[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WQDdxrJpC0[/youtube]

Since June 10, the region of Catatumbo in the department of Norte de Santander has been consumed by protests and riots that have left four protesters dead and over fifty injured.

More than 12,000 peasant farmers have participated in the protests, reported La Prensa Latina, demanding the government halt coca eradication until they can provide an economically viable alternative, and also calling for more investment in public infrastructure and services and for the region to be made a semi-autonomous “rural reserve zone.”

The riot police dispatched to the area to control the protests have received widespread criticism for their heavy-handed response, including accusations that they have fired indiscriminately on crowds.

The government initially refused to address the protesters demands, but backtracked earlier this week and began talks with community representatives on June 25.

The movement for the right to affordable housing is very active in Rome, with hundreds of occupations, rallies and assemblies to prevent evictions, and public initiatives calling for affordable housing. On July 1, associations and collectives called a demo in the city center, demanding a moratorium on house evictions, which affect the weakest and the poorest in times of economic hardship.

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Minister of Security Sergio Berni has alleged that the serious attacks on Constitución train station had to have been previously planned. After disturbances that left at least 10 in police custody, the official fired that he was convinced that the incidents were far from spontaneous.

“We are convinced that it was organised, working people do not go around with a can of petrol in their hands,” Berni affirmed on arriving at the scene.

The incidents broke out around 7pm, when the effects of strike action that has affected hundreds of thousands of commuters trying to return home became most acute.

Irate protestors in the vicinity of Constitución began to attack the station with projectiles, also directing stones and other objects at the city buses which represented the only mode of public transportation to reach the southern zone of Buenos Aires.

Police arrived swiftly on the scene, but the group of demonstators escalated their attacks with stones and other debris from a nearby building site, and began to pull down fences on the adjacent street, while the station shows clear signs of damage – including broken windows and fire damage.

Αναδημοσίευση από  linksunten.indymedia.org (η έμφαση με πλάγια σε ορισμένα σημεία δική μας)

I met Mohammed Hassan Aazab earlier this year over tea at a table of young anarchists in downtown Cairo. The anniversary of the revolution had just passed with massive protests and the emergence of a Western-style black bloc that appeared to have little to do with anarchists in the city. At the time, much of the ongoing grassroots organizing was against sexual violence — in particular, the mob sexual assaults that have become synonymous with any large gathering in Tahrir. The trauma of such violence carried out against protesters was apparent in our conversation. In fact, Aazab told me that he was done with protests and politics, and had resigned himself to the dysfunction of day-to-day life in Egypt.
Then came June 30. Crowds reportedly as large as 33 million took to the streets to call for the Muslim Brotherhood to step down from power, just a year after Mohammed Morsi took office. In the pre-dawn moments of July 1, as Aazab’s phone battery dwindled steadily, I reconnected with him to chat a bit about his return to resistance.

The interview:

What’s the feeling in Cairo right now? We’re seeing reports here of the largest protests in human history.

Today, all of us worked really hard to get through the protests without violence. Everyone’s afraid a civil war could break out. The protesters gave Morsi 48 hours to step down. If that deadline passes, there’ll be a general strike. In the last five hours, 10 people were killed — four in Assiut and six in front of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters. The sun is coming up now. All the old revolutionaries are preparing for clashes in the streets.

I heard that the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters were torched. Is that true?

Yes. And it’s still surrounded by protesters right now.

Who called for the general strike? Are there particular unions involved?

No. The unions are totally ineffective. 

So how is the strike organized?

Tamarod [the Rebel Movement] called for the general strike. Actually, it has not been organized in advance; it has been a spontaneous development. It will work by people believing in and supporting it.

Do you think people will follow through?

Port Said will start the general strike tomorrow. I have no idea to what extent people will follow through on it, beyond that. But it’s clear people are absolutely determined to force Morsi out.

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αναδημοσίευση από Jadaliyya

The issue of women’s empowerment continues to be of paramount significance in determining the future of the incomplete Arab revolutions. Numerous scholars, activists, and feminists have commented with concern about the precarious position of women after the contagious revolutions, which started in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Many haveexpressed anxiety that the controversial gender issue in the Middle East will dominate the coming years, as even Christian leaders transmit Islamists’ pressure on women to dress “more modestly” to their communities. Others have remarked that misogynist attitudes are observable today across the post-revolutionary Arab states, because the Islamists in power have revealed themselves to be agents of an “Islamic neoliberal” ideology that works hand in hand with constraining measures regarding women. These observers have pointed to various shocking acts that all converge in one direction: the targeting of women’s bodies.

The aged President Hosni Mubarak had long embodied the oppressive and institutionalized patriarchy in Egypt. After Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011, an ageing military junta replaced him, and continued to use violence to subdue protest. It was as if a targeted vengeance were being directed against Egypt’s youth, and as if the generational conflict between the old generals and the young protesters had to be played out through the mutilation of young bodies.

Today, almost a year since the election of longtime Muslim Brotherhood figure President Mohamed Morsi, there is a general feeling that nothing has really changed in terms of citizens’ rights. None of the security officials responsible for the series of killings of protesters since January 2011 have been convicted. As this in turn sparks new demonstrations, the Brotherhood regime continues the use of thuggery and public violence,together with sexual harassment, to terrorize citizens and deter them from protest in Tahrir Square.

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Αναδημοσιεύουμε τμήμα μιας συνέντευξης ενός στελέχους της Morgan Stanley Investment Management, γιατί συνδέει τη σημερινή οικονομική κατάσταση των BRICs  και γενικότερα των “αναδυόμενων οικονομιών” με τις ταραχές, με τη γλώσσα του κεφαλαίου φυσικά, αλλά η γλώσσα αυτή σ’αυτήν την περίπτωση είναι ιδιαίτερα χρήσιμη. (Η έμφαση με πλάγια σε ορισμένα σημεία δική μας)

Ezra Klein: So as I understand it, your view is that people shouldn’t be surprised to see protests in Brazil and riots in Turkey. It’s the long period of economic growth and political calm that preceded them that you consider surprising, or at least unusual. Is that right? 

Ruchir Sharma: Absolutely. The last decade gave us this misleading impression because growth was booming in every single emerging market and that was keeping everything calm. It gave the impression that this was a new era for the emerging world.

But a lot of that growth was driven by low interest rates and the commodities boom. The long-term growth rate of emerging markets is about 4 to 5 percent annually, but from 2003 to 2008 it was over 7 percent. At the same time, inflation, which used to be a big problem, collapsed.  But now all that’s reversing. In Brazil, for instance, growth is down and inflation is creeping back up. And that’s how you get a situation where a rise in bus prices can be the final straw that gets people into the streets.

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZhZugGyOOE[/youtube]

There have been riots in the small town of Vradiyevka in southern Ukraine after the gang rape of a woman, allegedly involving local police officers.

Mobs stormed the town’s police headquarters, after authorities refused to detain one of two policemen accused.

29 year old Iryna Krashkova says she was beaten and raped by two policemen after being grabbed on a street and forced into a taxi.She told euronews she knew exactly who her attackers were:

“For sure they were policemen because I know them, because I live in this village where they work. I never talked to them but I know that they are policemen because I live in this town.”

In Kiev, there were further demonstrations close to the presidential palace.

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Ενδιαφέρον κείμενο για την κατανόηση των περίπλοκων συγκρούσεων που λαμβάνουν χώρα στην Αίγυπτο. Από το roarmag

Egypt’s revolution will never be complete until the authoritarian neoliberal state is finally dismantled. Only the power of the streets can do this.

Morsi is trembling. Two days after millions of Egyptians took to the streets to once again demand the downfall of the regime, the Muslim Brotherhood looks weaker and more isolated than ever. On Monday, the grassroots Tamarod campaign that kicked off the mass protests gave Morsi 24 hours to step down and threatened an indefinite wave of civil disobedience if he failed to comply. The army quickly joined in, giving the government a thinly-veiled 48-hour ultimatum to “meet the people’s demands”.

Since then, at least six government ministers have jumped ship, with rumors doing the rounds earlier on Tuesday that the entire cabinet had resigned. To further compound the pressure on Morsi, the army command released spectacular footage showing Sunday’s mass mobilizations from the bird’s eye view of the military helicopters that circled over Cairo carrying Egyptian and army flags — set to bombastic music, patriotic slogans and incessant chants of “Out! Out! Out!” directed at the President and Muslim Brotherhood.

On Tuesday morning, government officials, opposition leaders and the military command were all quick to deny that the army’s statements and actions were indications of an impending military coup — even though one of Morsi’s advisors had earlier gone off script and argued that the office of the Presidency did regard the army’s ultimatum as such. Still, Tamarod organizers and opposition leaders have unambiguously welcomed the army’s stance in the hope that its secular command will take their side and “gently” nudge the Islamists from power.

Many of those in the streets also seem to be broadly supportive of an army intervention. Every time one of the military helicopters flew over Tahrir, the people would greet it with loud cheers, chanting that “the people and the military are one hand”. Still, the hardcore activists who have struggled ceaselessly to defend their revolution over the past two-and-a-half years remember the lies and brutalities of the military junta that they themselves helped to push from power, and continue to call for total liberation: “No Mubarak, No Military, No Morsi!”

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