The Erdoğan government’s dictatorial approach to town planning has awakened a sleeping giant. In the space of 24 hours a simple protest over a park’s future has become a nationwide rebellion against authoritarian government, violent police and creeping Islamisation of a famously secular society. rabble’s men on the ground, Reuben and Gielty, report. Yesterday saw one of the biggest protests in Istanbul’s history. At 1pm the commercial centre of the cosmopolitan … Read More
A Tale From The Taksim Anti-Mall Mobilisations
Bellowing foggy clouds of tear gas choked the early Istanbul morning of the 30th of May, as police clad in paramilitary riotgear stormed Gezi park in Taksim. Reuben & Gielty have this report from the front lines. (This article was written pseudonymously by Irish journalists Ronan Burtenshaw and Tommy Gavin because of safety concerns.) Using a signal dampener to limit internet use and accompanied by a heavily armoured “Mass Incident Intervention … Read More
Two, Better Than One.
As the entertainment industry fights a losing war for copyright protection, digital pirates continue to find ways of keeping the commons open. The Pirate Bay has been forced out of its “away from keyboard home” in Sweden due to recent threats of legal action, it has now taken up residence elsewhere in Scandinavia. For a while now the site’s true location has been unknown, hidden away in a far-off cloud and identifiable only by the … Read More