Category: Leaders

The hunt for opposition members continues throughout the country with undisguised ferocity

AKP-MHP coalition wants to ban opposition party HDP. Already at the end of January, reports pointed in this direction. In recent days, Turkish media have reported signs that Erdogan and MHP leader Bahceli are on course to ban the HDP.

After hundreds of HDP members were arrested in one day alone, the Turkish government plans to revoke the parliamentary immunity of 28 of the 56 HDP parliamentarians. The hunt for opposition members continues throughout the country with undisguised ferocity. The Kurdish population is particularly affected. Many Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin are seeking protection in Europe, especially in Germany. But many Kurdish persecutees are denied protection.

Basayev had pushed the logic of terrorism with spectacular attacks, now he was presumably killed by an explosion on the way to a new attack

According to Russian intelligence, Shamil Basayev, one of Chechnya’s best-known terrorist leaders, and in any case the most wanted, was killed along with 11 other men. The death was also confirmed by the website KavkazCenter, which is close to the rebels. Only recently Basayev was appointed vice-president of Ichkeria (as the rebels call Chechnya), which indicated a radicalization of the resistance. Doku Umarov had only recently become president after the previous rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was killed.

Shamil Basayev. Image: KavkazCenter

In Jamaica’s Tivoli Gardens slum, organized crime defends its monopoly on violence

There are areas where organized crime more or less openly has a monopoly on violence. In the rough part of Kosovo, for example – or in some Jamaican slums, where the dons sung about in dancehall reggae "Dons" regulate the distribution of resources.

In Tivoli Gardens, one of these slums, Christopher Coke reigns supreme. Born in 1969 "Dudus", who describes himself as a businessman and "community leader" is the son of the drug lord Lester Lloyd Coke and is supposed to preside over investigations of the US judicial authorities after the so-called Shower Posse. This Shower Posse supplies, among other things, the rough area of New York with the eighties drug crack, which is why the U.S. Last September filed an extradition request against "Dudus" made.

Protest in Barcelona on Tuesday against the trial. Image: ANC

Because he broke off a dialogue that had begun tentatively, Catalan parties voted against his budget. Now new elections are on the horizon

Now the question is no longer whether there will be early elections in Spain, but only when. After the rejection of the budget of the Socialist Pedro Sanchez by 191 votes to 158 in Parliament on Wednesday, Sanchez will announce the date for early elections on Friday after the weekly cabinet meeting.

Bjorn Hocke at the state party conference of the AfD-Thuringen on 19. August 2019 in Arnstadt. Bild: Vincent Eisenfeld/CC BY-SA-4.0

27. October: The world looks to Thuringia

On Sunday are state elections in Thuringia. A close result is expected. Currently, the Left Party seems to be in the lead thanks to the popularity of the incumbent Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, followed by the AfD. While the CDU keeps pace with these two parties, the Grune and Social Democrats receive less than half as much support. The FDP must fear the 5% hurdle.