Day: May 27, 2013

Greater Middle East
Turkey

Crackdown escalates on Turkish opposition

Riot police erected steel barriers and used water cannon to prevent crowds from gathering to hear a speech by the deposed leader of Turkey’s main opposition party in Izmir’s central Cumhuriyet Square. Özgür Özel and the core leadership of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) were removed from their posts by a court order that they charged was politically motivated. Following issuance of the order, Özel and his supporters barricaded themselves inside the CHP headquarters in Ankara. Police stormed the building, firing rubber bullets and tear-gas in a violent end to the standoff. (Map: CIA)

Europe
Belgorod

Podcast: ‘Bad facts’ and the Belgorod incursion

As Russian propaganda portrays Ukraine as a “Nazi state,” exemplifying fascist pseudo-anti-fascism, actual far-right links among forces backed by Kyiv constitute “bad facts” for the Ukrainian cause. In Episode 175 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the self-declared Freedom of Russia Legion and other forces involved in the armed incursion into Belgorod oblast. The incursion force seems to have constituted a strange liberal-fascist alliance, joining fighters seeking a democratic revolution and those seeking an even more totalitarian state. Meanwhile, anti-fascist forces, including Russian anarchist defectors, are also fighting for Ukraine. And an armed resistance has emerged in Belarus—with no indication that its politics are anything other than pro-democratic. Is there hope for a new Russian revolution? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa
Sahel

Sahel: deadly violence in mining sector

At least two were killed as security forces attacked protesting gold miners at Burkina Faso’s western Houndé commune. The protesters were demanding release of 12 of their comrades who had been arrested a week earlier, when informal miners angered by government moves to expel their camps overran and ransacked the facilities of Houndé Gold Operation, a subsidiary of UK-based multinational Endeavour Mining. In far greater violence, fighting between rival groups of informal gold miners in the remote north of Chad left an estimated 200 dead. The clashes at Kouri Bougoudi, in the Tibesti mountains on the Libyan border, apparently pitted ethnic Arabs against members of the Tama community. (Map: Wikivoyage)

Europe
belarus cops

Fascist pseudo-anti-fascism in Belarus

Under long-ruling dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a fascistic order has long obtained in Belarus—and amid the wave of state terror following last year’s stolen elections, it may now be going over the edge into outright fascism. Which is why it’s particularly sickening that Lukashenko and his propaganda machine are playing to anti-fascism in the international flare-up over his latest outrage. Activist and blogger Roman Protasevich, arrested when a passenger plane was forced down by a Belarusian fighter jet, may face the death penalty for “terrorism” charges. But it all appears to rest on Protasevich’s supposed involvement in Ukraine’s Nazi-nostalgist Azov Battalion—and this seems entirely a matter of conjecture. (Photo: Libcom.org)

Greater Middle East

US rejects autonomy for Syrian Kurds

The US State Department rejected the Syrian Kurds' declaration of autonomy—ironically, just as the Pentagon is coordinating with Kurdish forces for a major offensive against ISIS. 

Palestine

Israel bombs Gaza; Amnesty accuses Hamas

As Israel launches new air-strikes on the Gaza Strip in response to a cross-border rocket, an Amnesty International report accuses Hamas of killing and torturing dissidents.

WHITHER IRAN’S DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION?

by Frieda Afary, Iranian Progressives in Translation

As we approach the June 2013 Iranian presidential election, the real front-runners of the 2009 election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and  Mehdi Karroubi, as well as  Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard—all of whom came to be known as the leaders of the reformist Green movement—continue to languish under house arrest.  Many young opposition activists,  feminists,  and ethnic activists who participated in protests against election fraud in 2009, or any activities deemed “seditious” by the regime, are also in prison.

Although the recent disqualification of two candidates, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, from the election, is very significant and further reveals the intense power struggles within the regime, more significant are the defining issues which continue to fuel the grassroots discontent inside Iran. These issues are the following:

Continue ReadingWHITHER IRAN’S DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION? 
North Africa

Mali to resume talks with Tuareg rebels

Mali’s government and the MNLA, at odds over whether army troops will be allowed into the rebels’ northern stronghold for upcoming elections, will resume talks in Burkina Faso.

The Andes

Bogotá, FARC reach deal on land reform

Negotiators from Colombia's government and the FARC rebels signed an agreement on agrarian reform, calling for redistribution of illegally held or underused lands.