Read the full article HERE:"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the ISIL has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.
Yet on both fronts, Erdoğan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on ISIL, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK. Why now?
Smarting from an election setback in June, when the AK Party he founded lost its majority and the pro-Kurdish opposition HDP secured enough votes to enter parliament for the first time, Erdoğan is keen to win back nationalist support.
"The likely target here is instead the HDP. By striking hard at the PKK, the Turkish government is pressuring the HDP to pick a side," said Erik Meyersson, an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, in an article on his website.
"Either it denounces PKK to end violence, risking political blowback among its Kurdish base, or it adopts a more pro-Kurdish rhetoric, risking the ire of the Turkish public as well as the judiciary, which has a long history of banning Kurdish parties and politicians."
A collapse of the Kurdish vote and fears over security could, in the event of an early election, revive the AKP vote and with it Erdoğan's ambition to change the constitution, investing his presidency with broad new powers.
To overcome fear. TAKE OUR LIVES IN OUR HANDSIn recent years, we have seen each day increasingly dominated by extreme poverty and exploitation. Through our inability to meet our needs, it becomes an obvious conclusion: that our life is not determined by us but by others on the basis of market conditions and profit for the bosses, local and foreign. In recent years, we have seen that the system has unleashed an all-out assault to protect its interests. The police have become the military occupation of cities. Fear and terror, the main media propaganda. Under a regime of permanent threat, the bosses invite us to compromise and apathy or manufactured decisions or more insidious methods that give the illusion of choice, such as the referendum.
Beyond the dilemmas of power, to overcome inertia and fear.
To not delegate the solution of our problems to those who created them. The oppressed must take our lives in our hands.
Faced with the dilemma: Memorandum of lenders or Memorandum of SYRIZA respond with self-organization and rupture, from both foreign and local bosses and their armies.
Against the legality of the exploiters that keeps us slaves, to respond with direct action of the oppressed and collective self-organization of life and struggle.
Refusal of obedience to the dictates of the bosses. Refusal of payments (tickets, accounts, bank debt, taxes)
Creation of collective structures to cover our needs (squats, collective kitchens) Solidarity between the oppressed building communities
Get back from the bosses everything we produced with sweat and blood. Expropriation of accumulated wealth
Reinforcement of our communities to organize self-defense and attack our oppressors
Saturday 11/7 comrades proceeded to the expropriation of the “VENUS” supermarket in the March area, on the eastern side of Thessaloniki. Products were expropriated especially basic necessities (oil, pasta, legumes, etc.) and shared out at an adjacent street market with the positive response of the people taking the products and welcoming the move.
$72 billion in now-toxic Puerto Rico bonds are stashed away in supposedly conservative bond funds and retirement accounts. Moody’s says the probability of default is now 100%. Some of the bonds have no legal protection and their recovery rate might be 33 cents on a dollar. Bonds with better protection will still get clobbered. Recovery on those will be 65-85%.
That’s not the worst of it. UBS (and probably lots of other banks too) underwrote some of the bonds and put them in their own closed-end funds. These funds are not traded. UBS sets the price. Some investors bought these bond funds with money borrowed from UBS and may have used them as collateral for more “investing.” However, UBS just decreed the collateral value on their very own Puerto Rico closed-end funds is now zero. That’s right zero. UBS is saying their own bonds are worthless. Expect a festive number of lawsuits.
Clients were warned that they can no longer use these funds as collateral for loans, even those loans they used to buy these funds with in the first place.Thus, they will have to come up with new collateral very quickly or UBS may sell the bonds and come after them for the balance. Let’s be clear. Some of them are retirement accounts. All of them will take big hits.
Of course, banks made lots of money by underwriting slop everyone knew was risky then foisting it off on customers and clients. It’s all just terribly tragic. There will be investigations. UBS will promise to sin no more. The government will levy a stiff fine (or is this a protection racket.) No one will go to prison. Lots of people’s retirement accounts will drop in value. None of the banks care what happens to Puerto Rico.
This is why we stand with Kobane
Please watch/share this video and donate if possible to the below Firefund to help restore the heroic city of Kobanê. Those recently massacred by TURK-ISIS in Suruç were on their way to assist the city, and this is a great way to honor their sacrifice. I know and can vouch for those working on the project, and it was developed by the official Kobanê Reconstruction Board.
[Link to Give] --> http://www.firefund.net/
* I was also personal witness to the battle of Kobanê last year, and I learned more about humanity by watching the Kurds defiantly resist and repel ISIS there, than all of my years up to that point.
This is why we stand with Kobane Please watch/share this video and donate if possible to the below Firefund to help restore the heroic city of Kobanê. Those recently massacred by TURK-ISIS in Suruç were on their way to assist the city, and this is a great way to honor their sacrifice. I know and can vouch for those working on the project, and it was developed by the official Kobanê Reconstruction Board.[Link to Give] --> http://www.firefund.net* I was also personal witness to the battle of Kobanê last year, and I learned more about humanity by watching the Kurds defiantly resist and repel ISIS there, than all of my years up to that point.
Posted by International Brigades of Rojava on Thursday, 23 July 2015
Tragic Week (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (25 July – 2 August 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the Spanish army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia (Spain), backed by anarchists, socialists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on 9 July, in what is known as the Second Rif War.
Syriza’s strategy to end austerity within the Eurozone has failed. What does this mean for the future of the Greek left and the anti-austerity movement in Europe?In the past weeks, the masks have really fallen: the structures and legitimacy of the Eurozone are now thoroughly broken. Has the time come for the left to abandon the single currency, or even the EU? And what role are grassroots movements to play in the reconstruction of a radical transnational project against austerity and for a democratic and socially just Europe?These are some of the questions discussed in this episode of #TalkReal, recorded in Athens during the GCAS World Conference, Democracy Rising. Featuring: Costas Douzinas, acclaimed Greek intellectual close to Syriza; Margarita Tsomou, Greek performer and commentator based in Berlin; Jerome Roos, writer and founder of ROAR Magazine; and Srecko Horvat, Croatian philosopher and member of the board of European Alternatives. Host: Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives.
