kul Lake region. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Greater Middle East
Yemen

Weapons manufacturers sued over Yemen war

yippieIn Episode 233 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg recalls his days as a young neo-Yippie in the 1980s. A remnant faction of the 1960s counterculture group adopted a punk aesthetic for the Reagan era, launched the US branch of the Rock Against Racism movement, brought chaos to the streets at Republican and Democratic political conventions, defied the police in open cannabis "smoke-ins"—and won a landmark Supreme Court ruling for free speech. The Yippie clubhouse at 9 Bleecker Street, the hub for all these activities, has long since succumbed to the gentrification of the East Village, but it survived long enough to provide inspiration to a new generation of radical youth during Occupy Wall Street. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo from the CounterVortex collection)

Greater Middle East

UN warns of ‘catastrophic’ crisis in Yemen

VaneigemRaoul Vaneigem, famous as a key figure in the Situationist International and author of The Revolution of Everyday Life, a tract associated with the May 1968 uprising in Paris, traces Gnostic and millenarian movements of ancient and medieval times as critical precursors of the revolutions of the modern age. In Episode 208 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses his book Resistance to Christianity: A Chronological Encyclopaedia of Heresy from the Beginning to the Eighteenth Century, newly translated from the French by Bill Brown and released by Eris imprint of Columbia University Press. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.