This week I'm bringing my news review link-list post forward a couple of days and I may even make this section twice per week (no guarantees) because, really, the list of news is always huge and often I'm telling you about things that happened five days or even 10 days earlier.
While there is much more stuff I think that three are the main issues: (1) Occupy Wall Street, (2) the mystery radioactive iodine cloud that haunts Central and Northern Europe and (3) the Nazi terrorist network that has come to light in Germany and that enjoyed protection from police. These I will deal with in separate sections.
Occupy Wall Street (and all the rest)
After the violent repression of Tuesday, when the Liberty Camp was dismantled by police's bulldozers, the confrontation has continued all the week, reaching an apogee, for what I could gather, yesterday with a massive demonstration:
Angry people, losers? That will become a slogan somehow.
Demonstration that resulted in brutal police aggression, including the use of less-lethal weapons such as a sound cannon, repression that fell against nonviolent demonstrators and journalists alike.
They also arrested a dissident police former agent, the odd real good cop who asked his colleagues in the police not to be mercenaries of the corporations (and was able to forecast his own arrest).
Elsewhere in the USA, Seattle police pepper-sprayed elderly and pregnant women alike, never mind that the city hall declared its solidarity with the movement earlier in the week - snake tongue FTW, seems to be their mantra.
Another hotspot is Denver, with packed demos on Saturday and then again yesterday (at least). Other reported protests took place in Portland and the University of California.
Interestingly enough, some NYC OWS activists have begun a project to map the demos and related incidents in the USA and around the World. By the moment it seems that the information they have is heavily biased towards the USA and New York City specifically but with your help the project may become easily a "real time" map of the revolution.
The Revolution will not be televised indeed... but nobody said anything about the Internet.
For related protests in Europe and elsewhere see below.
Radioactive iodine over Europe
I'm really not sure how to deal with this but since early in the week there have been reports of iodine-137 (a dangerous radioactive isotope with a half-life slightly above the 8 days) all over Central and Northern Europe. Incredibly enough the cloud has been around for a month or two already but only now we have been told about it (thanks to a Czech watchdog who went public on the matter).
The levels appear to be relatively low but such a rapidly decaying isotope must be continuously emitted for this persistence and that is both intriguing and dangerous.
Initially fingers were pointed (by Poland) at Pakistan but the data does not seem consistent with that. A Hungarian lab has eventually admitted to a minor punctual release of this isotope but they deny that the amount could be related to what is seen over so much of Europe.
Some reading in chronological order
“Quite Exceptional”: France reveals detection of iodine-131 — Says it could be from nuclear reactor.
What is intriguing is that many experts think it is a nuclear reactor accident. Where? Some have said it is from Fukushima, while others vehemently deny the possibility (but presenting no evidence).
In a related incident:
Fire in reactor containment at Swedish nuke plant blamed on Vacuum cleaner — Over $250 Million in losses. Surreal but not the source I guess.
Nazi terror in Germany and the right-eye blindness of German police
The impunity of the Nazi terror gang National-Socialist Underground, revealed this week after two members of a cell died and another began to cooperate with the tribunals, is outrageous. Its intermingling with the state security forces extremely worrying.
As Rafael Poch exposes at La Vanguardia[es], Nazi terror is by far the worst spat of such kind of crime ever in Germany, having killed at least 147 people. By comparison the so much mystified Red Army Fraction only killed 34 (and lost 27) people.
However as the victims are not mafioso banksters or their mercenaries but poor immigrants or loser lefties in most cases, this right wing terror has not achieved any notoriety and in most cases the culprits remain at large, surely under protection of the same authorities that are supposed to control them.
Some further reading/watching:
Nazi terror gang had a list of German politicians[es].This list included left-wing ones (Jerzy Montag, Greens) but also, oddly enoug, far-right ones (Hans-Peter Uhl, CSU).
Basque Country
Censorship in festival 'against censorship'[es]. Independent Cuban journalist was forbidden from filming and threatened on pretexts and arbitrary grounds.
Inquisition charges with "attack against authority" to the three ecologists who threw cream pies to Pamplona Mayor Barcina[es]. Never mind that the 'crime' took place in French territory (where they have not been prosecuted). Police evicts people who entered the building which briefly hosted occupied social center Kukutza II[es], another link[eu].
Judge rules that city-imposed punishment against Txori Barrote (Bilbao fiestas' popular association or konpartsa) is null[es]. This one and another konpartsa, Kaskagorri, were banished from taking part in the fiestas of the city in the last two years for showing photos of Basque prisoners (what is being persecuted against all laws).
Freedom for the Nice-3[es]. Three people from Navarre and La Rioja were arrested and sentenced to four months of prison when traveling to Nice G8 protests for having some climbing equipment in the car (totally absurd except maybe for the Gestapo). Their freedom and rights are being demanded in weekly protests.
Europe
Other news from Europe:
West Asia and North Africa
Palestine:
Ilan Against the Wall: Palestine-Israel, The joint struggle is not intimidated by the change of seasons (weekly report).
Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights (book review).
Other:
LIBYA: Headed for Some Sort of Sharia (Karlos Zurutuza)
America
'Israel's advocate' Dennis Ross to leave White House... and enter AIPAC.
South Asia
The conflicts between the government and armed factions within the Nepal Maoists seem to be reaching a point of no return, specially as all the government seems to want is to become a bourgeois recycling machine.
Another hotspot is Pakistan, where the terrorist attacks by US forces never seem to end.
East Asia
Japan nuclear catastrophe:
Daiichi-Inpo report (PDF)
Opinion
In Spanish language: videos of the conference of Richard Stallman, founder of the movement for free software, in Tabacalera occupied social center (at Las Interferencias blog).
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