#kurdish and turkish smoking man

[zooterchet]

Clan MacBeth (Arab-Greek Medicine)

Clan MacBeth, had a particular medical trade in the British Isles and France, wherein they would function as a doctor with a leather satchel, a bottle of whiskey, a buck knife, and a matchlock.

They would enforce medical codes, wherein only a woman, could be a pharmacist (an apothecary), men placing ego into the work of selling opium to smoke, to ease pain.

The philosophy of Clan MacBeth’s practice of medicine, was that any injury, could not be treated, hence seeking a doctor, was an act of accounting in fatality of force.  Anyone practicing medicine, was taken to a doctor, and any male pharmacist, was murdered, with knife and matchlock, whiskey consumed after.

At the time, it was a rare trade, bound to bloodlines like Hippocrates, Avicenna, and Verrigoes.

However, William Shakespeare, the pen alias for Ottoman highblood of London, William Wallace, combined with Longshanks’s line, desired the role to be duplicated, to make the medicine more efficient and widespread, favoring the Bruce’s style of Kurdish marijuana dealing medicine.  Elizabeth I, the first Queen of England, and the founder of the Anglican Church, upon which relied the Globe Theater’s testaments to teach Groundlings to be Gentry, a new class of Noble for merchantry (prior restricted in the Catholic Church, to families with a purchased bishop, archbishop, cardinal, or papal title in the family, held for remainder of life of descendents, repurchased into the Church at any time).

The idea, was to outmaneuver a superior base of agriculture, the Continent, using Ireland and England’s scant resources, for an advantage, art being the Ottoman system of transmitting a professional or career role, when on Ottoman performed the scribe, in their particular manner (male actors, children as crossdressers to perform female roles and then rise into ranks of “villains”, lawyers and magistrates, and “thespians”, writer assassins, to do field research).

The basis of Puck, Romeo, and MacBeth, was the doctor chosen, Puc Lascerdes, and he took up his leather handbag, his traveling satchel, and performed the research for each play, then establishing inside the Globe Theater, whose descent would be the mercantile houses of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and Paris, as well as the Canadian and American Colonies, eventually the whole world; the Turkish concept of conquest, fielded through art mimicking the work in question, through the death of the “Witch”, Othello, those applying fictional works derived from the already existing formulas, to produce more; the proper choice, to become a Gentry, a man or woman of status, being to comprehend, not to apply, any literature, using theory, not application, of art.

Being a member of Clan MacBeth, and having created the concept of the fatality of medicine, you owe me everything for your modern clinical system; the concept of art, making you seek a medic, to die happily, on opium, and perhaps, should you wish to practice medicine yourself and drink whiskey (particularly Arab whiskey, Jim Beam), you can see a doctor too.

[aswiya]

Zeynab Serekaniye, a Kurdish woman with a gap-toothed smile and a warm demeanor, never imagined she’d join a militia.

The 26-year-old grew up in Ras al-Ayn, a town in north-east Syria. The only girl in a family of five, she liked to fight and wear boys’ clothing. But when her brothers got to attend school and she did not, Serekaniye did not challenge the decision. She knew it was the reality for girls in the region. Ras al-Ayn, Arabic for “head of the spring”, was a green and placid place, so Serekaniye settled down to a life of farming vegetables with her mother.

That changed on 9 October 2019, days after former US president Donald Trump announced that US troops would pull out of north-east Syria, where they had allied with Kurdish-led forces for years. A newly empowered Turkey, which sees the stateless Kurds as an existential threat, and whose affiliated groups it has been at war with for decades, immediately launched an offensive on border towns held by Kurdish forces in north-east Syria, including Ras al-Ayn.

Just after 4pm that day, Serekaniye says, the bombs began to fall, followed by the dull plink and thud of mortar fire. By evening, Serekaniye and her family had fled to the desert, where they watched their town go up in smoke. “We didn’t take anything with us,” she says. “We had a small car, so how can we take our stuff and leave the people?” As they fled, she saw dead bodies in the street. She soon learned that an uncle and cousin were among them. Their house would become rubble.

After Serekaniye’s family was forced to resettle farther south, she surprised her mother in late 2020 by saying she wanted to join the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). The all-female, Kurdish-led militia was established in 2013 not long after their male counterparts, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), ostensibly to defend their territory against numerous groups, which would come to include the Islamic State (Isis). The YPG have also been linked to systematic human rights abuses including the use of child soldiers.

Serekaniye’s mother argued against her decision, because two of her brothers were already risking their lives in the YPG.

But Serekaniye was unmoved. “We’ve been pushed outside of our land, so now we should go and defend our land,” she says. “Before, I was not thinking like this. But now I have a purpose – and a target.”

Serekaniye is one of approximately 1,000 women across Syria to have enlisted in the militia in the past two years. Many joined in anger over Turkey’s incursions, but ended up staying.

“In discussions [growing up], it was always, ‘if something happens, a man will solve it, not a woman’,” says Serekaniye. “Now women can fight and protect her society . This, I like.”

According to the YPG, a surge in recruitment has also been aided by growing pushback against and awareness of entrenched gender inequality and violence over recent years. In 2019 the Kurds’ Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria passed a series of laws to protect women, including banning polygamy, child marriages, forced marriages and so-called “honour” killings, although many of these practices continue. About a third of Asayish officers in the Kurdish security services in the region are now women and 40% female representation is required in the autonomous government. A village of only women, where female residents can live safe from violence, was built, evacuated after nearby bombings, and resettled again.

Yet evidence of the widespread violence that women continue to face is abundant at the local Mala Jin, or “women’s house”, which provide a refuge and also a form of local arbitration for women in need across Syria. Since 2014, 69 of these houses have opened, with staff helping any woman or man who come in with problems they’re facing including issues of domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape, and so-called “honour” crimes, often liaising with local courts and the female units of the Asayish intelligence agency to solve cases.

On a sun-scorched day in May, three distraught women arrive in quick succession at a Mala Jin centre in the north-eastern city of Qamishli. The first woman, who wears a heavy green abaya, tells staff that her husband has barely come home since she’s given birth. The second woman arrives with her husband in tow, demanding a divorce; her long ponytail and hands shake as she describes how he’d once beaten her until she had to get an abortion.

The third woman shuffles in pale-faced and in a loose dress, with rags wrapped around her hands. Her skin is raw pink and black from burns that cover much of her face and body. The woman describes to staff how her husband has beaten her for years and threatened to kill a member of her family if she left him. After he poured paraffin on her one day, she says, she fled his house; he then hired men to kill her brother. After her brother’s murder, she set herself on fire. “I got tired,” she says.

The Mala Jin staff, all women, tut in disapproval as she speaks. They carefully write down the details of her account, tell her they need to take photographs, and explain they plan to send the documents to the court to help secure his arrest. The woman nods then lies down on a couch in exhaustion.

Behia Murad, the director of the Qamishli Mala Jin, an older, kind-eyed woman in a pink hijab, says the Mala Jin centres have handled thousands of cases since they started, and, though both men and women come in with complaints, “always the woman is the victim”.

A growing number of women visit the Mala Jin centres. Staff say that this doesn’t represent increased violence against women in the region, but that more women are demanding equality and justice.

The YPJ is very aware of this shift and its potential as a recruitment tool. “Our aim is not to just have her hold her gun, but to be aware,” says Newroz Ahmed, general commander of the YPJ.

For Serekaniye it was not just that she got to fight, it was also the way of life the YPJ seemed to offer. Instead of working in the fields, or getting married and having children, women who join the YPJ talk about women’s rights while training to use a rocket-​propelled grenade. They are discouraged, though not banned, from using phones or dating and instead are told that comradeship with other women is now the focus of their day to day lives.

Commander Ahmed, soft-spoken but with an imposing stare, estimates the female militia’s current size is about 5,000. This is the same size the YPJ was at the height of its battle against Isis in 2014 (though the media have previously reported an inflated number). If the YPJ’s continued strength is any indication, she adds, the Kurdish-led experiment is still blooming.

The number remains high despite the fact that the YPJ has lost hundreds, if not more, of its members in battle and no longer accepts married women (the pressure to both fight and raise a family is too intense, Ahmed says). The YPJ also claim it no longer accepts women under 18 after intense pressure from the UN and human rights groups to stop the use of child soldiers; although many of the women I met had joined below that age, though years ago.

Driving through north-east Syria, it is no wonder that so many women continue to join, given the ubiquitous images of smiling female shahids, or martyrs. Fallen female fighters are commemorated on colourful billboards or with statues standing proudly at roundabouts. Sprawling cemeteries are filled with shahids, lush plants and roses growing from their graves.

The fight against Turkey is one reason to maintain the YPJ, says Ahmed, who spoke from a military base in al-Hasakah, the north-east governorate where US troops returned after Joe Biden was elected. She claims that gender equality is the other. “We continue to see a lot of breaches [of law] and violations against women” in the region, she says. “We still have the battle against the mentality, and this is even harder than the military one.”

Tal Tamr, the YPJ base where Serekaniye is stationed, is a historically Christian and somewhat sleepy town. Bedouins herd sheep through fields, children walk arm-in-arm through village lanes, and slow, gathering dust storms are a regular afternoon occurrence. Yet Kurdish, US and Russian interests are all present here. Sosin Birhat, Serekaniye’s commander, says that before 2019 the YPJ base in Tal Tamr was tiny; now, with more women joining, she describes it as a full regiment.

The base is a one-storey, tan-coloured stucco building once occupied by the Syrian regime. The women grow flowers and vegetables in the rugged land at the back. They do not have a signal for their phones or power to use a fan, even in the sweltering heat, so they pass the time on their days off, away from the frontline, having water fights, chain smoking and drinking sugary coffee and tea.

Yet battle is always on their minds. Viyan Rojava, a more seasoned fighter than Serekaniye, talks of taking back Afrin. In March 2018, Turkey and the Free Syrian Army rebels it backed, launched Operation Olive Branch to capture the north-eastern district beloved for its fields of olive trees.

Since the Turkish occupation of Afrin, tens of thousands of people have been displaced – Rojava’s family among them – and more than 135 women remain missing, according to media reports and human rights groups. “If these people come here, they will do the same to us,” says Rojava, as other female fighters nod in agreement. “We will not accept that, so we will hold our weapons and stand against them.”

Serekaniye listens intently as Rojava speaks. In the five months since she joined the YPJ, Serekaniye has transformed. During military training in January, she broke a leg trying to scale a wall; now, she can easily handle her gun.

As Rojava speaks, the walkie-talkie sitting beside her crackles. The women at the base were being called to the frontline, not far from Ras al-Ayn. There is little active fighting these days, yet they maintain their positions in case of a surprise attack. Serekaniye dons her flak jacket, grabs her Kalashnikov and a belt of bullets. Then she gets into an SUV headed north, and speeds away.

By Elizabeth Flock. Additional reporting by Kamiran Sadoun and Solin Mohamed Amin. 

#syria #Zeynab Serekaniye #kurdish #long post #war #Ras al Ayn #women #Elizabeth Flock #Kamiran Sadoun #Solin Mohamed Amin #ypj #turkish #afrin #Viyan Rojava #free syrian army #operation olive branch #tal tamr #sosin birhat #isis #america #Women’s Protection Units #people's protection units #women's protection unit #ypg #mala jin #violence #asia

[antifainternational]

2020: A Timeline of Bigoted, Fascist, And  Extreme Right Violence: Part Two (September - December 2020)

(CONTENT WARNING FOR EXTREME RACIST LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE) In keeping with our 2017, 2018, and 2019 lists of documented incidents of bigoted, fascist, and extreme right violence, we thought it smart to continue this year. Read Part One (January - May 2020) of our Timeline Here: https://antifainternational.tumblr.com/post/190676684915/2020-a-timeline-of-bigoted-fascist-and-extreme Read Part Two (June - August 2020) of our Timeline here: https://antifainternational.tumblr.com/post/625560737897758720/2020-a-timeline-of-bigoted-fascist-and-extreme You’ll also find these crimes listed on our corresponding map: http://bit.ly/2020ViolentHateCrimesMap We will be updating this on the regular, so check back once in a while. Please help us continue & expand this project by making a donation! https://bit.ly/intlhatecrimesresearch September 1, 2020: Right-wing militia members Michael Karmo and Cody Smith are arrested by the FBI in a Pleasant Prairie, WI hotel as they prepared to go to Kenosha WI to allegedly “pick off” Black Lives Matter protestors and loot.  The police seize four firearms, a silencer, ammunition, body armor, and a drone among other materials and charge both men - who as convicted felons are not allowed to possess firearms - with various weapons offences. Karmo and Smith allegedly plan to drive to Portland, OR. afterwards to “take action.” SOURCE: https://www.wisn.com/article/men-arrested-after-tip-they-were-going-to-kenosha-to-possibly-loot-pick-people-off/33919195 September 1, 2020: Turkish fascists set fire to the Vienna premises of a Kurdish/Turkish Workers association, while people were upstairs in the building. People in the building smelled smoke and managed to put out the fire before it had a chance to spread, SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/autonome.antifa.w/posts/2783503861884954 September 2, 2020: The decomposing corpse of murdered trans activist Mireya Rodríguez Lemus is found in her Aquiles Serdán, Mexico apartment. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/02/mireya-rodriguez-lemus_aquiles-serdan-chihuahua-mexico_bed0a2b5 September 3, 2020: A cyclist riding through Manhattan's Flatiron District stops to yell racist slurs at an Asian man and his girlfriend, then smashes the man with his bike before riding away. SOURCE: https://www.amny.com/police-fire/bike-riding-bigot-hurls-anti-asian-slurs-then-strikes-victim-in-flatiron-district/ September 3, 2020: As a Black Lives Matter march makes its way through Times Square, a driver in a dark-colored sedan rams its way through the crowd, miraculously only injuring one person. SOURCE: https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/03/909478054/car-rams-into-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-new-york-citys-time-square September 3, 2020: Three men and two women surround a black man at a skate park in Brandon, Canada, yelling racial slurs at him.  As the man tries to flee the scene, the mob surrounds him, stabbing him five times.  Two women have been arrested and the stabbing victim remains in hospital, recovering from his wounds. SOURCE: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/hatred-charges-black-man-skate-park-brandon-1.5712091 September 3, 2020: 53-year-old Picture Butte, Canada resident and Soldiers of Odin supporter Dan Forsyth faces a slew of charges after a lengthy RCMP investigation that alleges he had been using 3-D printers and other devices to manufacture prohibited firearms and firearms parts including bump stocks (which convert semi-automatic guns into fully-automatic machine guns) and silencers and trafficking them. SOURCE: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/3d-printing-firearms-dan-forsyth-alberta-first-charges-1.5710831 September 3, 2020: Self-described “Boogaloo Bois” and “Boojahideen” Michael Robert Solomon, 30, and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 20 are arrested in Minneapolis after an FBI investigation catches them conspiring to supply Hamas (but actually undercover FBI agents) with silencers and fully-automatic weapons and plotting to attack politicians and media figures. SOURCE: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-self-described-boogaloo-bois-charged-attempting-provide-material-support-hamas September 3, 2020: Dozens of Israeli illegal settlers blocked a lane on Route 60 near the turnoff to the settlement of Eli. They threw stones at passing Palestinian cars and tried to block their way. Many of the stones hit passengers or their cars. Several people were injured, receiving head wounds from the rocks, including a pregnant woman, and several people were cut by breaking glass. Israeli soldiers were present in the area and came to the spot at least twice, yet did nothing to protect the passengers or stop the settlers from throwing stones. In at least one case, the Israel Police was notified but did not arrive. SOURCE: https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/20201021_settlers_stone_palestinian_cars_for_hours_on_route_60 September 4, 2020: 31-year-old Bryan E. Huff of Pocatello, ID. climbs the fence of a home displaying a Black Lives Matter sign, confronting the homeowners and a family friend in the backyard by unsheathing a sword and telling them “It’s going down today,” and that, “Today is the day of reckoning,” and that he would return later that night before fleeing. SOURCE: https://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/local/police-attack-with-medieval-sword-over-familys-blm-sign-not-a-hate-crime/article_9daaf07c-a0b3-50d0-ac3a-948e7f1c37e2.html September 4, 2020: A group of Kurdish harvest workers were attacked by Turkish racists in Sakarya, Turkey. "It all started when the owner of the plantation, Hacı Hüseyin Cebecioğlu, insulted us", explains Rojda Demir, who recorded the attack with her cell phone. A grandson of Cebecioğlu came up to us and told us to collect the hazelnuts at the entrance. While we were still talking to him, Cebecioğlu insulted us from his terrace as a 'pack of mutts'. The man also voiced other expressions. We replied that we should not be subjected to such insults, put the buckets on the ground and left the plantation. Hacı Hüseyin Cebecioğlu continued his insults in the meantime. After about ten minutes, as we had reached our accommodation, Hasan and Kenan Cebecioğlu, the two sons of the farmer, rushed towards us and shouted: 'How dare you leave the plantation? This is not Mardin, but Sakarya.' Shortly after that my cousins were severely beaten. When my 15-year-old cousin tried to intervene, she was slapped.” SOURCE: https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/racist-attack-in-sakarya-they-wanted-to-kill-us-46425 September 4 & 11, 2020:  54-year-old Timothy James "Yo" Carroll twice confronts a Black Lives Matter protest and threatens the protestors while armed with a leaded cane and a loaded .357 magnum pistol.  Carroll now faces hate crimes charges. SOURCE: https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-man-charged-with-hate-crime-threats-against-protesters-holding-george-floyd-memorial September 5, 2020: Trans woman Leslie "Rocha" Alejandra Ferreti is found stabbed to death, with her hands tied behind her back, in her Ciudad Juárez, Mexico apartment. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/05/leslie-alejandra-ferreti-leslie-rocha_ciudad-juarez-chihuahua-mexico_28a7cb53 September 5, 2020: 21-year-old Willy Monteiro Duarte is beaten to death in the town of Colleferro, Italy, by four white far-right men. Duarte, who was black, was returning home with friends when near his home he tried to stop a fight in which a group of people were attacking a young man he knew. The men started attacking him, kicking him in the head, after which he died. SOURCE: https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20200908/483379504288/conmocion-italia-asesinato-joven-negro-ultraderecha.html September 6, 2020: Aftab Alam's son Mohammad Sabir records over the phone his father being lynched by a mob of drunken Hindu nationalists in Noida, India. The recording captures the mob trying to force Alam to drink alchohol and chant "Jai Shri Ram," before killing him.  After Sabir alerts the police, they find Alam's lifeless body tied to his own car.  Alam had been beaten to death. SOURCE: https://thewire.in/communalism/jai-shri-ram-muslim-driver-lynched-death-uttar-pradesh September 6, 2020: The body to trans woman Giovana Perez is found dumped in a ditch in Mururú, Brazil.  She had been stabbed to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/06/giovana-perez_mururu-maranhao-brazil_76cb3953 September 7, 2020: The driver of a stolen car drives through a group of five black men, two of whom are wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, killing one and injuring another. SOURCE: https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/denver-fatal-scooter-crash-update/73-ebeda9ff-cf14-4761-877e-b9b3d646a290 September 7, 2020: 28-year-old Cavan Medlock enters a North London immigration law firm's offices carrying a confederate flag & a nazi flag and begins racially abusing staff before threatening a receptionist with a knife and then threatening to stab a lawyer.  Police have charged him with preparation of terrorist acts. SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-54661222 September 7, 2020: Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer members attack Black Lives Matter protestors in Salem, Oregon, chasing and beating people with baseball bats and pipes, and assaulting people with pepper-spray and paintball guns. SOURCE: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/trump-supporters-proud-boys-gather-for-labor-day-caravan-outside-portland.html https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1303110704350728193 September 7, 2020: Just hours after their car's tires were slashed and the messages "terrorist Black Lives Matter not welcome" and "get the fuck out!" were painted on their car, a black couple in Warren, MI. are sitting at home when an assailant fires six shots into their living room.  A 24-year-old delivery truck driver targeted the family because of their Black Lives Matter sign. SOURCE: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-veteran-couple-detroit-black-lives-matter-terror; https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/defenders/2020/09/30/man-confesses-to-crimes-against-warren-family-in-federal-hate-crime-investigation/ September 8, 2020: Two trans women are shot multiple times shortly after performing at a wedding in Peshawar, Pakistan.  One woman dies from her injuries. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/08/gul-pandra_peshawar-khyber-pakhtunkhwa-pakistan_0c21f912 September 8, 2020: A medical team enroute to render emergency assistance to a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece after a fire in the camp are set upon by a mob of far-right extremists with stones and wooden clubs, shattering car windows and trying to pull people out of the vehicle.  SOURCE: https://europeansforhumanity.org/widespread-fires-destroy-large-parts-of-overcrowded-camp-moria/ September 8, 2020: The body of trans woman B. E. Álvarez Hernández is discovered alongside a highway outside of Copacabana, Colombia. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/08/b-e-alvarez-hernandez_copacabana-antioquia-colombia_1680c964 September 10, 2020: Far-right activist Kaitlin Bennett brings a pack of goons to harass University of Florida students in Orlando, refusing to leave campus when asked to by campus security and then assaulting multiple students opposing then. SOURCE: https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/09/13/conservative-gun-rights-activist-breaks-ucf-covid-19-policy-student-protesters-assaulted September 10, 2020: A transgender woman is been shot dead by her 13-year-old brother in Swabi, Pakistan. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/14/pakistan-transgender-woman-shot-dead-brother-swabi-third-gender/ September 11, 2020: Maria Paola Gaglione, 22, is riding on a motorcycle with her fiancé, Ciro Migliore, towards their home in Acerra, a town in southern Italy,  when her brother appears behind them. Michele Antonio, 30, then abruptly began chasing the couple, ramming their vehicle with his own, causing them to tailspin and crash. Loved ones of Maria spoke of her brother as a dominant figure in her life who disapproved of her marrying a trans man, local media reported. When investigators asked Michele why he slammed into his sister and her fiancé’s motorcycle, he bluntly said: “I wanted to teach her a lesson, not kill her.” Authorities arriving at the scene said they found Michele pummelling the unconscious body of Migliore, who had a fractured arm and was covered in bruises. The attacker was arrested by police and held in a prison in Poggioreale. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/19/woman-killed-brother-motorcycle-transgender-fiance-maria-gaglione-ciro-migliore-italy/ September 12, 2020: After encountering a Black Lives Matter protest in Johnson City, TN., 27-year-old realtor Jared Benjamin Lafer responds by driving through it with his Ford Expedition SUV, badly injuring one protestor. SOURCE: https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/suspect-in-johnson-city-hit-and-run-during-protest-no-longer-affiliated-with-coldwell-banker-king-in-north-carolina/ September 12, 2020: A truck carrying a Trump flag, driven by a member of a far-right militia, plows through a Black Lives Matter protest in San Antonio, texas. Luckily no one is hurt. SOURCE: https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/texas/i-didnt-want-to-hurt-anybody-video-shows-man-with-trump-flag-drive-through-crowd-of-protesters/273-858757ed-4730-48e5-b37a-b0416ee3cc91 September 12, 2020: Police allege that 34-year-old Guilherme “William” Von Neutegem - a white supremacist satanist and apparent follower of the nazi "Order of Nine Angles" (ONA) satanist cult/terror group - walked up to 58-year-old Mohamed-Aslim Zafis as he sat outside his Toronto mosque and stabbed him to death in a seemingly-random attack.  Von Neutegem may be implicated in another stabbing that killed another South Asian man in the same area the week prior, as well as in the disappearances of two other elderly South Asian men from the area. SOURCE: https://www.antihate.ca/suspect_stabbing_toronto_mosque_follow_hitler_worshiping_satanist_movement September 12, 2020: Dublin neo-nazi Michael Quinn, is arrested after he hit a counter-protester over the head with a large wooden pole wrapped in an Irish flag.  The victim, who was taking part in a counter-protest against a far-right rally when the attack occurred, sustained injuries to her head and was treated in a Dublin hospital after the incident. The victim, a queer activist who has spent decades fighting for LGBT+ rights in Ireland, had been taking part in a counter-protest against an anti-mask and anti-lockdown protest in Dublin when she was approached by the attacker. On video a group of fascists can be seen charging at the victim and other counter protesters. The video shows her falling to the ground, with later photos showing the activist covered in blood. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/23/izzy-kamikaze-ireland-dublin-lgbt-activist-michael-quinn-charged/ September 12, 2020: Trans woman Cibele "Nem" Rodrigues de Sousa is shot to death by two men in a drive-by shooting in Sobral, Brazil. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/12/cibele-rodrigues-de-sousa-nem_sobral-ceara-brazil_6a08bb82 September 12, 2020: A 29-year old Portuguese man is stabbed to death in a random attack in Morges, Switzerland by a religious extremist who said afterward that the attack was motivated by his ideology. SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Morges_stabbing September 13, 2020: Two brothers - both Syrian refugees - are stopped by four people in Samsun, Turkey, who shout at them to "go back to your country!"  then leave, returning with 16 others, who threaten the brothers with knives.  When one brother turns to signal the police, the mob turns on 16-year-old Eymen Hammami, stabbing him to death. SOURCE: https://stockholmcf.org/syrian-teenager-stabbed-to-death-in-alleged-hate-crime/ September 13, 2020: After an Amerstdam resident hangs a rainbow flag outside of his home, assailants throw improvised explosives at his house twice over two days.  SOURCE: https://www.ad.nl/amsterdam/woning-in-oost-twee-keer-in-24-uur-bekogeld-met-vuurwerkbom-vanwege-regenboogvlag~ad0fe80c/ September 13, 2020: The body of 24-year-old trans woman Jardiele Santos is found buried in a shallow grave outside of Maceió, Brazil.  She had been stabbed to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/13/jardiele-santos_maceio-alagoas-brazil_d83499c2 September 13, 2020: A Kurdish construction worker is killed by a Turkish man in Dinar, Turkey is a racially motivated attack.  Ömer A., confronted the construction workers, complaining about their work.  In the ensuing argument, pulled out a gun and hit the head of one worker.  Özkan Tokay intervened only to be shot several times, along with a third construction worker, who survived the attack.  SOURCE: https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/murdered-kurdish-worker-buried-under-military-blockade-46598 September 14, 2020: A 19-year old Dalit woman was raped and strangled by four higher-caste Thakur men in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, India. The woman’s back was broken and her tongue cut out. She died weeks later in hospital, after which police took her body and cremated it, against the wishes of her family. Local police and politicians have continually tried to sabotage the investigation into the case. SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hathras_gang_rape_and_murder September 14, 2020: A Kurdish man was attacked and severely injured in his home by eight Turkish fascists in Quaregnon in Belgium. The young man was reportedly attacked because he celebrated his Kurdish identity on social media. The attackers only let go of him and left the apartment when he played dead. The victim was transported to the hospital in critical condition, with a smashed face and severe brain trauma. SOURCE: https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/kurdish-man-critically-injured-by-racists-in-belgium-46638 September 14, 2020: Three participants in a Sacramento Black Lives Matter protest are injured when multiple vehicles deliberately veer into the crowd, ramming through people.  September 14, 2020: Max Misch, a self-described "white nationalist" faces charges after provoking a fight with a biracial couple who passed by him.  Misch has a history of racist behaviour that includes defacing a Black Lives Matter mural and harassing Vermont's sole black female legislator. SOURCE: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/vermont/articles/2020-10-07/white-nationalist-pleads-not-guilty-to-hate-crimes-charge September 14, 2020: The body of an unidentified trans woman is found in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico vacant lot.  She had been shot to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/14/name-unknown_ciudad-juarez-chihuahua-mexico_065d638e September 14, 2020: Two Israeli xenophobes are arrested after attacking a security guard at the entrance to a school for children of migrant workers in south Tel Aviv. The police said that Sheffi Paz and the other suspect are suspected of pepper-spraying the guard at the Keshet-Gvanim school. Since the beginning of the school year two weeks ago, Paz and other activists have come to the school, which is identified with the community of foreign workers in south Tel Aviv, to photograph the children and their parents. A mother of one of the students who witnessed the incident told Haaretz that the activist arrested with Paz attacked her after she tried to stop the two of them from photographing her. “I walked with my child to the school entrance, and the principal was at the entrance and she received me and my child. Sheffi stood and photographed us. I told her not to photograph me and put my hand to hide her telephone, and the young man who was with her sprayed pepper spray at me,” she said. At that point the guard arrived and intervened, the mother said. SOURCE: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-prominent-anti-refugee-activist-arrested-again-at-south-tel-aviv-school-1.9154452 September 18, 2020: After kissing while walking through Padua, Italy, Marlon Landolfo and Mattias Zouta were subjected to homophobic insults followed by a hail of kicks and punches.  The attackers then assaulted the two gay men’s friends, who tried to intervene. One of them had a bottle broken over their head and was treated in the hospital. SOURCE: http://www.gaynews.it/2020/09/19/padova-marlon-mattias-insultati-picchiati-omofobia-bacio-zan-legge-non-piu-rinviabile/ September 18, 2020: A black family staying open their Denver hotel room door to find a 51-year-old Douglas Murphy brandishing a gun and threatening them, telling them "nigger, you don't belong here!"  Other guests at the hotel heard Murphy scream "niggers get out!" followed by a gun shot.  Murphy is suspected of similiar incidents at other area hotels. SOURCE: https://highlandsranchherald.net/stories/man-tormented-black-hotel-guests-repeatedly-police-say,315488 September 18, 2020: After reporting his Halifax, Canada neigbhour for suspected domestic assault, 23-year-old Stephen Wentzell is visited by the man in the middle of the night, punching Wentzell more than a dozen times and kicking him in the face while calling him a “fucking faggot” and threatening to murder him.  SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/12/gay-man-neighbour-attack-stephen-wentzell-kicked-face-domestic-abuse-halifax-canada/ September 19, 2020: Trans woman Aerrion Burnett is shot to death in Independence, MO and then dumped in a field, just days before her 38th birthday. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/19/aerrion-burnett_independence-missouri-usa_de83d979 September 19, 2020: A woman on an Auburn, WA. bus approaches another woman, calling her a "white bitch" and assaulting her in an unprovoked attack. SOURCE: https://www.kentreporter.com/news/black-woman-charged-with-hate-crime-for-attacking-white-woman-on-bus-in-kent/ September 20, 2020: A public meeting in Red Deer, Canada to discuss racism in the community is cancelled after hate group members arrive beforehand and assault people attending the meeting while the police stand to the side and watch, refusing to intervene or press charges. SOURCE: https://edmonton.citynews.ca/video/2020/09/21/racial-bias-shows-up-in-algorithms-machine-learning/ September 20, 2020: 51-year-old Douglas Murphy racially harasses a black woman at a Littleton, CO. motel before producing a handgun and threatening to shoot her. SOURCE: https://highlandsranchherald.net/stories/man-arrested-after-threatening-black-woman-with-gun-police-say,314873 September 20, 2020: A Sikh taxi driver was attacked in his car as he drove four passengers home from a casino. Vaneet Singh said the men slapped and shoved him as he drove along the A33 after collecting them from the Grosvenor Casino in Reading. The 41-year-old said one of the men tried to remove his turban and asked him: "Are you Taliban?" He said: "It was horrible, really frightening, I will never work the nightshift again. I'm still very scared." Mr Singh said the person in the middle of the back of the car pulled his turban as he was driving and slapped him on the head, while others kicked and punched the back of his driver's seat. SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-54147842 September 20, 2020: The body of trans woman and municipal political candidate Barbie Macon is found next to a tree near her home in Salvaterra, Brazil.  She had been strangled to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/20/barbie-macon_salvaterra-para-brazil_f69e62fe September 20, 2020: Days after surviving a machete attack, trans woman Armando Ventura is deliberately run over in a car attack by a man who moments before had told another trans woman of his intentions to murder a trans woman that night. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/20/armando-ventura_santo-domingo-distrito-national-dominican-republic_9a1d1ded September 21, 2020: A 15-year-old black schoolboy is on a lunch break in Crumlin, Ireland when three men approach him.  One of the men knocks him to the ground and begins kicking and punching him while the other two scream racial abuse at him, leaving him with injuries to his face and head. SOURCE: https://www.thejournal.ie/attack-teen-crunlin-injuries-interview-5222124-Oct2020/ September 23, 2020: A man tried to ram his car into anti-Netanyahu protesters in Jerusalem, Israel, but was stopped by police and arrested before he managed to hit anyone. SOURCE: https://www.972mag.com/israel-police-attacks-jewish/ September 23, 2020: A driver in a pickup truck drove into Black Lives Matter protesters at high speed, running over a man on a bike, who had to be taken to hospital. "She happened to come by, we was marching, and she ran him right over. She said 'I don't like Black Lives Matter,' she didn't, racial slurs and everything, and just ran him over," an eyewitness said. SOURCE: https://www.newsweek.com/truck-driver-runs-over-cyclist-blm-breonna-taylor-protest-buffalo-1534100 September 25, 2020: Producing a knife, 37-year-old Joseph Barchard lunges out of a group that had been racially abusing two black men in Plattsburgh, NY and attacks the two, injuring both. SOURCE: https://www.mynbc5.com/article/plattsburgh-man-faces-hate-crime-charges-after-attack/34239705 September 26, 2020: At a Portland, OR held held by white supremacist gang the Proud Boys, members attack several journalists. One black journalist is pushed to the ground and kicked in the face by a  Proud Boy. SOURCE: https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/portland-police-search-for-white-man-who-kicked-black-journalist-in-the-head-at-proud-boys-rally/ September 26, 2020: A gay man was left bloodied and bruised after he was beaten and called homophobic slurs while filming a TikTok video on Broad Street, New York City.  In video footage released to local media, a man with blonde hair and wearing a white shirt can be seen approaching the pair aggressively. The gay man’s female friend tries to hold him off, but he moves past her, punching the gay man in the face. When the gay man turns around to walk away, his assailant punches him in the back of the head. The suspect also hurled homophobic slurs at the man during the unprovoked attack. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/02/gay-homophobia-hate-crime-attack-new-york-city-tiktok-police/ September 26, 2020: A trans woman in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is smashed in the face by a pub-goer while idly enjoying a drink with her boyfriend in what police are treating as a hate crime. “There was a lot of blood over my face and my clothes and the top of my forehead was cut, my nose is very smashed up and I have a lot of bruising. I truly have never felt my lowest than what I felt yesterday. It’s just so sad it’s the year 2020 and I am a trans woman getting assaulted for just being me!” SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/01/trans-woman-beaten-belfast-northern-ireland-anna-montgomery-bootleggers/ September 27, 2020: 48-year-old Wade Twiner, 48, and his 22-year-old Lane face charges after chasing two black teens on ATVs with their pickup truck down a rural Yazoo County, MS road, firing guns at the teens and ramming one of the ATVs.  Police noted a social media post by the elder Twiner "that displayed the words 'Redneck Neighborhood Watch,' separated by a picture of a Confederate Flag, with the words 'You Loot We Shoot' at the bottom."   SOURCE: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2020/10/01/sheriff-father-son-being-investigated-hate-crime-after-shooting/3575161001/ September 28, 2020: After being reported missing two days before, the body of 23-year-old trans woman Donna Nierra is found floating in a river in Caloocan, Philippines.  She had been murdered. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/28/donna-nierra_caloocan-metro-manila-philippines_c43d9282 September 30, 2020: The murdered body of trans woman Michellyn Ramos Vargas is found lying on a rural road outside of San Germán, Puerto Rico. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/09/30/michellyn-ramos-vargas_san-german-puerto-rico_3a246dc0 October 1, 2020: Poland’s Internal Security Agency arrested a German citizen suspected of involvement with a terrorist group and of holding radical, extreme-right views. He has been charged with possession of explosives and ammunition. The man, named only as Jürgen K. under Polish law, was detained by ABW agents in the northern city of Gdańsk. The arrest came as part of an investigation by the National Prosecutor’s Office into “the activities of an organised right-wing terrorist group” that operates in Poland and other countries. A search of Jürgen K's place of work found two blocks of TNT weighing 1.2 kilograms as well as ammunition, firearms, a teargas canister and a grenade. SOURCE: https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/10/01/german-accused-of-involvement-in-far-right-terrorist-group-detained-in-poland-and-explosives-seized/ October 2, 2020: 43-year-old “Boogaloo Boi” Eric Allport is killed by federal agents during a shootout on Friday near a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Madison Heights, Michigan. The FBI says that Allport opened fire while they were executing an arrest warrant for a federal weapons offense, leaving one person dead and an FBI agent injured. SOURCE: https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/10/06/a-man-killed-near-detroit-has-become-a-martyr-for-the-far-right-boogaloo-boi-movement October 3, 2020: A man in Marbach am Neckar, Germany, went on a molotov cocktail rampage, setting fire to the police station, a protestant church and an apartment building. Everyone managed to escape the burning buildings, although the apartment building burned to the ground. Three police officers chased the man after he set the police station on fire and managed to arrest him. The suspect is a 42-year-old German national who insulted the police officers and shouted anti-police and xenophobic slogans. SOURCE: https://www.bkz.de/nachrichten/brandanschlaege-in-der-marbacher-innenstadt-84386.html October 3, 2020: A man participating in a right-wing pro-Trump car parade on a highway near Hilliard, Ohio, was arrested after firing his .45 gun into the cab of a semi-truck whose driver was taunting the Trump supporters. No one was injured. SOURCE: https://www.10tv.com/article/news/local/i-270-shots-fired-dublin/530-2508b81e-a92f-4cd8-b245-1a443ea6026a October 3, 2020: A Trump supporter sucker punched a man in the face for playing the song “Fuck Donald Trump” on his car stereo, in Denton, Texas. The victim suffered a broken tooth. The attacker, 44-year old Jason Lata, was later arrested. SOURCE: https://www.tmz.com/2020/10/03/man-punched-face-playing-f-donald-trump-song-yg/ October 3, 2020: 26-year-old trans woman and São Pedro do Ivaí, Brazil resident Nathalia Leticia Barbosa "Bia" da Fonseca is shot multiple times and dies from her wounds. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/03/nathalia-leticia-barbosa-da-fonseca-bia_sao-pedro-do-ivai-parana-brazil_9e16dae6 October 3, 2020: The body 33-year-old trans woman Felycya Harris is found dumped in a park in Augusta, GA.  She had been shot to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/03/felycya-harris_augusta-georgia-usa_c5136259 October 3, 2020: 34-year-old trans woman Gretell Ceballos Ramírez is shot dead outside of her Minatitlán, Mexico home. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/03/gretell-ceballos-ramirez_minatitlan-veracruz-mexico_74461af8

October 3, 2020: A couple walking in Lancaster, UK are confronted by a mob of youth shouting transphobic abuse.  The couple are attacked and beaten in the street, both suffering broken bones and other injuries. SOURCE: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/crime/14-teenagers-arrested-after-transphobic-hate-crime-attacks-lancaster-3075044

October 4, 2020: A 26-year-old Jewish student leaving his Hamburg synagogue is confronted by a man wearing camouflage who hits him in the face with a shovel, seriously injuring him. The 29-year-old attacker was carrying a note with a swastika on it at the time of the attack. SOURCE: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Juedischer-Student-vor-Hamburger-Synagoge-schwer-verletzt,synagoge444.html October 4, 2020: A transgender woman survived a brutal attack by a gang of men who stabbed her 16 times and slit her throat as she sat on a park bench in Los Angeles, California. Daniela Hernandez, 42, is in stable condition at a local hospital as police search for multiple suspects in what they suspect to be a hate crime. Hernandez was sitting on a park bench in MacArthur Park when she was surrounded by a group of four to five men. They told her “something to the effect of, ‘We don’t want gays in the park,'” officials said. The group shouted homophobic slurs as they attacked her, and a woman accompanying the men was the one to cut Hernandez’s throat. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/07/transgender-woman-daniela-hernandez-stabbed-16-times-cut-throat-los-angeles-park/ October 4, 2020: Two men are attacked in a Cool Springs, TN. bar after being told to "speak fucking English! You are in America!"  The men are seriously injured, with one requiring multiple surgeries to fix damage to his eye and face. SOURCE: https://www.wkrn.com/news/brutally-attacked-for-speaking-spanish-musician-for-the-mavericks-says-hes-the-victim-of-a-hate-crime/ October 4, 2020: An Asian man walking in NYC's Flatiron District is confronted by another man yelling anti-Asian slurs, who then punches and chokes him before running off. SOURCE: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-nyc-hate-crime-asian-attack-20201009-4dr7rsiuprh5roxbgq4okddpbe-story.html October 4, 2020: The body 36-year-old farm worker and trans man Erick "La Niño" Deseano is found dumped in Ciudad Isla, Mexcio, with his hands and feet ties up.  He had been beaten and stabbed to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/04/erick-deseano_ciudad-isla-veracruz-mexico_7a5a608e October 4, 2020: A gay couple in Dresden are stabbed in a homophobic attack by a fundamentalist Muslim extremist.  One dies while his partner is seriously injured. SOURCE: https://taz.de/Messerattacke-in-Dresden/!5724638/ October 4, 2020: 26-year-old Michelle "Brenda" Ramos Alarcón is stabbed to death in the streets of Cartagena, Colombia. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/04/michelle-ramos-alarcon-brenda_cartagena-bolivar-colombia_155346b0

October 4, 2020: 26-year-old communist party activist P.U. Sanoop is stabbed to death by a group of far-right Hindu nationalist BJP and Bajrang Dal members in Thrissur, Kerala, India. Sanoop had been distributing food packages in the Thrissur Medical College, before he was killed. Four other activists were also attacked and injured - one of them critically. SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/Redfishstream/posts/1077617642682066 October 5, 2020: Several members of the fascist “Identitäre Bewegung”, including the leader Martin Sellner, drive their car into a group of counter-protesters at a memorial to the anti-semite Karl Lueger, in Vienna, Austria. Luckily no one is injured. SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/autonome.antifa.w/posts/2815240768711263 October 6, 2020: The half-naked body of a 27-year-old trans woman Bruna is found dumped alongside a highway in Governador Valadares, Brazil.  Her hands and feet were bound. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/06/bruna_governador-valadares-minas-gerais-brazil_40bb5cf2 October 7, 2020: Corvallis, OR. Proud Boy Ben Baker, from Corvallis, Oregon, is arrested  after starting a fight at a local skate park. Baker pulled out his gun and fired it, but didn’t hit anyone, before being knocked unconscious and having his gun taken away by bystanders, who called the police on him. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/CVAgainstFash/status/1317549987539144712 October 7, 2020: The body of 20-year-old trans woman Brooklyn DeShauna Smith is found in her Shreveport, LA. apartment.  She had been shot to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/07/brooklyn-deshauna-smith_shreveport-louisiana-usa_fed99fe5

October 7, 2020: Two man arrive at the Recife, Brazil hair salon of 42-year-old trans woman Adrianinha Paris and shoot her multiple times, killing her. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/07/adrianinha-paris_recife-pernambuco-brazil_5e6bd741 October 8, 2020: FBI arrest 13 men involved in a months-long plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and hold a "trial" for her for "treason."  The original plot - to storm the Michigan legislature and take elected officials hostage - was changed to kidnapping Whitmer at her vacation home.  At least two of the men were involved in the Boogaloo Bois and Three Percent/Threeper movements. SOURCE: https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/10/09/gov-whitmer-kidnapping-suspects-linked-to-boogaloo-anti-government-movement-nbc-news-finds/ October 9, 2020: 37-year-old Trump supporter Joshua Lockner, gets into an argument with a group of teenagers in a haunted house ride in Caldwell, Idaho and pulls a gun on the teens.  Lockner is charged with five felony counts of aggravated assault and one count of carrying a concealed weapon while under the influence. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1315406492548374528 https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/boise-man-caldwell-haunted-house-world-pulled-handgun-at-kids-children-after-an-argument/277-a59eb0f6-4714-415d-a315-87dccc78e711 October 10, 2020: A teenager attacks a rabbi outside of his San Diego synagogue, punching him in the back of the head and shouting "white power!" before riding off on a bicycle, laughing, before returning later to the synagogue to taunt the rabbi. SOURCE: https://www.insideedition.com/14-year-old-charged-with-hate-crime-after-allegedly-assaulting-rabbi-in-san-diego-62541 October 10, 2020: 42-year-old trans woman Halil Bertaç Aynaci is found murdered inside her home in Antalya, Turkey. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/10/halil-bertac-aynaci_antalya-turkey_4da555a0 October 10, 2020: When two gay couples dare to kiss each other in front of a homophobic demonstration of Christian fundamentalists in Paris, the mob attacks them, knocking them to the ground and trying to strangle them before police intervene.. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/15/paris-france-anti-lgbt-protest-la-manif-pour-tous-same-sex-couple-kiss-violent-brawl/ October 11, 2020: 29-year-old trans woman Sara Blackwood is shot to death while walking home from work in Indianapolis, IN. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/11/sara-blackwood_indianapolis-usa_6900cf13 October 13, 2020: 42-year-old Lee Mouat is charged with hate crimes after hospitalizing a black teen by smashing him in the head with a bike lock at a Monroe, MI. state park.  Prior to the attack, Moaut was overheard by several witnesses loudly saying things like "these niggers are playing gang music," ""I'll bash their heads in if they don't turn [their music] down," ""I wish someone would say something to me so I can beat them," and yelling "Black Lives Don't Matter," and ""this is my beach, nigger!" at the teen and his friends before leaving then returning with the bike lock. SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michigan-hate-crime-charges-racial-slurs-black-teens/ October 13, 2020: Two nazis attack a group of four youths of Morroccan origin in the San Blas neighbourhood of Madrid, Spain. Luckily their attack fails and only the two nazis had to be treated for their injuries in the local hospital. SOURCE:  https://www.publico.es/sociedad/san-blas-neonazis-amenazan-e-insultan-menores-no-acompanados-puertas-piso-tutelado-madrid.html October 13, 2020: Mi’kmaw fisher Jason Marr brought his catch to a lobster pound in Middle West Pubnico, Canada when a mob of non-native commercial fishers formed outside. "I got myself barricaded in the lobster pound here," Marr said. Rocks were hurled, his vehicle was set on fire, and the building was raided.  RCMP now say 21 people have been arrested. "Hopefully charges come through for that," said Mike Sack, the Chief of Sipekne'katik First Nation which was operating a moderate livelihood fishery at the time. "I’d like to see a lot more. You know there was hundreds of people at the wharf and at the pound and there just needs to be a lot more people held accountable." A few days later the lobster pound was burned to the ground, causing life-threatening injuries to one person who was taken to hospital. SOURCE: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/mi-kmaw-fishers-chief-react-to-news-of-arrests-in-lobster-pound-incident-1.5228457 October 14, 2020: Five friends walking through Ankara, Turkey are confronted by a mob of 15 people, who beat them and call them homophobic slurs. “There are faggots in our neighbourhood,” one of the drivers allegedly shouted. “We will not let them live here.” “We were battered,” they added, alleging that three of the attackers followed them while they escaped back home before beating them in an alleyway. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/20/turkey-lynch-homophobic-attack-ankara-aspava-kaos-gl/ October 15, 2020: A gay man has a bomb shatter the window of his home in Amsterdam.  Purely by luck the man and his dog, who were in the room at the time, weren’t injured by the flying glass or the explosion. SOURCE: https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/205027/vuurwerkbom-vernielt-raam-van-bewoner-van-beuningenplein-dit-is-een-aanslag-op-mijn-leven October 15, 2020: A group of hooligans from La Familia, the Beitar Jerusalem soccer fan club known for its far-right, anti-Arab ideology, attacked an anti-government protest in Holon, Israel’s Kugel Square, where they sprayed tear gas at demonstrators, while in the plaza outside the Mediatheque, they hit one protest activist, Sadi Ben-Shitrit, in front of his 8-year-old son and assaulted Haaretz photographer Tomer Appelbaum. SOURCE: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-violence-against-anti-netanyahu-protesters-goes-up-a-notch-and-no-one-cares-1.9240634 October 15, 2020: A month after being reported missing by her family, the body of 29-year-old trans woman Aitiana Valeria Ramírez is found stuffed into a water tank along with three other bodies in a home in Totolapan, Mexico. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/15/aitiana-valeria-ramirez-lala_totolapan-morelos-mexico_23f91c1b

October 16, 2020: 24-year-old Donoban Fonseca is charged with stabbing a transgender woman in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park on August 21st and participating in the stabbing of another transgender woman there in October.   SOURCE: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/10/16/man-charged-transgender-women-attacked-macarthur-park/ October 16, 2020: After coming out to her father as a lesbian, a 19-year-old university student in Narbonne, France is confronted by him on campus, where he threatened to murder her and had to be restrained by a university employee to allow the woman to escape.   SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/20/father-drove-500-miles-kill-daughter-lesbian-narbonne-strasbourg/ October 16, 2020: An 18-year old Moscow-born religious extremist decapitates a 48-year old school teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France for showing the Mohammed cartoons during a class about free speech. The murderer was shot and killed by police later in the day. SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/16/french-police-shoot-man-dead-after-knife-attack-near-paris-school October 16, 2020: A Wichita man is arrested on suspicion of threatening to kidnap and kill Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple over frustrations with the city’s mask ordinance. Whipple said he had been read a series of text messages received by another city official that asked about Whipple’s address and contained a detailed threat against his life. The apparent motive was the suspect’s opposition to “masks and tyranny,” Whipple said. “He said he was going to kidnap me and slash my throat and he needed my address because I needed to see the hangman — me and everyone who, something about tyranny,” Whipple said. SOURCE: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article246513655.html October 17, 2020: A supporter of the far-right AfD party drove his car into antifascist counter-protesters who were gathered in Henstedt-Ulzburg, Germany, to protest against an AfD gathering. The 19-year old fascist got in his pickup, and raced towards several anti-fascist walking on the sidewalk, hitting three of them and injuring a bystander further along the sidewalk too. Two of the injured had to be checked out in hospital. SOURCE: https://taz.de/Vorfall-nach-einer-AfD-Veranstaltung/!5719987/ October 17, 2020: 19-year-old Netanel Aharon Haim is arrested in Jerusalem for assailing police officers and attacking anti-government protesters protesters with a chair and a bottle.  A knife was also found in his pocket. SOURCE: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-anti-netanyahu-protests-to-resume-in-jerusalem-across-israel-as-restriction-lifts-1.9242122 October 17, 2020: Following an anti-government demonstration at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, two small explosives were thrown at protesters by a group of about 20 youth on bikes.  Police also confirmed reports of a pepper spray incident in Tel Aviv, in which a motorcycle courier with the Wolt delivery service pepper sprayed a 12-year-old girl who was there with her mother and brother, among others, at a protest. On Tel Aviv's Nordau Street, police arrested a 19-year-old suspect who sprayed an unknown substance at protesters, one of whom was injured by the attack and required medical care. Earlier in the evening, on Tel Aviv's Kaufmann street, police arrested a 54-year-old man who cursed at demonstrators and punched one of them in the face. The protester did not require medical treatment. SOURCE: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-anti-netanyahu-protests-to-resume-in-jerusalem-across-israel-as-restriction-lifts-1.9242122

October 18, 2020: 42-year-old Kurt Edwards is arrested in Vaughan, Canada after screaming anti-semitic slurs at a stranger on the street before attempting to assault him.  Police connect Edwards to a string of anti-black and anti-semitic incidents in the area where residents were racially-abused and harassed and property was vanadalized. SOURCE: https://dailyhive.com/toronto/man-charged-hate-crime-incidents-vaughan October 18, 2020: The body of a murdered unidentified trans woman is found dumped in the streets of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Mexico. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/18/name-unknown_tlajomulco-de-zuniga-jalisco-mexico_7a42eece October 18, 2020: Far-right hooligans in Prague attack police at an anti-covid restrictions demonstration, kicking a policewoman from behind and then attacking the four other officers.  The extremists then began throwing bottles, firecrackers and garbage cans at the officers. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as "Fuck Prymula" [the Czech Health Minister], "Prymula to the gas chambers", and slogans known from ultra-right demonstrations such as "Nothing but the nation" ("Nic než národ") and "Bohemia for the Czechs" ("Čechy Čechům"). A correspondent for news server Romea.cz reported that some demonstrators were giving the Nazi salute. SOURCE: http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/czech-riot-police-intervene-against-violent-anti-covid-measure-demonstrators   October 20, 2020: A 14-year-old Syrian refugees is stabbed to death while walking to work in Konya, Turkey.  Vail El Mansur and his brother are confronted by a pack of teens who insult them and assault them.  Although the brothers tried to run away, Vail is stabbed in the chest and bleeds to death. SOURCE: https://stockholmcf.org/14-year-old-syrian-boy-stabbed-to-death-in-turkey-in-alleged-hate-crime/

October 21, 2020: Two women get into an argument with a Muslim family before attacking two of the women in the family, trying to remove their hijabs and stabbing them multiple times while yelling Islamophobic & xenophobic abuse.  Both victims are hospitalized and treated for injuries, including a perforated lung. SOURCE: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/22/two-french-women-charged-over-racist-stabbing-of-veiled-muslim October 21, 2020: Two days after being reported missing, the body of 25-year-old trans woman Violeta Ramírez Pérez is found dumped in an abandoned building in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/21/violeta-ramirez-perez_tuxtla-gutierrez-chiapas-mexico_23a5956f October 21, 2020: The body of 59-year-old trans activist Sangeetha is found stuffed into a barrel in her Coimbatore, India home.  She had been stabbed to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/21/sangeetha_coimbatore-tamil-nadu-india_57e039fc October 23, 2020 Fascist activists of the neo-nazi party Forza Nuova rioted in Naples against coronavirus restrictions, setting fire, attacking passing cars and throwing bottles, bricks and fireworks at the police. SOURCE: https://www.ilriformista.it/processare-e-sciogliere-forza-nuova-dopo-la-guerriglia-di-napoli-i-neofascisti-sotto-accusa-170231/ October 23, 2020: Three nazis who had plans to kill Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, are arrested on federal weapons charges. One, a porn actor, and two former Marines, one of whom was recently discharged from the service after being exposed as a white supremacist, were arrested for attempting to illegally sell untracable guns. The neonazis include Paul Kryscuk, 35, as well as two former Marines previously assigned to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina: Liam Collins, 21, and Jordan Duncan, 25. On Sept. 11, the indictment stated, Collins and Kryscuk “knowingly transported and delivered” a firearm “from Idaho to Pennsylvania.” The indictment states that a 9mm pistol and suppressor, which were not serialized, were seized on June 18 from an individual identified as “JH.” Collins was among a trio of U.S. servicemen in 2019 who were found to have posted on the infamous Iron March message board, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an “influential online gathering place for young neo-Nazis and neo-fascists.” “I have a lot of Fascist friends in the Army,” Collins wrote. “They say there are a lot of “Red-pilled” Soldiers due to the fact that major bases like Fort Bragg are infested with N****rs.” SOURCE: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/camp-lejeune-white-supremacist-plot_n_5f983a72c5b6441dbf02c818 October 24, 2020: Dozens of fascist militants clashed with riot police during a demonstration against the curfew in Rome, as Italy's government prepared to tighten coronavirus restrictions further. Some 200 masked militants belonging to neo-fascist group Forza Nuova hurled projectiles at police and set rubbish bins alight. Police in the Italian capital reported seven officers injured SOURCE: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201025-far-right-protesters-clash-with-rome-police-over-virus-curfew October 24, 2020: 29-year-old Natasha Nascimento dies in a São Luís, Brazil hospital two weeks after being severely beaten by a man and two woman while she was returning home from a party.  The three have been charged with a hate crime as well as illegal possession of a firearm. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/24/natasha-nascimento_sao-luis-maranhao-brazil_cd084998 October 24, 2020: Friends in a city parking in Lancaster, UK are confronted by a mob shouting transphobic abuse. The friends are punched, kicked, and dragged by their hair into the road. One of the four is hospitalized for the injuries he sustained in the attack, SOURCE: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/crime/14-teenagers-arrested-after-transphobic-hate-crime-attacks-lancaster-3075044 October 24, 2020: Abed al-Basset and Maysaa Ahmad (both 52) were at home in Asirah al-Qibliyah, Palestine, with three of their six children and a grandson. At around 3:30 P.M., a village resident called to say he had noticed illegal Israeli settlers approaching their home. ‘Abed al-Basset went outside and saw some 20 settlers drawing near. He tried to stop them from reaching his home, and in response, they started throwing stones at him. One of the stones hit him in the head and he started bleeding. About an hour later, soldiers arrived in a military jeep and threw stun grenades at residents who had gathered to defend the house.  SOURCE: https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence_updates/during-corona-crisis?update=213162 October 24, 2020: Trump supporter Jonathan Moreno pulled a loaded handgun on teenaged girls after disrupting their Black Lives Matter protest in Woodinville, WA. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1328106591875317761 October 25, 2020: An LGBTQ+ person is confronted by a man in Charleston, SC who points a gun at the person while yelling homophobic slurs at them. SOURCE: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/charleston-police-investigating-suspected-anti-lgbtq-hate-crime/article_49a918b4-1890-11eb-b96c-9b926b2371a1.html October 25, 2020: Far-right nationalists and fundamentalist Catholics attacked several women protesting at a church in Warsaw, Poland, against the far-right government’s abortion ban, while police looked on. One woman was thrown down the stairs of the church and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. SOURCE: https://oko.press/mowili-zamknij-sie-szmato-narodowcy-brutalnie-bronia-kosciola-policja-sie-przyglada/ October 25, 2020: 19-year-old trans woman Joana "Joana D'Arc" Domingos is shot seven times in the streets of Rio Largo, Brazil.  Hers is the 15th violent death of an LGBTQ+ person in the state of Alagoas so far in 2020. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/25/joana-domingos-joana-darc_rio-largo-alagoas-brazil_284f7dc9 October 25, 2020: Gunmen in Vitória da Conquista, Brazil arrive at the workplace of 44-year-old trans woman Juliana Piropo, shoot her in the head eight times, killing her, and flee. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/26/juliana-piropo_vitoria-da-conquista-bahia-brazil_a37fe009 October 25, 2020: 25-year-old trans woman Angel Haynes is found shot to death in a Memphis, TN. hotel. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/25/angel-haynes_whitehaven-memphis-tennessee-usa_20fede45 October 26, 2020: A 23-year old student returning from protests in Gdynia, Poland, against the anti-abortion laws passed by the far-right government, is stabbed in the face by a 64-year old man. The victim had been walking back from the protest when the attacker started harassing and insulting the women in the group. When the victim intervened, the attacker pulled out a knife and stabbed the student in the face. The victim managed to get away by smashing a bottle on the attackers head. The attacker was later arrested at his home. SOURCE: https://www.rmf24.pl/raporty/raport-strajk-kobiet/news-zaatakowal-nozem-23-latka-wracajacego-z-protestow-mezczyzna-,nId,4821135 October 26, 2020: A 44-year old man working for the Polish secret service used his BMW to plow through a group of women protesting the Polish abortion ban in Warsaw, injuring one woman. SOURCE: https://www.nation.lk/online/polish-spy-drives-through-abortion-law-protesters-as-fury-over-restrictions-grows-18473.html October 27, 2020: Bolivian miner's union leader Orlando Gutiérrez dies in hospital from injuries sustained after being severely beaten by a mob of anti-MAS fascists protesting the results of the Bolivian election. SOURCE: https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2020/10/28/fallece-el-secretario-ejecutivo-de-la-fstmb-orlando-gutierrez-273098.html#! October 27, 2020: Eric Wise and Travis Phillips are charged with first-degree robbery and hate crimes after chasing a black man through Federal Way, WA. then beating and robbing him while screaming racial abuse at him. SOURCE: https://www.q13fox.com/news/hate-crime-charges-filed-against-two-men-who-beat-and-robbed-a-black-man-in-federal-way October 27, 2020: An investigation into anti-Semitic graffiti, posters and vandalism in Ithaca led police to a cache of explosives and weapons. Officers searched an Ithaca home this week and found “very alarming evidence,” ranging from posters emblazed with hateful slurs to items used to make explosives, the Ithaca Police Department said Thursday. A search of a second spot led investigators to a collection of rifle parts, police said. The investigation started Oct. 20 when someone wrote an anti-Semitic slur on a sign and left it at an Jewish-owened business. During the next six days, the person struck again and again, police said — hanging anti-Semitic signs and defacing public places with hateful graffiti, police said. A second Jewish business owner was targeted. SOURCE: https://www.syracuse.com/crime/2020/10/police-follow-trail-of-anti-semitic-posters-vandalism-to-explosives-cache-in-ithaca-home.html October 28, 2020 Location: Białystok, Poland Description: Fascist hooligans of the All-Polish Youth attacked the women’s march in Białystok, Poland, throwing flares and fireworks and attacking participants. SOURCE: https://www.o2.pl/informacje/bialystok-atak-na-uczestnikow-strajku-kobiet-mlodziez-wszechpolska-nie-kryje-radosci-6569788881910464a October 28, 2020: Over a hundred fascists from the All-Polish Youth attacked a Women’s march in Wrocław, throwing flares, using pepper spray and beating people. Two people had to go to the hospital. Two journalists were attacked as well. SOURCE: https://natemat.pl/325005,wroclaw-atak-prawie-stu-narodowcow-na-protestujace-kobiety-w-okolicach-asp October 28, 2020: Far-right hooligans attacked the Women’s march in Poznań, Poland, throwing flares and fireworks at protesters. One journalist was injured when he was trampled by a police horse. SOURCE: https://natemat.pl/325007,strajk-kobiet-w-poznaniu-kibole-lecha-zastraszali-protestujace-polki October 28, 2020: A group of Turkish ultra-nationalists attack Armenian demonstrators who were blocking a road near Vienne, France, in protest against Azerbaijan’s war on their country. The protesters were attacked with knives and blunt weapons. Four protesters were injured, one seriously when he was hit in the head with a hammer. SOURCE: https://www.ladepeche.fr/2020/10/28/a-lyon-les-images-impressionnantes-daffrontements-sur-lautoroute-a7-bloquee-par-des-militants-armeniens-9168513.php https://asbarez.com/198035/armenian-protesters-in-france-attacked-with-weapons-wielding-turks/ October 29, 2020:  A Muslim extremist beheads a woman and kills two other people in a church in the French city of Nice, before being shot and taken away by police.  He also stabbed a 44-year-old woman who fled to a nearby cafe where she raised the alarm before dying. Police then arrived and confronted the attacker, still shouting “Allahu Akbar”, and shot and wounded him. SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-nice-idUSKBN27E17D October 29, 2020: A member of the fascist Identitäre Bewegung  is shot dead by police in Avignon, France after threatening passers-by with a handgun and threatening a North African shopkeeper.  SOURCE: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/france-attacker-in-avignon-is-anti-muslim-extremist-/2024830 October 30, 2020: 33 year old self-proclaimed "proud boy" Anthony Raymond is arrested after sending a threat into the newspaper in Dickinson, ND to bomb a polling center. SOURCE: https://www.newsweek.com/self-professed-proud-boy-arrested-after-allegedly-threatening-blow-north-dakota-voting-location-1543696 October 30, 2020: The 100.000 strong march for women’s rights and against the government’s abortion ban in Warsaw, Poland, was attacked multiple times throughout the evening by neo-nazi hooligans and far-right Catholics, after calls to violence by the leader of the ruling party PiS. Attackers threw bottles, bricks and flares, several people were beaten, burnt by flares or pepper sprayed, but the attacks were mostly repelled by antifascists among the protesters. 35 far-right supporters were arrested by police, with weapons like extendable batons and knives being confiscated from the attackers. SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/bagpipes-and-techno-blast-at-warsaw-pro-choice-march-but-menace-lurks   October 31, 2020 Far-right counter-protesters in Vancouver, WA. use bear mace on Black Loves Matter marchers holding a vigil for Kevin E. Peterson, who was murdered by police. Two of the far-right counter-protesters drove through the crowd and sprayed mace at protesters as they reached the intersection. Crowds responded by chasing the vehicle and throwing objects at it, breaking one window. The SUV stopped at Esther and 11th. Crowds surrounding the vehicle suddenly fled, yelling, "He's got a gun!" Two shots rang out soon after. A voice from the vehicle could be heard yelling, "Shoot them! Shoot the motherfuckers!" Luckily the shooter missed, and no one was injured or killed. SOURCE: https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2020/10/31/video-shots-fired-on-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-vancouver-wash-following-vigil-for-man-killed-by-police/ October 31, 2020: The half-naked body of 25-year-old trans man Vicente González Lora is found dumped in a vacant lot in Los Rios, Chile.  He had been raped and suffocated.  Police arrested a 58-year-old man for the hate crime hours later. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/10/31/vicente-gonzalez-lora_valdivia-los-rios-chile_dd637ec7 October 31, 2020: A caravan of Trump supporters surround a Biden campaign bus with their cars and attempt to force it off the highway outside of Austin, TX. Trump later celebrated the attack on Twitter, calling those involved “Patriots” who “Did Nothing Wrong”. One Trump supporter rammed a car driven by a Biden staffer. The man behind the wheel of that truck, Eliazar Cisneros, has a long history of embracing political violence; posting on social media things like #AllLivesSplatter, #RunThemDown, and encouraging the murder of protesters with vehicles. In mid-September, Cisneros drove his truck through a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. SOURCE: https://itsgoingdown.org/trump-applauds-escalating-far-right-violence/ October 31, 2020: Trans woman  Samylla Marry Windson is shot in the streets of Praia de Iracema, Brazil. She dies in hospital two days later. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/02/samylla-marry-windson_praia-de-iracema-fortaleza-ceara-brazil_6b9f0a54

November 2020: An Asian woman walking down Edinburgh's Rose Street with her two young children is approached by a mob of ten teenagers, one of whom punches her in the head while screaming "COVID!" at her. SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-56113045

November 1, 2020: A caravan of far-right Trump supporters drives through Richmond, Virginia, to confront protesters at the Robert E. Lee monument. One man is hit by one of the cars, a woman is pepper-sprayed from a car, and another Trump supporter fires his gun at protesters but doesn’t hit anyone. SOURCE: https://www.nbc12.com/2020/11/01/police-trump-train-leads-incidents-gunfire-near-lee-monument/ November 1, 2020: Members of a far-right milita pursue a 20-year-old Black Lives Matter supporter through Bakersfield in their vehicles, snatching a BLM flag from her and spraying her with bear repellant.  SOURCE: https://calmatters.org/politics/votebeat/2020/11/pro-trump-blm-clash-bakersfield/ November 3, 2020: A Latinx couple walking in Moorpark, CA are confronted by two strangers who assault both of them while yelling racial abuse.  The couple are both treated in hospital for injuries sustained in the unprovoked attack. SOURCE: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/2-men-sought-after-pair-assaulted-racial-slurs-yelled-in-moorpark/ November 4, 2020: 29-year-old trans woman Sandy da Silva Gomes is shot to death in the streets of Tijucussu, Brazil. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/04/sandy-da-silva-gomes_tijucussu-ceara-brazil_5f961310 November 4, 2020: An Asian woman walking on a downtown Vancouver, Canada street is approached by a man who immediately punches her in the face, knocking her to the ground, before fleeing. SOURCE: https://globalnews.ca/news/7447317/vancouver-assault-east-asian-women-possible-hate-crime/ November 4, 2020: 20-year-old trans woman Skylar Heath is shot to death in Miami, FL. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/04/skylar-heath_liberty-city-miami-florida-usa_cff69d10 November 5, 2020: Fascists attempt to assassinate Bolivia's President-elect Luis Arce by detonating an explosive device while he was in a meeting at his political party's headquarters in La Paz. No injuries were reported. The incident took place on the day in which some groups of the Bolivian far-right began a strike in Santa Cruz in rejection of the result of the presidential elections held on Oct. 18. SOURCE: https://www.telesurenglish.net//news/Bolivias-President-Elect-Luis-Arce-Attacked-With-Dynamite-20201106-0001.html November 5, 2020: 34-year-old trans activist Alejandra Benitez is shot at point blank range by a man on a motorcycle in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, killing her instantly. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/05/alejandra-benitez-la-power_san-miguel-de-tucuman-argentina_69259adb November 5, 2020: Two QAnon supporters are arrested enroute to the Philadelphia convention center where votes in the U.S. federal election were being counted.  One man, had a .40-caliber Beretta handgun inside his jacket, the other, had a 9mm Beretta in a holster and an AR-style rifle and ammunition were found inside the vehicle. An additional gun was recovered from the inside their Hummer, police said. The vehicle had a window sticker and a hat with the logo for the internet group QAnon, which is known for spreading conspiracy theories. The FBI has labeled them a domestic terror threat. SOURCE: https://6abc.com/philly-police-investigating-pa-convention-center-attack-plot/7689932/ November 6, 2020: After enduring weeks of Islamophobic harassment, a Muslim family returning to their Queens, NY. apartment are confronted by two neighbours who scream Islamophobic abuse, telling the family "we are in America" and then savagely beating the father while calling him a "fucking Muslim."  The man was hospitalized with severe facial injuries. SOURCE: https://queenseagle.com/all/savage-attack-on-muslim-family-in-rego-park-sparks-call-for-hate-crime-probe November 6, 2020:  Police in Josephine County, OR. seize dozens of guns during a raid on members of the white supremacist prison gang European Kindred, arresting three men. During a series of four properties, investigators seize more than 30 guns, at least 100 pounds of dried marijuana, more than 40 marijuana plants, methamphetamine, heroin, packaging material and scales. The prison gang European Kindred is believed to have been founded within the Oregon prison system, and has ties to the Aryan Brotherhood and the Ku Klux Klan. SOURCE: https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/Josephine-County-investigators-arrest-alleged-members-of-prison-gang-seizing-guns-and-drugs-573017521.html November 6, 2020: Cedar Rapids IO. Proud Boy Raven Damien Burkhow, 26,  receives a 30 year prison sentence for distributing cocaine and illegally possessing firearms, including three machine guns and a pipe bomb. Burkhow sold cocaine and a gun without a serial number, (known as a “ghost gun,”)  to an FBI informant and offered to sell the informant a pipe bomb, a silencer, and a machine gun with an integrated silencer.  SOURCE: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/public-safety/member-of-proud-boys-sentenced-to-30-years-for-distributing-cocaine-and-possessing-firearms-in-cedar-rapids-20201106 November 7, 2020: Trump supporters in Salem, Oregon mace two people with mace - one of whom is a legal observe with the National Lawyers’ Guild and beat a third person at a “Stop The Steal” protest. SOURCE: https://www.kptv.com/news/stop-the-steal-rally-held-in-salem/article_ced8d6ac-21fd-11eb-9b78-ef86fc22e810.html November 7, 2020: Around 16.000 Covid-19 conspiracy theorists descend on Leipzig, Germany, to protest against coronavirus measures. Among them hundreds of nazis and far-right football hooligans. Fascists attacked counter-protesters with bottles, clubs and knives. Football hooligans fought police with fireworks and bottles. The journalists’ union reported 32 attacks on reporters during the protests. SOURCE: https://www.dw.com/en/leipzig-protests-police-attacked-with-projectiles-and-fireworks/a-55533111

November 8, 2020: Trump supporters and Proud boys attack  counter-protesters during a “Stop the Steal” rally in Sacramento, California. Trump supporters used bear spray on counter-protesters.  SOURCE: https://abc7news.com/million-maga-march-trump-rally-sacramento-california-president-donald/7972098/ November 8, 2020: The semi-naked body of trans activist Mía Zabala Gutiérrez is found lying in bushes in Playa Grande, Honduras.  She had been beaten to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/08/mia-zabala-gutierrez-mia-colluchi_playa-grande-amapala-valle-honduras_9e19724c November 8, 2020:  54-year-old Staten Island, NY resident Brian Maiorana is arrested after posting threats against elected officials including NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who Maiorana referred to as “the Jew Senator from Jew York.”  Maiorana also referenced his intention to bomb an FBI building and referenced the neo-nazi novel “The Turner Diaries.”  SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/nyregion/brian-maiorana-threat-fbi-schumer.html November 8, 2020: A lesbian couple in India are forced apart by their families, who barge into their home and publicly beat one of them in front of their village. The two women, who are both adults, were living happily in the Baghpat area of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India.  SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/13/india-baghpat-uttar-pradesh-lesbian-couple-homophobia-hate-crime-lgbt/

November 10, 2020: Police arrest a politician from the anti-immigrant, nationalist Sweden Democrats after discovering a pipe bomb in his Uppsala home.  A 25-year-old man was also arrested. SOURCE: https://live.aftonbladet.se/supernytt/news/politiker-haektad-efter-bombfynd.3I1g1Lkeh November 10, 2020: An irate man walks into a Chinese tea shop in Washington DC cursing and ranting about "coronavirus" before pepper spraying the shop's owner and then fleeing. SOURCE: https://wtop.com/dc/2020/11/attack-at-dc-chinese-tea-shop-being-investigated-as-hate-crime/ November 11, 2020: 33-year-old Jessica A. Keech provokes an argument with her Moriah, NY neighbour.  After Keech begins swearing and yelling racial abuse, the neighbour disengages, returns to her home, and locks the door behind her.  Keech kicks in the door punches the neighbour in the face, knocks her to the ground, and chokes her.  The neighbour his hospitalized and treated for injuries to her face, neck, chest, and abdonmen. SOURCE: https://www.pressrepublican.com/news/local_news/moriah-woman-charged-with-hate-crime/article_8c6b0116-59ae-59ab-a7f9-fd8e97c008a6.html November 11, 2020: During a banned ultra-nationalist independence march in Warsaw, Poland, far-right hooligans throw flares at a flat displaying a rainbow flag from their balcony. The flares miss and break through the windows of a downstairs neighbour, setting his house on fire. Luckily he was not injured. The nationalists continued the march and fought with police, throwing bricks, bottles and fireworks. SOURCE: https://www.donald.pl/artykuly/CuFuXPGG/antifa-odwiedzila-pana-stefana-od-zaatakowanego-mieszkania-pomoc-w-naprawach https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/12/independence-march-poland-warsaw-far-right-nazi-lgbt/ November 11, 2020: 29-year-old Khari Covington approaches a light-complexioned woman at a Brooklyn subway station and punches her in the head.  This is the first of five increasingly violent attacks on light-complexioned women in and around the station over a seven-week period, culminating in Covington rushing a cashier in a nearby cigar shop, pinning her to the ground, and beating her mercilessly.  Police charge him with hate crimes. SOURCE: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/new-suspect-charged-with-hate-crimes-in-attacks-on-women-at-brooklyn-subway-station/2813877/ November 13, 2020: Twelve men in Stutgart, Germany are charged with belonging to a far-right terror organization on allegations they were planning deadly attacks on Muslims to create unrest and eventually overthrow the German government.  Seven of the men also face weapons violations charges.  Prosecutors allege the men planned attacks on mosques designed to kill and injure large numbers of Muslims, and were stockpiling firearms. https://apnews.com/article/international-news-civil-wars-germany-0ff7428694469210965e4e8e26715107   November 13, 2020: A Sikh schoolboy in Wellington, UK is attacked by two classmates, who kick him before tackling him, repeatedly punch him in the head, and force his turban off in an attack that is recorded & circulated on social media. SOURCE: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/government-urged-tackle-bullying-sikh-children-after-vile-video-emerges November 14, 2020: Police arrest several people in Frankfurt, Germany, who attacked a 20-year-old transwoman. The 20-year-old victim was near a shopping center at around 8:15 p.m. when one of the attackers insulted her. More people came and continued the insults. After a short time, one of the people began to kick the victim. When she defended herself, the transphobes attacked her with punches and kicks. After the police arrived, several people between the ages of 14 and 30 were arrested on site. SOURCE: https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/4970/4763536 November 14, 2020: When a Milwaukee Health Department official attempts to enforce health orders at a post-election Trump rally, he is attacked and beaten to the ground by the assembled crowd, who were trying to stop him from ending the rally. He luckily was not injured. SOURCE: https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/health-department-shuts-down-pro-trump-rally-in-milwaukee November 14, 2020: Stinging from Trump’s electoral defeat, Proud Boys and other far-right Trump supporters, roam the streets of Washington DC, attacking counter-protesters, journalists and random bystanders with knives, pepper-spray and clubs. At least one person is stabbed. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1328084426425651200 https://www.al.com/news/2020/11/proud-boys-take-part-in-violent-washington-protests.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/11/14/million-maga-march-dc-protests/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4 November 15, 2020: A protest by anti-racist group Kick Out Zwarte Piet, who want the black face caricature of Black Pete to be removed from the Dutch Sinterklaas celebrations, is attacked by hundreds of racist protesters, including many far-right hooligans. One policeman is injured by thrown fireworks, and five racists were arrested for throwing objects at the protesters and police. SOURCE: https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/aytmara-39-naar-geheime-locatie-na-rellen-in-maastricht-we-werden-omsingeld-door-hooligans~ad270067c/ November 15, 2020: QAnon conspiracy enthusiast Neely Petrie-Blanchard shoots amateur legal “expert” Chris Hallett multiple times after coming to the belief that Hallett - who had been attempting to assist her regain custody of her six children - was actually involved in a far-fetched plot to keep her children from her.  Police capture Petrie-Blanchard in Dawsons Springs, KY, where she was being harboured by a group of “sovereign citizens,.”  SOURCE: https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-mom-arrested-for-murder-of-fringe-legal-theorist-in-florida?ref=author November 15, 2020:  A 46-year old man wearing a Nazi SS uniform and carrying an axe threatened two men in Zeitz, Germany, and attacked their car and a door before police intervened. SOURCE: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/kriminalitaet-zeitz-46-jaehriger-mit-ss-uniform-bedroht-zwei-maenner-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-201115-99-339597 November 17, 2020: A woman living in Trilokpur, India is murdered by her brothers for marrying a Dalit man. SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/antifascistindia/posts/1704371029721611 November 20, 2020: A trans teenager Eva Vildosola, 19, is attacked by two men as she left her Barcelona house. They began swearing at her and calling her a “monster” before grabbing her, punching her in the face and kicking her.  SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/23/eva-vildosola-transgender-trans-woman-barcelona-day-remembrance/ November 20, 2020: The body of 22-year-old trans woman Asia Jynaé Foster is found dumped in the streets of Houston, TX.  She had been shot to death, police believe at another location. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/20/asia-jynae-foster_houston-texas-usa_56244bb6 November 21, 2020: Far-right Covid-19 conspiracy theorists once again marched in Leipzig, and attacked journalists, police and acounter-demonstrators. One person - a police officer - was injured. SOURCE: https://www.fr.de/politik/corona-querdenker-leipzig-demo-live-ticker-news-rechtsextreme-mobilisierung-polizei-protest-zr-90107005.html November 23, 2020: A man approaches a teenager on a Manhattan city bus, harassing the teen because of the length of his hair and telling him "I don't like gay people."  When the teem attempts to get off the bus, the man follows and punches him in the back of the head. SOURCE: https://www.metroweekly.com/2020/12/new-york-city-police-seeking-man-who-punched-bus-rider-because-he-thought-teen-was-gay/ November 23, 2020: 30-year-old trans woman Chae’Meshia "Chae Chae" Simms is found shot to death in her car in Richmond, VA. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/23/chaemeshia-simms-chaechae_richmond-virginia-usa_b3364555 November 24, 2020:  A Swiss woman grabbed a woman by the neck and stabbed another in the neck with a serrated knife in a department store in the southern Swiss city of Lugano in an Islamist terror attack. One victim sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries and another was lightly injured. The attacker was known to authorities as a possible terror-threat. SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-knife-idUSKBN2842LF November 26, 2020: A high school in Wellington, New Zealand, is put into lockdown after police said one of its students - a self-proclaimed nazi -  teenager threatens to do a mass shooting, targeting LGBTQ+ students. SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/26/new-zealand-wellington-high-school-shooting-lgbt/ November 26, 2020: Trans woman Bianca Pereira is shot dead in the streets of Marabá, Brazel by two men who rode up to her on a motorcycle, executed her, then sped off. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/26/bianca-pereira_maraba-para-brazil_4cf7822b November 26, 2020: Recently-paroled Shawn McDonnell, his brother Christopher McDonnell, and his wife Kayleigh Lewis kick off a two-state shooting spree in the parking lot of a Henderson, NV. convenience store by shooting five people, before proceeding to commit a series of drive-by shootings targeting 10-11 people in total, leaving one dead and at least four injured.  The shooting spree ending in a shootout with police, during which the assailants crashed their vehicle.  Christopher McDonnell told arresting officers that his brother had instructed him to "shoot the black guy" as part of an "upcoming war." SOURCE: https://www.crimeonline.com/2020/12/06/suspects-in-deadly-2-state-shooting-spree-may-face-hate-crime-terrorism-charges/ November 27, 2020: While working on a construction site in Jáltipan, Mexico, 26-year-old trans woman Cristina "La Bimbo" Hernández Castillo is executed by two men who arrive on a motorcycle, shoot her four times, then speed off. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/27/cristina-hernandez-castillo-la-bimbo_jaltipan-veracruz-mexico_90e50cbf

November 28, 2020: Proud Boys attending a QAnon/Trump rally outside the Governor's Mansion in St Paul, Minnesota pepper-sprayed and sucker punched counter-protesters. SOURCE: https://unicornriot.ninja/2020/twin-cities-anti-fascists-scuffle-with-proud-boys-and-pro-trumpers/

November 28, 2020: A group of fascists attack protesters against the repressive new security law in Strasbourg, France before being driven off by the crowd. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/louloucum/status/1332722505610616833

November 29, 2020: Actress and trans woman Laverne Cox is walking with a friend in Los Angeles' Griffith Park when they are approached by a man that asks Cox for the time, then asks her friend if she is "a guy or a girl," then punches Cox's friend several times when he refused to confirm Cox's gender for the man. SOURCE: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/laverne-cox-details-transphobic-attack-it-s-not-safe-world-n1249334 November 29, 2020: The body of trans woman Mikaely Campion is found stabbed to death in the streets of Manaus, Brazil. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/29/mikaely-campion_manaus-amazonas-brazil_4b718e00 November 30, 2020: 26-year-old self-proclaimed "neo-nazi skinhead" Frederick Jordan Price is found by  police in Daytona Beach, FL. asleep at the wheel of his car with heroin and an IED beside him. SOURCE: https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/25/port-orange-man-found-sleeping-car-bomb-said-he-neo-nazi/4015088001/ November 30, 2020: The decomposing corpse of 27-year-old trans woman Geovanna Ángulo Ramos is found dumped in a ravine in Santiago Suchilquitongo, Mexico.  She had been beaten to death. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/11/30/geovanna-angulo-ramos_santiago-suchilquitongo-oaxaca-mexico_d909ccc7 December 1, 2020: Shirley "Sherlyn" Scarleth Villarreal - a trans woman living in Santa María ExMarquesado, Mexico, is working in her beauty salon when two men arrive on a motorcyle, shoot and kill her, and ride off. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/01/shirley-scarleth-villarreal-sherlyn_santa-maria-exmarquesado-oaxaca-de-juarez-mexico_c8783825 December 1, 2020: 33-year-old trans woman Natasha Liverman is shot dead in an attack at the Iguala, Mexico funeral home that she owned and worked at. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/01/natasha-liverman_iguala-guerrero-mexico_af53f961 December 2, 2020: A West Seattle, WA. woman is confronted by her neighbour who calls her a terrorist, tells her to go back to her country, and then smashes her in the head with the lid of a crockpot. SOURCE: https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/king-co-hate-crime-streak-not-letting-up-with-three-more-charged/281-08e0e34b-f497-46d1-894b-0ccbf3ca147f December 2, 2020: 49-year-old trans woman Johana Morena Mayor is shot dead outside of her home in Cali, Colombia by a man on a bicycle. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/02/johana-morena-mayor_cali-valle-del-cauca-colombia_47d40c91 December 3, 2020: Telly and Judy Bear - an indigenous couple returning home from a funeral  - are confronted by a man in a convenience store parking lot in Airdrie, Canada.  The man screams racist abuse at the couple, yelling " ‘Get out of Airdrie, you dumb fucking Indian," before pulling out a police baton.  The couple attempt to flee in their vehicle but the man chases them in his own car, ramming their truck, trying to smash our the driver's side window with his baton, and then beating Telly Bear over his head and back with it.  Both Telly and Judy bear were hospitalized and treated for injuries sustained in the attack. SOURCE: https://calgaryherald.com/news/crime/indigenous-couple-rear-ended-beaten-in-airdrie-hate-crime December 4, 2020: After Hamlin, NY nazi Stephen Reed Pattison confronted Black Lives Matter protestors with other bigots and threatened to murder them, an FBI-led search of his home discovered a shotgun and rifle, which Pattison as a convicted felon could not legally possess, along with nazi and white supremacist propaganda connection him to a Rochester, NY "Blood & Honour" nazi gang. SOURCE: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2020/12/04/feds-link-hamlin-man-stephen-reed-pattison-notorious-skinhead-group-blood-and-honour/3815335001/ December 5, 2020: Trump supporters attack counter-protestors in St. Paul, Minnesota, injuring a journalist and breaking another person's nose. SOURCE: https://unicornriot.ninja/2020/anti-fascist-shield-wall-opposes-minnesota-far-right/ December 5, 2020: Samuli Matilainen - a member of the outlawed Finnish branch of the National Resistance Movement - breaks into the apartment of fellow NMR member Salla Silvennoinen which she has breakfast with her boyfriend, NMR member Toni Hakulinen.  Matilainen - jealous of the relationship between Silvennoinen and Hakulinen - attacks Hakulinen with a baton and a knife, stabbing him 50 times and killing him.SOURCE: https://varisverkosto.com/2021/03/finnish-nmr-activist-samuli-matilainen-accused-of-murdering-another-member-pleaded-insanity-in-court/ December 5, 2020: 27-year-old Olympia white supremacist Christopher Michael Guenzler attends a pro-Trump/QAnon/COVID conspiracy rally in Olympia, WA.  and fires a pistol into a crowd of counter-protestors, injuring one. SOURCE: https://malcontentment.com/person-shot-at-olympia-protest-man-charged-with-assault/ December 5, 2020: 18-year-old trans woman G. Rocha Silva is shot dead on an Itarantim, Brazil football field. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/05/g-rocha-silva_itarantim-nordeste-brazil_9b6e7354 December 6, 2020: A group of antifascists travelling to Düsseldorf to counter-protest against a far-right Covid-19 conspiracy theorist demonstration are attacked at Düsseldorf station by fifty neonazi hooligans and members of Combat 18. After a while, police separated the two groups and then let the attacking Nazis go, without so much as taking names. SOURCE: https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/392665.attacke-auf-antifaschisten-%C3%BCberfall-ohne-folgen.html December 6, 2020: A  group of men are speaking in Turkish on a Berlin street corner when a 26-year old man gets out of his car and fires a handgun at them before fleeing. Luckily no one was injured. Police arrested the man later in Hamburg, and said the motive was racism. SOURCE: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/schuesse-in-berlin-26-jaehriger-stellt-sich-der-polizei-li.124273 December 7, 2020: The body of 25-year-old trans woman Bruna Gomes Araújo is found under a bridge in Jacaré dos Homens, Brazil.  She had been stoned to death.  Araújo had survived a previous attempt to murder her. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/07/bruna-gomes-araujo_jacare-dos-homens-alagoas-brazil_ae9959a8 December 7, 2020: 20-year-old trans woman Tati Quirós is shot in the chest by an assailant in Playas del Coco, Costa Rico.  She dies from her wounds. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/07/tati-quiros_playas-del-coco-guanacaste-costa-rica_d7b24619

December 8, 2020:  A 47-year old AfD member from München, Germany is arrested for smuggling illegal firearms and ammunition from Croatia to arm neonazis in Germany. The arrested man said the weapons were intended for the far-right political party AfD. SOURCE: https://www.zdf.de/politik/frontal-21/waffen-vom-balkan-fuer-rechtsextremisten-100.html December 8, 2020: Vicenta "La Chenta" de Loris.- a 64-year-old stylist and trans woman in Iguala, Mexico, is shot dead by two gunman while she is praying at a local shrine.  She is the 2nd trans woman shot to death in Iguala that week. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/08/vicenta-de-loris-la-chenta_iguala-guerrero-mexico_ae94d271

December 9, 2020: A Somali woman is sitting in her car with her daughter in an Edmonton, Canada shopping mall parking lot when 41-year-old Richard Bradley Stevens approaches their car, screaming racist abuse at them.  Stevens punches out the passenger window, prompting the women's daughter to get out of the car and run from him, but Stevens pursues her, tackles her, and then attacks another woman who attempted to intervene. SOURCE: https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/could-have-been-me-somali-community-reacts-to-hate-motivated-attack-outside-edmonton-mall-1.5224222 December 9, 2019: An 18-year old nazi from Alburn, Australia is arrested on terrorism charges, with police saying he supported and wanted to be involved in "a mass casualty event". The man was described as holding neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic and white supremacist views. He urged others to commit terrorist acts, and sought bomb-making material. SOURCE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-09/nsw-albury-man-18-expected-to-be-charged-with-terrorism/12966514 December 9, 2020: Shortly after putting a Black Lives Matter sign on their lawn, a black family in Little Elm, Texas wake up to find both of their cars engulfed in flames and "Trump 20" spray-painted on their garage. SOURCE: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/18/black-texas-family-says-cars-set-fire-over-blm-sign/3956433001/ December 11, 2020: A woman deliberately plows her BMW through a protest march of migrant activists from behind, sending six people to hospital with injuries sustained in the attack. SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/11/new-york-vehicle-crowd-injuries-black-lives-matter-protest December 11, 2020: Trans woman Paula Brandão is beaten to death in São Paulo, Brazil by a mob of transphobic men. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/11/paula-brandao_sao-paulo-brazil_f4438d0e December 12, 2020: People attending a Hannukah celebration in Lexington, KY. are confronted by a man yelling anti-semitic slurs at them before ramming his SUV into the crowd, dragging one attendee and running over his leg before fleeing. SOURCE: https://www.wsgw.com/man-hit-by-car-during-hanukkah-ceremony-says-driver-used-anti-semitic-slurs/

December 12, 2020: A large group of Proud Boys bitter about Trump’s loss assault an active duty serviceman counter-protesting them in Washington DC. SOURCE: https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1337850354818375681 December 12, 2020: Proud Boys and other far-right Trump supporters attacked counter-protesters with mace and other weapons during an anti-Covid-19 measures protest in Olympia, Oregon. One of the fascists pulled a gun and shot a counter-protester, gravely wounding the man. He was saved by the quick action of protest medics transporting him to the hospital. The fascists also threw a firework bomb which failed to explode. SOURCE: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/12/riot-declared-in-olympia-after-opposing-protest-groups-clash.html December 12, 2020: Two anarchists were attacked and beaten in Lyon by a group of eight fascists as they left the anarchist bookstore and social center La Plume Noire. They had hosted a collection of toys and clothes for poor and immigrant families that day, and were ambushed by the fascists as they were leaving to go home. SOURCE: https://rapportsdeforce.fr/breves/lextreme-droite-attaque-une-librairie-anarchiste-a-lyon-et-fait-deux-blesses-12138878 December 12, 2020: Around 600 far-right conspiracy theorists attack police at  a banned anti-Covid-19 measures protest in Erfurt, Germany. SOURCE: https://www.johannes-krey.de/nicht-genehmigte-querdenker-demonstration-in-erfurt-eskaliert December 12, 2020: 24-year-old trans woman Marcela Estella Vieira is shot in the face and killed in Colniza, Brazil. Her body is found lying in the street hours later. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/12/marcela-estella-vieira_colniza-mato-grosso-brazil_d784a54a December 12, 2020: Following a string of raids throughout the country, Austrian police seize a huge quantity of weapons bound for German neo-Nazis. Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer delivered a press conference on Saturday detailing the government’s findings: The cache of trafficked weapons, which included assault rifles and hand grenades, were bought with drug money with the intention of arming an underground fascist group in Germany’s southeasternmost state of Bavaria. Raids have so far led to five arrests, and the seizure of around 74 semi- and fully automatic firearms including AK-47s, Uzis, and Skorpions, 14 handguns and revolvers, six grenades, explosives, as well as over 100,000 rounds of ammunition. This is the biggest haul that Austrian police have dealt with in decades. SOURCE: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000122445163/fuenf-festnahmen-und-spektakulaerer-waffenfund-in-rechtsextremer-szene December 12, 2020: Police say a passerby attacked a man holding political signs who was standing on the side of Hudson Bridge Road in Stockbridge, GA., during a Democratic ‘Get Out the Vote’ rally. Police said a person stopped and confronted a man who was holding Democratic candidate signs. Witnesses said that the suspect punched the victim in the face and then tore up his campaign signs. SOURCE: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/man-attacked-beaten-while-holding-political-signs-georgia-rally-police-say/KXYEK4F3MZF6VKMHKWPUBXYJ2E/ December 12, 2020: After a pro-Trump rally in Atlanta, Georgia, a group of four anti-fascist activists said they were packing up to leave when two trucks of Three Percenter militia members pulled up behind them while another group of trucks allegedly blocked off nearby traffic. “Chris Hill jumped out first.” said one of the victims, who agreed to talk to WABE on the condition of anonymity. Hill is a leader of a local Three Percenter militia group.  At least three masked men rush at the four, one carrying what appears to be a stun gun; another cocking a rifle. One of the anti-fascists says he and his group are unarmed as one of the alleged attackers repeats, “You wanna f***in’ die?”  and then smash the phone of out of the anti-fascist’s hands. Soon the four are surrounded by more than a dozen armed men and beaten while being held at gunpoint. SOURCE: https://www.wabe.org/counter-protestors-allege-militia-assaults-at-gunpoint-after-atlanta-rally/ December 13, 2020: 19-year-old Jaheim Pugh - a gay black man who sometimes dressed in drag - is shot & killed at a Prichard, AL. holiday party. SOURCE: https://mynbc15.com/news/local/family-calls-prichard-christmas-party-murder-a-hate-crime

December 13, 2020: Two racists harassed Roma family on a Prague bus, calling them racial slurs and giving Hitler salutes before trying to rip the family’s baby out of its stroller. When the father stopped the men they threatened to murder him. They were arrested shortly after getting off the bus. SOURCE: http://www.romea.cz/cz/zpravodajstvi/domaci/cikane-chces-pres-drzku-rasiste-v-praze-napadli-rodinu-s-malym-ditetem.hajlovali-a-snazili-se-dite-vyndat-z-kocarku December 13, 2020: A Jewish man is chased through Hackney, London by a man screaming  "I want to attack Jewish people" "I will soon launch an attack,!" and threatening to smash him with a bottle. SOURCE: https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/crime/upset-caused-by-anti-semitic-incidents-in-hackney-6857430 December 13, 2020: Duda, a 29-year-old trans woman living in Caucaia, Brazil, is stabbed to death in the streets. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/13/duda_caucaia-ceara-brazil_9ad02949

December 15, 2020: 32-year-old Rene Ladouceur launches an unprovoked assault against a 23-year-old hijab-wearing black woman at an Edmonton, Canada transit station, attempting to hit her in the head with a shopping bag while screaming racial abuse before a transit officer intervened. SOURCE: https://globalnews.ca/news/7531855/edmonton-police-hate-motivated-attack-parkdale/

December 15, 2020: A Kurd is approached by two men in Manisa, Turkey, was attacked by two unidentified persons after being overhead speaking Kurdish on their cell phone. ‘They said to me ‘Speak Turkish, we don’t understand you’. They swore at me and said ‘You will either say ‘how happy is the one who says i'm a Turk’ (a Turkish fascist slogan), or leave’. Then they beat me. I have the marks of the beating all over my body, and had to go to the hospital to get checked out.” SOURCE: https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/racist-attack-on-hdp-member-in-western-turkey-48683

December 15, 2020: Maria, a trans woman in Karachi, Pakistan, is found stabbed to death in her home. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/15/maria_karachi-sindh-pakistan_8dff34ef

December 16, 2020: A black man walking home in Edmonton, Canada is chased by another man screaming racist slurs and death threats at him.  He is chased into his own yard by the man and assaulted. SOURCE: https://globalnews.ca/news/7531855/edmonton-police-hate-motivated-attack-parkdale/ December 17, 2020: A dispute on a NYC subway involving a woman not wearing a face mask turns into a hate crime when six people assault the woman while screaming anti-Asian abuse at her. SOURCE: https://www.amny.com/news/angry-mobs-assault-on-maskless-a-train-rider-in-greenwich-village-investigated-as-hate-crime/ December 17, 2020: An 82-year-old COVID-positive Latino man in a Lancaster, CA. hospital is beaten to death with an oxygen tank by his 37-year-old hospital roommate, who took offence when the man began praying. SOURCE: http://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/10381/20201226/elderly-man-treated-for-covid-19-killed-by-fellow-patient-because-he-prayed.htm December 17, 2020: A Syrian refugee family is forced to go public after enduring months of attacks by their own neighbours in Heerlen, Netherlands. The family had been forced out their home to shelter with friends in Belgium. The main attacker, their direct neighbour had attacked the family with bleach and broken down their door to beat them with a club. Other people from the neighbourhood threw bombs at their house. SOURCE: https://nos.nl/artikel/2361032-heerlen-zoekt-woning-voor-bij-burenruzie-betrokken-syrisch-gezin.html December 18, 2020: Anthony Crumbley is walking home from a bar in South Boston, Massachusetts, when he is attacked.  The 25-year-old gay man said: “The two males and a female approached me and two males attacked me and stabbed me in my neck and in my stomach, and pretty much ran and left me there.” Suffering life-threatening injuries and left to bleed out on the ground, Crumbley was taken to Boston Medical Center where he spent four days in a coma in the hospital’s ICU. Crumbley insisted: “I believe it was an attack that had to do with gay hate because, you know, I dress very femme and I’m a very outspoken person.” Still recovering in hospital, the young gay man said he is living in fear and struggling to make ends meet after being stabbed. “No one has been arrested for doing this to me and I’m scared, truthfully, knowing they are still out there on the streets and could do this to me again at anytime.” SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/12/28/gay-black-man-stabbed-coma-boston-massachusetts-anthony-crumbley/ December 18, 2020: An Israeli settler opens fire at a group of Palestinian and Israeli protesters on Friday during a demonstration against an unauthorized outpost near the village of al-Mughayyer, Palestine. As the protesters reached the hill, several Israeli settlers with weapons and attack dogs drove up in a car, got out and walked toward them, at which point one of the settlers fired a number of direct shots from his pistol just meters from the protest. Soldiers who arrived at the scene about a minute after the shooting did not detain the shooter; they instead hurried the Palestinians away from the scene, threatening them with arrests should they refuse the soldiers’ orders. SOURCE: https://www.972mag.com/settlers-open-fire-palestinian-protesters/ December 20, 2020: The decomposing corpse of a trans woman is found in her home in Baga, India.  She had been murdered. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/20/name-unknown_baga-goa-india_6fa35efa December 21, 2020: Bastian Brandstötter is waiting for an elevator in Vienna, Austria when an older man standing beside him “suddenly started yelling at me, abusing me and kicking me," he says. The man didn't want to stand next to him and certainly didn't want to take him in the elevator - "because I have dark skin," says Brandstötter. The 26-year-old began filming the altercation. When he tried to get in the elevator the racist pepper-sprayed him several times. SOURCE: https://kurier.at/chronik/wien/sohn-von-neos-abgeordneter-am-westbahnhof-mit-pfefferspray-angegriffen/401137608 December 21, 2020:  A special session on Covid-19 measures at the Oregon Capitol was slightly disrupted as far-right protesters tried in vain to get into a largely-empty Capitol. Throughout the day, Proud Boys and other Trump supporters broke glass doors on the west side of the Capitol building, tore tarps from the marble reliefs on the front steps, and engaged in a brief standoff with Oregon State Police and Salem Police Department officers. More than 100 protesters joined in the efforts, including members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right, Washington-based group led by Joey Gibson. State police arrested four organizers during the six-hour rally — and are looking for a man who tried to break in and attacked two reporters, officials said. SOURCE: https://eu.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/21/protesters-gather-oregon-legislature-starts-special-session/3993102001/ December 22, 2020: Austrian police investigating a neo-nazi terror cell search the Guntramsdorf, Austria residence of notorious neo-nazi Peter Binder, recovering two kgs of TNT, four anti-personnel mines, two hand grenades, ammunition and several fully automatic weapons. SOURCE: https://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/neonazis-zwei-kilo-sprengstoff-und-minen-in-guntramsdorfer-wohnung/401138601 December 22, 2020: Hours after celebrating her birthday with friends, trans woman Oreinha is found beaten to death and dumped in a ditch in Cruzeiro do Sul, Brazil. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/22/oreinha_cruzeiro-do-sul-rio-largo-alagoas-brazil_88ef22ec December 25, 2020: A transgender woman is shot dead on Christmas Day in the East Chatham neighbourhood of Chicago in what her friends believe was a hate crime.  The 25-year-old was found dead in an incident initially reported as a hit-and-run crash, though it has since emerged she suffered gunshot wounds.  SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/12/29/courtney-eshay-key-chicago-transgender-woman-death-misgendered-police/ December 25, 2020: 26-year-old trans woman J. A. da Silva is shot to death in the streets of Cascavel, Brazil. SOURCE: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2020/12/25/j-a-da-silva_cascavel-ceara-brazil_db80c313 December 26, 2020: Ten fascists armed with bats, clubs, and knives storm a shelter for refugee children in Oreokosta, Greece, beating all of the children while screaming xenophobic abuse at them.  Four children were injured in the attack, one of whom had to be hospitalized. SOURCE: https://alterthess.gr/content/ratsistiki-epithesi-se-domi-filoxenias-anilikon-prosfygopoylon-traymatistikan-tessera-paidia December 28, 2020: An Asian woman walking along a Manhattan street hears a man shout at her "“You bitch, go back to your own country, go back to China!”  When she turns around, the man racially abusing her slaps her glasses off of her face and then punches her in the head before fleeing. SOURCE: https://nypost.com/2020/12/28/man-punches-woman-after-telling-her-to-go-back-to-china/ December 28, 2020: A historically-black church in Springfield, MA. burns down in a "highly suspicious" fire that the FBI is investigating as a hate crime.  It is the third fire in as many weeks in the area. SOURCE: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/springfield-black-church-fire-hate-crime-b1780078.html  December 29, 2020: Police raid a storehouse leased by a nazi in Malaga, Spain, seizing 121 hand guns, 22 assault rifles, 8 submachine guns, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, eight silencers, an antitank grenade, and 1.5kgs of explosives. SOURCE: http://sareantifaxista.blogspot.com/2020/12/operacion-nongreta-g-civil-interviene.html READ PART ONE (JANUARY-MAY 2020) OF OUR TIMELINE HERE: https://antifainternational.tumblr.com/post/190676684915/2020-a-timeline-of-bigoted-fascist-and-extreme READ PART TWO (JUNE-SEPTEMBER 2020) OF OUR TIMELINE HERE: https://antifainternational.tumblr.com/post/625560737897758720/2020-a-timeline-of-bigoted-fascist-and-extreme

[breitzbachbea]

#11 and #41 for turgre!

Thank you for sending the prompt in!

Fanfic Trope Mash Up

#11 Neighbour AU + #41 Big Damn Kiss =

Herakles & Sadık are both recent university graduates from Athens & İstanbul, but find themselves lacking opportunities to work in their homecountries. So they go abroad to try their luck elsewhere.

Both end up in Germany. Herakles' is living with the Simonides old family friends who've either migrated decades ago or are living as expats in Germany. Natasa and Ibrahim welcome Herakles with open arms. He immediately makes friends with their twins, only a few years younger than him. Omar and Timothea, as they're called, are still living with their parents while they're attending the local university. They're not living in luxury, but they're happy.

Sadık manages to get in contact with Havva Be Yauno via some university acquaintances. They migrated to Germany a while ago, after being kicked out working in local administration. Sadık gets to share a small flat in the building Havva manages for the landlord, together with a Kurdish Woman called Dilan Taş. After some initial hiccups, the two become close friends.

The hiccups with their neighbours next door are less initial. No, that's a lie - The Simonides don't mind their new neighbours, even invite them for coffee and tea. Omar pretty quickly evolves a crush on Dilan.

It's just Herakles and Sadık who keep butting heads.

They argue about petty semantics that only people who studied 'breadless art' would care about. Herakles complains that they're too loud at night. Sadık says Herakles is dragging stray cats into the house by leaving out food & now the whole staircase stinks. There's always something.

As time goes on, they get over themselves a little. Too busy with their own life. Sadık feeds the cats with scraps he gets from the Turkish butcher. Herakles comes over after it's been eerily quiet for weeks and finds out that Sadık's latest odd job makes him work at night. He actually finds him slumped over on the kitchen table when Dilan lets him in before she leaves for work. He goes back and leaves him a package of expensive coffee beans that he had imported from Greece.

One night, they end up together on the university campus. Sitting on the steps surrounding a piece of green near a small river. The city's barely still awake, there's only music, TV and chatter from the dorms. The occassional student crossing after they stayed late at the library.

"What did you actually study?" Sadık asked and put the lighter back into his pocket. It was a cheap one with a wheel. Pain in the ass to get working at this point. His last money had been spent on the cigarettes themselves.

Herakles took a deep breath through his nose. He stared at the water, flowing invisibly except for a few dancing white and orange specks. "Philosophy," he said.

Sadık chuckled and the chuckle quickly became a laugh. "Oh, what a surprise that you couldn't find a job with such a prestigious degree." He grinned and exhaled some smoke.

"And history. Archaeology, Politics, Linguistics, Architecture, Maths... I dipped my toes into physics, too, for a little bit, but couldn't really make it."

Sadık's grin had long faltered. Herakles looked to the river. A smile replaced the initial surprise on Sadık's face. "Oho, a real Renaissance man, aren't you?"

"I like to learn. But all I could do with the few fields I actually managed to acquire a degree in was teach in school. And I'm just not... very good at that." He sighed. Long. "But my dad had stopped paying once I had gotten a job, not that he had ever really paid me enough, mind you, so... I had nowhere to go if I had quit."

"Except here." Sadık wished Herakles would have looked at him. To even catch a glimpse of him, a little bit of that beautiful face illuminated by the pale moon or the orange streetlights.

"Except here." Sadık finally had his wish granted. "What did you study?"

Sadık took a deep breath through his nose. His cigarette was almost finished. "Architecture, too. Tried to get into engineering, but couldn't quite make it. Would have loved to do Literature, frankly. I dunno, get a teaching position at an university, but Anne* always had higher plans for me. Career woman and all that, only wanted the best for me, too, so studying something almost as useless as philosophy wasn't really up for debate."

Now he was the one to stare into the river while he took another drag. He looked at his feet. His shoes could need a good cleaning.

"A smoking literature professor, how cliché," Herakles said and the deep shadows on his face hid how much it reflected the amusement in his voice. He leant in closer to Sadık and put a hand on his thigh. His inner thigh. "All the women would have gone wild over this."

"You think so?" Sadık asked, an expectant but cautious smirk on his face. Rest of his cigarette between his fingers. Herakles' weight on his thigh. He enjoyed his touch. The nights were so cold here in Germany. He leant in for a kiss.

Herakles' hand disappeared. "But I don't kiss smokers." The next moment, Sadık was engulfed in darkness as Herakles stood and blocked the streetlight. He turned and adjusted his jacket. "I have a job interview tomorrow, so see you around, I guess." He turned to just the right angle that Sadık could catch his grin.

He only had a dumbfounded stare as goodbye while Herakles climbed the stairs back to street level.

Some time after this incident, Herakles gets a job as research assisstant at the local university. It's initially only for a project of the history facculty, but he's happy nonetheless.

Now that he knows Sadık enjoys literature, he tells the Simonides one time the topic crops up & they know of a regional literature club, who's holding public reading nights. Any author can show up and read their pieces for 10 Minutes to an audience. Omar tells Dilan, who knows that Sadık writes poetry. She thinks he should go and so after she bullied him into it, they do.

Sadık becomes a regular guest there and ends up meeting other literature enthusiasts, like the Beilschmidts. (He and Gilbert bicker a lot about what the other writes, both trying to take the other down a peg). Sadık never tells Herakles any of this.

So imagine his surprise when he spots him one night in the audience. Afterwards, he's torn between sneaking out and going straight up to him, but Herakles makes the decision for him.

"I didn't know you wrote poetry," Herakles finally broke the awkward stare-off.

"Well, now you do." Sadık closed his book and shoved it under his arm. With a grin, he asked: "You think it's good?"

Despite what followed, Herakles couldn't wipe the smile off his face: "I enjoyed it more than the other guy's crime story, at least."

Sadık gave a short bark of laughter. "Oh, you don't know half of it, Gilbert's been trying to make it work since forever. You got time for a coffee?"

So life's good. They're hanging out, they're working, they're pursueing their passions. One time, the heater in Sadık and Dilan's flat breaks and despite Havva trying their best to get it repaired and them a temporary replacement, they're freezing their asses off. So they go and visit their neighbours, who offer them to sleep over. Sadık is supposed to sleep on the couch. Dilan is supposed to sleep on a mattress in the Simonides' room. Both somehow end up sleeping in a Greek's bed instead. (Herakles has a really small room - his desk is even in the twins' room cuz it wouldn't fit in his own. Sadık asks if he wants coffee and they end up drinking coffee in his bed together and talk until they fall asleep.)

Life could be rosy. That is until one day, the Simonides get into real trouble with the landlord. You see, Natasa and Havva always had a tense relationship, because Natasa doesn't believe in playing by the rules too much, while Havva is a very organized person. However, now some things - like mayhaps Herakles living with them - have gotten directly to the landlord of the building and they're not amused. They threaten to evict them, unless Herakles is going - and want a hefty fine from the Simonides either way.

Getting a new home would mean severe financial strain, not to mention the fine. Omar and Thea may would have to pause or drop their studies. Herakles would have to go back to Greece and start from scratch.

Which he's willing to do, seeing how much trouble he caused the family, even if it breaks his heart. Natasa is having none of it - "I'm not sending you back to your son of a bitch, deadbeat dad, Iraklis" - and insists he stays.

Dilan and Sadık get wind of all of this and they're just as devasted as the family itself. They don't want to lose their neighbours. They don't want this to ruin Omar's and Thea's future. They don't want Herakles to leave. Sadık doesn't want Herakles to leave.

So he pleads with Havva to do something, anything, he'll help them do whatever it takes. Natasa is far too proud to do so. Maybe she even suspects that Havva had something to do with it. (They don't).

And through a lot of negotiation, bribery and running errands, the Simonides get to stay. Omar and Thea can continue pursueing their degrees in peace. Herakles gets to stay and keep working in Germany.

"You... You've spent your past weeks on this?" Herakles' stare pierced Sadık as much as it seemed to look right through him. His mouth hung open, jaw slack. "This was all your doing?"

Sadık took a deep breath, but had to settle for a rather unintelligent "Well, yeah." Herakles' stare unsettled him. He had never seen him at a loss for words before. He was even afraid the other might faint.

A heartbeat later, Sadık was afraid he might faint. Herakles had taken a step towards him, grabbed his face and pressed his lips onto Sadık's. It knocked the breath out of him.

His lips were soft. They were so soft and hot and melded with his own effortlessly.

He kissed back, hands on Herakles' face, fingers buried in the messy hairy. The pressure between them was right, felt right, made them one for a brief eternity.

It ended as abruptly as it had begun. They both took a deep breath through their nose and Herakles panted loudly as he exhaled through the mouthm He swallowed.

"Herakles, I don't think that that's an appropriate enough Thank you", Ibrahim said, but neither of the two barely even registered it. Natasa laughed. Loudly.

"Oh, no, I think it's more than enough," Sadık replied as he stared at the wall next to Herakles' head. His hands were still on his face. "Although..." Ibrahim and Natasa were talking in Greek when he faced Herakles again. She still chuckled while a grin stole itself onto his face. "I think I could go for a little bit more gratitude, after all we've done."

"Don't push it," Herakles warned him. Yet, his cockyness was rewarded with another kiss.

Sadık's tongue slipped between his lips effortlessly. As if it belonged there.

Like Herakles belonged here.

So... yeah! I hope you liked it!

#beareplies #needcake #aph #hws #hetalia #aph turgre #hws turgre #aph greece #aph turkey #hws greece #hws turkey #I came up with this AU before I fell asleep last night #Oh also Omar and Dilan start dating as do these two idiots. #I imagine this entirely set in my Uni city and for Hera to work for one of my Profs LMAO #Sadık sometimes visits Herakles at work to bring him sweets #storie nostre #natasa #ibrahim #omar #thea #hera #dilan #havva #sadık #also havva gets invited for dinner sometime to say thanks for their efforts. to smooth things over.

[gurahe-bikisine]

Forgotten war

There’s a war going on

I've been told this movie will write itself

To spread love, be wise and let violence fight itself

I can’t when there’s a war going on outside every street corner

A war, on my TV screen every morning

Can’t sleep, with the bombs and the helicopters swarming

There’s a war in my mind, that's what everyone's ignoring

This Turkish problem will be contained, I know everyone feels the same

Protect this block and tuck this fucking Glock, like every kurdish dame

This our spot, this is my kins spot, freedom through blood is what we represent

I go crazy, bash your babies head on your doorstep

Fight to death, and I mean to death, I let my weapons talk

You say “truce”, I don’t speak your dying language, kill fascism at the heart

You force your “laws”, fuck you and the law, I’ve killed your police officers too

Carpet bomb your schools, shoot up your teacher too, they can’t teach the truth

Make your head pop, because you took my pops, spilling blood won’t stop

I'm too real?, I feel more comfortable with a Dragonov

Show you what I got, there’s nothing else but this gorey shit

You made my home look like the Gaza Strip, so in turn I castrated your kids

Made them suck their dick

You kill our kids, and locked up my mama too

She was fighting for kurdistan like any Kurdish mother would

I be stressed, I be hella stressed, I gotta smoke a bunch of weed

Get high for real, start popping pills and drop a Xanny in some lean

As a kid I screamed, but you just smiled like everything is fine

Hope it was fun, cause I will grab my gun, come take your life or mine

Suicide, existing is suicide, fighting us is suicide

Fuck what’s right or wrong, as a kid I learned do or die

If I do I die, fine

But if I don't I die, that’s a waste of life

All it took was you gutting my brother for me to choose a side

When there’s a war going on at every border

Many have asked why I smiled in the courtroom when all the cameras started swarming

It’s because I felt happy that you had to plan your fathers funeral that same morning

I adapted to war with my whole heart

War wholeheartedly raised me and changed my thought

It’s a process, so I digest killing as my own art

You’re not blessed, the fact you’re still alive is because you ran when the shooting started

We have our families gassed out their homes now

But when we retaliate we are told to “let God in”, it brings the good out

Just learn a lesson and listen

My current composition is a threat to happy living

I have nothing but bloodlust driven envisions of bombing your children and sending them to hell

Being like this wasn’t my decision

People look into my eyes thinking they can find good

I only have a militant mind, as all should

Define good by yourself, I think killing can be good

And may my actions live forever like they should

It's a war going on and I won’t stop fighting

So frightening when we attack it sounds thunder and lightning

Ambush striking, our bullets fall like ice and hail

My whole life had been like, cold nights in Hell

Stuck in a mode like, feeling low like, like you don't like yourself

You got no sight what my life’s like

No foresight, that's the shit that your foes like

Run up on a man get him froze like

Put the 9mm to his head, to take a pic and tryna get the pose right

Red dot, headshot, let him bleed

Out of all these people, I've got to shoot some

Fuck one pistol, I'm cocking two guns

Don't need to get paid, I have a coup to run

One on one you all can’t do none

Guns, that’s my way of life, get ammo not God

If you got guns, we got bigger guns, riddle you as I ride

If I die, they say I went hard, I fought really hard

You are either with this life or not, we’re gonna get these kills or starve

War is what we breath, writing in my pad, making more war songs

My enemies don’t know what’s happening, Planning their death won’t take to long

What do I mean?

I’ll make them scream, leave them bleeding at the scene

Kurdish block, we carry more than Glocks, having devilish schemes

War too real, it’s why some can’t deal, I'm too real to dream

So when I run in your home and turn your family cold I won’t feel a thing

[bountyofbeads]

The Latest: Arab FMs to meet over Turkey's Syria operation

https://apnews.com/5bf8e9bfa25c45ef9d4dfcef352e26a3

The Latest: Arab FMs to meet over Turkey's Syria operation

15 mins ago

BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest developments following President Donald Trump's decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish fighters ahead of Turkish offensive into northeastern Syria (all times local):

10:55 p.m.

The Arab League says foreign ministers from around the region will meet to discuss Turkey's military operation in northern Syria.

Hossam Zaki, deputy secretary general of the pan-Arab organization, says Wednesday the meeting will take place in Cairo on Saturday.

The meeting comes after Egypt called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League to discuss Turkey's "blatant aggression" against Syria's sovereignty.

___

10:45 p.m.

Turkey's Defense Ministry says Turkish ground forces have moved across the border to fight against Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria, hours after Turkish jets and artillery pounded areas in Syria's northern border.

The ministry said Turkish troops, joined by allied Syrian opposition forces, moved into Syria on Wednesday. It did not provide further details.

Turkey's offensive — named Operation Peace Spring —came after U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to withdraw American troops from the area, paving the way for an assault on forces that have long been allied with the United States.

Turkey aims to create a so-called "safe zone" that would be cleared of Kurdish fighters — that Ankara considers to be terrorists and an extention of Kurdish rebels fighting inside Turkey — and eventually allow for the return of refugees.

___

10:35 p.m.

A Syrian war monitor and an activist collective in Kurdish-held areas say at least seven civilians have been killed in Turkish strikes in northeastern Syria.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at eight, including two Christian Assyrians in the city of Qamishli, a husband and wife and their child as well as another man in a village outside of the town of Tal Abyad, and a child in a village west of Qamishli. Also killed was a man in Ras al-Ayn, it said.

The Rojava Information Center, an activist collective in northeast Syria, counted seven killed.

The Observatory said at least seven fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in the fighting. The Rojava center put the death toll at three.

Turkey began a military operation against Kurdish fighters Wednesday targeting areas in northeast Syria with airstrikes and artillery shelling.

___

9:20 p.m.

U.N. diplomats say the Security Council will hold a closed meeting Thursday on Turkey's military action in northeast Syria.

The five European nations on the council — France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and Poland — requested the meeting on Wednesday, the diplomats said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions were private.

The meeting will take place after Thursday morning's scheduled meeting on Colombia, the diplomats said.

— By Edith M. Lederer

___

8:15 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. does not endorse Turkey's assault on northern Syria and has made it clear to Ankara that its incursion against Kurdish fighters who helped the U.S. battle the Islamic State is a "bad idea."

In a statement Wednesday, Trump said no American soldiers are in the area being invaded. Earlier, Trump ordered U.S. forces out of the area, prompting criticism that he was abandoning an American ally.

Trump says he does not want the U.S. to fight "these endless, senseless wars."

He says he will hold Turkey to its commitment to protect civilians and religious minorities, including Christians, and ensure the invasion does not create a humanitarian crisis. He also says Turkey must make sure that IS fighters held captive in Syria remain detained.

___

8:05 p.m.

A U.S. defense official and a Kurdish official in Syria say the American-backed Syrian militia being attacked by Turkish forces has suspended operations against the Islamic State group.

The militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, has been moving into position to contest the Turkish onslaught, which so far includes airstrikes and artillery barrages.

The officials who confirmed the SDF suspension of operations against the Islamic State were not authorized to provide details on the unfolding situation and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. defense official said an incursion by Turkish ground forces had not yet begun but was expected soon.

— By Robert Burns

__

7:25 p.m.

Egypt has condemned Turkey's military operation into northern Syria, calling it an "aggression" against Syria's sovereignty.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry in a statement Wednesday condemned "in the strongest words" the offensive and called for the U.N. Security Council to halt "any attempts to occupy Syrian territories . or change the demographics in northern Syria."

The statement says Turkey's attack is a "blatant aggression" against Syria's sovereignty. It also calls for an emergency meeting of the Arab League.

____

7:05 p.m.

A Syrian war monitor and a Kurdish activist collective say Turkish bombardment of northern Syria has killed at least one member of the Kurdish-led force.

The Britain-based Syrian observatory for Human Rights said one fighter of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces was killed and six others were wounded.

The Rojava Information center, an activist collective in northeast Syria confirmed that an SDF fighter was killed in the border Syrian town of Ras al-Ayn.

Turkey began a military operation against Kurdish fighters Wednesday targeting areas in northeast Syria with airstrikes and artillery shelling.

The SDF said in a statement that the Turkish airstrikes reached as deep as 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border. It said 16 SDF positions were targeted.

___

6:20 p.m.

Germany's foreign minister is condemning Turkey's offensive in northern Syria and called on Ankara to end the military action, saying it threatened "a further humanitarian catastrophe and further displacement of persons."

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement Wednesday that "we condemn the Turkish offensive in the northeast of Syria in the strongest possible terms. "

He said Turkey was running the risk that it would "further destabilize the region and strengthen IS," referring to the so-called Islamic State group.

Maas said that Syria needed stability after eight years of war and that the first step should be to summon a constitutional committee in the near future: "We call on Turkey to end its offensive and to pursue its security interests in a peaceful manner. "

____

6:15 p.m.

The secretary-general of NATO is urging Turkey not to "further destabilize the region" through its military action in northern Syria.

Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference in Rome that Turkey, a NATO ally, "has legitimate security concerns," having suffered "horrendous terrorist attacks" and hosting thousands of refugees.

He said NATO has been informed about Turkey's ongoing operation in northern Syria. And he added "it is important to avoid actions that may further destabilize the region, escalate tensions and cause more human suffering."

He said Turkey should act with "restraint" and any action should be "proportionate."

Stoltenberg will discuss the military action with Turkey's leader on Friday in Istanbul.

___

6 p.m.

Turkey's state-run news agency says two mortar shells have been fired into a Turkish town, on the border with Syria. No one was hurt in the attack.

Anadolu Agency said shells hit the town of Ceylanpinar on Wednesday.

They were fired from the Syrian Kurdish town of Ras al-Ayn, Anadolu reported, shortly after Turkey launched a military operation aiming to drive Syrian Kurdish forces away from Turkey's border.

Meanwhile, Turkish authorities declared an area along the Turkish-Syrian border off-limits to civilians.

___

5:35 p.m.

Turkey's state-run news agency says Turkish artillery units are shelling suspected Syrian Kurdish forces targets across the border in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad.

Anadolu Agency said howitzers pounded the town Wednesday after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of a Turkish military operation against Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria. Turkey's Defense Ministry said the offensive started at 4 p.m. (1300 GMT).

Earlier, Turkish television reports said Turkish jets were carrying out airstrikes on Syrian Kurdish positions in the town of Tal Abyad and showed smoke billowing from the targeted areas.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said ambassadors of the United Nations Security Council's five permanent members, including U.S. ambassador David Satterfield, were being briefed on the operation.

#trump scandals #trump administration #president donald trump #trumpism #news today trump #impeach trump #against trump #u.s. news #u.s. military #u.s. presidential elections #turkey kurds #turkey #erdogan kurds #syrian kurds #kurds #iraqi kurdistan #politics and government #us politics #politics #foreign policy #u.s. politics #u.s. navy #impeachtrump #impeachment #impeachthemf #impeachment inquiry now #impeach45 #need to impeach #impeachtheloser #impeachable

[healthandhumanrights17]

A man is carrying a child away from a car explosion in Syria. The car bomb was set off by the Turkish rebel group Ankara. Many civilians are running away from the scene to avoid the burning vehicle in the road. The man in the front of the photo is carrying a child, and he looks distressed and worried about the situation. Behind him is another man carrying a child away from the car inferno. Both men are possibly looking for medical help or are trying to find safety. The child looks pale and frightened, perhaps in shock from the loud explosion and commotion of people fleeing the scene. Debris is scattered across the road, and the thick, black smoke is spreading through the air in the city of Azaz. 

Wars in Syria are causing a loss of lives of civilians. Azaz, a city in Syria, has been controlled by Turkey rebels, Anakara. Anakara’s first invasion into Syria began in 2016. The purpose of this invasion was to force Islamic State militants and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from its border with Syria. The picture encompasses the reality that wars cause on civilians and the country's infrastructure. Civilians seem distressed and overwhelmed by the explosion. Unexpected explosions in public places is becoming the norm for these civilians. This is mostly for political gains, however, lives should be not at expense for ulterior motives.

This relates to our lives for several reasons. First, civilians should feel safe and secure in public arenas. Instead, civilians are forced to think about protecting themselves from unexpected dangers (i.e. fires, explosions, shots, etc.). The government should be responsible for protecting basic human rights. Unfortunately, it is not doing its job properly as innocent civilians are being killed and/or injured. The conflict in Syria has been ongoing for about 5 years, and no resolution has been reached. This conflict is based on religion as the Islamic militants are being threatened out of Syria. Religion has been a major issue that led to conflicts between nations in the past (i.e. medieval times). Differing opinions and perspectives on religion is a source of divisiveness in the current day. 

Ankara is a Turkish rebel group that has been trying to take over the city of Azaz. The rebel group had previously bombed the city in 2016, so the civil unrest is still an ongoing issue in the country. The dissonance between the Islamic religious groups is the main source behind the unrest. When two groups have different values and beliefs, it tends to create difficult situations because each group wants to feel superior. 

The distress and fear in the man’s eyes should educate the rest of the country of the turmoil people are going through in their hometowns. The child in his arms was likely playing with friends nearby or coming home from school, but was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The car bomb was set off during a busy commuter time when people were coming home from work, so it was targeted specifically towards civilians. Political influence from international parties is needed to aid these cities and help restore peace for the sake of many lives. 

We can raise awareness about similarities and differences that we share as human beings. We should teach others about the similarities that we share as human beings and not allow religious beliefs to divide us. Human lives are more important than religious differences. We can also bring this attention to international news, and ask the United Nations to get involved in resolving the issue. Several human rights issues are being violated in these bombings, and these violations must be taken seriously and something must be done to help the civilians. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/week-in-pictures

#PBH516

[tanyushenka]

Photography: “A Kurdish man watches smoke rising from the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane by the Kurds, after an air strike, on October 8, 2014 in the Turkish-Syrian border, in the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province.” Photographer: ARIS MESSINIS

[biofunmy]

A Look At Civilian Life In The Never-Ending Conflict Between Turkey And The Kurds

Emin Özmen / Magnum Photos

Farmers wave while Turkish military vehicles carrying tanks make their way to northern Syria to join ongoing military operations against Kurdish fighters.

Turkey’s incursion into Syria to create a so-called safe zone within 20 miles of the border cuts through so many layers of history that it is difficult to summarize its importance. The border towns on both sides have experienced conflict for years and have the scars to prove it. Over the past century, through changes in leadership and redrawings of the border, this story has repeated itself.

BuzzFeed News spoke with Emin Özmen, a photographer based in Turkey who traveled to the Turkish–Syrian border to report on the effects of the invasion. Before we start, some basic background information:

The Kurds are a Muslim-majority ethnic group who live in territory controlled currently by Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

Over the years, there’s been a continuous push from Kurdish leaders for more autonomy, if not independence.

Kurdish civilians have endured multiple crackdowns and massacres over the last century, including in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and during the Syrian civil war.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has used violence to advance Kurdish interests. It is a terrorist group in the eyes of Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

An offshoot of the PKK, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) was one of the US’s main partners in defeating ISIS in Syria.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

A TV reporter broadcasts on a hill in the border town of Ceylanpinar, as Turkish military fights with Kurdish rebels in Ras al-Ayn in northern Syria.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

People in Akçakale watch television reports on the bombing of Tel Abyad, the city across the Turkish border, on the second day of Turkish military operations against Kurdish fighters.

Emin Özmen: What matters for me is to show what civilians endure, no matter their nationality, religion, etc. Civilians are victims on both sides of the border. Journalism has to show all sides of an event, so my work alone is of course not enough to explain the aftermath of this operation, as I was on Turkish side (geographically), so I documented what happened there. I wish I would have been able to document what happened on the other side of the border too (Syria), but I was not able to do so.

Can you give some context to why Turkey sees the Kurds as a threat, and whether everyone in Turkey agrees with that?

EÖ: It’s such a complicated question, I can only answer for myself. I don’t think that Turkey sees the Kurds as a threat. I would say that Turkey sees the PKK as a threat. It is a very complex conflict that began decades ago.

By the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdish society found itself divided in four different countries, separated by walls. This topic alone would need more explanations to understand better, but I don’t pretend to be an expert on that question. The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey and compose between 15% and 20% of the population (which is some 14 million to 18 million people).

In Turkey, the PKK, designated a terrorist organization by NATO and the EU, has waged an insurgency against the central government on and off since 1984. The 35-year-old conflict has already taken the lives of over 40,000 people.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters wave from an armed vehicle going to fight against Kurdish fighters in the northern Syrian city Tel Abyad.

Emin Ozmen / ©Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

People hide and watch near the border as Turkish tanks shell targets in Tel Abyad in northern Syrian, during the military operation against Kurdish fighters.

I’m Turkish by birth, and I grew up in a culture where the Kurdish issue is ever-present and remains sensitive. Since the beginning of the ‘80s, we are living in a country where there is always conflict — mostly in east and southeastern part of the country, where the situation is always at an emergency level.

The conflict in Syria is a complicated matter, as are the internal politics in Turkey. The Turkish government was never comfortable that the YPG took control in northern Syria; they saw this as a threat that could spread in Turkey. In this context, Turkey started its military operations in northern Syria to disperse it: Euphrates Shield operation in 2016–2017, Olive Branch operation in 2018, and now the Peace Spring operation in October 2019.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

A man watches as Turkish military vehicles pass through Akçakale, on the way to northern Syria to join ongoing military operations against Kurdish fighters.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

People flee their homes as mortars land in several locations near the border.

How long were you at the border?

EÖ: It became clear Turkey would attempt an incursion into Syria, so I arrived in Akçakale on Oct. 9, a few hours before Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring against Kurdish fighters of the YPG, which control northeast Syria. All the communication and social media were blocked by 4 p.m. No internet, no phones. We learned that Turkey entered Syria through the radio. Very quickly, we started to hear sounds of mortars. Turkish artillery was unleashed, shelling Syrian border towns and villages. Military convoys carrying tanks continued passing the border town all night and other days. I was at the border between Oct. 9 until Oct. 25.

What was the mood like in the town?

EÖ: By the beginning of the operation, the city’s loudspeakers broadcast Ottoman military marches, reading the sura of conquest, taken from the Qur’an. Akçakale (on Turkish side) and Tal Abyad (on Syrian side) are two sister cities that are separated by a few hundred meters of concrete wall. The populations in both towns are dominantly Arabs. Akçakale was also a shelter for most of the refugees who fled the conflict in northern Syria since 2012.

On the second day, early morning, people gathered with Turkish flags near the border gate, showing their support for the ongoing operation. By 2 p.m. in Akçakale, rockets started to fall everywhere. Mortars were landing in neighborhoods, markets, streets. The population panicked; it was a total catastrophe for hours. Ambulances rushed in, carrying wounded people. Three people were killed (including a 9-month-old Syrian baby). More than 50 were wounded at the end of the day; half of the city fled. It continued until the end of the fifth day.

3.6 million Syrians have fled from war and took shelter in Turkey since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. They mostly live in these towns and cities on the border. I don’t think that Turkey expects new refugees arrival because the border is closed now.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

Children stand on the roof as smoke rises in Tel Abyad city near the Turkish border on the second day of Turkish military operation against Kurdish fighters.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

Elif Aksoy, 13, (second from right) cries, as a mortar landed near her family’s store, wounding everyone in the store, including her father, brothers, and sisters.

Is this different from previous conflicts, or is it just another chapter in a long and bloody war?

EÖ: Several mortars landed in Akçakale during the fight between regime forces and the opposition back in 2012 and 2013, which killed 5 [and] injured 10 in October 2012.

Unfortunately, this seems to me to be just another chapter in this terrible conflict. Worse, I would say that this may not be any different from what I have felt when I documented wars in other countries. Being a witness to suffering and death gives the same feeling (regardless of the conflict): helplessness and absolute sadness.

I saw this 13-year-old girl crying after rockets hit Akçakale. I took a picture of her, but I didn’t dare talk to her at that moment. Her suffering really shook me up. I went back to see her two days after I took that picture. She then explained to me that many of her family members were in the hospital and that she could no longer sleep. She’s traumatized. I can’t forget her suffering.

Do you think the ceasefire will make a difference?

EÖ: I think that it saved lives of civilians, but I’m not sure [in the] long term how the situation will evolve.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

Turkish military vehicles carrying tanks seen near the border on the way to northern Syria for the military operation against Kurdish fighters.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

The entrance of a store after a mortar landed nearby and injured a woman.

Emin Ozmen / Magnum Photos

A Turkish soldier stands at the door of a home where a mortar landed.

CORRECTION

Nov. 05, 2019, at 17:13 PM

Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria targeted Kurdish-held areas. An earlier version of this post mischaracterized the conflict as a war between Syria and Turkey.

Sahred From Source link World News

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[weditchthemap]

Visiting Mardin - A Travel Guide to Southeastern Turkey's Most Beautiful City

Arriving in Mardin, Turkey

Our drive through southeastern Turkey, from Van to Mardin, contained a security check point, which appears to be standard for overland travel in Turkey. Roadside police officers board the vehicle, collect Turkish identity cards from all passengers, run some kind of background check, and then, a few minutes later, return to the bus to distribute the cards. They weren’t interested in collecting our foreign passports, instead a quick glance sufficed. This routine procedure reinforced our feeling that traveling to Mardin is safe.

On the minibus we felt every twist, turn and bump on the 6-hour journey to Mardin. As is customary, the bus made smoke-stops for nicotine depraved passengers (and driver) and one stop for lunch along the route. Pulling into the modern suburb of Yenişehir, our drop-off point just below Mardin, it was possible to see the castle of old city of Mardin sitting regally on the hilltop above. As the highest point on the surrounding Mesopotamian plains, Mardin’s old city dominates the landscape.

We exited the bus, relieved that the long uncomfortable ride was finished, and crossed the street to the dolmuş (minibus) stop where displaced Syrian children hawked water bottles. Moments later we caught a minibus and a pair of 20-something guys, looking at our bulky packs, generously forfeited their seats for us. Once in the old city, our final destination, we dropped our bags off in our airbnb – a traditional (refurbished) stone carved dwelling over 600-years-old (!) - before heading out to dinner. The apartment’s were so thick that the internal temperature was cool despite not having air conditioning.

Our First Tastes of Mardin: Trying Local Specialities

Before dinner, we sat for a cup coffee, of which Mardin is know for a few local varieties. In additional to the standard cup of Turkish coffee we tried dibek coffee which is named for the dibek stone that was once used to grind the beans. The ground coffee is served sweet with a hint of cardamom. We also tried menengic coffee, but this is a misnomer. It isn’t actually coffee at all, it’s a hot drink made from roasted pistachio tree seeds that are ground into a paste and cooked with milk. Scott was a big fan on this un-caffeinated milky beverage.

We ate dinner on a rooftop that overlooked the vast plains onto Syria in the horizon. We sipped on Assyrian wine, which was traditionally homemade by a small community of Christian-Orthodox Assyrians using local grapes. It was never consumed to get drunk, but rather to symbolize the blood of Jesus. Now production has gone commercial and you can find this sweet, unusual wine for sale in a few restaurants and many shops in Mardin.

As we dined, rambunctious children played in the narrow stone lined alleys below and minarets towered overhead. We observed fig saplings growing like weeds between cracks in the stone walls, stray cats slinking about, candy-covered almonds being distributed freely, and stores toting unwieldy piles of homemade soap. We watched the sun set as it saturated the stone houses in a warm golden hue. Only hours after arriving, Mardin had captivated us. In fact, we were so enamored by the city that we decided to extend our stay.

A Background of Mardin, Turkey

Mardin is a city rich in history. For starters, it’s located in what was once known as Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. This region was once the homeland of the Syriacs, “an ancient people who trace their origin to the Akkadian Empire, established in Mesopotamia around 2200 BC. Syriac is a Semitic language directly related to the native tongue of Jesus Christ (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Mardin).” In the 5th century, Mardin was settled by Assyrian Christians, then Arabs. Later ownership passed from the Turks, to the Kurds, to the Mongols, to the Persians and then to the Ottoman Empire. Today a small group of Assyrian Christians remain in the Mardin area and some of their churches are still intact - you can even visit a few of these historical sites. Continue reading this Mardin travel blog to learn about these ancient sites

Is it Safe to Travel to Mardin?

Upon completing our own extensive research we’ve found that there have been no attacks directed towards tourists for years in the south of Turkey. The prior altercations have been between the Kurdish PKK militia and the Turkish government. If you look at the US State Department, however (as of July 2019), the US advises against travel to Turkey. They rate most of Turkey with a safety risk of 3 out of 4, which means: reconsider your travel plans. They give a blanket rating of 4 (Do Not Travel) to all areas near the Turkey/Iraq and Turkey/Syria border. However, we think this is unfounded. As an American, the sad truth is that your chances of being a victim of a mass shooting are more likely than experiencing a terrorist attack in Turkey. We felt very safe during our 3 months of travel around Turkey, which included visits to Van, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Urfa, Gaziantep, Antakya, Cappadocia, The Lycian Way, Selcuk, The Turquoise Coast, Istanbul, and Antalya. Not only did we not have a single issue regarding our health or safety, but we were also received with warmth from locals in all locations. If you haven’t read our post on the safety of backpacking through Turkey read our article on Turkey Travel Safety 2019.

Exploring Mardin’s Old City

We set out early in the morning to familiarize ourselves with Mardin’s Old City (or Old Town as it is also referred). Getting out as the city awakens is our favorite time of day - it’s still not too hot and energy emanates from the potential of a new day. With no plan in mind we meandered the alleys, too narrow for cars, but not for donkeys (which is consequently, how garbage is collected). The old city, which is not large, is easy enough to explore on foot - if you aren’t bothered by frequent uphill walking and stair climbing that is. The quiet back alleys felt like they were ours explore. Though domestic tourists visit Mardin they don’t venture far from the main street and international tourism hasn’t returned to full force since the Turkey-PKK conflict in the 90’s. We admired old ornate doorways, where the street level has risen over thousands of years to the midpoint of the door - a tangible reminder of just how old this city is.

We tried a variety of fresh breads displayed enticingly in front of bakeries, some fragrant with cinnamon and other spices, then meandered into a back alley bizarre where the dying craft of copper engraving is still showcased by a dwindling number of artisans. Homemade Mardin soap, a centuries old craft, is another locally produced item that can be found everywhere in Mardin. The soaps are special because of their natural, locally derived ingredients like olive oil and pistachio. There’s a soap to cure any skin malady - acne, eczema, wounds, hair loss - or so they say. Actually in need of soap, we purchased a bar for less than a dollar. (For this bargain price, get away from the main street to buy your soap.) The shop owner rang us up while a lit cigarette dangled from his lips. A shocking number of people smoke and there doesn’t seem to be any regulation as to where one can or cannot smoke.

Winding down alleys further away from the main street we passed a man sitting on his stoop. He called after us, “where from?” And shortly after we were beckoned to join him. His daughter brought out a tray with coffee and, through gesturing, inquired if we would like anything to eat. They brought us a tray of fruit and in addition the man extended his spoon and bowl to share his own breakfast of meat and bulgur with us. Using single words, we managed to communicate a bit. At the commotion outside his preteen grandson emerged and excitedly communicated with us using a cellphone and google translate (android / apple). He reassured us that we could ask for anything we wanted from them, and that we should ask “shamelessly.” Curious neighbors walked by and gave waves and smiles. The family pointed out a few Syrian people as they passed – a reminder of the influx of refugees and the war happening not too far away. With amusement they divulged that one of their neighbors has 46 children with his three wives.

At the end of our visit, the grandson communicated that “we are nice,” “ what we are doing is beautiful,” and that he “hoped we liked them.” With these parting words, we were sent us on our way to continue our exploration of the ancient city. Their kindness lingering with us all day.

After covering my head with a scarf, we entered The Grand Mosque. Inside the carpeted prayer hall we noticed two women craning their necks in order to place their face below a glass cabinet. They gestured to us and encouraged us to do the same thing. The cabinet contained a supposed hair from The Prophet Mohammad’s beard. We realized what they were doing - they were smelling the seam of cabinet door hoping for a whiff of the beard hair! Later, in a different mosque housing a supposed footprint of Mohammed, a man opened the glass cabinet, swiped his hand down the footprint, then rubbed his hand onto his beard. It seems like interacting with religious items is full sensory experience here. People aren’t satisfied by only looking; they want to absorb it. (It also seems like doors, signs, and restrictions are headed as more of a “suggestion.”)

On the outskirts of the bazaar we sat down for a cafeteria-style meal. I love these no-frills types of places where all of the options are on display. The atmosphere is simple, the service is prompt, and the food is typically delicious. The best part of eating a meal in Turkey is all of the additional plates of meze, condiments, garnish and/or veggies that come along with it free of charge. After finishing the meal, we headed toward the door and made sure to compliment the owner’s tasty food. In response he handed us a dough-covered fried ball of meat for the road. The Turkish people take great pleasure in feeding us!

Later, Scott got a haircut and shave. He can’t get enough of these barbers’ meticulous skills, make sure to read about his last Turkish haircut. He also spent over an hour being pampered at Emir Hamamı. This hammam (public bath house) had separate hours of entry for women and men. We’ve been looking for a bath house where males and females can attend together, and although it exists in some cities, it’s certainly not traditional and not found in Mardin. To me, the baths seem a bit daunting to take on alone and a tad uncomfortable. Fortunately, Scott was happy to assume the role of guinea pig and reported back his hammam experience.

Historically, hammams were public places for cleansing and relaxation. Scott felt like he stepped back in time when visiting the hammam, back to a time when access to a hot bath wasn’t readily available and one’s hygiene was entrusted to a burly professional. Scott’s hammam experience began in the sauna which he arrived in through a series of marble rooms. The temperature in the sauna climbed steadily from 131 degrees. At 155 degrees, Scott wondered if he’d been forgotten. Sweating, he exited and was lead to a large marble room where a hairy shirtless man, armed with a loofah, throughly scrubbed away layers upon layers of dead skin. Scott reports that the dead skin sloughed off in rolls. The scrubber-man then donned an oven mitt-like glove, lathered it with soap and scrubbed Scott’s entire body. Next he washed off the soap and gave Scott a brief but firm massage. One final rinse and Scott concluded his first trip to a hammam. He really enjoyed it. Next it’s my turn.

Turkish Hospitality - Never Turn Down a Cup of Tea When Offered

Locals took great interest in us and we had the pleasure of meeting quite a few during our stay in Mardin. Our english sparked attention wherever we went, and we were constantly met with friendly curiosity, the ever-present question of, “where are you from?” and invitations for tea. We met the persistent ice cream boy who demanded we stop by for a chat every time we passed his cart (he still texts Scott), we met a group of teenage boys who shared their liter of soda with us while attempting to speak English, and we met a young doctor through the couchsurfing network.

It was refreshing to hear the doctor’s progressive female perspective as we’ve mostly met men. In fact, in many of the Turkish cities we’ve visited it feels like a disproportionate amount of men are visible on the streets, sitting and chatting over cups of cay (tea) while smoking cigarettes. Over a glass of Assyrian wine, she provided some information about Turkey’s history and insights about the political climate. She was educated in the west of Turkey, but because Turkey is a democratic socialist country, she was assigned a year and a half of service in Mardin. Prior to working in Mardin she admitted to having some preconceived notions about the Kurdish people who are densely populated in southeastern Turkey (Kurdistan), a sentiment mirrored by some in western Turkey. But, after working in the southeast, near Turkish Kurdistan, and gaining exposure to this group of people she now has a much different opinion. Based on our experiences in Van and Diyabakir, we have found the Kurdish people to be absolutely delightful, open, and generous despite any existing tension.

On another occasion, as we played with a tiny kitten in an alleyway (we just couldn’t refuse it’s cuteness), an older man watched us from his balcony. Smiling down he called, “madam!” “milk!” We nodded in acknowledgment, not recognizing this exchange as an invitation. Moments later his 20-ish daughter entered the alley and invited us up for tea asking, “cay?” We followed her to the second floor of the building where her father (the older man), her mother, and a few other family members sat watching television. The TV was promptly turned off and everyone gave us a smile and friendly greeting. We were given ayran (a watery salted yogurt drink) and multiple glasses of cay. The older man communicated with a few single words of English but what he couldn’t communicate in words, he communicated with his smile and generosity. We sat through many moment of silence, wishing we could construct any semblance of a sentence in Turkish. Eventually we resorted to typing back and forth on his computer using google translate. We shared our plans for Mardin - he even offered to join us for some of the sights. He gave us some suggestions, then showed us around his home. When it was time for us to leave visible dissapointment crossed his face. Even without a common language this family had taken it upon themselves to personally welcome us to their city and celebrate our presence in Mardin. We were blown away by their willingness to reach out to us as strangers in order to ensure that we felt accepted and comfortable in their hometown.

Extending hospitality is in the Turkish people’s blood. It’s truly at the core of their beings and we’re happy to see that it’s not a dying trait. Hospitality is still very much intact in the younger generation as we observed in our 26-year-old neighbor. Our neighbor, also amused by our antics of caring for the abandoned kitten, invited us into his home for cay, tea. Pouring us tea and offering us cigarettes he used the few English words he knew. With no sense of rush or urgency, he embraced our company, asked us questions and shared information about himself - he works as a solider. He asked us about our plans for Mardin and we admitted we were having difficulty figuring out transit to the archeological site of Dara - a public bus wasn't available and taxis had quoted us unfairly high prices. Immediately wanting to resolve our problem, he offered to go with us so a taxi would charge a fair local rate, and then he took it up a notch by calling a taxi-driver friend to inquire about securing a fair price. We accepted the price, as it was lower than the other offers we received, and we visited Dara 30 minutes laterthat day accompanied by our neighbor; our own local ambassador.

I’ve been thinking about the displays of hospitality and the welcoming nature of the people we met in Mardin. I have some ideas - firstly, they are kind and sincere people, secondly, they take pride in their culture, thirdly it’s a culture that assumes less privacy - people sit outdoors inviting conversation with neighbors, extended family members come and go - it’s like the homes have a revolving door. Sometimes people sit in silence together, just appreciating the company of others, not feeling a need to be entertaining but just cherishing the time spent together. I think the concept of privacy may be more of a western construct, (maybe in response to an overly stimulating life? maybe a result of living in homes larger than our social species was meant for?). For example, large suburban homes isolate individuals from neighbors and some houses are so large you can go hours without seeing family members. I also think that in the States we are plagued by a chronic need for “busy-ness” - if we’re busy, we’re productive and therefore '“useful”. We are a country that values productivity, perhaps sometimes at the expense of other virtues like the connection that can be built through shared idleness. Scott theorizes this phenomenon is one of the several unintentional pitfalls of capitalism.

Now, this tiny little kitten that I’ve mentioned a few times really threw a wrench in our plans, but we couldn’t possibly stay mad at him and his cute lil’ face. We found him alone, stretched out on a stone staircase, with low-energy and a dry, crusty face. The little guy looked like he was in need of some hydration. (Might I add that temperatures reached 105 degrees during our stay in June!) We carried him a short distance to our courtyard where he frantically lapped up water and milk and put away a startling amount of the canned meat we’d just purchased for him. Over the next few days his energy reeved-up and he playfully raced around our rented apartment and courtyard like an adorable little doofus. We were growing quite fond of our pint-sized furry friend. But, he did have a concerning sneeze. We decided we couldn’t possibly return him to the streets and started a search for a new home for our little guy. Unfortunately, taking him with us wasn’t an option. So, Scott reached out to the local couchsurfing community for help.

Our plea was successful and the night before we were to leave Mardin we met with a guy living locally who had an interest in helping animals. We met for tea in the Old City and he told us about himself. He was born in Syria but now lived as a refugee in Turkey. Due to his refugee status he had difficulty finding a job, despite being highly educated in engineering and fluent in English (self-taught). He has not been able to return to Syria for six years. He has not seen his family, his parents, his brothers or sisters in person for six years. He feels a sense of hopelessness and a loss of freedom which is felt even more acutely as he’s less than 20 miles from his family but isn’t permitted to leave Mardin. He vocalized that citizenship is many other countries favors the wealthy and he feels defeated. He currently works as an English teacher. Lately he feels that the Turkish people are becoming increasingly less tolerant of Syrians in their country, commenting that some people are using hashtags on instagram that are hateful toward Syrians. In spite of this, he has a big heart. He put up with our escapade as we corralled the kitten into a box for transport and he continues to send photos and follows-up with us about the kitten. He took the kitten to the vet and paid for injections for an infection the kitten suffered from. We are so touched. He did not have to take on this responsibility on top of his own hardships. We are so thankful that our kitten found a loving home.

Visiting Mardin’s Historical Sites: Dara and Deyrul Zafaran Monastery

Dara Ancient City

Th archeological site of Dara is 30km south of Mardin, 7km from the Syrian border. The city was once a powerful fortress for the Romans in the 6th century. Today there are two major location to explore: the necropolis and the water cistern. We arrive at the necropolis by taxi and spent about 40 minutes walking the grounds. It’s possible to see carved cave tombs and an expansive gallery grave where hundreds of bodies were buried in a massive grave. Peering into the tomb its possible to see countless bone remains beneath a glass floor. Tangible evidence that proves this site served as a cemetery for almost 1,500 years.

A few minutes by car took us to the impressive Dara water cistern, which was accidentally discovered by a farmer in the area. Descending into the cistern, the temperature drops and it’s possible to image the volume of water once contained between the ornate stone arches. Entrance to both sites was free. We encountered only a few tourists at each site. Currently, as of July 2019, there are no busses to Dara so renting a car, hiring a taxi, or taking private tour are your only options too see this marvelous ancient city.

Deyrul Zafaran Monastery (Mor Hananyo Monastery)

The still active Deyrul Zafaran Monastery is located 6km outside of Mardin. Built for the Assyrian Christians in 493AD, this monastery is still one of the most important religious centers for the Assyrian Church. It was built on a hill on what was originally a sun temple and later used a castle by the Romans. A small area is open to the public for a fee. There is no public transit to the monastery, so a taxi is you best option.

Mardin City Museum

Also worth a mention is the lovely Mardin City Museum, it’s small but loaded with interesting historical and cultural information about Mardin with english translations.

A Quick Recap:

What to do in Mardin: shop in the bazaar, stroll through the alleyways of the old city, visit a hammam and get acquainted with the friendly locals

What to buy in Mardin: traditional Mardin soap and Assyrian wine

What to eat and drink in Mardin: sip the local coffee varieties and sit for dinner at a roof top restaurant for some Mardin unique cuisine

What to see in Mardin: Dara Necropolis and Cistern, Mardin City Museum, and Deyrul Zafaran Monastery

#is it safe to visit mardin #mardin turkey safey #mardin travel blog #safe for americans to go to turkey #mardin safety travel blog #traveling mardin turkey safety #about mardin turkey] #information about mardin turkey

[todaynewsstories]

Syria’s Idlib under ‘violent’ air strikes after Tehran failure

AL MUNTAR: Syria’s last major rebel bastion Idlib was on Saturday (Sep 8) targeted by the “most violent” Russian air strikes in a month, a monitor said, after the failure of a three-way summit on the Syrian conflict.

The renewed strikes came a day after the leaders of rebel backer Turkey and regime allies Russia and Iran failed at the summit in Tehran to agree on how to stave off a threatened offensive on the northwestern province of Idlib.

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Aid organisations have warned that any military campaign to retake the region of nearly three million people on the Turkish border could spark one of the worst humanitarian disasters in Syria’s seven-year war.

On Saturday, dozens of Russian air raids hit southern and southeastern areas of Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

At least four civilians including two children were killed in the strikes and as dozens of barrel bombs were dropped by regime aircraft, the Britain-based monitor said.

An AFP correspondent in the southern village of Al-Muntar saw huge clouds of grey smoke billow up above olive trees after a barrel bombing.

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Women and children ran terrified across nearby fields, one woman appearing to clutch a baby in a blanket.

An elderly man sat out of breath, barefoot and dazed in the red earth, his walking cane by his side.

The raids prompted hundreds of families to take to the roads, as dozens of cars and trucks tried to ferry civilians away from the bombardment.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the raids targeted jihadist and rebel positions, some of which were empty and others in use.

CIVILIANS FLEE

It was the heaviest bombardment since Aug 10, when at least 53 civilians were killed in Idlib and the neighbouring province of Aleppo, he said.

Idlib is largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate, as well as rival rebels.

The United Nations has warned that any offensive could force up to 800,000 people to flee their homes and urged key powerbrokers to avoid a “bloodbath”.

On Friday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly disagreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a press conference in the Iranian capital.

Syrian protesters wave the flag of the opposition as they demonstrate against the regime and its ally Russia, in the rebel-held city of Idlib on September 7, 2018. (Photo: AFP/Zein Al Rifai)

Erdogan called for a “truce”, while Russia’s president said Damascus “has a right and must eventually take under control all of its national territory”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned against a “scorched earth” policy, but said “fighting terrorism in Idlib is an unavoidable”.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has upped its rhetoric on retaking control of Idlib and surrounding areas over the past month.

The threat comes after it recaptured areas around the capital Damascus and in southern Syria earlier this year, through a combination of deadly bombardment and surrender deals.

REGIME, KURDS CLASH

With the spike in Russian raids on Saturday, Moscow was aiming to put pressure on Ankara to agree to a deal for a regime takover of Idlib, according to analyst Nicholas Heras.

“Russia is reminding Turkey it needs to stay in Russia’s good graces if Turkey wants to avoid a painful catastrophe in northwest Syria,” said the researcher at the Center for New American Security.

Idlib’s provincial health chief Munzer al-Khalil warned Saturday that a large-scale military operation could result in “the most catastrophic crisis in our war”.

Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov, for his part, said Moscow had “irrefutable information” that Syrian rebels were planning a “provocation” in Idlib province to justify Western intervention.

A member of the Kurdish internal security police walks by a government forces’ pick-up truck at the site of clashes with regime forces in Qamishli, northeastern Syria. (Photo: AFP/Delil Souleiman)

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests.

Elsewhere on Saturday, clashes between Kurdish forces and regime fighters in the divided northeastern city of Qamishli killed 18 combatants, the Kurdish forces and the Observatory said.

Kurdish forces control most of Qamishli, but regime fighters and allied militiamen hold part of the city and its airport.

The Observatory said shooting broke out when Kurdish security forces at a checkpoint demanded that regime fighters step out of their patrol vehicle but they refused.

“When they did not comply, the shooting started on the car,” Abdel Rahman said.

The Kurdish forces said they had retaliated to regime fire.

With US-led support, Syria’s Kurds played a key role in the war against the Islamic State group, during which they seized large swathes of northern and northeastern Syria.

The Damascus regime has vowed to reintegrate the Kurdish-held areas, by force if necessary. In late July, it opened talks with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

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An Ancient River in Syria Sections Off a Modern War

By Ben Hubbard, NY Times, Aug. 3, 2018

ZOUR MAGHAR, Syria--On the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, Kurdish militiamen aligned with American troops burrow into sandbagged positions and eye their foes across the water.

On the other side, Arab rebels backed by Turkey shoot at anyone who nears the river.

For millenniums, the Euphrates has given farmers in the village of Zour Maghar water to irrigate fields of wheat, eggplant and sunflowers. Generations of families have sprawled on its banks for picnics, the older children teaching the younger to swim.

But after seven years of war, the river that has fed life in Syria’s parched east has become a hostile front, separating warring sides as it travels north to south. Deprived of its water, families have fled Zour Maghar, abandoning their mud-brick homes and leaving their fields idle.

“The river was everything for us,” said Muhammad Bozan, 35, a farmer who can no longer work his waterfront land. “We used to live from the river and now we can’t.”

Syria’s war has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions and left entire cities in smoking ruins. It has also ensnared the Euphrates, an arc of the Fertile Crescent that is considered a cradle of civilization.

On a recent trip along the river, we found a wasteland dotted with depopulated towns, gutted factories and civilians struggling to get by.

We mostly stayed on the east bank, an area out of Damascus’s hands that is effectively stateless and boxed in by hostile powers. The only way in was to cross the Tigris River from Iraq in a shaky, seatless motorboat.

As the government of President Bashar al-Assad has focused its military power on defeating rebels in the north and south, the river has emerged as the collision point for the great powers and their local allies struggling for influence in the east.

On the eastern bank are mostly American-backed Kurdish-led militias. On the west, along the northern part of the river, are Turkish-backed rebels. Farther south are Syrian forces supported by Russia and Iran. The Islamic State still holds a pocket along the river near the border with Iraq.

For now, the division is holding because none of the other powers wants to confront the United States, which has about 2,000 soldiers on the eastern side and whose fighter jets control the skies there.

Most of the world has accepted that Mr. Assad will continue to rule Syria, but the standoff and shattered landscape along the Euphrates raise questions about whether he can ever stitch the whole country back together.

The immediate question is how long the United States will stay. President Trump has said he wants to pull out the troops, who lead an international coalition against the Islamic State. If he does, the United States’ local allies fear the worst.

“The mere presence of the coalition in the region gives a message to the regime and to the Turks not to interfere: ‘This is where you stop,’ “ said Muhammad Kheir Sheikho, a member of the civil council in Manbij. “The withdrawal of the coalition forces, and at their head the American forces, would cause complete chaos in the area.”

Three hulking, armored American military vehicles leave their base in the olive groves east of Manbij and rumble off to patrol the front lines. American soldiers staff gun turrets atop each vehicle, helicopters or drones fly overhead, and the convoy flies large American flags to make it clear who is driving.

The Americans came to Syria in 2014 to fight the Islamic State, but the jihadist group’s nearest outpost is 200 miles away. The convoy heads out several times a day to protect Manbij, a town with no resources and which few Americans have heard of, from Turkey, a NATO ally.

The American presence in Manbij is a clear indication that the United States came to Syria with one goal but picked up others along the way, complicating a potential withdrawal.

As the United States worked with Kurdish forces to take territory back from the Islamic State, its footprint in eastern Syria expanded. The area, about one-quarter of Syria and mostly desert, is now dotted with American military bases--housed in fields, in an out-of-use cement factory and in oil and gas facilities that the Syrian government would like to take back.

The American security umbrella has allowed Manbij to become a relatively stable island in a war-torn country. It is a local economic hub, with a bustling market and about 200,000 new residents displaced from elsewhere.

But Turkey sees Syria’s Kurdish militia as a terrorist threat on its border and has threatened to attack it. The United States worries that a Turkish attack on Manbij would siphon off the Kurdish fighters from the battle against the Islamic State in the south. Thus the American patrols to keep the Turks at bay.

But as the battle against the Islamic State winds down, the Americans will have less reason to stay.

On the flat roof of a cinder-block farmhouse converted into a military base west of town, Kurdish militiamen pointed across a shallow valley at Turkish military positions and acknowledged that the Turks could storm the area quickly if they wanted. But they did not because of the American military base nearby: a few trailers surrounded by armored vehicles, the Stars and Stripes flying overhead.

“If it weren’t for the Americans, there would be a disaster here,” said Ibrahim Sheikh Muhammad, a Kurdish militiaman.

Most of the territory held by the United States and its Kurdish allies was once ruled by the Islamic State, and the scars of the military campaign to defeat it run deep.

South of Manbij stands the Tabqa Dam, which the Soviets built in 1973, creating Syria’s largest body of water, Lake Assad, and generating power for much of the country.

The jihadists of the Islamic State ran the dam for years but blew up its turbines when they retreated.

It is now back at work, sort of. Its 350 employees work in buildings shattered by coalition airstrikes that blew holes in walls and shook tiles off the floors. Inside the hydroelectric station, rows of charred circuit boxes set alight by the jihadists sit below ceilings stained black from smoke.

But three of the dam’s turbines were whirring as water rushed through below, and a man with a blowtorch worked to repair a fourth. From eight damaged turbines, engineers had salvaged enough parts to rebuild three of them.

The dam is a rare example of cooperation across opposing sides. A power line that connects it to a smaller dam passes through a government-controlled area, sending electricity to the station that provides drinking water to the city of Aleppo, said Mohammed Sheikho, the head of the mechanical department. And the Syrian government still pays salaries to some workers.

But the dam is just limping along.

New heavy electric cables cannot be installed because the German company that made them will not send its engineers into a war zone. And the country best able to fix the rest of the dam, Russia, is allied with the Syrian government.

Even worse, there isn’t enough water.

Since the Kurds took over the area, Turkey has reduced the amount of water it allows into Syria by more than half, limiting the generation of electricity, said Muhammad Tarboush, the dam’s supervisor.

The situation had never been so dire, he said, even when the Islamic State was in charge.

“They are boycotting us with water,” he said.

On the rocky banks of the Euphrates in the former capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, boatmen yell to coax passengers onto rickety metal barges. Once they are filled with passengers, cars, motorcycles and trucks bearing everything from diapers to flatbread, the motors roar and belch black smoke as the men pilot their charges across the pale green water.

Raqqa was once a commercial center for Syria’s breadbasket. Now, it is an orphaned city in ruins.

The military campaign that drove out the jihadists in October left two-thirds of the city’s buildings damaged or destroyed, local officials said. Entire city blocks were erased and apartment buildings brought to the ground. Residents have returned to find walls and ceilings missing from their homes. Some even struggle to find their homes.

But the world powers who fought here, led by the United States, are staying out of reconstruction, so Raqqa’s residents are largely on their own.

All 32 bridges in the area were destroyed. The two major bridges spanning the Euphrates are impassable, cutting the city in half. One has a hole large enough for a tractor-trailer to fall through. Under the other, boys climb downed electrical cables to plunge in to the water below.

That has left only the barges to get people across.

Muhammad Jassem, a heavy-machine operator, lives on one side of the river and his elderly parents on the other. The once-simple trip to visit them now takes longer, costs more and gets his shoes and trousers wet.

“As you can see, life is a bit miserable here,” he said after wading ashore.

Everyone relied on the boats: a woman taking her grandson to the doctor for diarrhea; a family of four crowded onto a single motorcycle; a shopkeeper hauling chips and soft drinks.

Since the battle ended, the United States has put $13.7 million into Raqqa for water, electricity, rubble removal and other projects, in addition to $54 million to clear mines left by the Islamic State, according to the State Department.

But it is not rebuilding the city, which Ahmed Ibrahim, the city’s co-mayor, estimated would cost $5 billion.

He had no idea where that money would come from and worried that a lack of support would leave a vacuum that the Syrian government or an extremist group like the Islamic State could exploit.

“As long as they give concrete aid, the people will belong to them,” he said.

Farther south, the road along the Euphrates is strewn with the remnants of an economy blown back decades by the war: a gutted sugar factory, an idled cotton mill, a train station littered with cars blown off their tracks.

The Syrian government controls Deir al-Zour, the largest Syrian city on the Euphrates, but the bridge that connects it to its eastern suburbs across the river is destroyed.

The Kurds, their Arab allies and the United States hold the eastern side, with bases in the oil and gas fields to keep the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies from retaking them.

In some places, opposing bases face each other across the water, so close that soldiers can see each other’s flags and watch each other smoking cigarettes. At one crossing point, a local militiaman monitored the eastern side, while Syrian soldiers stood on the other, about 200 yards away, while residents rowed across in battered metal canoes.

“It’s like an international border,” said a woman on the Deir al-Zour civil council after stepping off a metal canoe that carried her from the government side.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity so that she could continue to visit her parents on the western side, said that most of the forces on the government’s side were Syrian but that she sometimes saw Russians and Iranian-backed militiamen from Iraq and Afghanistan buying items in shops.

Incursions in either direction are rare. In February, a column of tanks carrying about 500 pro-government forces, including Russian mercenaries, crossed the river in what appeared to be a push to seize an oil field. The United States repelled the raid, killing 200 to 300 of them.

Since then, all sides have largely accepted the river as the dividing line, an understanding likely to hold until the Americans leave.

The division was bad for Syria, the local councilwoman said, but she did not know how to end it.

“God willing, the sides will come together again,” she said.

#Syria #Syrian conflict #Euphrates River

[bountyofbeads]

Turkish Town Shelled as Border Fighting Sharply Escalates https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-offensive.html

Turkish Forces Escalate Campaign in Syria Against Kurdish-Led Militia

Turkish forces kill at least 23 Kurdish fighters and seize 11 towns. The Kurdish-led militia punches back but quits anti-ISIS operations.

By Carlotta Gall and Patrick Kingsley | Published Oct. 10, 2019 Updated 6:48 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted October 10, 2019 705 PM ET |

AKCAKALE, Turkey — Turkish forces and their Syrian Arab allies swept into northern Syria on Thursday, killing at least 23 Kurdish fighters in a sharp escalation of a campaign against a Kurdish-led militia that had fought alongside the United States against the Islamic State.

The Turkish assault, which began on Wednesday after President Trump acceded to it and moved American troops out of the way, has pulled the militia out of its fight against the remnants of the Islamic State in Syria.

Three American officials said Thursday that all counterterrorism operations by the militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, had been suspended.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential military assessments, said the militia had been carrying out several dozen missions per day, some in conjunction with American Special Forces.

Opponents of the Turkish invasion in Washington and Europe have expressed concern that the operation would weaken efforts to keep the Islamic State fighters from regrouping.

The Turkish forces also seized at least 11 villages clustered around two Kurdish-held border towns that stand about 75 miles apart, according to Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency.

At least 11 civilians in Kurdish-held areas were killed and 28 wounded in the Turkish attacks on Thursday, according to the Rojava Information Center, an activist group in northeastern Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces appeared to be striking back.

Shells and rockets landed in several Turkish border towns, killing four civilians, including an infant, and wounding 70.

At least one Turkish soldier was killed, according to a tweet by a lawmaker from Turkey’s governing party.

More than 60,000 Syrians in Kurdish-held territory have fled their homes since Wednesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain, and United Nations officials.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said that Turkish forces did not plan to go farther than about 19 miles into Syrian territory, a distance he said was needed to stop Kurdish fighters from firing missiles into Turkey.

Mr. Cavusoglu said that ultimately Turkey planned to seize a corridor stretching for hundreds of miles along the Turkish-Syrian border but he did not say when. “We will do that in time,” he said in an interview on Turkish television.

Turkish military analysts said this week that the initial plan was to seize only the 75-mile stretch between the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain.

At least one Syrian town less than a mile from the border, Al Yabseh, fell with no resistance to a brigade of around 1,000 Turkish-backed Syrian Arab fighters.

“We captured the town an hour ago without any clashes,” Al-Hareth Dahdouni, 31, a member of the militia said by telephone from inside Syria. “The town was totally empty. It is just one minute away from the border.”

Turkish troops appeared to have stayed within a few miles of the Syrian border, according to information provided by the state-run Anadolu Agency.

On the Turkish side of the border, the military buildup continued steadily in full view of residents.

A long convoy of military trucks carrying armored personnel carriers under tarpaulins entered the Turkish border town of Akcakale after dark. Soldiers in camouflage stood among dozens of armored vehicles parked in a base beside the main road.

The Turkish Army used cranes to remove parts of a concrete border wall, allowing Turkish troops, Turkish-backed Syrian Arab rebels and military vehicles to enter northern Syria.

In Akcakale, three sharp explosions filled streets around the town’s police headquarters with smoke, sending pedestrians fleeing for cover and armored police vehicles barreling through the streets.

The Turkish military responded with salvo after salvo of artillery fire throughout the afternoon, pounding the Syrian town of Tel Abyad visible across the border where the Kurdish-led militia appeared to be still ensconced.

Tel Abyad is one of two small Syrian border towns that the Turkish military has made its first target, pounding it with artillery and airstrikes on Wednesday.

By late afternoon black smoke rose from a line of burning buildings along the ridgeline of the town, ballooning in the sky and blocking out the horizon.

Just to the west, a building in Syria that Turkish residents said was an arms depot, was also in flames. Choking black smoke drifted back into Turkey over the village of Upper Arican.

The police were urging residents to evacuate.

“They said it was safer further inside Turkey, but we don’t want to leave our house,” Ayse Bayrak said. “No one wants to leave their house.”

But many did, on both sides of the border, cramming into cars and pickup trucks and searching for safety.

The fighting marks a new stage in the eight-year-old Syrian civil war that began as a wave of protests against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but which has since escalated into a jumble of overlapping conflicts involving foreign armies and an array of local militias, including former Syrian government officers, Islamist extremists and Kurdish nationalists.

The United States joined forces with a Kurdish-led militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, to clear northeastern Syria of militants from the Islamic State. Kurdish groups seized the opportunity to carve out an autonomous statelet in northeastern Syria.

The Kurdish presence, abutting the Turkish border, enraged the Turkish government, which considers the Kurdish-led militia an enemy because of its ties to a Kurdish guerrilla force inside Turkey.

For several years, a small American force kept the peace between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey — until President Trump’s sudden decision on Sunday to pull American troops out of Turkey’s way, despite qualms from his own military officers and State Department officials, and criticism from Republican politicians.

On Thursday afternoon, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said the invasion was an attempt to preserve Syria’s long-term sovereignty and clear the area of not just Kurdish fighters but also of the remnants of the Islamic State.

‘‘The aim of Operation Peace Spring is to contribute to the territorial integrity and political union of Syria,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech to his political party, using the Turkish military’s name for the invasion.

He dismissed concerns that the mayhem of the invasion would risk allowing thousands of Islamic State militants detained by the Kurdish-led militia to escape.

“We will keep in jail the ones who should be kept in jail and send the other ones to their countries of origin, if those countries accept them,” he said.

The American officials said that the Syrian Democratic Forces were still in control of the prisons, though they had scaled back the number of guards.

President Emmanuel Macron of France condemned the offensive on Thursday, calling for Turkey to end it “as quickly as possible.”

A group of European countries, including Germany, France and Britain, issued a statement calling for Turkey to “cease the unilateral military action,” saying it would not address Turkey’s security concerns and would “undermine the stability of the whole region, exacerbate civilian suffering” and increase the number of displaced people and refugees.

Both Mr. Macron and the European statement warned that the Turkish action could aid the resurgence of the Islamic State.

Where Turkish forces struck Kurdish-held areas

The fighting threatens to create a humanitarian crisis for hundreds of thousands of people who have been cut off from Syrian assistance for years. Most rely on the Kurdish forces and aid groups for basic services.

The impact of the assault was “a lot worse, a lot more dramatic” than aid organizations had feared, Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator in Syria, said in a telephone interview. “The protection of civilians is now the biggest concern.”

Some aid organizations had already evacuated personnel from the area, he added.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians “are now in harm’s way,” Filippo Grandi, head of the United Nations refugee agency, said in a statement.

Henrietta Fore, the executive director of UNICEF, said Wednesday that the military escalation would have “dramatic consequences” on the ability to provide aid.

“I urge all parties to protect children and the civilian infrastructure on which they depend, in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law,” she said. “The use of explosive weapons in populated areas causes unacceptable harm to children.”

Inside Turkey, families also began loading up their belongings and leaving town to travel away from the border. “We are going west because people were hit on the east side of town,” said Ayse Kaya as she piled her family into a small car.

But others, including Syrian refugees now living in Turkey, were less concerned.

“I have seen this before, I am from Syria, I am going to prepare a shisha,” said Mustafa Ali, an elderly man in a long cotton robe, referring to a traditional water pipe. “I came from Aleppo, I saw many of these in Aleppo. I am going to prepare a pipe at home.”

Carlotta Gall reported from Akcakale, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt from Washington; Daniel Victor from Hong Kong; Karam Shoumali from Berlin; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Aurelien Breeden from Paris; and Nick Cu

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[alamante]

The near side of the Euphrates River near Manbij, Syria, is controlled by American-backed Kurdish-led forces. On the other side are Turkish-backed Arab rebels.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

ZOUR MAGHAR, Syria — On the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, Kurdish militiamen aligned with American troops burrow into sandbagged positions and eye their foes across the water.

On the other side, Arab rebels backed by Turkey shoot at anyone who nears the river.

For millenniums, the Euphrates has given farmers in the village of Zour Maghar water to irrigate fields of wheat, eggplant and sunflowers. Generations of families have sprawled on its banks for picnics, the older children teaching the younger to swim.

But after seven years of war, the river that has fed life in Syria’s parched east has become a hostile front, separating warring sides as it travels north to south. Deprived of its water, families have fled Zour Maghar, abandoning their mud-brick homes and leaving their fields idle.

“The river was everything for us,” said Muhammad Bozan, 35, a farmer who can no longer work his waterfront land. “We used to live from the river and now we can’t.”

Image

Members of a family picnic in their garden in Zour Mghar, a village on the Kurdish side of the Euphrates near the Turkish border. Behind them is a wall built this year by Turkish forces, and beyond that Turkey.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

A pump in the Euphrates provides water for the region near Zour Mghar. South of that, the river becomes a battle zone, its water inaccessible.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

Syria’s war has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions and left entire cities in smoking ruins. It has also ensnared the Euphrates, an arc of the Fertile Crescent that is considered a cradle of civilization.

On a recent trip along the river, we found a wasteland dotted with depopulated towns, gutted factories and civilians struggling to get by.

We mostly stayed on the east bank, an area out of Damascus’s hands that is effectively stateless and boxed in by hostile powers. The only way in was to cross the Tigris River from Iraq in a shaky, seatless motorboat.

As the government of President Bashar al-Assad has focused its military power on defeating rebels in the north and south, the river has emerged as the collision point for the great powers and their local allies struggling for influence in the east.

On the eastern bank are mostly American-backed Kurdish-led militias. On the west, along the northern part of the river, are Turkish-backed rebels. Farther south are Syrian forces supported by Russia and Iran. The Islamic State still holds a pocket along the river near the border with Iraq.

For now, the division is holding because none of the other powers wants to confront the United States, which has about 2,000 soldiers on the eastern side and whose fighter jets control the skies there.

Most of the world has accepted that Mr. Assad will continue to rule Syria, but the standoff and shattered landscape along the Euphrates raise questions about whether he can ever stitch the whole country back together.

The immediate question is how long the United States will stay. President Trump has said he wants to pull out the troops, who lead an international coalition against the Islamic State. If he does, the United States’ local allies fear the worst.

“The mere presence of the coalition in the region gives a message to the regime and to the Turks not to interfere: ‘This is where you stop,’ ” said Muhammad Kheir Sheikho, a member of the civil council in Manbij. “The withdrawal of the coalition forces, and at their head the American forces, would cause complete chaos in the area.”

A Place Few Americans Have Heard Of

An American military convoy patrols the front near Manbij several times a day, a show of force to protect the city from Turkey, an American ally.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

Three hulking, armored American military vehicles leave their base in the olive groves east of Manbij and rumble off to patrol the front lines. American soldiers staff gun turrets atop each vehicle, helicopters or drones fly overhead, and the convoy flies large American flags to make it clear who is driving.

The Americans came to Syria in 2014 to fight the Islamic State, but the jihadist group’s nearest outpost is 200 miles away. The convoy heads out several times a day to protect Manbij, a town with no resources and which few Americans have heard of, from Turkey, a NATO ally.

The American presence in Manbij is a clear indication that the United States came to Syria with one goal but picked up others along the way, complicating a potential withdrawal.

As the United States worked with Kurdish forces to take territory back from the Islamic State, its footprint in eastern Syria expanded. The area, about one-quarter of Syria and mostly desert, is now dotted with American military bases — housed in fields, in an out-of-use cement factory and in oil and gas facilities that the Syrian government would like to take back.

Kurdish troops, in a sandbagged post outside of Manbij, fear a disaster if the Americans leave.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

The American security umbrella has allowed Manbij to become a relatively stable island in the war-torn country.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

The American security umbrella has allowed Manbij to become a relatively stable island in a war-torn country. It is a local economic hub, with a bustling market and about 200,000 new residents displaced from elsewhere.

But Turkey sees Syria’s Kurdish militia as a terrorist threat on its border and has threatened to attack it. The United States worries that a Turkish attack on Manbij would siphon off the Kurdish fighters from the battle against the Islamic State in the south. Thus the American patrols to keep the Turks at bay.

But as the battle against the Islamic State winds down, the Americans will have less reason to stay.

On the flat roof of a cinder-block farmhouse converted into a military base west of town, Kurdish militiamen pointed across a shallow valley at Turkish military positions and acknowledged that the Turks could storm the area quickly if they wanted. But they did not because of the American military base nearby: a few trailers surrounded by armored vehicles, the Stars and Stripes flying overhead.

“If it weren’t for the Americans, there would be a disaster here,” said Ibrahim Sheikh Muhammad, a Kurdish militiaman.

Burned, Bombed and Still Turning

The control room of the Tabqa Dam, built by the Soviets, its turbines blown up by the Islamic State, its buildings shattered by American-led airstrikes. It is now back online.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

Most of the territory held by the United States and its Kurdish allies was once ruled by the Islamic State, and the scars of the military campaign to defeat it run deep.

South of Manbij stands the Tabqa Dam, which the Soviets built in 1973, creating Syria’s largest body of water, Lake Assad, and generating power for much of the country.

The jihadists of the Islamic State ran the dam for years but blew up its turbines when they retreated.

It is now back at work, sort of. Its 350 employees work in buildings shattered by coalition airstrikes that blew holes in walls and shook tiles off the floors. Inside the hydroelectric station, rows of charred circuit boxes set alight by the jihadists sit below ceilings stained black from smoke.

But three of the dam’s turbines were whirring as water rushed through below, and a man with a blowtorch worked to repair a fourth. From eight damaged turbines, engineers had salvaged enough parts to rebuild three of them.

The Tabqa Dam is a rare example of cooperation across battle lines, run by the Kurds with Syrian government help.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

The Tabqa Dam created Lake Assad, Syria’s largest body of water, where a Kurdish family displaced by the fighting lunches at a cafe.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

The dam is a rare example of cooperation across opposing sides. A power line that connects it to a smaller dam passes through a government-controlled area, sending electricity to the station that provides drinking water to the city of Aleppo, said Mohammed Sheikho, the head of the mechanical department. And the Syrian government still pays salaries to some workers.

But the dam is just limping along.

New heavy electric cables cannot be installed because the German company that made them will not send its engineers into a war zone. And the country best able to fix the rest of the dam, Russia, is allied with the Syrian government.

Even worse, there isn’t enough water.

Since the Kurds took over the area, Turkey has reduced the amount of water it allows into Syria by more than half, limiting the generation of electricity, said Muhammad Tarboush, the dam’s supervisor.

The situation had never been so dire, he said, even when the Islamic State was in charge.

“They are boycotting us with water,” he said.

Shattered City, Uncertain Future

With Raqqa’s 32 bridges destroyed by the war, residents depend on crude barges to cross the river.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

On the rocky banks of the Euphrates in the former capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, boatmen yell to coax passengers onto rickety metal barges. Once they are filled with passengers, cars, motorcycles and trucks bearing everything from diapers to flatbread, the motors roar and belch black smoke as the men pilot their charges across the pale green water.

Raqqa was once a commercial center for Syria’s breadbasket. Now, it is an orphaned city in ruins.

The military campaign that drove out the jihadists in October left two-thirds of the city’s buildings damaged or destroyed, local officials said. Entire city blocks were erased and apartment buildings brought to the ground. Residents have returned to find walls and ceilings missing from their homes. Some even struggle to find their homes.

But the world powers who fought here, led by the United States, are staying out of reconstruction, so Raqqa’s residents are largely on their own.

All 32 bridges in the area were destroyed. The two major bridges spanning the Euphrates are impassible, cutting the city in half. One has a hole large enough for a tractor-trailer to fall through. Under the other, boys climb downed electrical cables to plunge in to the water below.

That has left only the barges to get people across.

A bombed-out bridge in Raqqa, no longer suitable for crossing the river, has been repurposed as a diving platform.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

The military campaign that drove the Islamic State out of Raqqa left two-thirds of the city’s buildings damaged or destroyed.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

Muhammad Jassem, a heavy-machine operator, lives on one side of the river and his elderly parents on the other. The once-simple trip to visit them now takes longer, costs more and gets his shoes and trousers wet.

“As you can see, life is a bit miserable here,” he said after wading ashore.

Everyone relied on the boats: a woman taking her grandson to the doctor for diarrhea; a family of four crowded onto a single motorcycle; a shopkeeper hauling chips and soft drinks.

Since the battle ended, the United States has put $13.7 million into Raqqa for water, electricity, rubble removal and other projects, in addition to $54 million to clear mines left by the Islamic State, according to the State Department.

But it is not rebuilding the city, which Ahmed Ibrahim, the city’s co-mayor, estimated would cost $5 billion.

He had no idea where that money would come from and worried that a lack of support would leave a vacuum that the Syrian government or an extremist group like the Islamic State could exploit.

“As long as they give concrete aid, the people will belong to them,” he said.

Facing Off Across the Water

In Deir al-Zour Province, people take rowboats from the Kurdish controlled-side of the Euphrates to the other bank, controlled by the Syrian government.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

Farther south, the road along the Euphrates is strewn with the remnants of an economy blown back decades by the war: a gutted sugar factory, an idled cotton mill, a train station littered with cars blown off their tracks.

The Syrian government controls Deir al-Zour, the largest Syrian city on the Euphrates, but the bridge that connects it to its eastern suburbs across the river is destroyed.

The Kurds, their Arab allies and the United States hold the eastern side, with bases in the oil and gas fields to keep the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies from retaking them.

In some places, opposing bases face each other across the water, so close that soldiers can see each other’s flags and watch each other smoking cigarettes. At one crossing point, a local militiaman monitored the eastern side, while Syrian soldiers stood on the other, about 200 yards away, while residents rowed across in battered metal canoes.

“It’s like an international border,” said a woman on the Deir al-Zour civil council after stepping off a metal canoe that carried her from the government side.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity so that she could continue to visit her parents on the western side, said that most of the forces on the government’s side were Syrian but that she sometimes saw Russians and Iranian-backed militiamen from Iraq and Afghanistan buying items in shops.

Incursions in either direction are rare. In February, a column of tanks carrying about 500 pro-government forces, including Russian mercenaries, crossed the river in what appeared to be a push to seize an oil field. The United States repelled the raid, killing 200 to 300 of them.

Since then, all sides have largely accepted the river as the dividing line, an understanding likely to hold until the Americans leave.

The division was bad for Syria, the local councilwoman said, but she did not know how to end it.

“God willing, the sides will come together again,” she said.

Follow Ben Hubbard on Twitter at @NYTBen.

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