In my one week absence from this column, things got just about as bad as they've ever been in both Egypt and Syria. First off, the Egyptian army continued its apparent bid to spark an all-out civil war, massacring over 500 Morsi supporters in a week, unapologetically gunning down unarmed civilians in the street while the world's press looked on. Across the Mediterranean sea, the Syrian regime have been flirting with the prospect of a barrage of Western military intervention by gassing over a thousand civilians to a death. But more on that later.
And while the West preparing to drop their peace bombs on Assad – possibly pissing off Russia, China and Iran, and sparking World War Three in the process – grabbed most of the headlines, there were a bunch of other people around the world devoted to feeding world peace to the dogs; Colombian police and Polish football hooligans being my picks of the week.
COLOMBIA
Colombia's escalating tensions with its farmers came to a head last week when clashes erupted across the country between police and farmers, the latter backed up by their allies in the student movement.
Last Monday, Colombian agricultural workers started their second strike over President Juan Santos' agricultural policies – the farmers claiming that his legislation makes it incredibly difficult for them to turn a profit. Farmers had set up burning barricades in Boyaca province, the heartland of the protests, and police moved in to clear them, sparking the clashes in the process.
In Colombia's capital, Bogota, students protesting in solidarity fought running battles around the university campus as police used a water cannon and tear gas against their slightly more primitive arsenal of petrol bombs and stones.
In a blatant move to discredit the grassroots movement, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon later claimed – without providing any evidence – that the leftist guerrilla group FARC had infiltrated the protest. He stated that no milk or potato farmer would have it in them to set up barricades and set fire to police cars.
Which seems like an odd thing to say, considering you don't have to have much "in you" to set up a barricade to protest something you're angry about, especially if you're a hardy Colombian farmer who's used to regularly toiling with heavy stuff (like whatever they used to make their barricades). It also assumes that no civilians have ever set fire to anything out of anger, which is kind of an embarrassing thing for a national defence minister to assume.
POLAND
Poland versus Mexico – not one of the world's most spectacular fixtures. But with the football season just about to kick off, it looks like these Polish hooligans couldn't wait to spend the next few months kicking the shit out of people instead of watching any football, so – bizarrely – had an early run at a bunch of Mexican sailors on shore leave.
Fifty-six navy cadets were enjoying their holiday on a beach in the town of Gdynia, sunbathing away the stress of their navy exercises, when a mob of 300 Ruch Chorzow fans charged at them bare-chested, turning the beach into a war zone.
The vastly outnumbered sailors were pummelled to the ground and repeatedly stamped on, all because – according to the hooligans, anyway – one of them had slapped a local woman. However, this was disputed by the local prosecutor, who accused the hooligans of being the "aggressors".
The fight was taken so seriously that the Mexican government summoned its ambassador to the country for a briefing on the event after two of the sailors were hospitalised with serious injuries. Mexican-Polish relations have never been so low, though I imagine a full-scale war is unlikely.
SYRIA
Last Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched the most devastating chemical weapons attack since Saddam gassed thousands of Kurds in 1993. Residents of the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghoutta awoke to scenes of horror as thousands lay dead or dying from the effects of Sarin gas, which is widely believed to have been fired by Assad's forces.
The regime denied it was responsible, instead blaming rebels for staging the attack, which the Syrian opposition claim killed 1,300 people. The last time the regime used chemical weapons, the US and its allies vowed to arm the rebels; this time, the response has been markedly more aggressive, with reports suggesting we can probably expect "limited" Western missile strikes against military positions to begin on Thursday.
The US has stressed that this is not about regime change, but more about showing Assad that the use of chemical weapons is not acceptable. Ultimately, that's not true – it's likely that the US hopes these strikes against Assad's air power and military bases will give the rebels the much needed momentum to tip the balance against the regime that, down the line, could lead to regime change. There has already been increased activity on the British military base of Akrotiri in Cyprus, and US warships are being brought closer to Syrian controlled waters. Air strikes are risky, as Syria's air defences are far more capable than Libya's, meaning the use of cruise missiles from submarines and destroyers is favourable – but a combination of both is likely.
Both Russia and Iran have warned against intervention in Syria, with Iran stating that any intervention could start a conflict that would "engulf the region" – something that ignores the already existent spread of the conflict into Lebanon and Iraq. Direct and overt retaliation from either country is unlikely, though Russia has just moved its Pacific fleet into the Eastern Mediterranean, closer to Syria, throwing the slightly worrying possibility of a standoff with the US navy into the mix.
Check in next week to see how World War Three is developing.
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