Day: August 18, 2012

Greater Middle East
Yemen

Yemen moves closer to return of ‘all-out war’

Yemen is closer to all-out war than at any other point since the 2022 ceasefire, UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg told the Security Council amid an upsurge of violence in and around the divided country. A Houthi attack on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait killed six people, while fresh clashes between Houthi and government forces erupted in the frontline city of Taiz the following day. The Houthis said a drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s Jizan oil refinery, on the Red Sea just over the border from Yemen, was a response to Saudi violations of Yemeni airspace. (Map via PCL)

Planet Watch
Nairobi

World war or world revolution?

In Episode 239 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the protest waves and uprisings going on across the planet—in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, China, Serbia, Venezuela, and in Israel. This as worldwide protests in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza continue. Amid ongoing protests against Netanyahu in Israel, there have also been protests against Hamas in Gaza. Despite internal dangers and contradictions in all these upsurges, there is a sense that we could be approaching a revolutionary moment such as that seen in 2011—the year of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. And with the planet on an accelerating trajectory toward world war, the linking of these upsurges through conscious solidarity and the infusion of anti-war content to their demands is urgently mandated. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Twitter)

North Africa
Libya

Libya: new inter-factional clashes shake Tripoli

Months of relative peace in Libya’s capital were shattered as clashes erupted between two militia factions aligned with the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU). The fighting began when the Special Deterrence Force, which controls the city’s airport, seized 444 Brigade commander Mahmoud Hamza as he attempted to fly out. Calm was restored two days later when the SDF turned Hamza over to a “neutral security party.” By then, some 25 had been killed, over 100 injured, and hundreds of families displaced as fighting tore through their neighborhoods. The SDF is said to be a “former” Islamist militia now integrated into the GNU’s “official” security forces. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Southern Cone
University of São Paulo

Brazil: cyberattack on ‘Democracy Manifesto’

Faculty at the University of São Paulo produced a “Manifesto for Democracy” in response to threats by President Jair Bolsonaro not to respect the results of Brazil’s upcoming elections if he loses. The letter was released and read aloud at an event at the university on Aug. 11—the date of the release of a similar manifesto in 1977, opposing the military dictatorship then in power. The letter has accrued more than 800,000 signatures. However, the day before the manifesto’s release, the computer system collecting the signatures was debilitated by a “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack. The IP addresses indicated that the attack originated in Russia. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons viia Brazilian Report)

Afghanistan
afghanistan

Afghanistan: ousted VP launches resistance

The first vice president of Afghanistan under the government just ousted from Kabul by the Taliban, Amrullah Saleh, has taken refuge in the Panjshir Valley north of the capital and declared himself the country’s legitimate president. Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi has reportedly joined Saleh in the Panjshir Valley, as has Ahmad Massoud—son of the martyred resistance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Many ethnic Tajiks in the Afghan army are said to have arrived with their equipment, including armed vehicles and tanks, after withdrawing from the nearby frontlines. Ethnic Hazara families have reportedly walked 200 kilometers to reach the Valley, fearing persecution as the Taliban seize their homeland in Bamiyan province. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Southern Cone
quilombo

Military Police evict land occupation in Brazil

Brazilian Military Police completed the eviction of a long-standing land occupation called Quilombo Campo Grande in Minas Gerais state, after a struggle of almost three days. Police brought in armored vehicles and fired tear-gas to clear the community from the land, before moving in to destroy homes and crops. Also demolished was the Eduardo Galeano Popular School, where children, youth and adults studied together. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), whose followers established the squatter community on the abandoned lands of a bankrupt sugar mill 22 years ago, protested that the mass eviction leaves some 450 families homeless in the midst of a pandemic. (Photo: MST via Brasil de Fato)

The Andes

Delays in Peruvian climate change lawsuit

A lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer and mountain guide against a European utility over the imminently threatening impacts of climate change in the high Andes has been stalled for months in the evidentiary stage, partiially due to the lack of an inter-governmental legal assistance agreement between Germany and Peru. Earlier this year, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, in North Rhine-Westphalia, made a request to the government of Peru to be allowed to inspect the alpine lakes that are the subject of the lawsuit. This is expected to take at least one year to arrange. Meanwhile, signs mount of the glaciers above the lakes becoming destabilized by warming, portending a regional disaster. (Photo via GermanWatch)

The Andes

Peru: anti-mine protesters score victory

Peru’s Ministry of Energy & Mines (MINEM) officially suspended the license of the giant copper mine planned for Tia Maria, in the agricultural Tambo Valley of Arequipa region. The project had been the focus of years of protest mobilizations by local residents, and a new general strike had been declared after MINEM finally issued a construction permit to the project’s developer, Southern Copper Corporation, in July. In revoking the permit, MINEM implicitly invoked the protests, saying the “spaces for dialogue had not been generated” before the license was granted. (Photo: Diario Uno)

Greater Middle East

Egypt passes draconian anti-terror law

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approved a counter-terrorism law assailed by rights groups as making permanent powers usually reserved for a state of emergency. 

Southeast Asia

Bangkok blast as southern insurgency simmers

Thai authorities have been slow to name suspects in the deadly Erawan Shrine blast, hoping to bring Muslims insurgents in the country's south back to the negotiating table.

Iraq

Iraq: Yazidis stand and fight; Baghdad worries

A Yazidi militia group has entered the fight against ISIS, clashing with militants near Sinjar—while Baghdad's army command objected to foreign military aid to Kurdish forces.