anarchists

Syria

Syria: Lessons from Kronstadt 1921

In Episode 65 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers his presentation on the panel “Kronstadt 1921 and the Social Crises of 2021,” part of the online conference Kronstadt as Revolutionary Utopia, 1921-2021 and Beyond, marking the centenary of the Kronstadt uprising in revolutionary Russia. In March 1919, Russian naval troops mutinied and took over their island garrison as an autonomous zone, in solidarity with striking workers in Petrograd, and to demand greater freedom and power for democratic soviets (worker councils) against the consolidating one-party state of the Bolsheviks. When the uprising was brutally put down, this marked the first time that international leftist forces found themselves on the side of repression rather than rebellion. A century later, all too many on the international “left” similarly find themselves on the side of repression rather than rebellion in Syria. And the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, unlike the Russia of 1921, is by no stretch of the imagination a revolutionary state. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo mash-up with images from Rojava Breaking News and RFE/RL)

Syria

Ten years after: the Syrian Revolution betrayed

Ten years after the Syrian Revolution began with peaceful anti-regime protests, the UN Human Rights Commission released a report finding that actions by the Assad regime and its Russian allies over the course of the Syrian war have likely constituted “crimes against humanity, war crimes and other international crimes, including genocide.” The UN and human rights groups have issued such findings repeatedly—to little media coverage. The charge of genocide officially requires the world to act under the Genocide Convention. But the world is no longer even paying attention. (Image: Delawer Omar)

The Andes

Indigenous candidate upsets Ecuador elections

Ecuador is heading to a run-off presidential race in April after leftist candidate Andrés Arauzof the Union of Hope (UNES) coalition won a first-round victory, following years of economic austerity made more painful by the pandemic. However, in a surprise development, his rival leftist Yaku Pérez Guartambel of the indigenous-based Pachakutik party emerged neck-to-neck with conservative banker Guillermo Lasso of the right-wing Creating Opportunities (CREO) party. The vote is still too close to call which challenger Arauz will face in the April run-off. Pérez portrays UNES and CREO alike as parties of the right that have embraced an economic model based on resource extraction. (Photo: Revista Crisis)

Southern Cone

Chileans vote to draft new constitution

Exactly one year after a mass demonstration brought more than a million people to the streets of Santiago to demand fundamental change amid a mass uprising, Chileans voted to scrap the Pinochet-era constitution. An overwhelming 80% voted for the drafting of a new constitution in the two-question referendum, with a similar proportion voting in favor of the new charter being drawn up by a body to be 100% elected by a popular vote rather than one made up by 50% of members of Congress. President Sebastian Piñera signed a law last year calling for the referendum in response to the protest movement then sweeping the country. (Photo: OHCHR via Noticias ONU)

Europe

One of Berlin’s last surviving squats evicted

Hundreds of demonstrators confronted riot police in central Berlin to protest the eviction of one of the city’s few remaining squats, a symbol of the German capital’s once-thriving alternative scene. Hundreds of police were mobilized to remove residents of the Liebig34 squat in the hip and gentrifying Friedrichshain district of the former East Berlin. The eviction itself went off peacefully—but after dark, ranks of masked and black-clad protesters marched in a driving rain from the central Mitte shopping district with a banner: “Defend free spaces, remain on the offensive.” Shop windows were smashed and cars set ablaze. Police charges were met with barrages of pelted bottles. (Photo via CrimethInc)

New York City

Human rights violations seen in NYPD repression

The NYPD’s violent mass arrest of peaceful protesters in the South Bronx violated international human rights law and will likely cost New York City taxpayers millions of dollars in lawsuits, according to a new investigation by Human Rights Watch. The in-depth report examines the June incident in the Mott Haven district, where hundreds of demonstrators were “kettled” behind barricades before being arrested. As riot police blocked protesters’ path minutes before Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 8 PM curfew, a second line of officers charged them from behind, “unprovoked and without warning, wielding batons, beating people from car tops, shoving them to the ground, and firing pepper spray into their faces before rounding up more than 250 people for arrest.” The report documents at least 61 cases of protesters, legal observers and bystanders who sustained injuries in the operation. HRW counts the incident as “among the most aggressive police responses to protests across the United States following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.” (Image: Human Rights Watch)

Mexico

Mexico City: militant protest for reproductive rights

A march for abortion rights turned violent in Mexico City as a group of women wearing ski-masks and armed with hammers clashed with police. Members of the Bloque Negro feminist collective joined the protest after departing from the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), which they had been occupying for weeks and had turned into a shelter for victims of gender violence. With their path to the city’s historic center blocked by riot police, some threw Molotov cocktails and charged the police lines. Some of the women also bared their breasts, even as they wore goggles and helmets. Authorities said 11 police were injured in the confrontation. The demonstration was part of a Day for Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America & the Caribbean on the eve of International Safe Abortion Day. In Mexico, abortion is only legal in the Federal Distriact and southern state of Oaxaca during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. In the rest of the country, it only permitted under limited circumstances, such as if a woman has been raped. (Photo via Mexico News Daily)

Southeast Asia

Thailand authorities arrest pro-democracy activists

Thai authorities arrested six activists involved in ths month’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Bangkok. Anti-government rallies by students have been occurring on a daily basis for over a month, demanding constitutional reform, curbing the power of the king, and an end to the intimidation of dissidents. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the protests have gone “too far” and urged demonstrators “not to create chaos.” Speaking against the monarchy carries a 15-year prison term in Thailand. Demonstrators have been asserting that democracy is “impossible” without limiting the monarchy’s constitutional role. (Photo of student protest at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument via Wikipedia)

Europe

Stuart Christie, Scottish anarchist icon, dead at 74

Stuart Christie, the legendary anarchist and anti-fascist militant most notorious for his 1964 assassination attempt on Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, died at his home in East Sussex, England. At 74, Scottish-born Christie was still an international icon of the anarchist movement, seen as a bridge between the era of “classical” anarchism in the early 20th century and the resurgent radicalism of the New Left that emerged in the 1960s. After serving three years in a Spanish prison, Christie founded Anarchist Black Cross, a support group for anarchist political prisoners worldwide which remains active today. He would later face charges for his supposed involvement in the Angry Brigade, an underground cell that carried out a series of bombings that caused property damage at several targets around London in the early 1970s, including the US and Spanish embassies. He was still maintaining an anarchist small press house, Christie Books, at the time of his death. (Image via Bella Caledonia)

Syria

Rojava Kurds cut deal with US oil company

In the imperial carve-up of northern Syria, US troops have since late last year been controlling the oil-fields of Deir ez-Zor province, in collaboration with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Now reports are emerging that the Kurdish autonomous administration in the region has signed a 25-year contract with a little-known US company for exploitation of the oil. The company, Delta Crescent Energy, received a waiver from US sanctions on Syria from the Treasury Department. The deal was confirmed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Map: Energy Consulting Group)

New York City

Fifth Estate Live with Bill Weinberg

Portland-based musician and vlogger David Rovics interviews CounterVortex editor Bill Weinberg for Fifth Estate Live. The two discuss Weinberg’s upcoming story for the anarchist journal Fifth Estate on the “two faces of fascism” the US confronts at this moment—a Trumpian dictatorship or a post-pandemic “new normality” of complete surveillance and social control. But the moment is also pregnant with possibility, witnessing the mainstreaming of anarchist ideas such as abolishing the police. Initiatives such as cannabis legalization as a first step toward this aim are gaining ground nationally. Looking back, they draw lessons for the current revolutionary moment from the Tompkins Square Park uprising on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s, and the rebellion of the Zapatistas in Mexico in the 1990s—who continue to hold liberated territory in the southern state of Chiapas even today. Watch the video archive on YouTube or listen to the audio version on SoundCloud.

Southeast Asia

Police raid Java ‘anarcho-syndicalists’

Police in Jakarta arrested five suspected members of an “anarcho-syndicalist” group they claim was hoping to trigger unrest across the island of Java amid public anxiety over the COVID-19 pandemic. The group allegedly painted graffiti inciting people to riot with messages such as “time to burn,” “kill the rich,” and “die ridiculously or fight” on the walls of a shopping complex in Tangerang, an outlying city of the Greater Jakarta metropolitan area. Their plan to spark mass looting was announced on social media, police said. The five have been charged with “misinformation” and “public provocation,” and face up to 10 years imprisonment. (Photo: Anarchist Communist Group)