Non ne possiamo più, di piangere per Ischia. Le nuove ed ennesime vittime travolte dall’ennesima frana venuta giù dal Monte Epomeo (guai a chiamarlo vulcano: porta iella…) vanno piante, onorate e affidate alla terra col cordoglio di tutti gli italiani. Non meno doveroso, però, sarà rispettare lo strazio delle famiglie nel modo più serio e severo, con un’inchiesta che dia il giusto peso alla gravità dell’evento atmosferico ma spazzi via i tentativi di dare tutta la colpa alla fatalità. Si sapeva, che poteva succedere ancora. Si sapeva.
Why “Jîna”: Erasure of Kurdish Women and Their Politics from the Uprisings in Iran
Why “Jîna”: Erasure of Kurdish Women and Their Politics from the Uprisings in Iran
The future of Iran could be changed forever by the protests in September 2022 sparked by the death in police custody of Jîna (Mahsa) Amini, a Kurdish woman from the city of Saqez who was arrested for wearing her hijab “improperly.”
The protests have generated an inspiring and newfound solidarity among Iranians of all ethnic backgrounds, as well as promising internationalist feminist solidarity. However, as two Kurdish women, we have been deeply disappointed to see Jîna’s Kurdish background routinely ignored by mainstream media and among allies in diasporic solidarity rallies and in expressions of international solidarity.
In particular, we focus on three types of erasures we see even among progressive and feminist circles. The first relates to the ways people use or don’t use the name “Jîna” and the broader significance of such choices. Second, we draw attention to a patterned failure in acknowledging the origins of the slogan “Woman, Life Freedom,” which was developed by the Kurdish women’s freedom movement affiliated with the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK) against colonial, patriarchal states and societies. The third points to a wider dismissal of the significance of Kurdish struggles and demands both inside Iran and beyond it.
Dismissing Jîna’s Kurdish identity, downplaying the systematic and structural oppression of ethnic minorities, and ignoring the origins of the now popularized chant, “Women, Life, Freedom,” risks fueling rifts, distrust, and resentment among Kurdish populations. To start, overlooking the likely relationship of Jîna’s Kurdishness to the fatal violence she was subjected to, reveals deeper patterns of violence that Kurds have experienced in modern Iran. In short, Jîna’s Kurdishness is critical to understand marginalization in Iran and the broader Middle East and a feminist movement that is simultaneously anti-colonial and anti-imperial.
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/44560
What Viral Chatter Tells Us About Bird Flu
In early September, scientists at the University of Florida confirmed that a bottlenose dolphin, found dead in a canal on the Gulf Coast in March, carried a highly pathogenic kind of avian influenza. Its brain was inflamed.
True to its label, this virus is skilled at infecting birds, but it sometimes goes farther afield. A few months after the dolphin’s death, another mammal, a porpoise, was found stranded and weak on the west coast of Sweden. It subsequently died, bearing the same virus. Between these events there was another concerning case in Colorado, when a man tested positive for bird flu. He was a state prison inmate, at work in a prerelease job that involved culling birds on a poultry farm where the infection had struck.
Later analysis questioned whether the Colorado man was truly infected or whether a testing swab had merely picked up a big load of virus in his nose. But he was not the sole human in the past year to test positive for bird flu, specifically H5N1. A 79-year-old man in Britain, who lived closely with about 20 pet ducks, also tested positive for the bird virus around Christmas of 2021.
El k-pop y la generación z: mucho más que solo música
Descubrí el pop coreano cuando tenía doce años. Antes de eso, crecí escuchando lo que había a mi alrededor, lo que escuchaban mis padres y amigos, desde pop en español como Julieta Venegas o Lila Downs hasta música clásica que mi papá ponía mientras trabajaba. Encontrar este género por mi cuenta fue realmente emocionante, distinto: la primera vez que escuchaba música que sentía plenamente mía. Me topé con algo que por mucho tiempo había estado buscando: chicos y chicas de aspecto etéreo cantando melodías pegadizas, acompañadas por coreografías elaboradas y llamativas, algo genuinamente refrescante. Era justo lo que quería en esa época. Aquella expresión artística, esa exagerada mezcla de música pop y toques experimentales, los vestuarios idílicos y el balance perfecto entre mi gusto por el arte familiar y una naturaleza foránea, completamente desconocida, me invitaron a descubrir de qué se trataba.
K-everything: the rise and rise of Korean culture
Last week, I was standing in a huge dance studio – one of 12 – near the top of a funky new office tower just north of the Han River in the South Korean capital, Seoul. The building is home to a company called SM Entertainment, which has strong claims to have invented one of the most potent cultural movements of the 21st century, the phenomenon of Korean pop music – K-pop.
Each generation creates hit factories in its own image. The “SM Culture Universe” was originally the vision of a Korean pop entrepreneur called Lee Soo-man who, after a brief career as a singer and DJ, studied computer engineering in the States in the 1980s. He returned to Seoul “with the dream of globalising Korean music”.
In the dance studio, his nephew Chris Lee, now the chief executive, is talking me through all the ways in which this dream came true. To begin with, K-pop idols conquered Asian charts; lately, after the extraordinary success of K-poppers BTS (the biggest-selling band in the world for the past two years, managed by rival conglomerate Hybe), they have been expanding their reach to all corners of the globe. New members of boy bands and girl bands – aged 11 upwards – are recruited by SM each year on long contracts and this building becomes their virtual home. It is designed as an inside-out place, with every room a stage set for press conferences, fan chats and livestreams; one floor is an “artist’s house”, a place where “idols” can chill or do some cooking (while their fans watch and scream outside); another is a “song camp” where songwriters from across the world are flown in on rotation to create a global sound.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/04/korea-culture-k-pop-music-film-tv-hallyu-v-and-a
Middle Powers are reshaping geopolitics
President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping’s meeting in Bali, on the sidelines of the G20, presented a paradox. Conducted in the familiar terms of cold war summits, at which respect and good behaviour were foregrounded, it nonetheless offered the best evidence yet that an actual cold war has not returned.
Simply put, the insecurities and ambitions of what we might call the Middle Powers, rather than any grand strategy of the Middle Kingdom, are shaping the emerging geopolitical landscape.
Observed from a distance, Russia’s war on Ukraine might appear like a rerun of the cold war stand-off between the “free world” and Russian (and Chinese) authoritarianism. A closer look complicates the picture.
https://www.ft.com/content/0129492d-ac7f-4807-8050-2760a09e9ccc
Labour rights legacy of the FIFA World Cup
On 18 December 2022, the Men’s World Cup football final will be held at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium. It will mark the end of a journey that started in December 2010 when Qatar was awarded the tournament hosting rights.
18 December is also International Migrants Day, a day set aside to honour migrant workers for their contributions and sacrifice. It is also Qatar’s National Day.
Over the past 12 years, millions of migrant workers have toiled to make the 2022 World Cup possible, building key infrastructure, including the stadiums in Qatar. However, these workers have always been at the margins, and the authorities have been less than responsive to their abusive work conditions.
Qatar’s Labour Minister recently rejected proposals for a remedy fund for abuses faced by migrant workers, including uncompensated deaths, further highlighting the lack of recognition for the people who perform the vast majority of the country’s labour. FIFA, football’s governing body, has not made a decision.
Muere en Argentina Hebe de Bonafini, icono de la lucha por los derechos humanos
Hebe de Bonafini, presidenta de Madres de Plaza de Mayo, ha muerto este domingo a los 93 años en Buenos Aires. Icono internacional de la lucha por los derechos humanos, deja tras de sí más de media vida dedicada a la búsqueda de dos de sus hijos, secuestrados por la dictadura militar en 1977. La expresidenta de Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, confirmó la muerte de Bonafini en sus redes sociales. “Queridísima Hebe, Madre de Plaza de Mayo, símbolo mundial de la lucha por los Derechos Humanos, orgullo de la Argentina. Simplemente gracias y hasta siempre”, escribió. El Gobierno de Alberto Fernández decretó tres días de duelo nacional en homenaje a “su memoria y su lucha, que estarán siempre presentes como guía en los momentos difíciles”. “Como fundadora de Madres de Plaza de Mayo puso luz en medio de la oscura noche de la dictadura militar y sembró el camino para la recuperación de la democracia hace cuarenta años atrás”, escribieron desde la Casa Rosada en un comunicado.
L’attentat de Taksim ouvre la voie à une frappe turque contre les Kurdes
C’est l’ultime mise à exécution d’une menace turque qui plane depuis mai dernier. Une semaine après l’attentat de la rue d’Istiklal, à Istanbul, qui a fait 6 morts et 81 blessés, la Turquie a lancé dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche un raid aérien contre des régions kurdes de Syrie et du nord de l’Irak, dans une opération baptisée « Griffe-épée ». « L’heure des comptes a sonné ! Les traîtres devront rendre des comptes pour leurs attaques perfides », a écrit dimanche le ministre turc de la Défense sur son compte Twitter pour annoncer l’offensive, montrant la photo d’un avion militaire qui décolle, sans donner plus de précisions sur le lieu. Cette attaque a été menée « conformément aux droits de légitime défense découlant de l’article 51 de la Charte des Nations unies, afin d’éliminer les attaques terroristes dans le nord de l’Irak et de la Syrie, d’assurer la sécurité des frontières et d’éliminer le terrorisme à sa source », a précisé un communiqué du ministère. Une opération militaire ordonnée par le président Recep Tayyip Erdogan, juste avant qu’il ne s’envole pour Doha, où s’est déroulée hier la cérémonie d’ouverture de la Coupe du monde qatarie.
Human rights groups warn of impending massacre in Kurdish city in western Iran
Kurdish rights groups on Sunday warned of an impending massacre in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in western Iran as a large number of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units attacked the city with armored vehicles on Saturday night, hunting down activists that have defied the regime.
Videos from the city on Saturday showed thousands of mostly young men barricading the streets of the city preparing to confront the IRGC and its militia, the Basij. The IRGC and the Basij attacked protesters across the Kurdish areas of western Iran (Rojhelat), killing at least 26 protesters including children during four days of unrest.
Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported loud explosions being heard in several Kurdish cities on Saturday night, with no information released on the cause.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/20112022
Idler on a hammock 