Invasive bug spreading across US could endanger California wine industry. 

What to know

Daniella Segura, The Charlotte Observer - Friday

An invasive insect making its way across the country could potentially threaten California’s wine industry, new research shows.

The spotted lanternfly, an insect native to Asia known to kill grapevines and damage crops, may make its way to California’s grape-producing counties in five years, according to a new analysis from North Carolina State University researchers.

“This is a big concern for grape growers; it could lead to billions of dollars of losses in the agricultural sector,” Chris Jones, the study’s lead author, said in a June 8 news release.

California produces 82% of the country’s grapes, researchers said.

Jones said it is hard to predict the exact damage that may come from the bug to grape-producing areas. If no preventative measures are taken, though, the insect could be common throughout the country by 2037, researchers say.

The spotted lanternfly was first seen in the country in Pennsylvania in 2014, researchers say. It is now in at least 11 different states.

In the study published in Communications Biology, a computer simulation tool was used to “predict the timing of the spread of the spotted lanternfly,” the news release said.

The bug “can damage or destroy commercially valuable crops,” including grapes, apples and peaches, researchers say. The bug kills the plants by feeding on them, and it can also leave behind a “honeydew” residue, which can further damage the plants as it encourages mold growth.

California, along with Washington state, have “highly suitable” climates for the bug, researchers say.

While there is a “low probability” the insect will reach California’s grape-producing counties by 2027, there is a “high probability” by 2033, researchers say. It will “likely spread through the grape-producing region by 2034.”

Jones hopes the study urges others to create strategies to manage the insects.

“We hope this helps pest managers prepare,” Jones said in the release. “If they can start early surveillance, or start treating as soon as the spotted lanternfly arrives, it could slow the spread to other areas.”

©2022 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Petr Kropotkin

The State Its Historic Role

The place of anarchism in socialistic evolution; an address delivered in Paris

Revolutionary Government

Communism and Anarchy

Expropriation

Anarchist Morality

The Coming Anarchy

Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles

 

 

textsAnarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles

Activists in Athens protest the invasion attacks carried out by the Turkish state

The invasion attacks carried out by the Turkish state were protested in Athens with a march.

ANF
ATHENS
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022

Members of TekoJIN, Navenda Çanda Demokratîk a Kurd, Defend Kurdistan, RiseUp Rojava and Tevgera Ciwanên Şoreşger (TCŞ) protested the Turkish state's attacks on South Kurdistan and the new threats against Northern and Eastern Syria with a march in Athens.

Executives and members of international revolutionary organizations also joined the march, which started in Syntegma Square, and saw the participation of hundreds of people.



The crowd, which opened posters of Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Öcalan, PKK flags and banners condemning the attacks by the Turkish state, often chanted "Biji Serok Apo", "Bijî berxwedana gerila", "Kurdistan goristan ji bo fascistan".

The crowd first went to the Parliament building in Sintegma Square and handed over a dossier on the attacks against Kurdistan, crimes against humanity and violations of rights to all political parties.

The crowd then came to the Greek Representation of the European Union to hand over a dossier. When the door was not opened, the mass condemned this attitude with a statement. The mass walked from here to the American Embassy and delivered the dossier there.

The institutions that made a statement here condemned the attacks against Kurdistan and called on European states to be sensitive to the crimes committed by the Turkish state. They emphasized that the Kurdish people will not give up their struggle.

  

Markéta Všelichová: We fought for humanity

Czech Republic citizen Markéta Všelichová, who went to Rojava in 2015 to support the Kurdish people fighting against ISIS mercenaries, talked about her experiences in her book 'We fought for humanity'.

ANF
PRAGUE
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022

Czech Republic citizen Markéta Všelichová went to Rojava in 2015 to offer her support in the war of the Kurdish people against ISIS mercenaries and was arrested in Turkey with her husband Miroslav Farkas while trying to cross from Turkey to South Kurdistan in 2016.

Všelichová, who spent 4 years in prison in Turkey, talked about her experiences in her book 'We fought for humanity'.

Introducing her book in a program held in Prague last Tuesday, Všelichová talks about her long struggle that started in Shengal and went on in Rojava. Všelichová also tells about the years she spent in a Turkish prison. She shares her memories of her Kurdish friends in prison and a photo album she prepared from Shengal and Rojava in the last part of her book.

Visiting Rojava with her husband and daughter Arien in April, Všelichová went to Raqqa, where she met old friends and visited refugee camps. Všelichová, who is actively fighting for Rojava in her country, the Czech Republic, said that she wants to contribute more to the Kurdish community here.

Time in prison

Markéta Všelichová went to Shengal to provide humanitarian aid for the first time in 2015 and went from there to Rojava. She was arrested at the border while crossing to South Kurdistan in August 2016 with her husband, Miroslav Farkas.

Všelichová and her husband were charged by a court in Şırnak on charges of being YPG members and aiding, and were sentenced to 6 years and 3 months.

These sentences caused a crisis between the Czech Republic and the Turkish state. The couple, who stayed in Şırnak, Şakran and Erciyes prisons for 4 years, were eventually released in July 2022 as a result of pressure from the Czech government.

The couple, who speak Kurdish very well and named their new-born daughter Arien in Kurdish, continue their work for Rojava.

New verdict from Belgium: The PKK is not a terrorist organisation

The Foreigners Litigation Council in Belgium said the PKK is not a terrorist organisation.

MAXIME AZADI
BRUSSELS
Thursday, 9 Jun 2022

The Foreigners Litigation Council (Conseil du contentieux des étrangers) annulled a decision to exclude the benefit of international protection to a Turkish national of Kurdish origin accusing him of having participated, outside his country of nationality, in the financing of the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation.

The Council said instead that “on the basis of the various sources of information submitted to it concerning the nature, structure, organization, activities and methods of the PKK”, it “considers that the acts committed by this organization, taken as a whole, cannot be qualified as terrorist acts.”

The ruling added that “the Council agrees with the point of view expressed by the Brussels Court of Appeal in its judgment of 8 March 2019, a point of view that the Court of Cassation endorsed in its judgment of 28 January 2020.”

The Council was evaluating the objection made after the rejection of a Kurdish refugee's political asylum request and concluded that the applicant could not be excluded on international protection.

HDP lawmaker submits parliamentary question regarding detention of 21 journalists in SE Turkey

By Turkish Minute
- June 11, 2022

Meral Danış Beştaş from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Thursday submitted a parliamentary question regarding the detention of 21 journalists in southeastern Diyarbakır province, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing the Bianet news website.

Addressing the Ministry of Justice, Beştaş said there was a confidentiality order regarding the investigations and demanded to know why the journalists were detained.

Turkish authorities detained 21 Kurdish journalists on Wednesday. The detainees worked for Kurdish news outlets JinNews and the Mezopotamya news agency (MA). Among those who were detained were MA’s Editor-in-Chief Aziz Oruç, JinNews News Director Safiye Alagaş and JinNews Editor-in-Chief Gülşen Koçuk.

The journalists are currently in custody at Diyarbakır police headquarters’ counterterrorism division, where they are reportedly being kept in one-person cells.

The journalists’ lawyer Resul Temur contacted the prosecutor to find out why they were detained and to see his clients. However, the prosecutor said the investigations were still underway and that he was reluctant to disclose the reason for the detentions. He only said the journalists were detained for their journalism activities and servicing news for foreign television stations.

Opposition politicians, journalists and activists expressed outrage over the detentions, saying it was a huge blow to freedom of the press. At a press conference in eastern Turkey’s Van province, representatives for the Human Rights Foundation (IHD) said the journalists were punished for their journalistic work.

“The police raided the homes and offices of these journalists as if they were terrorists,” they said. “They were made to wait in handcuffs for hours while the police conducted the searches.”

They added that the independent press would never stop telling the public the truth. “Independent journalists will not give in to political pressure and violence,” they said.

Journalists in southern Mersin province also said they would not give in to political pressure and supported their detained colleagues. At a press briefing they added that censorship had become common in Turkey but that they would cover the news with the utmost transparency.

The Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC) said the detention of journalists was unacceptable. “The government is trying to monopolize the press,” they said. “They want journalists to cover the news according to the government agenda. But a country where independent media does not exist cannot be democratic.”

The TGC said the government urgently needed to stop referring to government critics as terrorists and their journalistic work as terrorism. Moreover, they demanded that all detained and arrested journalists be immediately released.

Turkey is one of the world’s biggest jailers of professional journalists and was ranked 153rd among 180 countries in terms of press freedom in 2021, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Turkish journalists are often targeted and jailed for their journalistic activities.

Intellectuals and journalists call on everyone to stand up with arrested Kurdish journalists

A number of intellectuals, journalists and activists reacted to the detention of Kurdish journalists and called on everyone to take a stand against the AKP-MHP government.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022

Reactions to the detention of 21 Kurdish journalists in Amed continue.

A number of intellectuals, activists and journalists said: "We condemn the government's pressure on journalists and invite everyone to take a stance against this pressure."

The statement said: “We condemn the government pressure on the press and call on everyone to take a stand against it!

The AKP-MHP Regime is increasing its pressure on journalists and especially Kurdish journalists as the election approaches. The detention of 21 journalists from Mesopotamia Agency and Jinnews, whose ‘crime’ is writing, and keeping them in handcuffs for hours is not only a violation of the freedom of the press, which is an indispensable part of democracy, but also a violation of basic human rights.

The Turkish regime, which is becoming more and more totalitarian, increases its hatred towards those who do not think like it. When evaluated together with the social media law, it appears clear that the main target of this pressure and intimidation is actually to prevent the public's right to receive information, as well as to prepare the infrastructure for the frauds planned to be carried out in the next elections. The government wants to prevent the flow of information and news about human rights and election violations, especially in the Kurdish region.

The fact that political parties and non-governmental organizations, especially the main opposition, remain silent about this pressure means that they ignore the oppression and persecution of the Kurds, as always. It is naïve to think that there will be free and fair elections in an environment where there is no free and independent press.

Regardless of their origin, belief or language, efforts to silence journalists must be resisted and countered. Those who are silent today will not have the right to complain tomorrow.

We strongly condemn this pressure on journalists and invite everyone to take a stand against this pressure from the government and support our friends."

The statement was signed by the following people:

"1) Abdullah Cetin – Journalist

2) Ali Çatakçın – Author

3) Alin Ozinian – Journalist

4) Amberin Zaman - Journalist

5) Aris Nalcı – Journalist

6) Ayşe Hür – Researcher Writer

7) Ayşe Yıldırım – Journalist

8) Can Dundar – Journalist

9) Celal Başlangıç – Journalist

10) Cengiz Aktar – Academic

11) Dünya Doğan – Lawyer

12) Elif Yıldırım- Poet, Writer

13) Erdoğan Aydın – Journalist Writer

14) Ergun Babahan – Journalist

15) Erk Acarer – Journalist

16) Erol Köroğlu – Academic

17) Ertuğrul Mavioğlu – Journalist

18) Fuat Ateş – Journalist

19) Hasan Töre – Politician

20) Hayko Baghdad – Journalist

21) Hüseyin Levent Köker - Academic

22) İsmail Özen – Athlete

23) Latife Akyüz – Academic

24) Leyla Uyar – Journalist

25) Mahir Sayın – Politician

26) Mehmet Ali Çankaya – AABK Organizing Officer

27) Murat Çakır – Writer

28) Neşe Özgen – Academic

29) Nevra Akdemir – Academic

30) Nikos Michailidis – Academic

31) Ohannes Kılıçdağı – Academic

32) Osman Okkan – Journalist

33) Ragıp Duran – Journalist

34) Selim Eskiizmirliler – Academic

35) Şehbal Şenyurt – Director-Writer

36) Tuncay Yilmaz – Politician

37) Ümit Kıvanç – Journalist

38) Yavuz Baydar - Journalist

39) Yektan Türkyılmaz – Academic

40) Yiğit Aksakoğlu – Civil Society Member.

Peace in Kurdistan sends its solidarity greetings to all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds.

ANF
LONDON
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022

Peace in Kurdistan sent its solidarity greetings to all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds.

Peace in Kurdistan said in a statement: "We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those out on the streets who are joining in the demonstration for peace. For the fate of humanity, the Kurds must be victorious. Solidarity with the Kurds, stop Turkey’s war."

The statement continued: "The spill over into Kurdistan from the protracted conflict in Europe is becoming more clearly evident in Erdogan’s latest actions in Syria and Iraq. The President of Turkey is ruthlessly exploiting the situation opened up by the war in Ukraine to achieve maximum advantage in his unrelenting war against the Kurds. He calculates that while the United States and Russia are preoccupied with Ukraine, Turkish forces will have a free hand to eliminate Kurdish forces located across the border in Syria and Iraq, claiming to be acting in response to a terrorist threat and encouraged by his belief that Turkey’s allies will remain silent and in so doing will effectively be condoning his actions.

Furthermore, while much of the Russian forces are preoccupied in Eastern Ukraine, Erdogan appears to believe that the Russian military presence in Syria will offer no obstacle to Turkey’s military operations against the Kurds, which involve mass expulsion of the Kurdish majority population in the border region of some 1,400 km. He expects to escape criticism of his actions by the device of claiming that he is simply making the land safe for Turkey. This is a falsehood. The Kurds pose no threat to the Turkish people. They seek peace and to be treated fairly and only wish to enjoy the rights that other peoples can take for granted.

In pursuit of his war aims, Erdogan has frustrated NATO’s plans for expansion by refusing to countenance the membership of Sweden and Finland in a bid to exert leverage over the domestic policies of those two countries alleging that they offer a haven for Kurdish terrorist groups.

With Erdogan poised to launch an all-out war on Kurdish positions, the danger to the Kurds is now real and imminent. He has wanted to destroy Rojava ever since the Kurdish controlled enclave was established and has long resented the successes achieved by Kurdish forces in their resistance to ISIS and their cooperation with international forces in the common struggle to restrain the advance of the Islamist groups, who were engaging in an orgy of bloody massacres and enslaving all who stood in their way of their plan to construct a caliphate. Turkey collaborated with these groups, who were regarded by others as a scourge on humanity.

Like any other nation, Turkey must be held fully accountable for its actions. Ankara cannot simply be given free rein to ride roughshod over international law and flout standards of behaviour that we all expect other countries to follow.

Credible and repeated reports of the use of banned chemical weapons by Turkish forces against the Kurds demand to be thoroughly investigated.

Turkey must not be permitted to get away with its planned destruction of Kurdish civilians and displacement of entire communities in this ruthless and dirty war.

Turkey is pursuing an extremely high risk strategy with untold consequences which can only provoke further conflict and further destabilise the whole region. The Kurds stand full square for peace, for a new form of democratic self-government that offers hope for the peoples of the region and for advancing the rights of women and protecting the rights of minority communities. They must be supported.

The rights of all the peoples of the region and their way of life were mercilessly repressed by the jihadi factions whose interests became opportunistically aligned with those of the Turkish state. As such it is surely blatantly obvious that Turkey’s war on the Kurds is an attack on every one of us. Erdogan’s Turkey is engaged in a war of extermination against all decent, democratic, humanitarian principles and presents a threat to all the shared values that we should cherish and uphold as citizens of one global community. If we believe that we have a common interest in building a better future for the world, then we must stop Turkey from fulfilling its objectives.

Since its foundation in 1994, Peace in Kurdistan has consistently argued that direct peace negotiations between Turkey and the Kurds offer the only realistic solution towards bringing this historic conflict to an end with an enduring settlement. We repeat once again this demand and call on all those with influence to restrain Turkey’s war drive and bring Erdogan to the negotiating table.

The UK Government, NATO and the West must not remain silent in the face of Turkey’s war drive."

Peace in Kurdistan ended its statement by sending its solidarity greetings to "all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds. We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those out on the streets who are joining in the demonstration for peace. For the fate of humanity, the Kurds must be victorious. Solidarity with the Kurds, stop Turkey’s war."

BAN BLASPHEMY LAWS

Morocco bans film about daughter of Prophet

A man visits the empty Le Rif cinema in the western 

Moroccan city of Casablanca, on January 24, 2022. 

AFP
Published: 12 June ,2022

Morocco announced Saturday it had banned a British film about the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, which Muslims in a number of countries have denounced as blasphemous.

“The Lady of Heaven” will not receive a license to be shown in the country, the Moroccan Cinematographic Centre (CCM) said in a statement issued late Saturday.

The CCM ruling bans the film, directed by Eli King, from being screened on either a commercial or cultural basis in the country.

The drama is billed as the first film on the life of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatimah, and draws links between ISIS in the 21st century and historical figures in Sunni Islam.

The CCM’s ruling comes hours after Morocco’s Supreme Ulema Council, the kingdom’s highest religious authority, firmly condemned the film in a statement Saturday.

In the statement, they said the film was a “flagrant falsification of the established facts of the history of Islam.”

The film was released in Britain on June 3 but after protests outside cinemas, the world’s second-largest cinema chain, Cineworld, cancelled all screenings.

Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq are among the countries to have denounced the film as blasphemous.

Members of white nationalist group charged with planning riot at Idaho pride event

A police officer holds one of a group of men, among 31 arrested for conspiracy to riot and affiliated with the white nationalist group Patriot Front, after they were found in the rear of a U Haul van in the vicinity of a North Idaho Pride Alliance LGBTQ+ event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, US June 11, 2022. (Reuters)

Reuters
Published: 12 June ,2022

Police in northwest Idaho arrested more than two dozen members of a white nationalist group on Saturday and charged them with planning to stage a riot near a LGBTQ pride event, authorities said.

For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

Lee White, police chief in the city of Coeur D’Alene, told reporters 31 members of Patriot Front face misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot and additional charges could come later.

A local resident spotted the men, wearing white masks and carrying shields, getting into a U-Haul truck and called police, telling the emergency dispatcher it “looked like a little army,” according to White. Police pulled the truck over about 10 minutes after the call.

Video taken at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed about 20 men kneeling next to the truck with their hands bound, wearing similar khaki pants, blue shirts, white masks and baseball caps.

Police recovered at least one smoke grenade and documents that included an “operations plan” from the truck, as well as shields and shin guards, all of which made their intentions clear, White said.

“They came to riot downtown,” he said.

The men come from at least 11 states, White said, including Texas, Colorado and Virginia.

Patriot Front formed in the aftermath of the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it broke off from another extremist organization, Vanguard America, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

White supremacists are riling up thousands on social media



The Associated Press
Published: 10 June ,2022

The social media posts are of a distinct type. They hint darkly that the CIA or the FBI are behind mass shootings. They traffic in racist and sexist tropes. They revel in the prospect of a “white boy summer.”

White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo.

Their snarky memes and trendy videos are riling up thousands of followers on divisive issues, like abortion, guns, and immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the US in the coming months.

These type of threats and racist ideology have become so commonplace on social media that it’s nearly impossible for law enforcement to separate internet ramblings from dangerous, potentially violent people, Michael German, who infiltrated white supremacy groups as an FBI agent, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

“It seems intuitive that effective social media monitoring might provide clues to help law enforcement prevent attacks,” German said. “After all, the white supremacist attackers in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and El Paso all gained access to materials online and expressed their hateful, violent intentions on social media.”

But, he continued, “so many false alarms drown out threats.”

DHS and the FBI are also working with state and local agencies to raise awareness about the increased threat around the US in the coming months.

The heightened concern comes just weeks after an 18-year-old white man entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, with the goal of killing as many Black patrons as possible. He gunned down 10.

That shooter claims to have been introduced to neo-Nazi websites and a livestream of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings on the anonymous, online messaging board 4Chan.

In 2018, the white man who gunned down 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue shared his antisemitic rants on Gab, a site that attracts extremists. The year before, a 21-year-old white man who killed 23 people at a Walmart in the largely Hispanic city of El Paso, Texas, shared his anti-immigrant hate on the messaging board 8Chan.

References to hate-filled ideologies are more elusive across mainstream platforms like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram. To avoid detection from artificial intelligence-powered moderation, users don’t use obvious terms like “white genocide” or “white power” in conversation.

They signal their beliefs in other ways: a Christian cross emoji in their profile or words like “anglo” or “pilled,” a term embraced by far-right chatrooms, in usernames.

Most recently, some of these accounts have borrowed the pop song “White Boy Summer” to cheer on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on Roe v. Wade, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a social media intelligence firm.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta banned praise and support for white nationalist and separatists movements in 2019 on company platforms, but the social media shift to subtlety makes it difficult to moderate the posts.

“We know these groups are determined to find new ways to try to evade our policies, and that’s why we invest in people and technology and work with outside experts to constantly update and improve our enforcement efforts,” David Tessler, the head of dangerous organizations and individuals policy for Meta, said in a statement.

A closer look reveals hundreds of posts steeped in sexist, antisemitic, and racist content.

In one Instagram post identified by The Associated Press, an account called White Primacy appeared to post a photo of a billboard that describes a common way Jewish people were exterminated during the Holocaust.

“We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers. So no, a billboard calling out bigotry against Jews isn’t an overreaction,” the pictured billboard said.

The caption of the post, however, denied gas chambers were used at all. The post’s comments were even worse: “If what they said really happened, we’d be in such a better place,” one user commented. “We’re going to finish what they started someday,” another wrote.

The account, which had more than 4,000 followers, was immediately removed Tuesday, after the AP asked Meta about it. Meta has banned posts that deny the Holocaust on its platform since 2020.

US extremists are mimicking the social media strategy used by ISIS, which turned to subtle language and images across Telegram, Facebook and YouTube a decade ago to evade the industry-wide crackdown of the terrorist group’s online presence, said Mia Bloom, a communications professor at Georgia State University.

“They’re trying to recruit,” said Bloom, who has researched social media use for both ISIS and far-right extremists. “We’re starting to see some of the same patterns with ISIS and the far-right. The coded speech, the ways to evade AI. The groups were appealing to a younger and younger crowd.”

For example, on Instagram, one of the most popular apps for teens and young adults, white supremacists amplify each other’s content daily and point their followers to new accounts.