Iran
Zahedan

Iran: uprising spreads to Baluchistan

The nationwide uprising in Iran spread to the restive eastern province of Sistan & Baluchistan as residents gathered in provincial capital Zahedan to protest the reported rape of a 15-year-old Baluch girl by the police chief of the nearby town of Chabahar. Security forces opened fire, and at least 41 protesters were killed, local rights monitors report. According to Iran Human Rights, this brings the total dead since the uprising began two weeks earlier to 133. Iran Human Rights director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “The killing of protesters in Iran, especially in Zahedan, amounts to crimes against humanity. The international community has a duty to investigate this crime and prevent further crimes from being committed by the Islamic Republic.” (Image: Iran Human Rights)

Iran
KRG

Iran strikes targets in Iraqi Kurdistan

At least 13 people were reported killed in Iranian missile and drone strikes on the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. UNICEF said a pregnant woman was killed and two children were among those injured as one missile struck a school in the refugee settlement of Koya. Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had struck Kurdish “separatist terrorists” who backed “riots,” referring to the anti-government protests that have swept the country over the past two weeks. The IRGC named the targeted groups as Komala, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). Komala confirmed that 10 drones landed the Zargwez area, PAK said its headquarters in Sherawa was hit, and the PDKI said its bases in Koy Sanjaq were struck. (Map: UNHCR via ReliefWeb)

Europe
ICBM

Russia keeps escalating nuclear war threats

As Russia suffers more territorial losses on the ground in eastern Ukraine, figures close to the Putin regime are escalating both the frequency and blatancy of their threats to use nuclear weapons. Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s region of Chechnya who has mobilized his regional forces to fight in Ukraine, stated on social media platform Telegram: “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the…use of low-yield nuclear weapons.” Kadyrov’s comment came as Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a key city in Donetsk oblast—mere days after Putin had declared the entire oblast as annexed. Former president Dmitry Medvedev stated that if Kyiv continues its offensive on annexed territory, Russia could be “forced to use the most fearsome weapon against the Ukrainian regime.” (Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense via BAS)

Europe
Smyrna

Erdogan invokes burning of Smyrna

Amid rising tensions between NATO allies Turkey and Greece, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan explicitly invoked the burning of Smyrna at the end of the Greco-Turkish War. “We have only one word to tell Greece: Do not forget Izmir,” Erdogan warned, using the Turkish name for the coastal city that was the scene of atrocities targeting the substantial Greek populace after it was taken by Turkish forces in September 1922. “We may come suddenly one night,” Erdogan added. The current dispute stems from a treaty signed the year after the attack on Smyrna/Izmir, which gave offshore islands to Greece on condition that they remain unarmed. Ankara charges that Greece is militarizing the islands, in violation of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. (Photo via HALC)

Europe
Munich

Podcast: Donbas = Sudetenland

In Episode 143 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the all too telling irony that Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Donbas region came on exactly the same day as the 1938 Munich Agreement, which approved Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region. Russian annexation of the Donbas was preceded by that of Crimea, just as the Nazi annexation of Sudetenland was preceded by that of Austria. This is the same pattern of escalation toward world war—only this time Putin’s overt nuclear threats make the stakes even higher. Signs of hope include the anti-draft uprising in Russia and mass exodus of Russian youth, which undermine Putin’s war effort and threaten his very regime. War Resisters International has issued a petition demanding that European states offer asylum to all Russian deserters and conscientious objectors to military service. Alas, much of the Western “left” continues to make excuses for Putin’s criminal aggression. Dissident websites such as CounterVortex and Balkan Witness debunk the Russian war propaganda being recycled by Putin’s internet partisans on the pro-fascist pseudo-left. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, interpreter, and Neville Chamberlain meeting in Munich, September 1938: German Federal Archives via Encyclopedia Britannica)

Europe
Georgia

Mass exodus of Russian youth

Tens of thousands of conscription-age Russian men have fled to neighboring countries since Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization of military reserve troops to fight in Ukraine. The tide has grown in recent days amid fears that the Kremlin will impose an exit ban. The sense of a closing window has led to chaotic scenes on Russia’s land borders with Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia—countries that do not require a visa for visiting Russians. But Poland, Finland and the Baltic states have stopped issuing visas for Russians entirely. Among European Union countries, only Germany is offering refuge to Russians seeking to escape the war. Anti-war groups including War Resisters International, International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection have issued a petition calling on EU leaders to extend asylum for deserters and objectors to military service from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. (Photo: Verhniy Lars via Moscow Times)

Europe
dagestan

Russia: anti-draft uprising spreads

More than 2,000 people have been detained in protests across Russia since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization of military reserve troops to fight in Ukraine. The demonstrators are risking long prison terms under laws passed shortly after the Ukraine invasion was launched, which have facilitated a harsh crackdown on dissent. At least 20 were detained in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, where police fired in the air to disperse local villagers who were blocking a highway. But the following day, the protests spread to the regional capital of Makhachkala, where demonstrators shouting “No to war” were attacked by riot police. Reports indicate that it is not only military reservists who are being called up, and that a general conscription is actually underway in some areas. There are also reports of disproportionately high numbers called up in poor regions populated by ethnic minorities, such as the North Caucasus. (Photo via Moscow Times)

The Amazon
VRAE

Protests as US troop mission approved for Peru

Peru’s Congress, at the behest of President Pedro Castillo’s government, voted to approve the entry of US military troops for participation in anti-drug and anti-terrorism operations. But the vote was protested by voices within Castillo’s own Partido PerĂș Libre (PPL), with legislator Kelly Portalatino calling it a “sign of submission.” Previous such US troop missions have seen operations in the Valley of the ApurĂ­mac and Ene Rivers (VRAE), a key coca cultivation zone. Campesinos of the VRAE Federation of Agrarian Producers (FEPAVRAE) have just announced a region-wide indefinite paro (civil strike) in protest of ongoing government coca-eradication campaigns. (Photo: FEPAVRAE)

New York City
traffic casualty

Podcast: against the anti-bicycle backlash

In Episode 142 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes on the ugly backlash against bicyclists in New York City, which has escalated from petitioning against bike lanes to dangerous anti-bicycle vigilantism. The recent killing of Chelsea resident Gavin Lee by a hit-and-run bicyclist became a rallying point for the anti-bike partisans. But 255 New Yorkers were killed by motorists last year, their names quickly forgotten by all but their loved ones. The killing of young bicycle messenger Robyn Hightman by a truck driver in 2019 briefly sparked protests. But the names of most victims of automotive terror quickly go down the media Memory Hole. Weinberg recounts some of the recent lives claimed by motorists in the city: Be Tran, Carling Mott, Christian Catalan, Lynn Christopher, Karina Larino, Eric Salitsky, Raife Milligan. It is the auto-centric system that pits pedestrians and bicyclists against each other. What is needed is the dismantling of this system, and its replacement with one that centers human beings and human-powered transport—as is already underway in several European cities. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Bill Weinberg)

Europe
Crimea

Crackdown on civil society widens in Crimea

Drone strikes and unexplained explosions on the Russian-annexed Criman Peninsula have prompted the Moscow-controlled administration to urge citizens to hunt for possible saboteurs. This comes amid widening repression on civil society, especially targeting the Tatar people. A local court jailed four people involved in a Tatar wedding in Bakhchysarai for performing a Ukrainian patriotic song. Officers of the FSB security agency raided the home of Vilen Temeryanov, an independent journalist working with the rights group Crimean Solidarity, in the village of Vilne. Temeryanov was detained on charges of collaborating with a “terrorist organization.” In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists said: “Authorities must drop all charges against Temeryanov, release him immediately, and stop cracking down on Crimean Tatar journalists.” (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

New York City
Loisaida

Podcast: political geography of the Lower East Side

In Episode 141 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg defends the notion that he lives on New York’s Lower East Side, repudiating those who would insist that his neighborhood is actually the East Village or (worse) NoHo. Weinberg traces the nomenclature controversies going all the way back to the Lenape indigenous villages of the area, Dutch and English colonial settlement, the riots and uprisings of the “Gangs of New York” era, the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican identity as Loisaida, the origin of the name “East Village” in the hippie explosion of the 1960s, its cooptation by the real estate industry in the gentrification of the 1980s, and the resultant last gasp of anarchist resistance. Weinberg counts himself among a surviving coterie of old-timers who still consider the entire area to be the Lower East Side. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Carmen PabĂłn del Amanecer JardĂ­n)

Iran
hijab protest

Iran: high-tech crackdown on hijab resistance

An Iranian government entity enforcing Islamic rules says the Intelligence Ministry has arrested 300 anti-hijab activist “ringleaders” working “for the enemy.” A spokesman of the Enjoining Good & Forbidding Evil Headquarters said that the activists were arrested in accordance with the new Hijab & Chastity Regulations, which officially extend the mandatory hijab to social media posts. This is to be monitored by the government’s facial recognition software that was used during the pandemic to track if people were wearing face masks. (Image: Iran International)