(revolution-news.com) Amid calm euphoria, increased state repression, and mass-media lies, people in Bosnia and Herzegovina move from street protests to plenums, or public assemblies. Plenums are about taking back the power: political parties are banned from participating.
(libcom.org) Protests and demonstrations broke out in Tuzla on Wednesday night and have spread to the towns of Zenica, Mostar, Bihac and Sarayevo. In the northern industrial city of Tuzla, thousands of workers have been made redundant with many of them losing their pensions and health benefits.
Reuters reports that many workers have taken to the streets and have been joined by students. Government buildings and the police have been attacked and confrontations continue. Unemployment is officially 27.5% in Bosnia (officially) and the ruling cliques here are widely seen as gangsters. It’s early and we should be careful but this looks to be different from events in Ukraine which is subsumed in nationalism and inter-imperialist rivalries.
Türkçe bölümler için: vimeo.com/channels/geziparkibelgeseli
email: gezidocumentary513@gmail.com
Source: http://vimeo.com/7620673
Watch it here for free: http://mubi.com/films/vers-madrid-the-burning-bright/watch
(mubi.com) With VERS MADRID Sylvain George makes a “newsreel” with the cinematic experiments in mind conducted by the likes of for example Robert Kramer, Jean-Luc Godard during the seventies. A newsreel which presents views, scenes, political moments of class struggle and revolution in Madrid in 2011, 2012, 2013. As a “newsreel experimental”, the film tries to present political and poetical experiments, but also shows new forms of life, implemented by generations which have remained too long in silence. Past and future meet in the present at Place Puerta del Sol, where they are constantly reinvented. —Joana Ribelle
After documenting the inhuman conditions in which tens of Africans refugees live in the streets of Northern France with his two films Les Éclats and Qu’ils reposent en révolte (Best Film in the 2011 edition of Bafici), Sylvain George now goes to Madrid to document and understand the different demonstrations that took over the city streets in early 2011. His approach is almost journalistic, with that objective tone that we know doesn’t really exist –like those newsreels that were screened in theaters back in the Thirties and Forties, or like Jem Cohen recreates them in one of his latest films (Newsreels: Reports from Occupy Wall Street). But two years after the events (and ten years since the Argentine 2001, which shares several common features), it is amazing to witness how that material can turn into something else, even despite of itself. A historical event that allows us to analyze with more information, contextualize, and maybe even understand something about modern societies, and where they are heading to. —BAFICI
Source: http://mubi.com/films/vers-madrid-the-burning-bright
(roarmag.org) This collection of photos by activist Jenna Pope recounts the events surrounding the destruction and occupation of Gezi Park in early June this year.
When major protests against the destruction of Gezi Park engulfed Istanbul this past summer, American photographer and activist Jenna Pope was quick to decide that she needed to be part of this. Within days she arrived in Turkey, camera in-hand to photograph and report on the biggest popular uprising in the history of the country.
The Gezi Park protests began with two dozen activists occupying the iconic park in the center of Istanbul to protect it against destruction. They tried to stop the government’s plans to turn this last natural refuge in the concrete jungle into another unnecessary and unwanted shopping mall. After a violent police crackdown on the peaceful protesters, the marginal environmental resistance quickly turned into a countrywide uprising against Prime Minister Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. Street battles were fought between the extremely violent police forces — which used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to subdue the ‘Çapulers’ — and the defiant resistance movement.
For a period of two weeks — without a doubt the two most significant weeks of the entire Gezi protests that saw the rise and fall of the Taksim commune — Jenna was on the streets of Istanbul documenting the police violence and the determination of the protesters, supporting the movement, and spreading the word about what was going on in Turkey to a global audience. Jenna’s pictures have played an important role in creating awareness about the situation in Turkey at the time, not only showing the dark side of the protests in the form of the disproportional police crackdown, but also, and more importantly, the solidarity amongst and the defiance of the protesters…
More about this at > http://roarmag.org/2013/11/gezi-park-photography-jenna-pope/
(infoaut.org) Today a new step after the October 19 Porta Pia camp was made by the Italian movement. A new siege was called beneath the capitol’s power seats – namely the State-Regions roundtable, that was meant to work out a national housing policy decree – at a time in which rampant speculation and evictions gravely undermine the basic housing rights of the citizens.
In the early morning the Housing Struggle Movements in Rome managed to block and postpone three evictions in different parts of the city, while similar initiatives of solidarity were carried out in the cities of Milan, Turin and others. In Cosenza a former monastery in the city’s downtown was occupied by needy families, and in Palermo homeless people, precarious workers and social centres activists camped outside the town hall, with the mayor nowhere to be seen. In Pisa, activists from the social movements occupied an abandoned cinema, staging a roundtable on the crisis and livestreaming the events in Rome.
The march started out in the central parliamentary square Piazza Montecitorio, heading towards the via stamperia building in which the State-Regions roundtable was taking place. Police wagons on its way were pelted with eggs, smoke bombs and various objects by the demonstrators which rallied behind the big banner already shown on October 19: “[We want] Only one great work “House and income for everyone!”. The migrants, evicted and homeless people at the head of the march then approached and confronted the heavily armed police forces in Via del Tritone, managing to push them back on their wagons. Relentlessy, demonstrators wearing V for Vendetta masks started to climb up the wagons, and the police reacted with truncheons and tear gases, some of the latter being thrown by an helicopter on the backside of the crowd, packed with families and children.
Pictures: http://eagainst.com/articles/italy-the-siege-of-palazzo-chigi-from-the-top-of-the-police-wagon/
(earthfirstjournal.org) With an eye to getting their message out to young people, demonstrators calling for a departure from nuclear power on Sept. 29 changed course from their usual venue and took to the streets in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya and Harajuku districts.
Protesters shouted slogans such as “We’ve got enough electric power” and “No nuke reactors on earthquake-prone islands” as they marched past Marui City Shibuya and other fashionable commercial establishments packed with trend-conscious youths.
(via Reflections on a Revolution) BREAKING – Egypt’s leading newspaper Al-Ahram quoted a presidency source on its website saying that the army has informed (former) President Morsi that as of 17:00 GMT (7pm local time) he is no longer president of Egypt. The chief of Egyptian armed forces, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, is currently speaking live on Egyptian television. More updates will follow shortly. #June30 #Tahrir #Egypt
Check comments too: https://temporaryartist.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/egyptians-flood-tahrir-square-in-anti-mursi-protest/#comments
(nbcnews) Egypt’s military gives Morsi 48-hour ultimatum, threatens to intervene
CAIRO – Egypt’s military on Monday said mass protests calling for the resignation of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi were an “unprecedented” expression of the will of the people and gave the government 48 hours to meet the opposition’s demands.
In a statement read on state television just hours after the headquarters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement were ransacked, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said if this did not happen the army would intervene.
The protesters’ main demands are that Morsi announce early elections and step down, allowing a temporary government to take over.
(infoshop.org) 
Tear gas is a very good place to start trying to understand what is happening in Turkey. The main purpose of tear gas is to terrorise and thus break up large crowds of people. In Istanbul over the last weeks huge quantities have been used over and over to prevent large anti-government demonstrations developing. This wasn’t about ‘riot control’ – generally there was no riot to control. In this piece I’m going to put the Gezi park revolt in the context of the cycle of struggles that began in 2010 and of the specific economic, politcal and historical situation of the Turkish republic to try and draw out the lessons for all of us fighting global capitalism.
The first time I was gassed I was taking a photo of four American tourists in Taksim square, they in turn were snapping a self portrait using an iPad 2.
A tranquil scene with the other people in view chatting and holding hands. From where I was standing near the Ataturk monument you couldn’t see a single cop. Yet without warning tear gas canisters suddenly came raining down on every part of the huge square, a use designed to create a panicked stampede. On Mayday 1977 42 people had died in Taksim square and hundreds were injured after snipers created a panicked stampede by firing into that year’s Mayday demonstration. Perhaps because of that history – which would be as familiar as Bloody Sunday in Ireland or Kent State in the USA – the reaction of the crowd to that massive tear gas attack was very disciplined, people retreated slowly.
The clouds of gas choking entire streets along with yet more dangerous blasts of water canon is what you have seen online and on the TV. But those clouds also tell you something essential about the nature of Turkish ‘democracy’. And that is even if the prime minister Erdogan is properly elected there is little room for dissent and protest. There are always differences between the expectation of a ‘right to ‘protest’ and reality. Occupy Wall Street also saw the use of tear gases on protesters. But in Turkey that disconnect is particularly severe due to the way gas is used. An article in the English language daily Hurriyet revealed that 130,000 canisters of tear gas had been used by police in the first 20 days of the protests.
Many of those tear gas canisters were fired horizontally at close range at protesters resulting in a huge number of head injuries, a dozen people losing eyes and along with other causes, including one death from live ammunition, at least four deaths. At all the entrances to Taksim square street traders had replaced their normal goods with piles of construction hats, goggles and dust masks. I generally reached Taksim by walking the length of Istiklal, the long shopping street familiar from photos because of the strings of decorative lights overhead. As you neared Taksim you would see more and more people with bandaged forearms, heads and eyes. Even the BBC journalist Paul Mason got hit in the head (he was wearing a helmet) during the weekend he spent reporting from Istanbul.
Sunday 16th June,the day after the huge police assault that have cleared Gezi Park served as an illustration of Erdogan’s democracy. On the one hand thousands of free buses and ferries had been used to bring people to an enormous pro-government rally on the outskirts of Istanbul. As many as 300,000 people were gathered there to listen to a two hour tirade from the Erdogan during which he laid down his paranoid fantasies about Gezi park being part of the international conspiracy against Turkey.
Meanwhile in the rest of Istanbul squads of police equipped with tear gas and rubber bullets spent the entire day swooping on any attempt by protesters to meet up, even in small numbers. They were backed up by water cannon and armoured personnel carriers that appeared whenever a larger crowd appeared. All the while, secret police snatch squads in plain clothes waited up the side streets to scoop up unwary protesters who had become isolated. Later in the day Amnesty International had released a statement demanding to know what had become of those detained- an estimated 400+ people. After Erdogan’s rally ended there were multiple reports of youth members of his AKP party carrying sticks and knives accompanying police patrols.
Read more: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20130623011942361
Greece: Thousands gather in an anti-government protest following suspension of State TV and Radio, (ERT)
Thousands in Athens, Greece gathered in the evening of June 11, 2013 outside the national tv headquarters, in solidarity to 2.656 employees that were left jobless in just one day.
The protest continued all throughout the night and the next day (today) to protect the building from the riot police, that was supposed to evacuate it violently early in the morning.
@ggregator 