Day: December 3, 2007

Syria

Threat of Arab-Kurdish war in new battle for Syria

With the Syrian city of Aleppo now mostly in rebel hands following a surprise offensive, the danger emerges that Kurdish forces could be drawn into the conflict on the side of Assad dictatorship. Kurdish militias have for years controlled their own enclave within the city, the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now trying to open an evacuation corridor between Sheikh Maqsood and the Kurdish-held town of Tal Rifaat to the north. An evacuation of Tal Rifaat itself to Kurdish-held areas to the east is also being prepared. This effort is being blocked by one of the rebel militias, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), with clashes between the two forces reported. The SNA has been repeatedly implicated in abuses against the Kurdish population in areas it took from SDF-aligned forces in a 2019 offensive. This offensive drove the SDF into a tactical alliance with the Assad regime—although this alliance has repeatedly broken down over the regime’s rejection of the SDF’s principal demand of Kurdish autonomy. (Map: Google)

Europe

Podcast: Ukraine: against the ‘Nazi’ calumny

In Episode 152 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls out the relentless propaganda exploitation of the Azov Battalion to tar Ukraine as “Nazi” by the same pseudo-left hucksters (e.g. the inevitable Grayzone) who engage in shameless shilling for the fascist regime of Bashar Assad in Syria—which is beloved of the radical right and which employed fugitive Nazis to train its security forces. These hucksters also (of course) join with far-right figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and NickFuentes in openly rooting for Putin and opposing aid to Ukraine. And while hyperventilating about the Azov Battalion (which years ago purged its far-right leadership), they make no note of the Nazis fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine. This is both pseudo-pacifist war propaganda and fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-backed Donetsk “People’s Republic,” giving an award to one of his thugs who is wearing two Nazi insignia on his sleeve. Credit: The Sun. Fair use rights asserted)

South Asia

India: Northeast marks 2021 without journo-murder

If nothing sad happens in the next weeks, India’s restive Northeastern region will complete another year without any incident of journo-murder, maintaining a hopeful trend. The region, comprising eight states with multiple armed insurgencies, witnessed the slaying of journalists for the last time in 2017. However, the country as a whole continues to lose scribes to targeted killings. To date, the nation in 2021 has seen the murder of five journalists, while acclaimed Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed in Afghanistan. India lost 15 scribes to assailants in 2020, one of the worst records on Earth. (Map via TFI Post)

The Amazon

Mine ponds amplify mercury risks in Peru’s Amazon

The proliferation of pits and ponds created in recent years by miners dredging for small deposits of alluvial gold in Peru’s Amazon has dramatically altered the landscape and increased the risk of mercury exposure for indigenous communities and wildlife, a new study shows. The study found a 670% increase in the extent of ponds across the landscape in heavily mined watersheds since 1985. These formerly forested landscapes are now dotted by these small lakes, which provide low-oxygen conditions in which submerged mercury—a toxic leftover from the mining process—can be converted by microbial activity into an even more toxic form of the element, called methylmercury. The miners use mercury, a potent neurotoxin, to separate ore from soil and sediments, often without adequate safety precautions. Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is believed to be the largest global source of anthropogenic mercury emissions. (Photo via EurekaAlert!)

The Andes

Farmworker protests paralyze southern Peru

Hundreds of striking farmworkers are blocking the Panamerican highway through southern Peru, demanding revocation of a decree extending an anti-labor agricultural reform law that was supposed to sunset this year. The protests have prompted the central government to send a dialogue team from Lima to Ica region, but the farmworkers have refused dismantle the roadblocks, insisting on a face-to-face meeting with Agriculture Minister Federico Tenorio. At issue is the Law for Agrarian Promotion—dubbed the Chlimper Law for its author, José Chlimper, who served as agriculture minister under the authoritarian regime of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. (Photo via Expreso)

Panama: criminalization of the Ngäbe

Ngäbe activists standing in front of the Barro Blanco dam site in June 2015. Three Ngäbe indigenous leaders are on trial in Panama, facing years in prison for blockading a dam construction site. The Barro Blanco Dam on the Tabasará River… Read morePanama: criminalization of the Ngäbe

Syria

China prepares to deploy elite forces to Syria

China is preparing to deploy elite troops to Syria in support of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces, fearing the presence of Islamist militants in its far western territory of Xinjiang, according to media reports in the region. China’s Defense Ministry intends to send two units known as the “Night Tigers” and the “Tigers of Siberia” from the People’s Liberation Army Special Operations Forces to aid the Assad regime. Damascus claims up to 5,000 ethnic Uighurs from Xinjiang are fighting in Syria.

The Andes