By TM A total of 26,115 people were investigated on allegations of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan throughout the year of 2018, indicating a 30 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Birgün daily.
A total of 4,480 of these investigations turned into court cases, and 2,462 of the suspects, including 19 under age, have received various punishments.
On Monday a social media user from Turkey’s Van province was given a 12-year prison sentence for insulting Erdoğan.
Canan Kaftancıoğlu, an official from the main opposition party, was also sentenced to over nine years for allegedly insulting the Turkish president.
Hundreds of people in Turkey, even high school students, face charges of insulting President Erdoğan.
Prison Radio | September 16, 2019 Freedom is now in sight. New evidence, recently found, and suppressed for decades could be the key to relief for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Joe McGill and Ed Rendell, trial prosecutor and DA, respectively, manipulated evidence and framed Mumia Abu-Jamal for first degree murder in 1982.
Six boxes of undisclosed case files labeled “Mumia Abu-Jamal” were found in a furniture closet last December by new DA Larry Krasner. Here is the exculpatory “Brady” evidence that was inside:
A letter from a witness demanding his money.
Memo after memo to and from Joe McGill tracking the open cases of another key witness.
Handwritten notes on original files, closely tracking the race of jurors.
Now we know that for 37 years the District Attorney’s office actively lied. They scrubbed clean every single document production, during multiple appeals, for years. It is cliché and almost predictable: evidence “lost” in a storage closet for 37 years by evil absent-minded hoarders.
Make no mistake- this evidence would have directly challenged the only “witnesses” at trial who identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the shooter of officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981.
The testimony of these two witnesses was compromised, something the jury was kept from knowing. One witness had as many as 35 prior convictions and 4-5 open cases. Now we know the DA was monitoring those cases very closely asking to be advised when they were in court. The other witness to the shooting was driving a cab on a suspended license and was on probation for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a school for pay. The jury never heard this.
This information certainly would have challenged prosecutor Joe McGill’s statement to the jury that they had nothing to gain from lying. Remember this is a jury who asked for re-instruction on the charges and were wavering on a finding of 1stDegree Murder. Remember Albert “I am going to help them they fry the nigger” Sabo, was the judge. And Alfonso “I retired with full pay and was indicted” Giordano, a commander, was the highest ranking officer on the scene that night.
On July 3rd, 1982, this was not an open and shut case. The petition to the Superior Court also raises the reinstated appeal issues from the Castille decision handed down by Judge Tucker. These include claims of improper jury selection (Batson Claims), ineffective assistance of counsel, and errors of law made by the court in previous appeals.
Every time you see Joe McGill in the courtroom or at an FOP event, or you see Ed Rendell at a party or a campaign event, remember this- they were stepping on the scales of justice from the beginning.
Mumia came within 10 days of being executed because of this misconduct. I was there. I got that call from the strip cell. Mumia had nothing but an orange jump suit, a half a sheet of paper and the cartridge of a pen (so he could send another prisoner as a proxy to the law library). Before and after his two death warrants he was held in solitary confinement on death row for decades!
“Because Mumia has for thirty years been subjected to torture on death row and because he is innocent, justice for Mumia will not be served by life imprisonment, but by his release from prison.”
Fast forward to 2017: Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker admonishes the District Attorney to produce all of the requested material from their files. Finally, having no faith in their review, he demands that they deliver all of their files to his chambers. There he found documents revealing the bias of PA Supreme Court Judge Castille that the DA had somehow “missed” – or willfully suppressed. After all that, in 2018, newly elected DA Larry Krasner* comes across six boxes of original trial material labeled “Mumia Abu-Jamal” in a storage closet. A week later they find hundreds of more boxes in that “storage cavern” […]
“Because Mumia has for thirty years been subjected to torture on death row and because he is innocent, justice for Mumia will not be served by life imprisonment, but by his release from prison.”
*[In April 2019 Krasner withdrew his objection to Mumia’s appeal to the Pennsylvania supreme court: see The Intercept]
After the Syrian Kurds’ fight for Kobane against ISIS in 2014-5, many across the world were suddenly made aware of the Kurdish women’s movement in Rojava, northern Syria. But it was already flourishing across the border in SE Turkey, where women joined in taking up the ideas of imprisoned Ocalan and intense cultural and political change to a horizontal anti authoritarian way of life was in full swing.
All this was suppressed in Turkey with Erdogan’s police and military crackdown in his bid to demonize the Kurds in a racist bid for dictatorial power. To his fury the revolution has continued and blossomed in liberated Rojava, with echoes in Europe and beyond, despite Turkish support for ISIS and Al Qaeda, the economic blockade and the 750km long wall.
Here we republish a great interview on the birth, growth and suppression of the Feminist movement in Kurdish Turkey (Nth Kurdistan).
“Actually we have been calling our experience World War III. This is a war of destruction. The state does not call it a war, but this is the experience of those affected.”
After the Syrian Kurds’ fight for Kobane (a Kurdish city in northern Syria/Rojava) against ISIS in 2014-5, many across the world were suddenly made aware of the Kurdish women’s movement.
What has not reached us, however, is a much wider context that enabled the Kurdish women-fighters to confidently take up arms to defend themselves and their people. The unprecedented accomplishments of the Kurdish women predated Kobane and the war in Syria.
They are rooted in the evolution of Turkey’s Kurdish liberation movement, as it is represented by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and in the ideological shift of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
In what is regarded as a departure from the Marxist-Leninist perspective of national liberation, Ocalan developed a theory of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy, making liberation of women into one of the central pillars of his struggle, alongside radical democracy and social ecology. The new ideology was first put into practice in Bakur (the Kurdish region in the southeast of Turkey) in the early 2000s and, despite continuing state oppression, the focus on and efforts towards women’s liberation within the movement brought visible results: a dramatic increase in women’s participation in the political and social life of the society, an evolution in their consciousness and the creation of various tools and spaces for their empowerment.
In the face of Dorian, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief and wider anarchist and autonomist networks have mobilized a web of autonomous hubs and supply chains, which are funneling medical supplies, food, and toiletries into impacted regions, including the Bahamas.
Wanting to know more, we recently spoke with several people participating in autonomous disaster relief efforts (note, this interview is edited, and includes the voices of multiple individuals) about how the network of autonomous hubs and supply chains are functioning and how they might be utilized in other struggles and situations.
We reflected on past experiences responding to disasters and realized that we helped foster community and contributed to people’s survival and self determination in impacted areas. And this, for good reason, has been our focus.
“The level of coordination is the best I’ve seen yet.”
Meanwhile, supply drives in other communities took place, but were sometimes haphazard or invisible and not cultivated as much as they could have been. This is an effort to be more intentional about strengthening bonds across the regional networks and encouraging people to self-organize around collecting needed supplies in their own locales, even if their community is removed from the zone of impact.
“This is an effort to be more intentional about strengthening bonds across the regional networks, and encouraging people to self-organize…”
Turkey’s latest threat: Give us safe zone or we send refugees to EU …Erdogan threatens: “… we will have to open the gates [to Europe].Either you support us or no one should feel sorry. We would like to host 1 million refugees in the safe zone.”
So Europe is being blackmailed to help this OPENLY fascist invader extend his empire in Syria and to wipe out the local Kurdish people an their democratic, non sectarian, anti racist, feminist revolution ..ETC..
In the last weeks the rate of refugees arriving in Greece has been shooting up, as Erdogan cynically allowed more people to escape, before cashing in on EU euros and political ignoring, if not actually aiding, his nazi invasion plans.
Aug 30 2019 Greece’s Lesvos receives largest single-day refugee arrival since 2015-2016 Some 547 migrants arrived Greece’s eastern Aegean island of Lesvos on Thursday in thirteen boats that set sail from the Turkish coast, marking the largest number of arrivals in a single day since the peak of a refugee crisis. Some 177 were men, 124 were women and 246 were children
So the craven EU politicians cave in and give him (indirectly) billions more public money for fear of losing their jobs and power to the racist right wing being fanned…
The European Commission on July 19 2019 adopted a new set of assistance measures worth €1.41 billion (nearly $1.6 billion), ensuring EU support to refugees and host communities in Turkey. This ups the total to over 6 billion euros. And this was before Erdogan’s latest human blackmail threats!
As well as receiving 6 billion euros to its economy (the cash goes directly to the refugees) there have been a long series of scandals alleging the slave labour exploitation in Turkey of defenseless Syrian refugee families who despite working could starve without the EU aid. (see here: Syrianrefugees: Abuse & exploitation in Turkey…650,000..)
The EU should spend the 6 billion euros of public money not on Turkish blackmailers but on helping refugees return and rebuild their lives in Syria.
This gives the Turkish business class a third big boost in cheaper production , increasing profits for the rich while forcing down wages for many other workers with the threat of cheaper refugee labour. Labour is cheap, refugeelabour is dirt cheap in Turkey
Refugees are being used again as Human Blackmail by Erdogan to extract money and impunity for Rojava invasion
¡Guerra a la guerra, sus cómplices y patrocinadores!
read in English / Catalan below
Concentración contra la industria armamentística: Viernes, 6 de septiembre 2019, 19h en Roc Boronat con Tangér (Metro Glories i Llacuna, Barcelona)
Hace siete años comenzó en Rojava, en el norte de Siria, una revolución que iba a cambiar radicalmente la vida de millones de personas. Después de liberarse de la dictadura del régimen de Assad, la población kurda comenzó a organizarse en consejos, comunas y cooperativas autogestionadas, mientras que la organización autónoma de mujeres se convirtió en la fuerza motriz de la revolución social.
Se desarrolló un proyecto multiétnico y multirreligioso, que hoy conocido como la Administración Autónoma del Norte y Este de Siria garantiza la coexistencia pacífica de millones de kurdos, árabes, asirios y otros pueblos.
Desde sus inicios este proyecto, único no sólo en el Oriente Medio sino a nivel mundial, ha sido una amenaza para el status quo de las potencias regionales y globales, como también una espina en el ojo de los yihadistas.
Durante todos estos años las combatientes voluntarias de las YPJ/YPG/FDS mediante el sacrificio de miles de mártires y apoyadas por la valiente resistencia de la población, consiguieron derrotar a los yihadistas de al-Nusra, al-Qaida y luego de Daesh y liberar el territorio.
From a distance, we cannot pretend to report fully on events as they unfold in the occupation of the Exarchia neighbourhood of Athens. What we are endeavouring to do is to translate and share as much as we can with English speakers, in solidarity with those who must struggle on the ground.
Given the daily police violence that has intensified since the beginning of the occupation of the rebel and solidarity neighbourhood of Athens:
“We will soon have deaths in Exarchia”
This sentence is repeated by many this morning, in a corner of the neighborhood where we have lunch with a few inhabitants, taking stock of the situation. An old anarchist companion is convinced that we are going to relive 1985 or 2008. In those years, a young activist was murdered by a policeman, and with each act of violence provoking very important riots. In December 2008, power shook. More than 300 banks and luxury stores burned. Parliament was besieged.
Today, the atmosphere is not the same in society, but weariness is at its height. Something is smoldering. Like a pain in the belly.
The Free 