El exmandatario Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva y el presidente Jair Bolsonaro cerraron ayer sábado sus campañas en los mayores colegios electorales de Brasil, que serán decisivos para la ajustada segunda vuelta de las presidenciales de hoy domingo.
Lula, favorito en todos los sondeos, participará en una marcha en la icónica Avenida Paulista de la ciudad de Sao Paulo para «celebrar la democracia», en compañía de sus principales aliados, entre ellos su compañero de fórmula, el liberal Geraldo Alckmin.
La asesoría del exjefe de Estado (2003-2010) señaló que será «un desfile», al que han invitado a los entregadores de aplicaciones móviles y que estará dividido por colores, cada uno de los cuales hará referencia a un «desafío» de Brasil.
The heroism of the Kurdish guerrilla women is accompanied by the painstaking work of women indulging in groundwork to organize and innovate alternative forms of resistance that would be a step in accomplishing the kind of world the women’s movement in Kurdistan wishes to achieve and inhabit.
It is perhaps true that the Kurdish resistance garnered most media attention with the circulation and popularization of images of female militants of Kurd armies, symbols of a revolution where women were more not mere victims of violence, but important actors and agents.
However, there is a longer history of social revolution that precedes these women taking up arms – a revolution that sought to change interpersonal relationships, community rules and settings and ways of dissemination of information and ideology and pave the way for a future that allows the imagination and realization of radically transformed spaces.
Even before garnering media attention in the West, Kurdish women were being recruited to militant forces, forming Congresses, and parties were forming women’s wings. On 8 March 1995, the first women’s congress took place, and by 1999 the PKK had a separate women’s wing. (Melis, 2016)
In the early 1990s, by some estimates, women made up a third of the fighting force of 17,000 militants in the PKK. (Ozcab, 2007) PKK leader Ocalan’s views that centered women and anti-patriarchal resistance in the fight against the state and capitalism, largely stemming from Engel’s writings and Marxist-Leninist ideology, served as an important base for Kurdish women’s resistance.
The Kurdish movement’s aim later shifted to a goal of ‘democratic confederalism’. We can find traces of both these visions in the ideals and beliefs that have governed Kurdish feminist actions.
Forty-seven people have so far been charged with offences relating to the disturbance. Many had initial charges of affray and violent disorder escalated to riot before they reached the Magistrates Courtand received crazy long sentences.
Campaign statement by Justice for the Bristol Protesters
Justice for the Bristol Protesters (JBP) is a group of parents, friends and supporters of those charged with riot and given harsh prison sentences as a result of being involved with the protest against the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill in Bristol on 21 March 2021.
Most of these protesters are young people, who had never been in trouble with the police before and were demonstrating legitimately against the Police Bill for the right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression..
Many were subject to violent attacks by Avon and Somerset Police who hit them with batons and bladed them with riot shields; at least one protester was knocked unconscious and another, a young woman of colour, Mariella Gedge-Rogers, feared for her life as she was pinned to the ground in an unprovoked attack by three police officers:
I was kneed to the floor by police and dragged around the floor by another officer whilst 3 officers held me down and one stood on my hand with their boot, my head was on the curb…this experience was very frightening…I didn’t know if I would get back up. I feared for my life... The Canary, 4/3/22
In contrast, the police claims of serious injury to officers were later retracted.
Forty-seven people have so far been charged with offences relating to the disturbance. Many had initial charges of affray and violent disorder escalated to riot before they reached the Magistrates Court.
It is very rare in England and Wales for the riot charge to be used in legitimate protests and requires permission from the Director of Public Prosecution. While many cases are still awaiting sentence or are going through the Courts, at least 15 people have so far been convicted of riot and sentenced in total to over 75 years in prison.
Such widespread use of the riot charge in this instance, compared to other more serious disturbances where the riot charge was not brought, looks like an assault on our legitimate right to protest and a deliberate attempt to silence dissent.
The young people caught up in the disturbances of 21 March 2021 were standing up for everyone’s right to freedom of speech and have paid a very heavy price. As well as disproportionately harsh prison sentences, many have been traumatised by their experiences and have been demonised by the mainstream media. JBP aims to restore their reputations and get them the justice they deserve.
The state made an example of our loved ones. We demand they are returned to us immediately.
note: One of Max’s clear mistakes is to link Iraqi Kurd support for the Irani Women’s Uprising to the local US proxy Barzani Govt (KRG). The support comes from the anti-Barzani Sulaymaniyah Governate which as a result suffered lethal air raids from Iran as well as continuing the murder campaign by Turkey ofAzadi supporters and the Jineoloji women’s leader Nagihan Akarsel
Editor’s Note: The following was originally published by the Grayzone.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Welcome to The Grayzone.
Protests inside Iran triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was picked up by Iran’s morality police on the grounds of supposed indecent exposure, have drawn massive international attention. Media around the world are following these protests, and on social media the hashtag surrounding Mahsa Amini’s name has generated more attention and retweets than almost any hashtag in Twitter history.
So how much of this international response is authentic? And how much of it is related to genuine concern for Iranian women—and not long-standing Western desire for regime change in Tehran? To better understand this issue, I spoke to a woman inside Iran. Her name is Setareh Sadeghi. She is an independent researcher, a translator, a teacher, and a Ph.D. She lives in the city of Esfahan.
Setareh Sadeghi, let’s talk about you and your own political views before we get into some of the details of these protests and the campaign behind them.
You studied the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as part of your Ph.D., and you’re also a student of propaganda [analysis]. Where do you situate yourself within the Iranian political spectrum, and specifically do you support women protesting the morality police and issues like the hijab?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, yes, as you mentioned, I finished my Ph.D. in American Studies, and I studied propaganda analysis as part of my Ph.D. dissertation, and the rhetoric of social movements as well. So, I have always been supportive of the Iranian government as a whole—the notion of an Islamic republic—but I have also been critical towards a lot of the things that happen in my country, like many of the other people who live here.
So, for the issue of hijab, as someone who believes in hijab and has always practiced it, I am totally against the morality police. By the way, in Farsi, the word that we use for it is the “Guidance Patrol,” but in English it’s usually referred to as the morality police, and I’m totally against it. I have been a part of the people, especially women, who took it online and used hashtags to talk about how they do not believe in the morality police even though they believe in hijab. And this is not something new. It has been in place from many years ago, but it’s become more significant this year.
So, even before these protests and before the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, people were talking about it online and I was also one of them, because I saw this was totally unacceptable. And even in my personal life—because I have friends who do not believe in the hijab and they don’t want to practice it, or they practiced it in a way that did not fit the standards of the Islamic Republic’s law of the dress code, and they were stopped by the morality police. In at least three cases that I remember, I would just go talk to the morality police and tell them, as someone who believes in hijab, I am totally against what they’re doing, and this is not the way they should enforce the law. Because it’s not always that they… the morality police don’t always arrest people. Their main job was to go and tell people. But even that, I’m totally against it and I don’t think that’s something that works, mainly because a lot of people who live here believe in some sort of dress code. I think as a woman, I think that’s not something that people should tell us. Like, I believe in law and order, but also, I don’t like being told those details, like how to dress and how to appear in public.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, what is the role of the morality police and how much public opposition is there to this unit of the security services? And are they known for being as brutal as they’re currently being portrayed?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, yes, they are known as being brutal because Iranian women don’t find it acceptable—not necessarily because everything that they do is brutal, but some harsh treatments are an integral part of the way they enforce the hijab law. But it’s also that, while I think a lot of people are against the morality police, it’s not that everyone is against the mandatory hijab law. So, these are two things that should be studied differently. A lot of people, I mean, there are different surveys, and different surveys in different provinces show a different percentage of people believing in obligatory or mandatory hijab, and I think that’s something that has to be dealt with based on the local culture of each province.
And that is also reflective of how the protests are going on, for example, in my hometown, because it’s considered more conservative and more traditional. The protests there are very much smaller than what you could see in other cities, for example, in Tehran or Rasht or other cities where the protests were significant compared to what is going on in my town. So, yeah, there are also people who believe that the morality police should be in place but the methods that they’re using should be different.
So, I think if you want to categorize women and people who live inside Iran, we have people who are totally against the mandatory hijab. They don’t believe in hijab at all and, obviously, they don’t believe in morality police. We have people who believe in hijab, but they don’t believe in the morality police or the mandatory hijab. We have people who believe in hijab, and they believe in the morality police, but they don’t believe in the methods that they are using. And that also creates a collective of people who are against the morality police but, again, based on how they feel towards it, their participation in these protests is different.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, let’s talk about the issue of Mahsa Amini. What do we know about her death? Most people in the West who are following this believe she was beaten to death by the morality police in police custody. Has that been established as the case, and is that the understanding even of the protesters in Iran?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Not really. I mean, even a lot of those Western media outlets corrected their headlines or started using different terms, referring to the case when the CCTV footage of the moment when Mahsa Amini fell and went into a coma was published. So, a lot of people believed that footage, about how some people said that she had bruises on her legs when she was taken to hospital, which shows that there was a beating. But the footage clearly shows that she was in good health conditions when she was there, based on what we see.
An investigation has been ordered. The files all are not yet published. There are talks about it, but there’s not a final statement by the state. The last thing that they have said is that the probe shows that there was no beating involved. They even released the CT scans of her brain and, as I said, there was CCTV footage. So, while there are protesters who believe that the beating happened, there are also a lot of protesters who think that it did not happen. But the fact that a young woman died in police custody only because of violating the dress code is something unacceptable, no matter what exactly happened in police custody.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: You’re in Esfahan, which is a large city in Iran, outside of Tehran. Most of the protests, as far as we know, have been centered in the capital of Tehran, and you have been receiving a wave of death threats for reporting that the protests in your city were very small and that the protests have not spread to key Iranian cities. Is that still the case?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, because I have already blocked a lot of people, and because the person who started those threats, as someone who knew me in person, at this point I can say that I haven’t received any new threats. But it was because I appear on different media and I have talked about Iran as a political analyst, I’ve always received insulting or sometimes death threats. But this time it was really unprecedented, as it was started by someone who knew me in person and had my personal information, and even the number of the people who attacked me was really huge.
And it started with the Independence Farsi account on Instagram, publishing a snippet of my interview and disregarding all the criticism that I had against the morality police, the crackdown on everything, and just saying that I lied about the number of the people participating in the protests, or the fact that these protests are much smaller than the ones that we witnessed, for example, in Esfahan in 2019. But at the same time there were a lot of people who were totally against even the Islamic Republic. But I mentioned that, and they verified it and they said that they were part of the protests, and that’s true. It was not significant because, as I said, Esfahan is a conservative and more traditional city, and people take to the streets on different issues. The morality police are, I guess, not the number one issue for people who live here. And I talked to my friends who don’t observe the hijab completely or according to the law, and they said that this is really not their number one issue, and so they don’t want to be part of the protests.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. We’ve seen large protests over the price of food or economic issues in Iran that were totally ignored in Western media. So, what do you make of the response in Western media, not just Western broadcast media but social media as well? The Mahsa Amini hashtag is one of the most popular hashtags in history, as you tweeted. It’s as if there are no other issues in the entire world. Do you think the outrage that we’ve seen on social media is authentic, or something that is being encouraged or pushed by Western—specifically NATO—states, the same way that there was a massive social media amplification campaign around the so-called Arab Spring?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, social media has never been a true reflection of what’s happening in different societies, especially not Iranian society, because Twitter is blocked here, and a lot of people do not have access to it. So, the number of Iranian users on Twitter is not significant because they use other [platforms]. For example, Instagram. Before these protests Instagram was not blocked, and a very large proportion of the population had Instagram accounts, especially because they also used it for selling products and they had their businesses on it; especially a lot of women run their own business on Instagram. But Twitter is very different and it’s something that is known by Iranians. Even those who are on Twitter, they know that it’s very different from the realities on the ground. And it’s surprising how when there was, especially in those towns where the protests were met, the crackdown on it was really severe and a lot of people couldn’t even use the hashtags, [but then] broke a record, which tells us that there is something that doesn’t come from Iran.
And there is a history of fake hashtags and fake accounts and trolls on Twitter, trying to portray Iran in a different way, and it’s not only about a protest. There are other cases. For example, there was a time when, if you posted anything positive about your life in Iran, you would be attacked by these trolls, because they said that you are normalizing Iranian people’s misery, as if there is no normal life in Iran and the only thing that you are allowed to post online about Iran is just all the problems and the grievances. They attacked a university professor for only posting pictures of him[self] inside a cafe in Tehran, for example.
So, we also have the case of Heshmat Alavi, who apparently is a Twitter user who posts against the Islamic Republic on Twitter. And it’s interesting that when Trump withdrew from the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal], he mentioned that the JCPOA is facilitating Iran’s crackdown on its people or on certain issues, and two Washington Post journalists asked for a source. And the source that Trump offered was an article written by Heshmat Alavi. And an MEK defector later also talked about how the camp in Albania, the MEK camp in Albania, uses its members to start hashtags and make them a trend, and they’re paid to post about it.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Just quickly, for those who don’t know, the MEK is the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is a U.S.- and Saudi-backed opposition movement, dedicated explicitly to regime change in Iran and replacing it with its cult-like leader, Maryam Rajavi. They have been based in Albania under the watch of the US military and U.S. intelligence, and it’s there that they maintain a troll farm, as you said, to spin out hashtags against the government in Iran. And this account, Heshmat Alavi, apparently was a sock puppet run out of this troll farm.
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yeah, that’s what the investigation shows. And even for the recent hashtag, the historical hashtag trends about Mahsa Amini, a few Iranian users track them and try to find out where those hashtags come from. And then you see a lot of users just posting nonsense, like alphabets and then using the hashtags, and right now I think it surpassed a hundred million times the hashtag words in Farsi and in English, and they come from a limited number of users. I think it’s less than 300,000 users that have been using the hashtags, but it already has the historical trend on Twitter.
And it’s interesting how, as you said, the protests in 2019, because at that time they were also really huge in my neighborhood. And in Esfahan I did not see any reflection of it online, because usually, like that protest was more by the working class and the middle class because it had economic causes, and it affected a larger proportion of the population. So naturally it was bigger, but you wouldn’t hear about it 24/7 on mainstream media or on social media. But this time, it’s a social issue, and it’s a very important issue for women, but at the same time it’s not really as big as the previous protests that we had. But we already have a historical record of hashtags for it, so it totally shows that it’s not reflective of what is actually going on in Iran.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, The New York Times is also reporting that the US State Department and its allies are trying to get communication gear into Iran. However, much of the noise about these protests appears to be coming from the outside. Because of an issue that Westerners can relate to, we’re deluged with identity politics here and we don’t have large economic protests here in the United States anymore, outside of maybe some union activity, some strikes. This is a case of the weaponization of identity, and obviously a real issue, as you point out, a real issue with the morality police may be not at the top of the agenda but something that upsets a section of the population in Iran.
But outside much of the noise is being made by Iranian exiles or expats, and one of the key voices who’s emerged in U.S. media, cable news media, is a figure named Masih Alinejad, who I’m sure you know. She’s been backed by the U.S. government, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts with the Voice of America, which is the U.S. government’s global broadcasting system. She’s met with former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Recently she cooked up a phony plot in coordination with the U.S. government and the FBI, claiming that the Venezuelan security services were going to kidnap her and take her on speed boats to Iran. It was one of the most ridiculous plots I’ve ever heard, and it was widely reported in U.S. media. Now she’s back. So, what do you make of Iranian expats kind of taking the mic and becoming the voice of the Iranian public?
OH, LOOK: it's Massih Alinejad with Mike Pompeo. Now why would that & f tons of smuggled arms, coming from Azerbaijan into Iran for 'protestors' make me wonder if this is the US co-opting another grassroots mvmt…on the heels of Russia receiving untold #'s of kickass drones… pic.twitter.com/0Pq1WkQatI
— Captain Crusty Abolish NATO ~ End ALL Sanctions (@CaptainCrusty66) September 24, 2022
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, I wouldn’t mind. Obviously, Iranian women would be very happy if those in exile really wanted to be a voice for women inside, but the thing is they are just echoing the voice of, I would say, a minority and just a section of the population in Iran that they agree with.
I think they also believe in the Western liberal notion of freedom for women, and not the notion—they don’t really care. I’m not talking about everyone, obviously, but some of these people who are given a voice and whose voices are amplified over the voices of women inside Iran, they’re just repeating the Western notion of freedom for women. And they do not understand that women in Iran can have a different notion of freedom, and [that] they have other priorities when it comes to women’s rights and women’s activism.
On the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of October, at least two protests broke out at the Indian River youth prison in Massillon, Ohio. In one protest, a guard was struck in the head and beaten down with a radio, and in another a dozen kids broke out of their cells, armed themselves, and set up barricades, which they defended until the following morning. Other protests and fights have occurred over the previous months.
In response to the riot, local media responded with systematic spins and manipulations to help spread calls by the guards for more physical violence against the children.
Two area papers, the Columbus Dispatch and the Canton Repository, as well as the local TV station, WKYC, referred to the children locked up at Indian River as “inmates,” “criminals,” or at best, “juveniles.”
They referred to their cells as “rooms.” They never referred to the prison as a prison, and they refused to interview any of the kids locked up there or any of their friends or family members.
They also refused to investigate or describe conditions at the youth prison, and they refused to do any fact-checking on any of the claims coming from guards or the family members of guards, while frequently repeating those claims.
These claims included the dubious assertion that guards at the facility are not allowed to use physical force, and that the kids were rioting and protesting “for fun.”
Please read & help!!! Journalists in Ohio are platforming calls for violence against children. Predominantly Black kids locked up in Massillon Ohio have rebelled against terrible conditions at least 3 times in the last months. They need support, not dehumanization! 1/ pic.twitter.com/KBzswblkk8
Media coverage was heavily focused on the family members of guards, humanizing them and also shielding them from legal consequences, as most of their more extreme statements came filtered through spouses who are not state employees.
With a perspective firmly and exclusively anchored on the side of the guards, multiple articles repeated claims coming from guards that the children locked up at the facility were not actually children but hardened criminals.
The purpose of this coverage was clearly to encourage and normalize the use of violence against imprisoned children, and to win more budget money for hiring more prison guards and buying them more weapons.
Turkish police raided the premises of several pro-Kurdish media outlets and private residences, detaining 11 journalists, including the mother of a 45-day-old infant, according to media reports.
Journalist Zemo Ağgöz, was separated from her 45-day-old baby and taken into custody by the Erdoğan government, who ‘cares’ for children. They separated the mother of a 45-day-old baby who had to breastfeed. Erdogan advocates ‘Let’s strengthen the family’ and wants all women to have at least 3 children.
The Turkish Journalists Union (TGS) tweeted that the 11 journalists were taken into custody in İstanbul and Ankara as well as in other cities including Diyarbakır in the Southeast, although no reason was given for the detentions.
Eight of the detainees work for the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency and three for JINNEWS, according to the union.
Mezopotamya’s Ankara correspondent, Zemo Ağgöz, the mother of a 45-day-old baby, was among those detained.
Ağgöz was taken into custody by police during a raid on her apartment, as were the 10 other journalists, at around 6 in the morning. Ağgöz’s lawyer said they tried to reach Ağgöz so she could breastfeed the baby, but they were unable to determine which police station she had been taken to. The baby had been hungry since its mother was detained and needs to be breastfed every two hours, the lawyer added.
The detention of Ağgöz and the other journalists triggered reactions from international and Turkish media and human rights activists.
“They separated a mother from her 45-day-old baby who needed to be breastfed. Those who don’t talk about journalist Zemo Ağgöz’s need to breastfeed her baby should not walk among us as opposition journalists,” said sociologist, writer and activist Veli Saçılık.
Çağrı Sarı, an editor at the Evrensel daily, commented on Ağgöz’s detention, saying, “Journalist Zemo Ağgöz, the mother of a 45-day-old infant, was taken into custody by the Erdoğan government, which supposedly cares about children, suggesting that we should strengthen the ‘family structure’ and repeatedly saying that he wants every family to have at least three children.”
🔴#Turkey: IPI calls for release of 11 Kurdish journalists detained as part of an "anti-terror operation"
— IPI – The Global Network for Independent Media (@globalfreemedia) October 25, 2022
The International Press Institute (IPI) called for the release of the 11 Kurdish journalists, tweeting, “IPI calls for release of 11 Kurdish journalists detained as part of an ‘anti-terror operation.’
Turkey regularly abuses anti-terror law to target journalists, who are frequently subject to arbitrary charges & imprisonment” and “#FreeTurkeyJournalists now!”
“The Turkish dictator has increased repression of the 17 million ethnic Kurds, ahead of elections next year, labelling even verbal resistance as ‘PKK terrorism’ sanctioned by endless prison sentences.
Oppression and killings of minorities and women have been a common way for the neo-fascist government to garner nationalist support. Currently Erdogan stands accused of killing with banned chemical weapons in invaded areas of Syria, Iraq and in Turkey itself.“
Turkey’s parliament this month approved a tough pre-election law that could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading “fake news.”
The new measures for the media come before a general election that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan enters trailing in the polls.
“At a time when the censorship law had just come into effect, many journalists’ homes were raided and the journalists were detained during the dawn operation,” the TGS said.
Opposition parties and journalists unions protested the new rules before and during the debates in the parliament.
Most Turkish newspapers and television channels fell under the control of government officials and their business allies during a sweeping crackdown that followed a failed coup in 2016.
But social networks and internet-based media remained largely free of oversight — much to the growing annoyance of Erdoğan.
Turkey is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in the annual media freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) earlier this year.
The Free 