On Thursday evening, March 10, community members who are without permanent housing and their advocates arrived at the Carla Madison Recreation Center in an attempt to take over the public facility overnight to be out of the below freezing weather.
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The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) strike entered its fourth day on Thursday March 11 as Minneapolis Public Schools remained closed. Picket lines continued to have large crowds with many schools reporting 100% turnout to their picket lines every day of the strike, and the others reporting nearly all educators on their lines.
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The Minneapolis teachers’ strike kicked off this week with a huge turnout. With the George Floyd uprising, Minneapolis saw the rebirth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. During the Derek Chauvin trial which coincided with the police murder of Daunte Wright, community members were once again brutalized with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the Twin Cities were crawling with National Guard. Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that the teachers who do the labor of nurturing the younger members of our society are on strike for racial justice. All of their demands are directly connected to the Black struggle.
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Nearly two decades after Bush administration began a nationwide crackdown on the U.S. movement against the invasion of Iraq, antiwar activists in Russia are experiencing a wave of brutal repression as President Vladimir Putin’s regime wages an extremely deadly war on Ukraine.
This is a pivotal moment for the antiwar movement in Russia. Some activists are fleeing the country to avoid persecution and agitate against the war under international protection, according to a Russian activist who must remain anonymous due to fear of arrest. There are also “plenty of examples” of others staying in Russia and developing creative ways to resist despite the threat of arrest.
“Plus, actually many don’t mind getting arrested,” the activist said over an encrypted chat this week. Many Russian antiwar organizers have emphasized that they feel strongly about putting themselves on the line at a time when Ukrainians are suffering so much at the hands of the Russian government.
Still, human rights groups say key organizers face serious criminal charges, and multiple protesters have reported injuries after being arrested and detained. Videos of police wielding batons against demonstrators and using “excessive force” have emerged from recent antiwar protests in Russia, according to Human Rights Watch. Nearly 14,000 people in Russia have been arrested or detained for participating in antiwar actions since February 24.
Meanwhile, Alexi Navalny, the Russian opposition leader jailed by the Putin regime, has reportedly called for mass antiwar protests across Russia this Sunday that could bring thousands of people into the streets.
Human Rights Watch reports that 5,000 people were detained during actions in 69 cities on March 6 alone, and several women allegedly endured violent interrogations by police at Moscow’s Brateyevo police station that could amount to torture under international law. Two activists, 22-year-old Marina Morozova and 26-year-old Aleksandra Kaluzhskikh, discreetly recorded their interrogations and gave the audio to independent media outlets.
The question of whether the Russian antiwar movement will grow into a serious challenge to Putin — or be stifled by police and the propaganda pushed by state-run media — could be answered in the coming weeks as Russian forces continue aerial bombardments of civilian areas and lay siege to key cities in Ukraine. Negotiations aimed at ending the conflict are not making progress, and with everyday Russians suffering under economic sanctions and fallen soldiers coming home in body bags, the truth is slowly seeping out despite the government’s efforts to control news outlets and social media.
In interviews, antiwar activists in the United States say they no longer discuss the war with their friends and counterparts in Russia over the phone. A new Russian law imposes a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for statements “discrediting” the military or cutting against the official narrative of Russian’s mission in Ukraine, which the Kremlin and state media often describes as a “special military operation” rather than an “invasion” or a “war.”
Activists worry the anti-dissent law will be enforced retroactively, allowing authorities to target activists for statements and online posts made before the crackdown and even call for the extradition of activists who have fled the country.
Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy, an antiwar and anti-nuclear proliferation group that brings Russian and American women together, recently published a petition calling for an immediate ceasefire. Unlike in previous appeals, the group withheld signatures of Russian members due to fear of arrest, according to Ann Wright, a well-known antiwar activist who resigned from the U.S. military in 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq.
“There are a few that are still speaking to the international media … but it’s very, very dangerous for them,” Wright said in an interview.
In a recent international poll by LexisNexis, less than half of Russians approved of the war but only 27 percent disapproved. Another 26 percent had no opinion, possibly reflecting the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent and independent media outlets, which has left many Russians with access to only the state’s narrative on the news.
Younger, tech-savvy Russians use Virtual Private Networks or VPNs that encrypt online data and web surfing for privacy to bypass the country’s censorship of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and access international news about the war. However, increased sanctions imposed by the U.S. are making VPNs difficult or impossible to use. Activists say most students and young people in major metropolitan areas such as Moscow and St. Petersburg oppose the war, while members of older generations swallow the Kremlin’s misleading narratives on state-run TV.
“The Russian people are going to suffer big time in terms of all of the sanctions on them,” Wright said. “The people are isolated; nobody is giving them visas to leave the country.”
Paula Garb, a longtime activist who lived in the Soviet Union for 20 years and worked as a peacemaker during conflicts in Georgia and other areas of the post-Soviet bloc, said she remembers living in an “information bubble” created by state television broadcasts when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. However, the repression of activists and independent news media appears to be more severe now, resembling the Soviet Union under the authoritarian grasp of Joseph Stalin after World War II, Garb said.
“It does seem as though maybe there is 50 or 60 percent of the whole country which may not be happy about the conflict, but are just accepting the Russian government’s narrative,” Garb said in an interview. “Thousands of people are willing to be activists, but it may not be enough — yet.”
Garb and Wright said observers across the world were taken by surprise by Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine. Many assumed Russian troops would defend the two pro-Russian breakaway provinces in the Donbas region, but the full-scale effort to topple the Ukrainian government that has claimed thousands of lives so far seemed like a remote possibility just a few weeks ago. Antiwar organizers were forced to act quickly as Russian military action escalated into an all-out invasion, pushing more than 2.5 million civilians out of the country.
“Russians say ‘don’t hate us for what our leaders have done,’” said Wright, who has visited the country twice in the past five years. “We were hoping in the U.S. that the world wouldn’t hate American citizens for what both Bush administrations did to Iraq.”
However, Wright said, the U.S. antiwar movement was also sidelined by the media as the U.S. went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan under President George W. Bush, and thousands of activists were arrested by police over the course of several years.
“It’s not like our government here was pleased with the antiwar sentiment,” Wright said.
Activists say we must not draw absolute parallels between the conflict in Ukraine and the U.S.-led wars in the Middle East, or the many other conflicts fueled by U.S. military support around the world, such as the occupation of Palestine and the civil war in Yemen. However, like many of these conflicts, the future of the war on Ukraine remains unpredictable.
Putin has not achieved the swift victory he may have imagined, and the conflict in Ukraine is already a humanitarian catastrophe that threatens to become a quagmire lasting for months, if not years.
Wright said multiple international antiwar coalitions continue to organize and support Russian activists, but they still need all the support — and media attention in and outside Russia — that they can get.
“We have to keep looking for those who are brave enough to speak out,” Wright said. “They are going to be heroes at the end of all this, if they are still alive.”
Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabir organized protests and observed a general strike on Thursday, March 10, against home demolitions planned by the Israeli municipal authorities. The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem reportedly plans to demolish around 800 Palestinian-owned homes in the area. Palestinians believe this is part of a much larger and long-running Israeli project of expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem in order to colonize and repopulate the area with Jewish Israelis, and ultimately to annex the occupied Palestinian territory into the present-day state of Israel.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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We go to Moscow to look at the growing antiwar movement in Russia, where activists are risking a brutal crackdown to oppose their government’s assault on Ukraine. Arshak Makichyan is a climate activist who recently joined protests against the invasion and says the actions of the Russian government do not reflect the will of the people. He says Russian citizens suspect President Vladimir Putin could declare martial law soon, as part of a broader campaign to suppress dissenting voices. Meanwhile, U.S. sanctions have unintended consequences on peace activists, whose access to virtual private networks and foreign social media platforms has been hurt, leaving them less able to find alternative sources of information. “It’s difficult and dangerous to fight this regime,” says Makichyan.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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For the first time in 50 years, Minneapolis public school teachers and educational support professionals (ESPs) went on strike yesterday to demand better wages, smaller class sizes, mental health support for students, and retention of educators of color. The last time Minneapolis teachers went on strike was in 1970 when it was illegal for public employees to strike.
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On March 3, 2022, police in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, opened an investigation into Asad Ali Toor for allegedly leading an unauthorized protest earlier that week, according to news reports and Toor, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.
On March 4, the Islamabad High Court ordered police not to arrest anyone named in the case until another hearing on Monday, March 7; at that hearing, Chief Justice Athar Minallah said that police officers’ use of excessive force and the registration of a criminal case against the protesters constituted an abuse of state power, according to news reports.
Toor, who was present at the March 7 hearing, said that Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan told the court that the state would withdraw the case. Toor told CPJ on March 9 that he had not been formally notified that the case had been withdrawn.
Khan and Shabbir Ahmad, the station house officer of Islamabad’s Kohsar police station who filed the complaint, did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app.
Toor told CPJ that he denied any leadership role in the protest, held on March 1 at the city’s National Press Club to protest the disappearance of an ethnic Baloch student, and only attended to cover it as a journalist.
A number of students were injured when police charged the protesters and attacked them with batons, according to Dawn. Toor alleged that the investigation was retaliation for his coverage of the protest and the police crackdown on his YouTube-based current affairs channel, Asad Toor Uncensored.
In a first information report, a police document opening an investigation, authorities accused Toor and several others of criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly, obstruction of a public servant’s duties, defamation, and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace. The most serious of those crimes, criminal conspiracy, can carry a death sentence, according to Pakistan’s penal code.
Previously, in September 2020, the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency in the northern city of Rawalpindi filed a first information report against Toor for allegedly defaming the army through his social media posts, according to news reports.
After four months of legal proceedings, the Lahore High Court dismissed the case for lack of evidence, according to news reports and Toor. He said that the state never informed him or his lawyers about who filed the complaint that led to the registration of a first information report, or which social media posts were allegedly defamatory.
Separately, in May 2021, unidentified armed men attacked Toor at his home and left him bound and gagged, as CPJ documented at the time. Toor told CPJ that police have not identified the perpetrators of that attack.
CPJ emailed the Federal Investigation Agency and Islamabad Police Inspector-General Muhammad Ahsan Younas for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Rituraj Sapkota of Māori Television
“I have never had that fear before that I might get physically hurt,” says Patrice Allen, a Ngati Kahungunu and Newshub camera operator based in Wellington.
“You’re going down there, you don’t know what it’s going to be like. A person from Wellington Live got beaten up.”
Māori Television’s press gallery videographer David Graham (Taranaki Whānui and Waikato) started working as a news cameraman in Wellington in 1989. He was there for the seabed and foreshore protests, and “in the 1990s it was Moutua and Pakitore,” he recollects. “But this is the most volatile one I have seen.
“Back then we [the media] were part of the show. They wanted us to be there. Now we are a part of the ‘axis of evil’, along with the police and government.”
Up against your own
“Now there are Pākehā calling you kūpapa [Māori warriors who fought on the British colonial troops side during the New Zealand Wars in the 19th century],” he says. He has just returned from filming with his phone in the crowd, and has heard protesters say things. Nasty things.
“Stuff like ‘you should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed of your whakapapa!’”
“I just don’t engage,” says Graham. “And I am not a random man with a camera here. I actually have whakapapa back to this marae on my father’s side,” he says, referring to Pipitea Marae where Taranaki Whānui laid down Te Kahu o Raukura as a cultural protection over the surrounding land that includes the Parliament grounds.
The protesters had lots of livestreams and many of them kept filming media camera-ops who were filming them. (Below: David Graham finds himself in one of the live feeds while a protester in the crowd heckles him.)
Allen feels the mamae is stronger when it comes from your own people.
“This happened on the day of the last protests,” she says, referring to the protests in November where the crowd threw tennis balls and water bottles at the media. She was filming a timelapse of the crowd leaving when a mother-son duo walked up to her.
“He was a big dude and he was really getting in my face. I was not feeling very safe. And I thought, ‘how can I diffuse this?’” So she asked them where they were from.
“And they were like where are you from? What are you?”
“Oh, Ngati Kahungunu, just over the hill in Wairarapa,” she replied. The man said something targeting not just her but also her iwi. “And that just broke my spirit,” says Allen.
“It was one of the days I went home and cried.”
‘We’re the enemy now’
“We are the enemy now,” says Allen. “And there is nothing you can do or say that will change their minds.”
Her teammate Emma Tiller thinks the camera can be a beacon in the crowd. “As soon as you put it up, everyone knows who you are. And they hate you.”
And even though security cover has become standard practice for all news camera-ops filming in the crowd, there are times she feels vulnerable. “It’s hard to think back to protests when we were out there. We didn’t have security with us. It didn’t even cross our minds.
“But now who wants to risk the violence?” she says.
“They have thrown things at the police. If they can do that to them, what can they do to us?”
“The last time I had security was when I was filming in East Timor,” says Allen. It was a long time ago, she adds, and at a time and place when there were terrorists around.
“It’s really bad because it’s made it ‘us and them’, media against protesters, and it’s not supposed to be like that.”
‘Difficult to turn off’
Sam Anderson, 22, is TVNZ’s camera operator at the press gallery. “It has been difficult to turn off,” he says “ I have been there [on the Speaker’s balcony] from 9am to 6pm just streaming the whole day.
“It’s all you are doing – copping the abuse, being yelled at, having your morality questioned.
“I sometimes hide behind the pillars from the frontliners who can yell all day.
“And throw that in with reading all the signs around you,” says Tiller.
“And they yell at you. And you go home and you can’t switch it off.”
Anderson’s teammate, Sam von Keisenberg, was on that balcony on February 11 when police made many arrests. Shortly after they arrested someone at the forecourt and the crowd was yelling at the police, a lady pointed a finger at him and said “You! You are a paedophile protector!”
“At first I was like, ‘that’s new’. But then she said it 50 times, as loud as she could, just at me.”
He pulled his camera off the tripod. “It was getting to me”, he says. “I have children. I would never protect a paedophile.”
His colleague asked him where he was going. “Just to punch some lady in the face,” he said under his breath. “And I walked out and just went to the bathroom.”
Sweeping generalisations
“Sometimes you have to take a step back,” von Keisenberg says.
“I had never experienced hate [directed] at me before,” RNZ video journalist Angus Dreaver says. Especially this type, he says, where they think media are traitors, and they want them to know.
“Four months ago, I was doing kids’ TV.”
Dreaver thinks the generalisation works both ways. While the protesters see the mainstream media as a monolith and sweep them with one giant brush, “it’s important for us, conversely, not to see them that way.”
Von Keisenberg believes there were more moderates in the crowd than extremists. “I always felt there were enough people around me,” he says. And that made him feel safe in the first week when he was filming undercover, knowing that “if things did get violent, there would be some moderate ones who would stop them”.
He saw that in action, too. In his forays of the first week, when he joined the crowd unmasked to avoid attention. He saw a man there in his 70s wearing a mask.
“The first thing he said to me was that he was immunocompromised, which is why he was wearing the mask.”
“It’s fine, mate. It’s a freedom rally, do what you want,” von Keisenberg said. But another protester came up and “tried to pull his mask off and started berating him, saying he had no identity. The mob mentality started and people around the gate joined in and started giving him grief.”
Von Keisenberg intervened. “Oi! chill out man. It’s a freedom rally, he’s free to wear a mask!”
“A woman close by turned around and said, ‘Yeah, come on guys! leave him alone.’ And they did.”
Mainstream media
When people tell von Keisenberg that they don’t watch mainstream media, his follow-up is, “Well then, how do you know we are ‘lying’?”
“They say, ‘we get our news from Facebook, which is different’. Yeah, different, because there aren’t many rules around it,” von Keisenberg says.
“Mainstream media is held more to account than social media,” Allen says. “But they think the opposite.”
Some of Dreaver’s acquaintances have shared his photos on Instagram, in posts that read “Mainstream media are liars”. “Bro, that’s me!”, he says.
Trying to remain objective in the face of constant harassment is a real challenge.
“I am almost hyper-aware of that, where I am trying to capture the mundane and relax as much as the heightened states,” he adds. “And I am trying to not let my anger affect the pictures I take or how I cover it.”
But for camera operators, the task ends once they take the picture. “We only aim for clear sound and sharp, steady pictures,” Graham says. “The rest of the stuff is for other people to decide what to do with.”
Anderson thinks there are differences in perspectives within newsrooms. People who have watched the protests from a distance or from their desks often take a kinder view of the protesters, he says.
“But me and the other camera ops, we copped a lot of abuse over three weeks. We just have a more bitter taste in our mouths for this crowd.”
The PM in ‘disguise’
There have been the fun moments, though, Anderson admits. There have been “raves” with young people dancing on the frontlines and he found himself almost filming to the beat. And there was a protester who thought he was the prime minister in disguise.
“Now that is one theory I know is not true,” says his teammate von Keisenberg. But how does he know for sure?
“Because I have seen both of them in the same room at the same time.”
And von Keisenberg has had his fun moments in the crowd, too. In one instance when he was filming undercover, a woman went on the stage and started talking into the mic about electric and magnetic fields (radiation) and how crystals could block them.
“Bullshit!” von Keisenberg turned around and shouted.
“We are here for the mandates,” he added, not snapping out of character, and for the benefit of those around him who were listening to the woman speak.
A potential for volence
“The vibe changed every few days, and that was because people kept coming and going,” von Keisenberg says. “But there were always the elements who were there for whatever happened on day 23.”
One camera op I spoke to said there had been a “potential for violence” right throughout. And when someone like Winston Peters visits the crowd and says “the mainstream media have been gaslighting you for a long time,” it gives them validation, and lends credibility to their theories.
But for those on the ground gathering news amid a hostile crowd, it exacerbates the possibility for harm.
Added to this potential of violence is the constant anticipation of things to come. “You have to be always prepared for when something will happen,” as Tiller puts it. “And that is exhausting.”
Emma Tiller describes her experience of the Speaker’s balcony as, “You feel like you have to be prepared for if something is going to happen, and that is exhausting.”
“The day things turn to custard, you want to be there on the ground,” Graham said to me a few days before the police operation. “You don’t want to be at home watching it on TV.”
And turn to custard it did; the threat of violence became reality on day 23. While the “battle” raged between the police and the protesters, the media people found themselves being targeted.
Dreaver was in the crowd by the tent where a fire had started. “A Mainstream! We have got a Mainstream here,” a woman who spotted him started shouting.
Brandishing a camping chair, she told him to, “get out of here! Out! Out!” The riot police were advancing behind him and he stood his ground.
“She started hitting me on the back with it,” he said. “She didn’t have a lot of speed but it was still a metal chair.”
“It hurt a bit,” he reckons.
“Get out of here,” demands the woman who attacked Dreaver with a chair. “Just go” shouts a man standing beside her. Screengrab from RNZ’s video story.
‘Not everyone’
“There were some protesters who were trying to stop the violence. Even right at the end,” says Dreaver, recollecting how when some people were breaking up bits from the concrete slabs to get smaller throw-able chunks, another person tried to physically get in the way and stop them.
“But the other guys had a metal tent pole and whacked him over the head with it.”
Throughout the three weeks of protests, there had been repeated calls from the protesters asking the media to talk to them. On the morning of day 23 when I was filming from the Speaker’s balcony, a TV reporter had just finished a live cross into the bulletin.
A man’s voice rang out from among the crowd, on the PA, inviting the media on the balcony to “come down and talk to real people and report the truth.” The same voice went on to berate us for wearing masks, behind which we were allegedly smiling smugly.
Less than a minute after the initial invitation, he followed up with another call to step down so he could put a fist through the mask.
“Why don’t you come down to talk to us? Because getting bashed with a chair was always inevitable,” says Dreaver. “It’s crazy it took so long.”
Protesters whacked another protester with a tent pole as he tried to stop the violence. “It didn’t look as though it injured him, because the tent poles are quite light, but it looked quite gnarly,” Dreaver says.
The aftermath
Parliament’s grounds have been reclaimed. All but one street around the buildings is now open to the public. On Sunday, Te Āti Awa held a karakia to reinstall the mauri of the land. There is currently a rāhui over the Parliament grounds.
It is time for healing. And moving on.
“I was feeling sad last week. And then I look at Ukraine and realise there are bombs going off next to all these journalists and camera operators,” Dreaver says “I got hit with a camping chair and I am going to sit around and complain about it?”
The effect of these protests linger though. Graham spent last Friday a week ago filming the hau kainga at Wainuiomata on high alert, and trying to keep the protesters from entering and setting up camp on their marae, as have other hapū around the capital.
The crowd has dispersed but not vanished, and neither has their kaupapa.
“I have seen some of their kōrero online,” Graham says. The mandates might be gone soon, but “there will be other stuff,” he reckons.
“It’s definitely not over.”
Rituraj Sapkota is Māori Television’s videographer in Parliament’s press gallery. Republished with permission from Te Ao Māori News.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Around 60 people gathered in Mayday Plaza on Sunday, March 6, for an International Women’s Day protest organized by the Twin Cities district of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Demands for reproductive rights and healthcare for all, justice for missing and murdered indigenous women and two-spirit people, an end to gender-based violence, queer and trans liberation, and justice for all stolen lives were raised. The demonstrators also stood in solidarity with Twin Cities educators preparing to strike, signs reading “Victory to the educators!” dotted the crowd gathered in the square, and similar phrases frequented the speeches given.
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Minneapolis, MN – On Saturday March 5 rank-and-file union members along with parents, teachers and students held a press conference in support of the teachers, education support professionals (ESPs) and education assistants who will begin a strike Tuesday in Minneapolis and Saint Paul public schools.
More than 93% of the Minneapolis educators voted to authorize the upcoming open-ended strike, along with a 78% strike vote from Saint Paul educators. In the week after the educators’ votes, food service workers in the Minneapolis school system also authorized a strike by a 98% vote. The food service workers’ strike is expected to start soon after the educators’ strike begins.
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About a dozen environmental activists took to the streets of downtown Green Bay Friday evening to protest a proposed oil pipeline reroute in northern Wisconsin.
“We’re trying to raise awareness about Line 5,” said organizer Justice Peche.
Canada-based Enbridge Energy is rerouting the Line 5 pipeline around the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation at the request of the tribe.
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The “Fight for 15” has started a new cycle of protests in Haiti. After the February 16 protests, there were protests on February 23 (where police journalist Lazard Maximilien and wounded two other people) and on February 24. Though Henry’s government has offered a new minimum wage of 770 gourdes ($7.40), union leaders refuse to concede and are holding steadfast to their demand for 1500 gourdes. They continue to strike.
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In a Feb. 24 announcement, teachers with the Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), which includes both teachers and Education Support Professionals, announced an intent to strike. Filed with the state of Minnesota’s Bureau of Mediation, the intent to strike was authorized by the board in a vote counted Feb. 17 and provides a legally-mandated, 10-day warning to the school districts about a possible strike.
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On the streets of Brasilia and Accra, Johannesburg and New York City, people’s movements and organizations demanded on February 25 that publisher and political prisoner Julian Assange be released immediately. The call for mobilizations was issued by the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) which launched a permanent campaign this month to call for Assange’s immediate release and the rejection of his extradition request.
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As the Russian military escalates its invasion in Ukraine, Russian police are cracking down on antiwar protesters at home, arresting more than 8,000 over the past eight days. Meanwhile, Russia’s lower house of parliament has passed a new law to criminalize the distribution of what the state considers to be “false news” about military operations, and remaining independent news outlets in the country are shutting down under pressure from the authorities. We speak with Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair for the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, who won the 2021 Right Livelihood Award — the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize” — for defending the environment and mobilizing grassroots opposition to the coal and nuclear industries in Russia. Slivyak describes Putin’s attempts to shut down independent media within Russia and the “pure propaganda” his regime is spreading on state-sponsored media to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to look at Russia’s escalating crackdown domestically following its invasion of Ukraine. More than 8,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested since Russia began the attack. Meanwhile, Russia’s lower house of parliament has just passed a new law to criminalize the distribution of what the state considers to be “false news” about military operations, like calling the attack “war.” Violators of the law could face 15 years in prison.
Still with us, Vladimir Slivyak. He is co-chair of the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, won the 2021 Right Livelihood Award, the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize,” for defending the environment and mobilizing grassroots opposition to the coal and nuclear industries in Russia.
Vlad, your response to the antiwar protests across Russia? Thousands have been arrested. And talk about what people understand, what is the feeling in Russia, and Putin’s crackdown.
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: Well, first of all, I think it’s very hard to imagine, for people in the West or in the U.S.A. or European Union, how Russian propaganda is working. I mean, you’ve got an access to different sources of information, to different TV channels, and Russians don’t have this. The big majority, like over 70% of Russians, are just watching the first channel on the TV, which is state-controlled and that put out all kinds of propaganda, anti-Ukrainian propaganda, to make people believe that in Ukraine something bad is happening to Russian-speaking people, which is absolutely not true and just a pure propaganda to justify this invasion.
But, I mean, I was a bit surprised, actually, that even in a dictatorship country like Russia — and Russia is dictatorship today — people actually went to protest, and the thousands of people went on the street. And, I mean, although it’s still not that mass protest, but even this number — I mean, I think it’s well over 10,000 of people that went to protest since the beginning. Well, it’s pretty impressive, taking into account what’s going on in Russia, how media controlled, how much repression is there right now. That’s my take.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the media outlets that have been shut down, like Rain, like Echo of Moscow? Explain their significance.
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: Well, it is very significant. Independent media are not big, unfortunately. And that’s because over the last decade Putin was basically shutting down every influential independent media in the country. And those two are — well, right now we have only one more or less independent media in the country, which is Novaya Gazeta, or a New Newspaper, if you translate it, which still puts a lot of antiwar propaganda — or, not propaganda, but antiwar information. So, we are left with only one newspaper that presents alternative point of view. And I think it could be shut down, as well. But the Echo Moscow and the TV Rain being the main sources of information, of alternative to governmental information, to — well, in a country like Russia, with 150 million of people, now people cannot really get this alternative information anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: And it’s also interesting to note that in occupied Kherson now, in the south of Ukraine, that the Ukrainian television has been turned off, and they’re now getting Russian government media.
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: Yeah. Well, I mean, Putin, for a very long time, been doing, well, a crackdown not only on the civil society but also on the free media. And, I mean, what we see today in Russia is a result of this policy, when all structures of a civil society are basically destroyed and there are now almost no organizations left who can actually organize mass protests, and Putin also shutting down free media so people cannot get independent information. And, yes, this is exactly what he will do to Ukraine if he will ever take it over.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, chaired by Putin, who also warned that Moscow could restore the death penalty, after Russian was removed from Europe’s top rights group, the U.N. human rights group — a chilling statement that shocked human rights activists in a country that has not had capital punishment for a quarter of a century. I’m reading a report.
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: That is absolutely shocking. But looking at what Russian regime or Putin regime been doing over last decade, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like impossible. I think Russians can do — I mean, Russian regime can do this.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to just comment that after Rain TV finished their final broadcast, they put on a loop of Swan Lake. This was an explicit reference to something Soviet authorities did when they wanted to bury bad news, including the 1991 coup attempt that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Vlad?
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, usually, TV was showing something like that when the leader of a country would be dead, actually. So, when something like that placed on the TV, people — I mean, a lot of people in Russia start to remember that back in the Soviet times they could see something like that on the television, when the big boss of the Soviet Union could be dead. So, now people — well, people still doing jokes about this. And, well, I would probably stop here, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Vlad — we have 30 seconds — the significance of the increasing sanctions against the leadership in Russia?
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: That is very powerful sanctions. And it is very good that the international community introduced so powerful sanctions. It’s hitting Russian economy very much. And I think, in this situation, that’s the only way to stop war, to cut out resources for continuation of war for Putin regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned that increasing the sanctions could lead Putin to take more drastic action?
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: I think if the rest of the world will not cut out resources for Putin regime, this regime will go into more wars, and there will be bigger war in Europe. So I support every sanction against Putin regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you afraid to go back to Russia?
VLADIMIR SLIVYAK: Well, I’m afraid, but this is not the most important thing right now. The most important thing right now is peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Vladimir Slivyak, I want to thank you for being with us, co-chair of the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, Right Livelihood Award winner.
When we come back, we’re going to go to where we started, and that’s Ukraine. We’re going to speak with a Ukrainian American journalist who says the Ukraine of his childhood is being erased. Stay with us.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
While the Canadian government declared a state of emergency and many of these protests have been quelled for the moment, the movement they started is spreading around the world. Right-wing activists first took up the mantle in places as far as France and New Zealand. It was only a matter of time, before a similar effort began in the United States. Activists who want to protect their communities from these far-right convoys are looking for lessons from those in Canada who had a recent crash course in how to push back.
The post What The US Can Learn From Canadian Activists Who Blocked Truck Convoys appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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On Thursday, February 17th, park rangers and Portland police showed up to the PDX Houseless Radicals Collective’s Fallout Camp on Park’s land in southeast Portland, Oregon. Their intended eviction of the camp was prevented by the presence of several comrades who were there in support. They promised to return in force the following Tuesday.
The post Portland Mobilizes To Defend Fallout Camp From Sweeps; Provide Mutual Aid To Houseless Community appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
ANALYSIS: By Paul Spoonley, Massey University
It has been interesting to watch media and public commentators come to the realisation — sometimes slowly — that the siege of Parliament was not simply an anti-vaccine mandate “protest” but something with more sinister elements.
While researchers and journalists have noted the toxicity of some of the politics on display, as well as the presence of extreme fringe activists and groups, it should have come as little surprise.
These politics have been developing for some time, heavily influenced by the rise of a particular form of conspiratorial populism out of Donald Trump’s America, and by the networking and misinformation possibilities of social media.
Internationally, researchers noted a decisive shift in 2015-16 and the subsequent exponential growth of extremist and vitriolic content online.
This intensified with the arrival of conspiracy movement QAnon in 2017 and the appearance of a number of alt-tech platforms that were designed to spread mis- and disinformation, conspiracy theories (old and new), and ultranationalism and racist views.
While local manifestations developed slowly, there was evidence that some groups and activists were beginning to realise the potential.
The Dominion Movement and Action Zealandia embraced these new politics — white nationalism, distrust of perceived corrupt elites and media — along with the relatively sophisticated use of social media to influence and recruit.
Covid and conspiracy theory
These anti-authority, conspiratorial views have been around in New Zealand for some time within the anti-1080, anti-5G and anti-UN movements.
But we began to see the formation of a loose political community around the 2020 general election. It was notable, for instance, that online material from the Advance NZ party had 30,000 followers and their anti-covid material was viewed 200,000 times.
Covid gave new impetus to these movements, partly because the pandemic fed many of the now well-established tropes of those inclined to believe in conspiracies — the role of China, government “overreach”, the influence of international organisations like the UN or WHO, or the “malign” influence of experts or institutions.
Covid not only encouraged others to be convinced that conspiracies were at work, the lockdowns also meant more were online and more were likely to engage. QAnon proved to be a key influence.
The election saw Advance NZ (and the NZ Public Party), along with the New Conservatives, the Outdoor Party and Vision NZ all peddle versions of covid scepticism, the distrust of elites or of ethnic and religious “others”.
Combined, they received 2.73 percent of the party vote and 3.01 percent of electorate votes. Not large, but related online activity was still troubling.
Slight cross-pollination of causes occurring at the Parly protest now pic.twitter.com/P0iF5MdwDA
— Sam Sachdeva (@SamSachdevaNZ) February 28, 2022
The alt-right in NZ
By mid-2021, when the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD, a UK-based research organisation) undertook a study for the Department of Internal Affairs of New Zealand’s extreme online activity, things had ramped up yet again.
The ISD looked at 300 local extremist accounts and 600,000 posts. In any given week, 192 extremist accounts were active, with 20,059 posts, 203,807 likes or up-votes and 38,033 reposts/retweets.
When it came to far-right Facebook pages, there were 750 followers per 100,000 internet users in New Zealand, compared to 399 in Australia, 252 in Canada and 233 in the USA.
Those numbers should give us all pause for thought. The volumes, the relatively high density, the extensive use of QAnon and the mobilisation of a not insignificant part of the New Zealand community indicate the alt-right and its fellow travellers were now well and truly established here.
‘So many rabbit holes’: Even in trusting New Zealand, protests show fringe beliefs can flourish https://t.co/tN4Zd6KO4m
— The Guardian (@guardian) February 25, 2022
The ‘sovereign citizens’ at Parliament
This is reinforced by the Department of Internal Affairs’ digital harm log. Not only are the numbers growing, but the level of hate and threats directed at individuals and institutions remains high.
In this context, it’s not surprising to see these ideologies surface at the occupation of Parliament grounds, or the fractious and divided nature of those attending, and that their demands are so diverse and inchoate.
Nor should it come as a surprise that the protesters display a complete unwillingness to trust authorities such as the police or Parliament.
For some time, the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement has been apparent in New Zealand, again heavily influenced by similar American politics. Laws and regulations are regarded as irrelevant and illegal, as are the institutions that create or enforce them.
What’s perhaps more surprising is that New Zealanders have generally not known more about these politics and the possibility they would produce the ugly scenes at parliament.
Information and action needed
While there has been some excellent media coverage, there has been a sense of playing catch-up. The degree of extremism fuelling the protests and the various demands appeared to catch parliament and the police off guard.
Our security and intelligence agencies are devoting more resources to tracking these politics – but they need to be more public about it. The Combined Threat Assessment Group and the SIS provide updates and risk assessments, but these often lack detailed information about local activists and actions. We need to be better informed.
The police are enhancing existing systems to better record hate crimes and activities (Te Raranga), which should become an important source of information.
And the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet will be announcing some of the details of the new centre of excellence, He Whenua Taurika, that will provide evidence of local developments.
If many New Zealanders have been surprised and saddened about the extremist politics visible at the parliament protest, there is now little excuse for not understanding their background and momentum. The challenge now is to ensure further hate crimes or violence do not follow.
Dr Paul Spoonley is distinguished professor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Unionized workers at publications including Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, The Root, and Jalopnik are striking to secure fairer contacts.
A number of staff at those G/O Media-owned outlets have unionized under the Gizmodo Media Group Union (GMG Union) banner, and are attempting to collectively bargain for contracts that guarantee healthcare, offer adequate family leave, codify diversity initiatives, provide work-from-home flexibility, prevent G/O from lowballing salaries, and protect staff from forced relocations to the NYC office.
The post GMG Union Staff At G/O Media Publications Go On Strike To Secure Fairer Contracts appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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On Saturday, February 26, thousands of elderly people in Sudan took part in the ‘Mothers and Fathers march’ to voice their support for the youth who, organized under the neighborhood Resistance Committees (RCs), continue resisting the military junta daily on the streets. The security forces attacked this demonstration, injuring at least 34 people, said the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD).
The post ‘Mothers And Fathers March’ Stands Firmly Behind Sudanese Youth Resisting Coup Leaders appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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There have been mass protests in many Russian cities, with people demanding an end to the war against Ukraine. From Ukraine itself, people are being urged to take up arms. And there are several reports of cyber attacks against Russian targets.
On 24 February, journalist Alejandro Alvarez posted on Twitter videos of mass protests in cities across Russia. In his Twitter thread they included: St Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, and Volgograd. Those demonstrating could be heard shouting in Russian “No to war”:
Protests are erupting in several Russian cities tonight against Putin's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, along with attempts from police to forcibly suppress them. Here's his hometown of St. Petersburg. I'll be threading videos below as I find them. pic.twitter.com/B5MyG5E4ou
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) February 24, 2022
Many of the brave Russian protesters were arrested and under the notorious Russian prison system may face imprisonment, beatings or worse. Though they will no doubt inspire the people of Ukraine to stand fast in their opposition to Putin’s war.
Indeed, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the people of his country to rise up and take up arms against the invaders:
We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 24, 2022
That follows authorisation by the Ukrainian parliament for volunteer groups and paramilitaries to use small arms and other weaponry.
Ukrainian MP Sviatoslav Yurash explained:
We are arming people who will be taking that fight to the Russians in every way. We are a nation of 40 million people and we are not going to just stand idly by as Russia does as it wants all across its borders.
We will fight with everything we have and all the support the world can provide us.
There are also reports that hacktivists have temporarily taken down the website of Russia Today (RT):
The #Anonymous collective has taken down the website of the #Russian propaganda station RT News.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonOne) February 24, 2022
Other Russian sites reportedly brought down include the Duma (Russian parliament), the Russian Ministry of Defence, and the Kremlin. There’s also a claim that the website of the Russian energy giant Gazprom was taken down.
Moreover, on 26 February, ‘Anonymous Ukraine’ issued a warning to Putin and put out a call to other Anonymous hacktivists to step up the attacks:
Cyber war started! #Ukraine #Zelensky #Anonymous pic.twitter.com/pgkkGXPAfd
— Anonymous Ukraine
(@anonukr) February 27, 2022
Meanwhile, Amnesty International reports that Russia may be guilty of war crimes. Indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces have included hits on civilian areas as well as hospitals.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, commented:
The Russian military has shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas. Some of these attacks may be war crimes.
One suggestion to how Putin’s war could end has come from former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis:
The only issue today should be to stop the war and to secure the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. The only way that could happen is a Washington-Moscow agreement that Russia withdraws in exchange for a commitment of Ukrainian neutrality. Anything else is war mongering.
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) February 24, 2022
In the past, armed resistance groups made up of citizens around the world have supported the fight against authoritarianism. One example is the International Brigade in Spain in 1936-39.
Indeed, it’s now reported that Ukraine is setting up an “international” legion for foreign volunteers to join the Ukrainian army. Zelensky explained:
Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country please come over, we will give you weapons.
Though the details of how that would run are not clear. Nor how local democratically-organised militias would or would not fit in with this initiative. Also, the call out could easily attract the far-right from every corner of the globe. That is not an exaggeration, given the integration of ultra-nationalists such as the Azov Battalion into Ukraine’s military structure.
Another possible outcome is Russians deploying sheer people power to demand the end of the corrupt and autocratic Putin-led regime. But this would require protesters taking to the streets not in their thousands but in their millions – and in every city and town in Russia. In short, a real revolution – by the people, for the people.
Russia knows too well that Ukraine has a proud history of resisting totalitarianism. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU) consisted of a 100,000 strong army, led by anarchist insurrectionist Nestor Makhno. The RIAU fought a campaign against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Communist revolution. In defence of the libertarian communes and “free soviets”, its long-term goal was to form a stateless, anarcho-communist society. That goal was never achieved.
As for the current conflict, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may ultimately prove to be his greatest mistake. For in recent days, the Russian people may have tapped into hope for a real revolution.
Featured image via YouTube
By Tom Coburg
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Workers in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, many of them young migrant women, were fighting for their lives. It was the deadliest point of the pandemic in 2020 in one of the hardest-hit states in Mexico, Baja California.
By May 2020, a local news outlet reported that 432 of the 519 Covid-19 fatalities to date had been workers in maquiladoras—assembly plants on the border that mostly supply the United States.
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This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Thousands of people filled the streets of Moscow in 2014 to protest Russia’s involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where separatists were fighting for control of the Donbas region after an uprising supported by the West pushed out an elected president in Kyiv. In 2003, tens of thousands protested against the invasion of Iraq by the United States in Washington, D.C. and in mass protests across the world.
Now, both Russia and the U.S.-led NATO coalition have escalated the conflict in Ukraine. Russian forces invaded the Ukraine on Thursday, and fierce fighting across the country is raising fears that the war will spiral into bloody chaos and spill across Eastern Europe. Russian missiles have destroyed Ukrainian military installations and airfields bringing in NATO weapons, according to the Kremlin. The Ukrainian government says dozens of soldiers and civilians lost their lives.
Scattered protests are popping up in Russia, Germany, the U.S. and across the world as the violence intensifies, but antiwar activists in Ukraine and Russia say their demonstrations rarely get Western media coverage and are often repressed by police.
The U.S. and its powerful allies placed economic sanctions on Russia this week after Putin recognized two pro-Russian breakaway “republics” in Donbas and deployed troops Russia calls “peacekeepers.” Putin also argued in a speech that Ukraine is essentially part of Russia. The Russian military claims its “peace enforcement operation” has no intention to “occupy” Ukraine, according to a statement passed along by a Russian military analyst, although it is unclear how that statement should be interpreted.
Both sides accuse the other of being the aggressor, and antiwar activists in Russia and Ukraine are drawing attention to escalating militarism on the part of both Russia and NATO.
“When Ukrainian and Western media mention Russian security concerns, it is usually to dismiss them, claiming that NATO is a defensive alliance and Ukraine has a right to align with it,” said Yurii Sheliazhenko, the executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, in an email. “When they show maps of amassing Russian troops on Ukrainian borders, they never show where NATO’s and Ukrainian military forces are positioned, despite there [being] a lot of public information of the sort; experts definitely know it.”
Sheliazhenko said that militarism is pervasive in Ukraine and Russia, although antiwar activists are raising their voices against the escalating violence.
“You should understand that due to the underdeveloped peace culture in Ukraine and all post-Soviet countries, including Russia, we have no independent impartial mass peace movement here and very few consistent pacifists,” Sheliazhenko said.
News outlets in the U.S. report a muted response from antiwar activists in Russia, where the 2014 protests were met with a harsh crackdown by police. Some experts say street protests have little impact on a government beholden to Putin. Antiwar protest organizers are now being arrested on a daily basis, according to a Russian activist who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of repression and sent messages in encrypted texts.
“There [are] no big street protests in Russia as all protests are banned ‘due to COVID,’ however, pro-war protests are accepted,” said the activist, who is currently living in a neighboring country but maintains contact with activists in Moscow. “In Moscow there are small actions daily and arrests.”
Sheliazhenko said there is also repression of the small antiwar movement in Ukraine, where violent elements of the far right were emboldened by a friendly government and its military supporters in NATO after a U.S.-backed uprising deposed a pro-Russian president in 2014.
Sheliazhenko said pickets and protests were recently held in several Ukrainian cities, including in front of the Ukrainian Parliament and the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. The media paid little attention, and protesters were searched by police and forced to say on video that they would not organize more demonstrations. Petitions to protect human rights tend to be more popular online than petitions to stop the conflict, and petitions have little effect on politicians to begin with, activist say.
“Again, I should say that street actions for peace are effective when genuine peace movements have people’s solidarity because of developed peace culture, and when there is little threat of persecution and violent attacks of far-righters,” Sheliazhenko said. “Now the state of emergency is introduced and Ukrainian government started to introduce the state of war, it limits freedom of assembly anyway.”
Plenty of people in Russia, the U.S. and across the world oppose the war in Ukraine. Activists say a return to diplomacy would prevent needless bloodshed, and cooperation rather than fighting among governments is desperately needed to confront global problems such as climate change and the COVID pandemic.
Some peace activists want to dismantle NATO or transform the military coalition into an “alliance of disarmament,” according to Sheliazhenko. NATO has supported multiple U.S.-led wars and enraged Putin by arming Russia’s neighbors with weapons, and the conflict Donbas escalated after the U.S. and its allies rejected Putin’s demand that Ukraine be barred from joining the military alliance.
“The conflict is the product of thirty years of failed policies, including the expansion of NATO and U.S. hegemony at the expense of other countries as well as major wars of aggression by the USA, Britain and other NATO powers which have undermined international law and the United Nations,” said a statement from the Stop the War Coalition in Britain this week.
In a poll this week, 72 percent of Americans said the U.S. should play either a minor role in the conflict or no role at all. Respondents want Biden focused on domestic issues such as gun violence and inflation, according to the Washington Post. Still, the threat of war in Ukraine did not prompt large protests in the pandemic-weary U.S. as negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over NATO expansion broke down.
Public opinion is muddled by former President Donald Trump, whose praise for Putin continues to be a favorite attack line for liberals. In fact, the poll found that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support the U.S. taking a “major” role in the conflict, with 32 percent of Democrats in support compared to 22 percent of Republicans.
However, antiwar groups in the U.S., Russia and beyond oppose the U.S. and NATO’s role in the conflict while also condemning Putin’s militarism and autocratic control of Russia.
“This is an act of imperialist aggression by Russia,” said Autonomous Action, a Russian anarchist collective involved in the 2014 antiwar protests, in a statement this week. “We have no illusions about the Ukrainian state, but it is clear to us that it is not the main aggressor in this story — this is not a confrontation between two equal evils.”
Putin’s supporters see him as a protector of Russian-speaking people in Eastern Ukraine, but there are also dissidents who dismiss Putin’s latest moves as blatant imperialism that will spread Russian authoritarianism. Indeed, the conflict in Ukraine puts Russian leftists in a difficult position. While many oppose Putin, they also oppose paramilitary right-wing ultranationalists on the Ukrainian side.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to deploy troops, attack helicopters and fighter jets to Eastern Europe, although Biden has said U.S. troops will not fight a war in Ukraine. In Russia, the U.S. and NATO are seen as the aggressors after meddling in Ukrainian affairs for years and surrounding Russia with advanced missiles in Poland, Romania and on the Black Sea.
“This conflict, in the first place, happened because of right-wing nationalists on all sides and their militant policies,” Sheliazhenko said. “Western governments and private benefactors invested a lot in development of right-wing and moderate nationalist Ukrainian civil society, while Russia funded networks of right-wing and moderate Russian nationalists and Putin sympathizers.”
For now, Ukrainian peace activists are pushing back against forced conscription into the Ukrainian military and “telling the truth about the belligerents” on both sides of the conflict “amidst their battle of arrogant lies,” according to Sheliazhenko. Activists are calling on the U.S. to pursue diplomacy above all, sending a message to all parties that peace talks must resume before more people die.
“Any apologies of war are essentially based on a mother of all lies: We are angels and they are demons,” Sheliazhenko said. “All wars are usually alleged to be defensive.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A government truly committed to a “feminist foreign policy” would support Haitians striking to boost their 70-cents-per-hour wage. But thus far Canadian officials have responded to the workers’ action by paying a celebratory visit to a sweatshop and ignoring protests repressed by Canadian-funded police.
At the start of last week thousands of Haitian apparel workers launched a strike for a higher minimum wage. Thousand have taken to the streets in Port-au-Prince calling for a tripling of their 500 gourdes daily salary (CDN $6.20). The largely female workforce stitches shirts and other apparel for brands like Gap, Walmart, Target, JCPenney as well as Canadian apparel giant Gildan.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The crush of people began at the 9 de Julio subway stop downtown, less than a block from the Buenos Aires obelisk, the city’s most recognizable monument. By 5:00 p.m. on February 8, thousands from over 100 trade unions, human rights organizations and student groups had blocked the main thoroughfare to protest a preliminary agreement between the Peronist, center-left government of Argentinian President Alberto Fernández and the International Monetary Fund. Amid a cacophony of competing drumbeats, demonstrators along Roque Saenz Peña bore signs that read “With the IMF, we return to the bottom,” “The IMF is poverty and unemployment,” and “Enough of austerity.”
The post Can Argentina Escape The Plague Of Imf-Imposed Austerity? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Berlin, February 23, 2022 – Spanish authorities should drop their criminal investigations into four journalists over their coverage of alleged police abuses, and should ensure that members of the press do not face criminal charges over their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
On February 16, the Provincial Court of Madrid acquitted a police officer on charges of attacking freelance photojournalist Guillermo Martínez during a demonstration in 2021, and ruled that prosecutors should open a criminal investigation into Martínez and three other journalists for alleged false testimony, according to news reports and Martínez, who communicated with CPJ via email.
The three others—freelance photographers Fermín Grodira and Juan Carlos Mohr, and a journalist from the news website Público whose name was not disclosed—all acted as witnesses supporting Martínez during the trial, according to those sources.
If charged and convicted of giving false testimony, they could each face a fine and up to two years in prison, according to the Spanish criminal code.
“Spanish authorities should drop their investigations into photojournalists Guillermo Martínez, Fermín Grodira, Juan Carlos Mohr, and an unnamed Publico reporter, and ensure that members of the press do not face legal harassment for reporting on the police,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Rather than pursuing journalists who file complaints about alleged police abuse, authorities should ensure that investigations into police actions are fair and transparent.”
Martínez alleged that on April 7, 2021, during a demonstration by the far-right Vox party in Madrid, a riot police officer whose name was not disclosed requested his press accreditation and then, before he could take the document out of his wallet, grabbed his arm, hit him from behind with a baton, and threw him into the ground, according to Martínez and a report by Público.
During the trial, Martínez showed videos of the incident taken by the three other journalists, which were published in that Público report. He also showed the court a forensic report that showed bruising consistent with a baton attack, Martínez told CPJ.
In a November ruling that acquitted the police officer, which was upheld on February 16, a court stated that it could not determine whether an officer hit Martínez with a baton, and said the journalist fell and that an officer tried to help him up, according to Público. That court then recommended the four journalists be investigated over their testimony in the trial, which the Provincial Court of Madrid upheld in its ruling.
After the April 7 demonstration, at least five journalists alleged that police acted aggressively towards the press and hit several reporters as officers tried to contain the crowd, reports said.
Martínez said that the February 16 verdict could not be appealed, and while the Spanish Constitutional Court accepts complaints concerning such cases, he said that court “only accepts 1 per cent of the cases and take an average of six years [to issue a ruling],” so he would not file a complaint there.
In response to an email seeking comment, the Madrid Municipal Police said it would not comment on court decisions. CPJ emailed the Provincial Court of Madrid for comment, but did not receive any reply.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Thousands of truckers are being hijacked by anti-vax loonies and encouraged to parade through red state America in search of any remaining Covid-19 restrictions to protest. The so-called “People’s Convoy” is scheduled to leave Barstow, California, on Wednesday, February 23, and meander eastward, picking up truckers as they go for a final jamboree and road-blocking in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 – the day of Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address.
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